Yesterday

I'm going to say yesterday was an awesome day. In the morning, I went to the train station and got my train tickets for my upcoming weekend jaunt to Córdoba, and for 30€ less than it would be if I bought online. Get ready for all kinds of photos of old buildings next Monday!

My musicology class is getting much easier, and the professor even asked me a question I might've been able to answer... If I'd only seen the movie Psycho. We were using movie plots to describe song "plots."At least I said a full sentence in the class for once. 

At lunch, Megan, David and I had a conversation about horror movies, stemming from my earlier predicament concerning Psycho. We all hate horror movies, is really the moral of that story. And David was surprised by how few movies we'd seen... I don't think he realized we were in middle school when half the movies we were talking about were released. 

I was supposed to have my culture class at 6, but it was cancelled for some reason. For this, Camila, Samantha and I went to Mandala for coffee and snacks. I had a café bonbón (coffee and condensed milk), and a tostada with tomato sauce and olive oil. Absolutely delicious. 

After sitting in the cafe for two hours and talking about everything from travel visas to haircuts, I went to French class. And, like most of my classes this week, understood a pretty good portion of it. The Spanish thing finally seems to be clicking a little bit. I also went to a tea shop today where I had a whole conversation with the shopkeeper an we understood each other almost perfectly. Best. Feeling. Ever. 

Slightly Absent...

Hey team, sorry I've been slightly MIA, my week just hasn't had too many exciting bits for you, so I'm combining them into one entry today! Woo! So, here's the hilights from the last few days!

• Went to an intercambio where there are students like myself who are learning Spanish, and locals who are learning English, and we all get together and attempt to speak real good together. Actually, this one was pretty good because we're all so advanced and awesome like that. And we got free tapas & soda, always a win. It was slightly awkward, but overall pretty fun.
• I ate more ice cream. Please see the photo below to understand why it's so difficult to walk by all the ice cream counters here and not have some! Plus, it's sooo warm walking around town all day. It's quite the dilemma. 

Today I got dulce de leche but my other favorites include lime & mint.
I want to try apple and orange though!

• I had to take a test for class. Boooo. I did alright on it though, just no one loves tests.
• I registered for my "real" classes! These are the ones at the actual university, not with International Courses, which my last two weeks of class have been. Those are kind of a joke (they're two weeks long and we spent half of that watching YouTube videos in my culture class...) but the ones I just registered are the real deal. So I ended up with three culture classes: Hispano-Hebrew Culture, Music in Spain, and Music of the 18th Century. Something like that. Not sure why I have two music classes, it just kinda worked out that way. Heh. And I'm taking intro to French, so I can start on my totally random 3rd language. But it seems like a fun schedule. The nice thing about being here is that I can pretty much take whatever classes I want, and try new things like a new language or a random music class, because I came in with enough AP credit that there aren't specific college credits I have to fulfill.
• I went to Karaoke Night at this bar near my classrooms. And, while we were looking through the book (for things other people were going to sing) I jokingly pointed out the Celine Dion song from Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On". Obviously, that led to me being onstage singing that song.  Awkward. Fun. But awkward.

Yeah we're on their Facebook page, we didn't take this

• That's most of what I have for this week! I also went to a bullfight today, but unfortunately I don't think I'm going to have the time to write everything I want to about that tonight. Stay tuned for photos of that tomorrow!!

First Day of School!

Today began classes with all kinds of (mostly) American students. Don't fret Mom & Dad, my classes with the locals will begin after this two week intensive class. We had two hours of language (I forgot how much I hate studying grammar), one hour of conversation (literally talked in pairs the whole time, best class ever), and one hour of culture (no one knew who the president was…). But it was a lot of fun actually.

This is the view from my classroom building...

 After class, a bunch of us wandered back towards the plaza, then we split off and headed home for lunch! María made us paella, so I had to tell her I hated shrimp… but the rice was really good!! We had a long conversation about how they speak the purest form of Spanish in Salamanca, so this is the place to be to learn!

Anyway, after all that we decided to go be tourists, because Megan has an internship at the tourism office, so she has to go visit all the sites! So we set off with another girl from the program to explore the city even more.

So we went to see Casa de las Conchas, the library that literally has stone shells all over the outside of it, and the first building ever built at the university (see library photo above) and then of course we had to get churros con chocolate at this place called Valor that was recommended to us by Bea from ISA. It was delicious, as predicted.

After a few more wanderings and church findings and shop enterings, we got back to the apartment in one piece. Megan and I noted that while we've only needed a map to get home once, we still take a different route every time. Yeah, that's the kind of layout this city has, that you can be coming and going from the same place every day and take a different route at least four times. Maybe more, I'm not sure how many times we've come home from the Plaza so far!

María had dinner ready for us, which looked like those breaded chicken breasts at first, but it turns out it was ham and cheese. Jamón in Spain, of course! And french fries too, those were good. And of course yogurt. She always gives us yogurt for dessert at night because it's good for our digestion. We spent a long time sitting in the kitchen and talking about her life pre-ISA students.

A very long, but lovely day. Loving it here still, even if I have to take class now!

Chau, os extraño!
(I miss you all!)

Cookies for Breakfast

Yeah, I ate cookies for breakfast, I kid you not. I wish I had photos. They weren't super sugary, but they were definitely cookies, and there were small amounts of chocolate involved. So we downed all of that then sped off to the Plaza Mayor with our mamá to meet the group.

After we said goodbye to María and the rest of the group arrived, we went to the College of International Studies for our placement test. It was one of those sneaky ones where you think it's gonna be super easy and then the last page is like, "If you have four apples and John takes three, calculate the mass of the sun." The grammar just got more and more complicated. But it was all multiple choice, and then we had a little oral part of the test, where she just asked me about if I'd taken Spanish for long, and if I'd visited Spain/Europe before. Super simple.

Next, we took a tour of the city! La Plaza, Universidad, abroad program offices, post office, shopping street, etc.

They turned us loose after a short meeting at the abroad office. Megan and I went to shop! She ended up with a Universidad hoodie, I got a clearanced skirt from Zala.

We came home to a very large amount of spaghetti that Maria had made for our lunch. We ate, she chastised us for not eating enough, showed her our purchases, and then she went off for a siesta and we went out to shop and explore more. We ended up wandering the Plaza, going into more shops, finding the library (Casa de Conchas), then going down to the New Cathedral of Salamanca. We were able to go inside this one and look around. Also, the outside was restored in the last century, and the guy who did it carved an astronaut into the facade outside the church! 

After more exploring and buying school supplies (one notebook), we walked back to the ISA office to get our schedules. Congratulations to me, I am in the Superior level class! Tomorrow begins the classes at the San Isidrio building, not pictured here. We then wandered back home, and are waiting for la cena (dinner). I think it might be tortilla española again, this time with the leftover spaghetti since we apparently don't eat enough. Sorry María!

Also, a few more photos of our exploration. We made it down to the Río Tormes and all sorts of places.

Casa de los Conches (the library)

And that is a human arm on display in the cathedral. We're really not sure why, we think it was a bishop or something... still not sure why. But we are all about dead people this week, I guess.