Salamanca is definitely a good place to study Spanish as most of the local people don't speak English but are patient with you when you butcher their language. This is very helpful as I've discovered my Spanish is truly terrible, instead of passable. However, due to some cramming day of, I placed into low intermediate Spanish. I like the school that I am studying at Colegio Delibes, as they don't just have low-med-high but have around 10 levels. Thus I'm actually on level 4. I have four hours of class per day, from 10 to 2. We have 2 hours of grammar and 2 focusing on communication.In my class (of five people) there is a mix of international students and no Americans. The material is pretty fast paced so I hope I can improve a lot.
Salamanca has a lot of history since the University of Salamanca was founded in 1225. The location of my apartment is ideal because it is directly in the old center. Thus it is less than a five minute walk to any museum or the lovely Plaza Mayor.
In the picture with me is Julia, who is my British flatmate. In my piso (as apartments are called here) everyone else are Spanish students, which in theory sounds good but in practice is pretty useless as they are busy studying for their classes and aren't too interested in American exchange students. Also, I really can't understand what they're saying because they use so much slang and speak so quickly. I can better understand my landlady, Ana. We have meals twice a day, at two and nine at night. There is both a cook and maid, which is different for me. Thankfully, a vegetarian option is made for me, which I really appreciate. The apartment is very nice. On Wednesday, I went to the Art Deco Museum, which was really good.
There was a great selection of art deco perfume bottles and statues. I also met a fellow student who is a Chinese graduate student learning Spanish. She asked me if I wanted to go to the Museo del Reloj, which translates as the Museum of the Clock. I assumed I had translated wrong or that it was simply a name but no, it was a museum of just clocks. They were really old and were really ornate. They had one of the first alarm clocks as well as a huge selection of grandfather clocks.
These are the views from my balcony at the pisa (apartment) that I am staying at. Apparently host family in Spain really means apartment with Spanish students and two meals a day. However, the view from the apartment is so nice I can't really complain.
My flight from Baltimore to Madrid may be seen as a cost-benefit analysis of flying internationally
Good thing: Spending 8 weeks in Spain
Bad thing: extremely little sleep from finals
Good thing: finished with finals
Bad thing: have to pack for year in 24 hours plus find places for all of my stuff
Good thing:Mom was there to help (thank you mom)
Good thing: have bulkhead so plenty of leg room for 7 hour flight to Heathrow
Bad thing: worst passage ever sits down for 7 hour flight combining terrible body odor and little kid. The passage on her other side expressed surprise that a two year didn’t have to have her own seat. The women replied she was turning two in a month (the child was big)= me being clobbered by mother and child trying to fit in seat. The child also keeps coughing so hopefully I don’t get sick ( I should note the women was very nice so I feel bad about this)
WORST THING: 25 minutes into the flight, the child proceeds to projectile vomit onto me (luckily I had a blanket to cover me). However, I was going to smell like puke for the rest of my 26 hour journey.
Better thing: I got upgraded to economy plus and got to listen some interesting stories from a former special forces guy (who had dinner with a mafia don in Sicily!)
Bad thing: London flight delayed arriving at Heathrow so I had 40 minutes to completely change terminals. Sprinting across Heathrow with a heavy bay+ having to re go through security=not fun.
Good thing: I made it to my flight on time
Bad thing: the plane leaving Heathrow was delayed so the rush wasn’t necessary
Good thing: landing to 70 degrees and sunny
Bad thing: waiting for my bag; not seeing it and assuming it had been stolen
Good thing: it hadn’t
Bad thing: apparently I raced for the plane to Spain, my bag didn’t and so remained in London. ARGH meanwhile this took about an hour to determine this.
Good thing: However they agreed to bring it to Salamanca so I guess that saved me porting it through Madrid on the next leg of my adventure.
Bad thing: I had assumed I could simply buy a bus ticket to Salamanca. WRONG Apparently I could have if I had arrived 20 minutes earlier (hence all of the delays and if even one hadn’t happened I would have been fine). However now that the bus ticket counter was closed the only way I could do this was online and print the ticket or take the metro across the city and go to the one counter that stayed open. However, I called the program in Salamanca, who knew (unlike the tourist information booth at the airport) that the bus company was on strike. The ONLY bus company that goes to Salamanca. So I decided to take the train. Of course the train terminal closed at four, the same as the bus. So I took the metro to the train station and bought a ticket for 9 pm, getting in at eleven. This will definitely made a good impression on my host family.
On the bright side: I’m on a train watching the sun set over Madrid...
