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.