so i've been in salamanca for a little over a week and haven't written. no real excuse for this, outside of having NO TIME IN OUR ROOMS EVARZ. i'm either in class six hours a day, going on tours of the city two hours a day, out drinking/dancing/etc until six am, or sleeping during the remaining hours. hell yeah, spain.
so, a brief review of what's been going on:
the flight wasn't too bad, i mostly slept. this did not stop us from looking haggard upon arriving in madrid last sunday morning, though.
yeahhhh airport faces. we took a bus to salamanca and unpacked some (aka i opened my bags and they exploded all over my room) and then napped before festejandooooo. check out teh group:
BFF4LYPHE!!1! since it was my oh-so-important twenty-first birthday, which i had forgotten about in transit, we went out to celebrate. though we were really just celebrating being here. i took more shots than everyone else. we went to plaza mayor, which is pretty much the city center from which i can locate everything else. it's pretty gorgeous at night.
the sky here also gets really
black. nothing like at home.
several pitchers of sangria and ounces of tequila later, we found a large group of english/scottish kids and followed them around. i tried to drink wine straight from the bag, and the following resulted:
it was a good night.
classes started on tuesday, and they're pretty useless. i actually feel like i knew more spanish before i started, because now i'm second-guessing myself where i shouldn't be. but they're not too bad, just four hours in the morning ... though getting up at nine is getting difficult, as an early evening now means in before three.
we've gone on multiple tours of salamanca, and it's really a gorgeous city. i had expected something dusty and barren, and it turned out to be really active. aside from having the most bars per person in europe (one for every ninety-six), it's a pretty major city with plenty of pretty architecture, and senseless street direction. my sense of navigation has improved exponentially, though.
this is the requesite picture of me with an important monument, acting like a jackass:
this is the old cathedral of salamanca (they're also the only city in spain to have two). the two are connected by a passageway, and i'm hoping to go to a big latin mass on friday night there to celebrate the start of the festival of salamanca.
they also have these things in salamanca that are kind of like busch gardens trams, but which look like trains at the front.
i wasn't invited to this picture.
oh yeah we also party with one of our instructors at the "immersion" school. he is a sketchball and pretended to buy us drinks but we had to pay. he's the one in the front on the right. i'm in this picture. that's my arm next to chad's. look closely.
i'm not sure how this ended up here. but i think this is the end of the same night. yeahhhh six am!!1!
oh also sieber has a really sweet hat, and when we go for tapas, i'm sometimes allowed to wear it.
these pictures are no longer in any semblance of order. this is some sort of trailer business outside of our residencia with really arty graffiti on it. i'm being arty, too. it says "mil mákinas nunca podrán hacer una flor." ("a thousand machines could never make a flower.)
i know, so deep.
speaking of arty, i get to see this every night when i go out. it's the cathedrals and a monastery. the sky is so dark and they're so bright and it's so beautiful.
on saturday i went to ávila, where there was a "three cultures" festival going on, which meant a bunch of people dressed up in crazy arab, jewish, or medieval christian garb. there were also lots of stands, where i tried to get henna of the
boondock saints "veritas" tattoo, but she messed up. the city was so quaint and walled. i went with my new british friend kate, and we just hung around all day. on one hand, if you've seen one walled city, you've seen them all. on the other ...
ahhhhh.
i move to madrid on saturday and finally meet my family, and i'll try to update before then, but i'm not sure that i'll have the time. if i don't, catch you on the flip side!
and even if i don't have internets in my house (i don't know yet), you can always leave me voicemails!!1!
<3<3<3
annie
i think this was actually our first night there.
... same night. w0000t.
THIS IS MY BRITISH FRIEND KATE SHE'S SO COOL I'M GOING TO VISIT HER IN ENGLAND SHE TAUGHT ME WACKY BRITISH PHRASES.
one of the biggest things that europe is missing is mexican foods. they have AWFUL mexican foods. because they have no mexicans. mrs. siebs thinks it's a colony thing, the government wants spaniards to think that mexicans are too dumb to make delicious foods. but the mexican resturant touring society, spain chapter is determined to find a real mexican restaurant in spain.
look at how the membership has grown in the past week!
in salamanca, we also went to visit a stonemason, who was responsible for carving a large portion of the new façade of the new cathedral. i worked on this masterpiece for a bit:
this is hilarious anti-nazi graffitti in salamanca. i thought it was really cool.
WE HAVE SIEBER HATS WE ARE SO COOL CAMELOT YEAHHHHH.
laaaaaaaaaast night in salamanca. rock and roll, camelot.
AND THIS IS A PICTURE OF MY HOTS PUPPY CORAL CUPCAKE YOU HAVE MAJOR COMEPETITION.
