A Look Back at Orientation

Today was the last day of orientation, and I surprisingly enjoyed 95% of it. I say that because orientation activities normally make me want to tear my hair out. Most of the people on the trip are easy to get along with which makes things easier. I'm going to try my best to not repeat things from previous posts in my general summary of the last week or so. Also, I can once again take no credit for any pictures in this post, this time because I don't bring my camera when we go out.

Anyway, Monday and Tuesday we had dancing lessons. I think I learned basic steps for 5 different kind of dances, and have no clue which belong to which. I unfortunately missed the inauguration broadcast because of the lessons, but I got to see it online later. They ended up being pretty fun even though I wouldn't think that I'd like it. On Monday we went to a bar called the Irish Rover with all the students and faculty of IES for a pizza party and a Spanish band called a "Tuna" came to play. They're basically a student group that plays random string instruments and most closely resemble a mariachi band probably. Here's a picture from inside the bar, I'm the one furthest back in the picture.


Here's a picture of the band. They were absurd looking, but put on a good show.


Wednesday I officially signed up for my classes and got everything that I was hoping to get. We did karaoke as a group on Thursday afternoon. That was probably the dull point of orientation, but still alright. I actually did it! With a group, but still, a big step for me... Then on Friday we went to a mall on the other side of the river. Actually, that was probably the dull point. If I had a ton of money to just throw around, I would have enjoyed it more as I like the clothing here a little too much, but it ended up being a lot of walking around. I saw Seven Pounds at the movie theater there which was really sad, but good. It was really confusing at the beginning though which was either the nature of the movie or because I had difficulty understanding the dubbed over version of Will Smith. Saturday we went to Zamora and Toro as I have already written about. Oh, and today we went to Valor and got chocolate con churros. It's things like that that I already know I'm going to miss when I go back home. What it is is basically melted, delicous chocolate in a cup served with sticks of fried dough to dip in it. Soooo amazing. It's more of an old lady thing to eat, but I really don't care, they taste way too good.

Outside of orientation acitivites, things are going pretty well as well. Monday night, a bunch of us stayed after the pizza party to hang out at the Irish Rover. It is the most American place ever. Only American Top 40 music and pictures of American icons all over the walls. It has a nice atmosphere, but not a place to go if you want to be Spanish. This is a picture of the two student orientation staff people who both are in the Facultad de Transducción. Saida is on the left and Mari is on the right.
I'm starting to get a hang of Spanish life a little bit more. A couple night ago we did tapa bar hopping for dinner. A group of 6 of us went and bought big plates of various tapas, including amazing chorizo, calamari, asparagus, and potato things. Overall it cost everyone like 15 euros which was a pretty good deal considering how much food and drink we got overall.

Last night, we went out again. Left the residencias at about 12:30 and got back at about 5. So late, but getting used to it. Its still unsettling to hear the birds singing on your way home. Here are some random pictures from people at different bars/discotecas. Anyone thats up close in the pictures is from my program. I admitedly look unnecessarily sketchy in the last one, but I thought I'd include it because its one of the few pictures with me in it.

So yes. Very good two weeks so far. Classes start tomorrow! Ahhh! I have both of my classes that I will be taking at the actual university tomorrow and I dont get home til 9 PM, but dont start til 1, so I'm okay with that. Wish me luck! I'll update soon about how my classes are going.

Day Trip to Toro and Zamora

I'm going to preface this post by saying that I did not take a single one of these pictures as I forgot my camera. So thank you to those people I stole these pictures from.

So. On Saturday, we took our second and last day trip of orientation. We went north this time to the town of Toro and then to Zamora. Toro is famous for its wine apparently, so we went to a winery! Being January and all, it wasn't a very active place, but we still had a tour of the "bodega" and a mini-wine tasting at the end which was more of a way to get 40 people to buy a bottle of wine from then than anything else. I may or may not have fallen for their tricks.

This is a picture of some of the vines next to the winery if that wasn't obvious.


Inside of one of the buildings where we did the "wine tasting" at 10:30 am. What an interesting breakfast.


Some of the barrels of wine in a basement. I may be missing some key vineyard vocab as I was taught it all in Spanish.


Different wines that they offered.


The next stop on our trip was to Zamora, the hometown of one of the IES staff members, David. It wasn't a very exciting city, but it had its cool parts nevertheless.

This is one of the plazas in Zamora that was filled with these trees that had been lead to grow together over many years so that it was one solid canopy on the top. It looked more like a sculpture in the winter than actual trees but it must look amazing in the summer when there are leaves on the trees.


I included this picture because it exemplified the town. In other words, it had a lot of old people and not much else. I also like the picture, but forget who I stole it from already.


This is part of a cathedral in Zamora. Not as cool as ours.


Another view of the cathedral. Its like a really really small version of Salamancas, or so we were told.


Zamora is known as the city of storks because, well, there are a lot of storks. The top of nearly every church in the city has a giant stork nest on it. Its pretty cool because they're just so freakin huge.


After we left Zamora, we stopped at an old wine cellar that has now been converted into a restaurant for la comida. The food was once again very good, but the restaurant was a bit too creepy for my taste. We had three courses of meat, ham to be precise. We started with a chorizo, then we had super thick bacon, then the main course was ribs. While they weren't the best I'd ever had, they were different than any other that I'd had before. After the meal, we had a delicious custardy desert that I already forget the name of followed by coffee and these "shots" that they gave everyone. I'm convinced that they were 99% sugar, but the combination of those and the wine they served with dinner got some of the girls pretty tipsy. The combination of drunks girls and the really creepy restaurant owner made for an interesting meal that involved said creepy man drawing obsene pictures on the table clothes and showing the group his collection of dirty diagrams and genital-shaped pottery. It was definitely an interesting experience and kind of surreal overall considering we were probably 30 feet or so underground, but it was still a lot of fun and filling overall.
This is the view outside of the restaurant. A series of private wine cellars.


The enterance to the restaurant. We should have known.


The ribs that they served us. Quite delicious.


Inside the restuarant/wine cellar. The best word to describe it would probably be "rustic".


Look! A picture with me in it! For some reason all the guys sat together so food was consumed much more quickly, but they just kept bringing us more, or we would steal some from one of the girls tables. So much food. Overall, a very nice day trip.

Segovia Day Trip

Yesterday we took a trip to the town of Segovia. It was about 2 hours north-east of Salamanca. We had to catch the bus at 8 in the morning. When we got there, we took a tour with a woman who was speaking very slowly in Spanish and using very simple words. It was a bit odd. Anyway, a lot of it was pretty interesting, there was a beautiful cathedral and we went into the castle used by the kings and queens of Castilla for hundreds of years. We were able to walk to the top of the tower and had some amazing views of the city.


This is a picture of some mountains outside of the city. As usual, much more impressive in real life.


This is Alcazar, the castle used by the kings and queens of Catilla for hundreds of years. The town-folk say that Walt Disney visited it once and it inspired the castles of his movies. Then other people said that was a complete lie. So. I guess make your own opinion.


More castle.


Highest part of the castle that we were able to climb up to.


View from the top of the tower looking down over part of the castle and the farmland around it.


Closer image of the same thing.


A very old church as seen from inside the castle.


View from the other side of the tower. This is the cathedral in town.


Back in town now, this is the front of the cathedral.


More cathedral.


And again, a full view of the cathdral as seen from the Plaza Mayor of Segovia.


A church in town.


The large arches to the left are Roman aqueducts. They have been touched in any way for 2000 years and are largely intact. There's nothing holding the stones together at all, they're just perfectly cut and placed. 100 feet tall, crazy stuff.

After hanging out in town for a while, we went to go eat lunch at about 2 or so in a very nice place a few miles outside of the city. IES payed for the meal and the food was amazing. They came out with plate after plate of appetizers and we had this delicious chicken dish for the main course.

We did end up going out last night and got to the fisrt place probably about 1. It's really weird being in any building and having people smoking around you. And the Spanish like to smoke a lot. My eyes were burning by the end of the night, but I guess I just gotta get used to that. Everything I was wearing smells so strongly of cigarettes. I got back to my room about 4 and we left the discoteca when it was at its busiest. I finally got over my jet lag, now I have to start going back to the sleep cycle I was on at home in order to keep up with the Spanish social scene. That's all for now!

First week in Salamanca

My first week of intensive Spanish class is now over. It's not really that intense, but I guess it's nice to hear Spanish for an extra three hours a day in order to get used to it. My professor's really awesome though. He actually teaches and is partly in charge of the Spanish program at Middlebury during the summer. We're learning a lot of information related to what to say and what not to say in conversation as opposed to writing, but I'm remembering very little because there's just way too much.

I finally took some pictures of the city, some were taken in not-so-optimum weather, but it will at least give some impression of the city.Here is a very poor picture of the cathedral, I'll get a better one soon.

This is the facade of the University of Salamanca. Whenever a student of the University first arrives, they're supposed to find the frog in the facade. The story goes that if they do, they will pass all of their classes and/or soon have a boy/girlfriend. I unfortunately needed help to find it...


This is the building that my Spanish class is in for the next week. It's really cold, but pretty.


This is the front of the Universidad Potificia de Salamanca, the private university in the city.


Some random road outside of my classroom.


La Casa de las Conchas. The public library.


View from the window of my Spanish class. Not too bad.


Looking down at the street.


The UPSA building again. If you look really close, you can see a stork on the top right of the closest tower.

Overall, so far, everything's going very well. The whole cooking thing I'm still not used to, but that'll come in time. A bunch of us are going out tonight for the first time. The Spanish are crazy. We're planning on leaving about midnight to get there about 12:15. And that's early for people our age. College students don't really make it out to the bars until 1ish. Before that they're in a cafetería (coffee shop, not bad food place). At about 2 or 3, they make their way over to the discotecas and come home anywhere between 4 and 7. Insane. We'll see how long I can last.

Moved In! (For a few days now...)

It's taken me wayy too long to update this considering everything that's been happening over the last few days. Unfortunately, not many pictures yet, but more should be coming very soon.

To begin, the metro in Madrid was definitely a more pleasant experience than any that I've been on the U.S. However, lugging a 70 pound bag on said metro during the morning rush hour, not so pleasant. Met everyone from my program back on Sunday at the airport, then took a bus into Salamanca. Spain is a lot more barren and farm-y than I was expecting, at least the part of it that I went through. Not a whole lot of trees.

I moved into my room as soon as the bus got into the city and it turned out that I'm sharing my kitchen with Reid Wilson from Amherst. It's a pretty good set-up because I've got my own room and bathroom, but I still have a semi-roommate person so that I'm not just sitting around my room alone when I'm in it. Everyone has their own individual water-heater so making showers quick is definitely important. Still getting used to the whole cooking-your-own food thing too. We made lemony-chicken tonight; wayyyy to much lemon. Getting there though. Here are some pictures of my room.


Orientation has been crazy busy. I once again find myself hating orientation-type activities like role-playing games, and "social hours" when they send you to an arcade to mingle... Awkward. I'm already starting to get used to the streets of the city. You can walk from one side of it to the other in a half hour which is really nice. All of the streets are cobblestone and a lot of the city center was built in the 1200's. It's so amazingly beautiful. Most streets in the city are pedestrian only, or so you think until a delivery truck goes flying by you at 40 mph. I was surprised at the degree that siesta exists here. Everything in the city just closes from about 1 until 4 or 5. Nothing's open, it's really hard to get used to. Also, maybe its just Salamanca, but there's soo much ham and yogurt, it's everywhere!

I'll leave it at this for tonight as its probably already way too long. I'll update soon with more photos.

I'm in Spain!

I'm here in Madrid now! Woooot! I left my house at 2:45 yesterday and checked into my hotel at 4:30 or so today. It was a very long trip with my sleep last night consisting of a half-hour nap. Just a bit tired right now. Luckily, everything seemed to go smoothly despite the doomy weather back in the northeast and the storm here in Madrid yesterday. There were a couple delays with flights, but I made all the connections and got here just as planned.

When I was in London for a few hours between flights, I started having this overwhelming urge to laugh at anyone who talked to me because they all had British accents. I realize that I was, in fact, in England, and I blame it on a lack of sleep, but they all sounded so strange. I had a very nice experience with British Airways, but I would prefer it if they flattened Heathrow and rebuilt it in a much more practical manner. It took me 2 hours to get from my arrival gate from the US to my departure gate to Madrid. And I was moving the whole time. It was insane. They also must convert to the Euro, I now have 3 pounds in change that I will never use again. Also, my first experience being in a vehicle that drives on the left side of the road. Terrifying. I'm also impressed with Madrid's metro system, very very clean, at least on the lines near the airport...

Here's some pics of my hotel room!
That's about it for now. I move into my room for the semester tomorrow. I just need to figure out how to wake up in the morning.... Oh, I also ate McDonalds for dinner. It's a horrible start to my trip in terms of the purpose of the trip, but I was way too hungry and the food was definitely higher quality than the typical meal from McDonalds.

Last Night in CT

I'm finally about to leave, but it doesn't quite feel like it. Everything is somehow all set to go. My computer was fixed today after crashing completely three days ago. I lost some things from my hard drive, but nothing too important. My checked bag weighs 69 pounds. They don't let you bring on anything over 70. Let's hope my scale is right. Also, my phone is staying home tomorrow, so I won't get anything after 2 pm tomorrow. I got to see everyone I wanted to see over break which was nice, and with almost no drama! Oh, for those of you who this may matter to, I tried sushi. Unfortunately, it was apparently an avocado roll, and I spend the next hour with a very itchy throat thanks to my very odd, but mild, allergy to avocado. So, I still need to have my first enjoyable sushi experience.

I finished the semester with not-so-great grades, for what I'm used to at least. I had a 3.15 average for the semester and my first C+ ever in physics. Gah. Luckily, this is a further boost for my desire to get a break from Amherst for the semester before the final stretch. My final obstacle, the 6-12 inches of snow that will be falling at its peak as my plane should be leaving the airport in NY. Wish me luck, and I will keep this as updated as I can. Sorry if this a horribly confusing stream of consciousness. Talk to you all from Europe!