Sunday, Aug 31
Salamanca is so mona! Mona= cute. This town is fabulous, don’t let the two square miles fool you, it has everything going for it. Size/looks wise it’s comparable to Georgetown. There is a University, many students, lots of shopping, restaurants, bars, and lined by a river on one side. The city is beautiful, the people son muy amables, and the food is delicioso. Spain never sleeps..an oxymoran because of their widely known ciestas, but let me give you a quick rundown of Spanish culture:
You wake up, have desayuno, which usually consists of café con leche, y el pan tostado. Breakfast here is muy pequito, then you start your day. (Dana, please forgive me for my run-on sentences and my lack of grammar.. I am completely aware.) Next you start your day. Students go to classes, people go to work (who have a job) and so on. At 2 o'clock everything in town closes, and everyone returns home para almorzar. Lunch is the most formal meal of the day. There are three courses. The first is usually a pasta or rice dish, the second is a meat, and the third is a fruit. Everyone is the casa gathers around at the table to eat and talk.. it usually lasts at least one hour. After that it’s time for una ciesta. Until about 4 o’clock everyone naps, reads, relaxes.. however you enjoy spending your time. Eventually the stores re-open until 8, the streets fill once again with people, and you continue on with your day.. classes, work…bench sitting as the old ones do.. etc. At 9:30 dinner is served, everyone returns home and gathers around once again for a smaller one course meal. Usually a small sandwich with a yogurt… or there is the other option of going to the bars (which are always open) to have a drink with tapas. The tapas becomes your dinner. During the week people usually sleep around 12 midnight, on the weekend they stay out after tapas until 5 or 6 at night.
Which brings me to my next paragraph. Saturday night. Approximate bedtime: 5:48am Sunday morning. How we do it, I have no idea. Like I said, Spain never sleeps.. Or at least in Salamanca they don’t. Everyone met in the Plaza at about 11:30, and the night took off. Went to a bar called La Chupeteria, conveiniently named after chipitos =shots (very tasty ones I may add ((of which i can only swallow half at a time cause i'm loser-ish)), only costing 1 euro each.) The night continued and consisted.. in short, of 4 other dance clubs, a bachelor party, salsa, singing men, pink haired ladies from a bachelorette party, jumping, tae bo dance moves, very sore feet, and most importantly excellent Spanish conversations. Once you get me started I can’t stop. I think I must have hable con ocho or nueve chicos about life, love, the US, and whatever else. With a few drinks, for some reason or another, Spanish becomes much easier. I think it’s because rather than focusing on my mistakes I just speak… and it comes out fairly well.. or so I was told by those 8 or 9 new found friends, “Hablas muy bien espanol.” Not sure if it was sincere or if they were just being.. boys. European men are much more forward than Americans. If you are beautiful they will tell you, if you are ugly.. they will tell you. They are not shy like those commonly found in the US... I bet the whole "chase" doesn't exist much here. Anyway, I salsa-ed with a few..and I did get a kiss from one of them after our duet… ha. (yes, mom). It was harmless--promise! His name was Kike and no I will probably never see him again seeing as he is not from Salamanca and is going on vacation until November. (Everyone gets like 3 months vacation here.) Don’t worry! Anywho, very good dancer! So, that was my night in a verryy summed up nutshell-like version.
And the story continues. The house phone rang at 12:40pm Sunday morning. It was Jesus. Danielle and I overslept through both of our alarms while our mama was at church so she wasn’t there to wake us for our meetings. The entire group was to meet at Plaza GG to receive our cellphones… woooooooops! We literally jumped out of bed, didn’t even pay attention to the breakfast and café waiting on the table for us, and sprinted about a half mile to Plaza GG just to find the group was no where to be found. Ha.. in the end everything ended up being okay. The boys also overslept (typical, although we can’t talk cause we did the same) and Jesus had just called their house to tell them to meet at the JMU office (apartment that jmu bought with computers and books etc etc). So we all wondered around town until we found the group all snuggled up in the office, apologetic that we were late of course. (They really didn’t mind at all.. thank goodness!) Just embarrassing. Let's just say by looking at us when we walked through the office door it was clear we all enjoyed our Saturday night. Well this leads me to say that by lunch time, 2:30pm, Danielle and I were veryyy hungry. Our mama made the most delicious dish ever today. It was called pimiento reyes. Very similar to stuffed peppers, but much smaller, no rice, the peppers are very soft and covered in this amazing reddish orange sauce and it’s just yum yum yum! We told her that she must teach us how to make them so we can do it as home! I’m going to be quite the little chef once I leave here I feel. About 3 hours after lunch the directors visited to check up on us and our homestays so we sat down for café con leche and Roberto, mi papa, made this delicious pastry with strawberries and kiwis—item number two on the “must learn how to make” list. Oh, and our madre wasn’t mad at all that we didn’t eat her breakfast, she thought the story was actually quite comical. .. had to be there.
There seems to be a lot of downtime here, but at the same time I am never bored and I feel like there is always something to do. We’ve decided that it’s a good thing there is no internet in la casa because it makes us get out and enjoy life here. We walk, we talk, observe, learn and just really experience true Spanish lifestyles. I feel so comfortable here, like I’ve already been here for weeks even though the days are so long. Life here is different, people enjoy their days, don’t stress about them. Rather than speed walking from place to place, you stroll, toma tiempo (take time). You actually can enjoy living. One thing I miss: running. Which I am going to make time for tomorrow following my ciesta. Tomorrow classes start so I think once we get on a bit of a schedule I can get my running back in… not to say I don’t move. We walk.. sheesh... at least 3 miles every day. It’s lovely, honestly I love it.
What’s to come? This weekend we are planning a trip over to Portugal! Lisboa for one day and the beach for twooo!!! Verrrry excited! Need to brush up on some Portuguesa! ha… yeah.
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Monday, Sept 1
Fun Fact: Today in class I learned that Salamanca has a total of 1800 bars. really. I love my professor btw. His name is Javier, very handsome, funny, great teacher.
You see, because we don’t have the internet I typically write my journals on a word document and then copy paste them to the site whenever I get a chance to sign on. Annoying--my laptop battery is dead. I charge is until it’s full and then it literally all drains within a half hour of not being plugged in. I’m pissed. This would happen the second I get to Spain. Let’s just hope it pulls through and the battery gets me through the semester at least. Bah! Thank goodness for outlets and electricity converters. Un Buena nota:
I finally went on a run today! Following class we had lunch, I took a two hour ciesta, and then woke up and ran to the rio. It’s almost a mile from mi casa to the river and then I did another mile there, and ran back home. Here, very few people run in the middle of the city. It’s very crowded during the day and runners typically don’t like that… unless you are me who gets bored easily from just the sight of a track. I prefer the city scene so I can watch people and learn more about it. I am really starting to get the hang of where everything is. Enough so to venture out of my own rather than in a group of two or three estudiantes de JMU. On the way home from the rio I was with my friend Jackie and we finally spotted el gimnasio! We went in and I asked about prices and things. The man gave me a paper of all of the yoga/dance classes as well of a rundown of precios. It’s 40 euros por cada mes, y 18 euros por cada semana. So for a month.. it’s robbery. I think I will stick to the free outdoors until I get bored of that, then maybe search for un otro gimnasio que estes mas cheaper!
Alright more business: mi numero de telefono es: (34) 638 436 371
Anyone is mooore than welcome to call! (provided that you have international calling plans on your cell) If you call me, it will cost you money, not me. If I call you, I will be the one paying, not you. So call at your own risk! I can also receive text messages---which are mas baratas (cheaper)! I think only 20 cents or so. 34 is the country code and the last 9 digits are my cell number. If you want to take the completamente free route and miss out on hearing mi voz bonita.. (una broma) email me! cazanpc@jmu.edu.
Bueno :) Hay fotots en facebook tambien!
