Paris tomorrow!

Sorry this post is a little late! I've been trying to fight off sickness for the past week so I didn't have much to share! However, I am happy to report that I (yes, mother, finally) went to the doctor on Monday and she gave me an antibiotic, so I feel substantially better! This past weekend, on Friday I believe it was, I was feeling well so I decided to go out and snap a few pictures of everyday Salamanca. I didn't get to take many because my camera died, but don't fret, I will go out again sometime with a fully charged camera battery. I know you guys want to see the monuments and stuff, but I also think sharing a little bit of everyday life can be interesting sometimes too. :) Not to worry, should you find this post boring, the next post will be full of pictures from Paris! This trip to Paris is one of the trips with API, so it's going to be a really fun trip with all of my friends there. I can't wait! :D

So, I'm going to start with how I start my day! I get up in the mornings, shower if I didn't shower the night before, and then I get dressed and go downstairs for breakfast. For me, my breakfast usually consists of plain flakes cereal with milk, and of course some sugar sprinkled on top. :) Amanda has cereal or she makes halfback pb&j sandwiches and eats a cup of yogurt. We could also make this stuff called ColaCao, which is like hot chocolate. Usually if you make that you eat some breakfast cookies dipped in it, but I usually save that for the night time, like an after dinner snack. The picture here is what my breakfast looked like last week: cereal, two different meds, water, and the little sugar box. What I found reallllyy interesting when I first came here was the fact that they don't refrigerate their milk until after they open it! When I opened the breakfast cabinet and saw that there were boxes of milk (no plastic gallons here, boys and girls!) I was honestly a little afraid! However, I must say, the milk here is really rich and I think a little bit sweeter than in the states! I like it, but it's not something I just drink a glass of like I would back home. I haven't had a glass of milk since I left home. I am SO looking forward to the day I can sit on the couch with a bag of powdered donuts and a tall glass of milk! Haha, it's the little things you miss. :)


These pictures are just things I see basically on a daily basis. There are some days where I just stop and look around and I have to wonder "Is this real?" Sometimes it just looks like it's straight from a post card. I love the history. There are so many stories being told everywhere you look. Some things I don't really understand because I haven't lived through the history here, but they are things I am interested to learn about.




So there's a street that is lined with cafes where people can eat al fresco. I'm really sad I never had lunch there before it got too cold, but we always have lunch prepared for us here at home, so I can't really complain. Speaking of food here at home, Concha, who is the sister of my host mom, is probably one of the best cooks ever. The woman who owns the house doesn't live here, so Concha basically always cooks for us. I LOVE her food. Back home we're all about flavor and spice and salt, but she mixes foods with sweet things instead, like fruit or chocolate. For example, one of my favorite foods I've had here was Concha's empanadas! She makes them with ham and cheese and DATES! Ohh my gosh the mix is heavenly. I could probably eat that every day. So THANK YOU Concha for taking such good care of us! :)

Okay, back to that street! These pictures were taken on that street, however there are many streets like this one. One of the pictures is of a "menu del dia" that I told y'all about earlier (I think in the Toledo post), and another picture is of a "50's Diner" that's supposed to be "American," but according to Aura it's not all that great. Another picture is of the typical "pharmacia" here in Spain! They're everywhere, and you can always find one by the big green flashing "+" sign outside!

The picture in the top left is one of the ham places!
Those are PIG LEGS hanging from the ceiling! YUCK.

Now I must say, one thing that I have hated about Spain has been their love of pork! I can't stand pork! There are these stores EVERYWHERE that sells cured pork. I can't stand walking by one of those stores because the smell is so pungent it makes me sick. I have to hold my breath every time I walk by there! Ughhh! BUT, I had to share because it is such an important part of life, at least here in Castilla y Leon. There's a special kind of pork from Spain called jamon iberico that comes from a pig that has been raised on bellotas (acorns) from a certain kind of tree here. Also, from what I've seen, they graze their pigs like we graze our cows, but there are always clusters of these trees everywhere for the pigs to eat from. Not my thing, but apparently that kind of pork is really good if you enjoy it!

Anyway, that's all the pictures I have for now! Like I said, I intend to do a much more in-depth photography session at some point, so in the future you'll see more posts like these. :)

So I have to admit that this Texas girl only THOUGHT she was ready for fall. It is COLD here. Today, for example, I had to go out and get travel-sized contact solution for the flight tomorrow and of course it had to be raining. It was a chilly 54 degrees farenheit and raining. We don't get weather like that in Texas until the end of November! Haha, when I asked for fall I meant 70 degrees and sunny! These people need to get it straight! It would be so bad... if we had heating in the house! They have some sort of heating system, but they don't turn it on until it gets "cold" (whatever THAT means- I'm not sure I'm ready to find out!). SO currently I'm decked out in my tall volleyball socks, pajama pants, an undershirt and a long sleeve shirt, topped off with my cozy blanket from home. I am COLD people, this is not what I asked for! Haha

Although I have to admit that today was actually a nice day to go out. I mean, it was rainy and cold and miserable, but it's something we don't get to experience very often. Amanda and I were walking towards Calle Toro (where all the shops are) and I said "do you smell that?" and she said "what?" and I said "the pine! do you smell it?!" and then yeah, after taking a second to sniff she did. It smelled like winter! It was such a lovely smell, the smell of pine needles mixed with someone's fireplace burning somewhere... it was almost dreamy. :) It was one of those moments that I will always have a snapshot of in my mind.

Aaanyway, I'm going to get off blogger and go do my homework and pack! I'll talk to y'all later! :)

Sickness is NOT a girl's best friend. :/

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately I don't have any lovely pictures to share this weekend, nor any exciting stories! I was supposed to go with API to La Alberca, which is a little ways outside of Salamanca, on Sunday for a hiking trip. Sadly, I woke up Friday with a somewhat-sore throat and by Friday night I knew I would not wake up a happy camper the next day. I was definitely right. Saturday was a total drag, complete with fever (the worst), stuffy nose, sore throat, and a cough. Of course I didn't leave the house on Saturday at all and there was no way on Earth I was going hiking on Sunday. Oh well, sometimes these things happen. At least it didn't happen NEXT weekend, when I'm going to Paris!

So, today is Monday, which is not that far from Saturday, so I'm still not feeling too hot. I went to school this morning (not the best decision) and finally went to the pharmacy this afternoon. I'm hoping that I start feeling better soon. Just so you all know, if you happen to travel in Spain, the pharmacy is where you go when you have a cold. Yes, you can go to the doctor, but the pharmacists here are like I feel they should be everywhere: you walk into the pharmacy, the pharmacist greets you and asks you what's wrong, you tell them your symptoms, and they give you meds that will help your symptoms. So easy, and no long waits in the doctor's office (sorry to all my future doctor friends, but you can't deny it's the truth), no co-pay or fees for getting some advice. It took me less than 5 minutes to walk in, tell her my symptoms, and walk out with some congestion medication and strawberry cough drops (why don't we have those in the states?!). I'm hoping to feel significantly better by tomorrow.

Anyway, this coming weekend I'm hoping to do a special project type thing that I've labeled "My daily life through pictures!" I'm thinking it will be quite a task, but I want to share with you all the small things that make life in Spain different from that in the States. For example, something I found really strange when I got here was the fact that they store their milk, which comes in little boxes not gallons, in the cabinet until it has been opened. The milk doesn't go bad, of course, but they do something that preserves it differently. I was a little freaked out when I first saw milk in the cabinet, as I'm sure you can imagine! It's things like these that I want to share with you all. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it, but here's a link to my inspiration. If this project doesn't work out like that one, I will definitely be doing something like that when I have kids. I'm pretty excited about the idea. :)

Anyway, going to do homework! Talk to you guys next week, with a hopefully more exciting post! :)

Porto, Portugal!

Hi everyone!

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I know I throughly enjoyed mine. I spent this weekend with Ginny, Aaron, and Danielle in Porto, Portugal! It was a pretty hectic weekend, but I think we managed to cram in everything necessary about a trip to Porto! By the way, the city of Porto is actually Portugal's namesake, in a way. When you cross the river from Porto, the other side was once (or maybe still is) a different city, so to refer to the whole area it used to be named Portus Cale (Porto on one side and Cale on the other), then over time it became Portucale, then evolved into Portugale. By the 11th/12th century it was referred to as Portugal! Cool huh?

So para empezar, our bus was scheduled to leave at 11:40 am on Friday, but, running on Spanish time, showed up an hour late. We got to Porto around 4 PM (it wasn't an express bus, so we made lots of stops). We grabbed a taxi to take us to our hostel. We stayed at Pilot Hostel, which is fairly new. Since there were four of us we got our own room (2 bunk beds) and it only cost us each 28 euro for two nights, and that includes free breakfast. I love that Europe has such affordable travel options. I'm so sad the states don't have anything like that. I would travel a lot more within the US if there were.

Anyway, Friday night we kind of just wandered around a little bit. We got dinner right beside the university in a cafe that is known as a popular place for students to eat. I got a traditional Portuguese dish called francesinha. I can't wait to try to make it when I return to the states, it was SO DELICIOUS. There's a little story about how the dish came to be in the link that our tour guide told us. After dinner we went wandering around town and actually found out there was a fall festival of sorts going on! What luck that we chose to come this weekend, right? So we followed this acting group through the streets, and every so often we would all stop and there would be another scene to the story. It was pretty cool, but since I don't know a single WORD of Portuguese we basically had no idea what was going on. (p.s. that's a lie, I learned how to say thank you and refreshments while I was there, but I don't want to type it because I would butcher the spelling without a doubt.)

The next day (Saturday) we got up and had the free breakfast, which was light just like Spanish breakfast. We had cereal and toast/breads basically. Then at 10:30 there was a free walking tour, so of course we took advantage of that. It was not an official guide but it was instead by a woman who has lived in Porto her whole life, so we got to hear stories and such that she had learned from her life walking around with her dad. It was a really good tour, but we only saw half of the city and it still took something like 3 1/2 hours! Afterwards we grabbed lunch (I just got a hamburger, boring I know) and then crossed the river to go to a wine tasting! If you didn't know, Porto is famous for its port wine. Port is a very very sweet wine, usually for after the dinner as a dessert wine. I really enjoyed the winery visit, I learned quite a bit about ports, and then we got to sample three different types, a white, a 7 year red, and then a 10 year red. I mean this may make me sound uncultured, but I just really really can't drink wine! I couldn't even finish my little samples haha, they were making me sick!


After our winery visit we were exhausted from walking all day so we went back to the hostel and took a nap. We had plans to go on a pub crawl that the hostel offers along with other hostels, but I wasn't feeling so hot so I chose to stay in. A pub crawl is where you pay a certain amount (this one was 10 euro) and then someone takes you around to different bars and clubs and you take a shot at each one or get a beer at each one, all as part of that one price you already paid. My friends went and they had a blast, but like I said I wasn't feeling up to it. I'm kind of glad I didn't go because Portugal doesn't have a law like Spain (or maybe just Salamanca) does where you can't smoke in bars or restaurants. Anyone who knows me knows how much I absolutely despise cigarettes and cigarette smoke, or any smoke for that matter, so I would have been so uncomfortable in those places.  Anyway I'm glad mis amigos had fun.

Sunday we had to check out by 11am but our bus didn't leave until 8:30 at night, so luckily our hostel was nice enough to let us leave our things behind their desk. After breakfast we went and hopped on a bus that took us to the beach! The weather in Porto was much warmer than Salamanca, but still not warm enough for me to bust out the bikini. The wind was really what made it chilly, but the water itself was FREEZING. There would have been no way on earth I would have actually gotten in that water, but I did at least touch it so I could say I have officially touched the Atlantic Ocean! YAY! :D We relaxed on the beach for a little while but then started walking to find lunch. We stopped and ate at a little cafe that was basically on the water, it was so nice. Once again I got a hamburger, but this time it also had an egg on it, which was delicious. Then we got back on the bus and went searching for Cafe Majestic, which is a cafe on the main shopping street in Porto. Apparently J.K. Rowling spent many hours there when writing the first Harry Potter book! Unfortunately since it was Sunday basically everything was closed, including the cafe, but we did get a picture in front of it! Afterwards as we were headed back to the hostel we were on the hunt for a place to get some coffee and a delicious sweet snack, and we eventually found a place that was open! I got a pastry that was covered in chocolate and had an egg based filling (like custard maybe?) and one scoop of strawberry ice cream that I'm pretty sure was the best strawberry ice cream I've ever had. Seriously. When we were fully stuffed we went back to hostel and spent about an hour there and then headed to the bus stop!

Now in case you didn't know, Porto is basically all hills. ALL HILLS. If you're not walking up a hill, you're walking down one, all the time. By the time we found the bus station (after walking to the wrong one!) I was pooped! It was funny, I was talking to Danielle today and we're both sore from hauling our luggage all around Porto trying to find the bus station! At least I got a workout! Our bus left late (of course!) and we had to make multiple stops again, so we got back to Salamanca around 4 am. I was SO grateful, first for my Dramamine on the bus, then for my bed and my time to catch up on my sleep today! That is, of course, after my placement exam this morning at 9! I'm pretty excited because I tested a whole level above my original test I took a month ago! It's exciting to know that I'm actually learning! Hooray! :D

In summary, Porto is a beautiful city. Hopefully you can tell by some of my pictures that it can be pretty majestic there. However, it's so sad because there is a lot of poverty and run down homes. The homes, we found out, are so run down because during the dictatorship there was a law created that said that if a person was renting a home for a certain amount of time the landlord couldn't raise the rent for the rest of the time that person lived there. Even though the dictatorship ended, the law was still in place for a while after that. So for example if the rent was only 20 euro and the person stayed there until they were 90 (which is a common thing) their rent was/is still only 20 euro. There was no way for the landlords to keep up the properties for such small amounts of money, so many of the houses are very very run-down. Also now that the area is a UNESCO heritage site the houses are worth a lot more but nobody can afford to buy the properties because they would basically have to tear it down and start over, and there aren't many people out there with that kind of dinero, especially with the economies the way they are now. It's a sad situation. Anyway, at least in most of the places where the houses are run down, beautiful purple flowers have taken over. It's gorgeous to see such beautiful new life in contrast to the poverty and sad history that you see there.

So yeah, new classes start tomorrow! I'll be taking 2 hours of grammar (required), history of women in Spanish history, Spanish lit, and business Spanish. I'm pretty excited about all of my classes, especially business Spanish! I think that will come in very handy in the future!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I'll talk to y'all next weekend! :)