salamanca at night

Thanks to a little program called paint, a personal tutor, and a Spanish dictionary, you all can finally see the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca (at night, duh!)

Friday

Last day of classes. To celebrate my new freedom, I liberated myself it another way. No, no nudity here. I cut my hair. This time (unlike Sweden), I had the forethought to bring along a photo of how I intended my hair to look after the cut. Didn´t really work out this time either, but, oddly enough, I kinda like the cut. We´ll see how it looks tomorrow when I use my own shampoo, etc. Would attempt to attach a picture here, but we all know the luck I´ve had with that. I´ll save that for Monday´s computer time. That and the picture of Salamanca.

What else? Emmm... this weekend is a slow one. Emily´s out of town and pretty much everyone else who is half-way worth spending time with has already left the country. The rest of you who are 100% worth spending time with are, unfortunately, not here in Salamanca....

Perhaps I will see a movie with this chic that I always forget her name and then feel stupid b/c it is Melissa. A name that shouldn´t be hard to remember considering I am often mistaken for a Melissa. Perhaps it is because she doesn´t feel like a Melissa. She needs some kind of really spectacular name like Sofia.

PERSONAL STORY ALERT (turn back now if you want, this is your only warning):

A few days ago, it became apparent that I would need to go to the doctor. First, I went to the hospital where I admitted that it wasn´t an emergency and that I didn´t really want to wait for two hours. The nice receptionist lady gave me the address of my insurance company. I went to the office the next day where I obtained a slip of paper that allowed me to have a consultation with a doctor w/o paying. I had the consultation, the doctor removed a specimen which I then had to take back to the insurance office. There, I obtained yet another slip, this time for the laboratory. I went to said laboratory and they couldn´t do the lab work in the requested time. Back to the insurance office for another slip to another lab. To the new lab (which just happened to be at the hospital where I started all of this jazz). Proceeded to the same receptionist (now three days later), gave her the same information. Got another slip of paper and directions to the lab w/in the hospital. At the lab, handed over the specimen and got another slip of paper. I have to pick up the results on Monday and go back to the doctor where she will "interpret" them. And that´s the end of my fun doctor-visit story.

On that note, I will sign off. I´ve got some actual work to do...

Bogus

I´m really a bogus blogger. I had intended to back write for all the time that I was in Germany, but I just never really get around to it. I guess that it doesn´t help that my computer time is rather limited (unless I want to pay for usage, which I don´t, by the way... internet cafés scare me AND they´re hot... think 30 computers in a room w/o air conditioning when it is 43 degrees outside... AND that´s Celsius just in case you were thinking that´s not hot).

So, long story short, I´m scrapping the idea of telling you guys about Germany. Let´s move on to Spain already. Salamanca is pretty cool. I´ve been here a while and I guess it feels somewhat homey. I say somewhat b/c there are an awful lot of tourists here all the time and I feel relatively permanent compared to them. But I wouldn´t want to live here. It´s beautiful, but not my cup-o-tea. It´s just too hot. I think that pretty much boils it down. I used to think that I didn´t really like air conditioning. That was before Spain. I swear the sun has extra powers here or something. I have been quite diligent in my sunscreen application, but even the sunscreen can´t keep out the heat. I´ve become a smelly European. Water costs more here, so we are encouraged to wear clothes until, "they are dirty." Which I would say takes about 15 minutes upon leaving the house, but I usually wear an outfit twice (after a few days to air it out, of course). The exception: my workout clothes. I once wore those for a whole week and I couldn´t even stand the smell of myself.

Enough about that. Here´s a much anticipated picture of Salamanca´s Plaza Mayor at night. You can see the "reloj" which is the meeting place for everyone meeting for anything. The whole plaza is enclosed with walls like the one in the pic. Nice place to sit and chat. When I first got here, I worried about the sanitariness of sitting on the ground. Much to my relief, I woke up early one day and saw them not only scrubbing the ground with a scrub-brush machine (it´s rideable) but also with a water-sprayer machine followed by a squeege-machine. AND they do it every morning for all of the streets. So that´s good. Without further ado:


OKAY, SO IT STILL WON´T LOAD (I´ve tried 5 times on 3 separate occasions). I will try loading it to facebook and then accessing it that way. No promises.

Today I had my final in my grammar class. Friday is the last day of classes. Tuesday (I think) I take another language level placement test and Wednesday start the last section of classes. I haven´t decided what classes I will take for electives yet, but that will come. My translation class has been the best out of the three I´m taking. We just finished an excerpt from the all-interesting movie, The Big Lebowski. Obviously, my teacher has a sense of humor. He also has a nice smile and likes to tell us colloquialism that we should use "con cuidado". I´ll let you guess what that´s about.

Until later...

Try it English Style

So here´s a short blog in English for my fellows (read: audience) in America.

Got a super cool call the other day, e-hem, I mean the FOURTH of July from the self titled "Best Brother." He truly is great and we talked through crazily-crappy reception for a few minutes before calling it quits--I had to get ready to go to my salsa dance lessons. I´d give the overall dance experience a 7. I subtracted the three points because I had to dance with a girl when we paired up and she really lacks dancing skills/experience, so I had to "play the guy" a.k.a. keep her on time. That really wasn´t so fun and she was pretty much hanging on me the whole time. It gives a new perspective to what guys have to deal with, though. After the lesson, we went to a chiquita club to practice our new grooves (with the dance instructor, mind you) and ended up watching the freakin´incredible end of the Italy-Germany game. Whew-ie! We did end up dancing a little, but I cut out early and went to bed--the dancing and the three hours of walking plus hour jog took it out of me....

Wednesday after class (9-1:15) and siesta (3-4), I met up to go to the pool with the API group. I don´t have a bathing suit, so I just sat by the pool and talked to our director´s sister. Which brings me to a topic about Spanish culture--the families here seem almost (key on almost) excessively close. For example, my host mother owns a building with four apartments. Her parents live on the ground floor, some random guy lives in the middle, and her sister and her sister´s family live two steps from our front door. There is an outer door that faces the street and this one remains locked, but the three interior front doors of each separate apartment are pretty much open the entire day so that any given family member can mindlessly roam from apartment to apartment (the random guy is not included in any of this, hence the title "random"). That´s the end of my little story here.

So, I did the pool thing. Then, Emily and I ran through some ab exercises--short and painful. Then, I speed walked home to have dinner (@ 9 pm) and take a 30 second rinse down before meeting up with Carmen (explanation to follow) at the Van Dyck Cinemas.*

Carmen is my intercambio partner. She is a doctor finishing up the last year of her fellowship in cardiology. She is traveling to England in September to do some research and wants to practice her English before she leaves. It works like this: we meet and talk in English for "un ratito" (a little while) and then we switch and speak Spanish. The night progresses for several of these rounds... we really hit it off and ended up walking all over Salamanca and speaking for 1.5 hours. It gets even better. She wants to meet everyday that we both can meet!! She is working a 2 hour shift today, but we will meet again on Friday evening! We have already selected topics for Friday´s conversation. That means I have "deberes" (works/homework) for school and for my intercambio!!

In case I haven´t already told you... Spanish television sucks. It really is painful to watch, more so than Jerry Springer, etc. Anyway, Simpsons is somewhat tolerable as they actually have half-way normal voices. Yesterday afternoon and today before lunch, I watched a little bit of a serie whose name I can´t remember, but it is tolerable AND understandable. So, that may become a tradition to watch it every afternoon to practice listening some more. I´ve already been to two movies--Almódovar´s "Volver" and somebody´s "La educación de las hadas". The first I could understand and I would definitely recommend. The second one appeared to be interesting and fun for those around me. I was pretty much 40% lost the entire time because that´s the amount this 8 yr. old kid talked and slurred just about every word.

Anywho, gotta go... it´s about 6 and I have to meet up with Emily to run before dance class tonight. Pictures to follow some other day (perhaps tomorrow if I get lucky =)

abrazos fuertes...

*I am having trouble pronouncing the name of the cinema with a Spanish accent and I think that I have actually offended a few people when talking about the cinemas. Side note to this side note: the cinema is having a summer film festival that I am contemplating purchasing tickets to because they are super cheap--like 6 tickets for 12 euros!

más fotos de alemania

jewel está en la choza en alemania del este

la frontera del alemania del oeste y del este

entonces, es muy corto, pero voy a dejarlo aquí porque tengo que correr con mi amiga, emilia.

abrazos fuertes