More Traveling...

After the Northern Spain trip we settled into school a little more seriously. I´ll talk about school in another post.

The Tuesday after the trip, I went to El Parque de Buen Retiro with Minta, Angela, and Serena (that doesn´t mean anything to you, but I want to remember who I went with). We had a picnic and rented a row boat. A cute old man on the sidewalk made gestures to us to come over for a kiss. Minta politely said "no gracias" as we rowed further away. When it started to rain Angela, the girl from Oregon, told us this was normal for her, she would rather use our full 45 minutes of rowing and be wet. But, she also came prepared with sweaters to share.

After the rowing, they walked me to the metro stop where I split from the group to go meet Martin at the airport! After missing over two weeks of school, he had a lot to catch up on.

Before Martin got here, I spent a lot of time with Angela and Serena. They live a block away, so we walked to school together, figured out the bus system, stuff like that, and became friends in the process. After Martin arrived Serena told me they were singing excerpts from a Lion King song "(...) here's the bottom line. Our trio's down to two. (...) with all this romantic atmosphere, disaster's in the air!" I thought it was funny. But sadly, that is kinda what happened. There is a limited amount of time in a day. If more of it goes to Martin (which is what I want), then there is less time for other things. We still hang out, just not as much.

That weekend (Sept 12-13) the group went to Silos and Numancia. There was an awesome church in Silos that was built in and over a cave where a hermit lived. The chapel was painted on all the walls and ceilings, depicting scenes from the bible.

The next weekend, Marty and I spent a day in Toledo. We got a few souvineers, including a hand painted ceramic plate that was discounted 15€ because of chip that is hardly noticible after being painted over. I'm a cheap student. We also got some mazapan (spanish spelling) that is hand made by nuns. I don´t know why that makes it cooler if it tastes the same, but it's cooler. Maybe because I had to go into the abby and ring a bell for the nun to come bring it too me.

This past weekend we went to Avila and Salamanca. Avila has the sites of Santa Teresa de Jesus. I liked learning about her visions and life's work. We also walked the city wall and went inside the cathedral. Salamanca has a few amazing churches and a Roman Bridge. On our way home we went an hour and a half out of the way to see one of the only remaining Visigoth curches. It is from the 7th century. It is a great example of a church shaped like a byzantine cross, rather than the typical Latin cross. Cool as that was, you could see a lot of other things in four hours. But maybe medival history and visigoths are your thing. If so... you can stop by the bar for a fanta. The town is so small, it's the only place to get a snack.

Northern Spain

After weeks of not posting, I am finally making time to write again. One advantage of me not writing frequently is that it isn't possible for me to give a day by day detailed diary.

The trip to northern Spain was great. The cathedral in Leon was awesome. It has the second most stained glass of the European cathedrals. We stayed up till midnight so we could see the windows lit from the inside. They needed to get some brighter lights, but it was still pretty.
While in Leon I tried tapas (spanish appetizers that come with drinks) for the first time. We had a little confusion over the fact that tapas are only for the bar. The waiter told us we had to leave out table unless we were going to get dinner. Oops. We´ll call that a learning experience.

One of the stops on the trip was a small town called Ribadesella. I wish Martin could have visited it. While I was there I think I fell in love... with the city. It is built around a little harbor filled with fishing boats. The fishermen put there lobster traps on the dock ready for the next trip. It also helped that our hotel was on the beach. We walked out our back door for a swim.

Later we went down the street to a pastelería that had dark hot chocolate thick almost like pudding, an amazing assortment of pastries, marzipan fruits, as well as gourmet chocolates. Letizias are a heart shaped chocolate truffle thing that is only made in that region (name after the princess), so I was sure to try one. Later we splurged and got salmon at a sit-down restaurant. We were very proud of ourselves for asking questions about the menu, understanding the answers, and paying for food, all with a waiter that only spoke spanish (this was a week and a half after arriving). I was very enthralled by the town. It managed to be this charming despite being foggy and rainy the whole time I was there, even when we were swimming.

In an effort to be short here are a few other highlights of my week in Northern Spain.
- Bilbao with the Guggenheim museum and pinchos (a type of tapa)
- Exploring Santillana del Mar, another quaint spanish town
- Learning more about Spanish pre-history than I ever wanted to know, through many museums and archeological sites.
- Getting to know the study abroad group... many hours in the bus and in hotels together.

Some Drawings of Lindsay and I

Some drawings Lindsay and I did one afternoon together:



A wonderful drawing of a willow tree by Lindsay.



A side view drawing of me, Martin.



A Willow Tree I drew.




A wider view of the same tree.

The start of this week.

Tomorrow I head off to northern Spain. I have to say I´m pretty excited. When I write about it I really will try to be more concise.
Today I had my first class session for religion. I really really like the first half hour and even understood most of it. After that I started to think about how uncomfortable my seat was and how to explain a game in Spanish that we were going to play later. I didn´t understand much when I was doing that.
After class was family home evening (since we don´t really have families here we are assigned to groups). Martin volunteered us to be "mom and dad" but since he isn´t here I get to be a single mom. I´m good at deligation though. Planing was as easy as asking the responsible people to plan a lesson and song. I did plan the game, but we didn´t end up playing because the girls wanted to hear the story of how me and Mart met/got engaged. Poor Marty will never know what I said or be able to defend himself.
I´m off to pack. I have to be at the train station at 7:50 am, which is even earlier in Spain.