Pictures!!

Well everybody I finally have pictures up online... http://emilyrose.smugmug.com so go check´m out!! School´s still going pretty well... Planing on going out tonight with Stephanie and Kristine as well as some guy from Pakistan who´s in our class too. He´s pretty cool... works for there ¨ministry of foreign affairs´or something like that... so he´s here for 9 months learning spanish. Should be fun... tonight I expect will be a huge night for partying as nobody has class tommorrow (tis the Fiesta de Salamanca)... so yeah. Should be lotsa fun. Sposed to be fireworks tonight too. Plus they built yet another gigantic stage (the 2nd one this week!! Built one for last Saturday/Sunday, then tore it down and painted a chessboard on the plaza... then got rid of that, and started putting up another stage!! Tis crazyness!!)

Sup

Well, still lotsa fun here in Salamanca. Started classes again today, went fairly well. Also found out just how much we´re being totally overcharged by API - by about 3 thousand odd dollars!! 1 month at the university costs a total of 450 euros. Plus another 400 for the host family per month. So yeah. Basicly... I could stay for another 6 months for half what we paid for 4. Makes me sick. Especially since I´m totally *not* happy with API at this point at all. Between the director being a bitch to me, and them just really doing absolutely nothing other than setting everything up for you... yeah. Kinda sad. Oh well though. Might try and come home for christmas and then come back (but just through the university) for another few months. It´d be no more expensive thats for sure!!

Anywho though... Planning on going out tonight with a couple of super cool Austrian girls - they said that they´ll teach me some german/austrian while we learn spanish too, so its quite cool!!

Classes, Salamanca, partying... fun-ness!!

Well, today is saturday and in a little while I´m going to go to some play-type-thing (i think thats what it is anyhow... ´teatre animado´) about Don Quiote (sp?)...

Yesteday was also our first day of class, and it went pretty well. I´m in the ´beginner´classes, of course, but thats Ok. Theres a couple other girls from the US (though they came via different programs or whatever, so I didn´t know them beforehand), as well as two girls from Vienna, Austria who are super super cool.. meant to meat up with them last night, but it just didn´t happen. Theres also one guy from Norway, two from Japan and another guy from somewhere else (can´t member where exactly... somewhere in europe, I think).

Spain is also, apparently, one of only two countries in all of europe (the other being france...), where like nobody speaks english (or at least, refuse to do so..). The girls from Austria speak EXCELLENT english, and were super surprised that nobody here does.

Mostly having a blast though... I think I´ll bring my camera to the plaza on monday (when I have my backpack with school stuff), and take some pictures, then try and get them online for everyone to see.. My classes are all in the same building and its beautiful, gold colored sandstone with all kinds of crazy ornate stuff around it. But yeah. Lots of fun...

Salamanca

Yesterday was our first full day in Salamanca and it went quite well.. we had a tour of the city and then time to hang out and do whatever.

Last night we all ended up going out together around 11:00pm... The bar we went to, was absolutely awesome. Thats all there is to it...

Girls drank for FREE all night long - "open bar" - at least as far as beer, sangria and some other drink were concerned. None of us planned on getting wasted... but man, we just couldn´t pass up free alcohol. As for the guys, they had to pay a whopping 4 euros (about 5 bucks), and then drank as much as they wanted too. I couldn´t believe it, none of us could. And, whats more, this is apparently the case at this bar EVERY tuesday and wednesday!! So yeah, we all now know when we´re going to be getting totally wasted... ::grin::

Then this morning at 8:30am we had our placement test... don´t know how it went, but will find out here very shortly (like 15 mins actually...)... I´m guessing I´ll be in the "beginner" class. But, yeah. I still can´t quite believe I drank so much (had at least 8 drinks) for FREE. Pure crazyness. I wonder if other bars have the same deal on other nights... God bless Salamanca, god bless spain... where beer is cheaper than frigging water!!

Salamanca, the hurricane... crazyness!!

Hmm.. I just got done reading about the Hurricane, of which I have not heard (or at least understood) much, until now. I don´t know what to say. Its, its just frigging crazy.

Anyhow though, I´m in Salamanca now, and so have finally been able to unpack and settle-down, which is very nice. Tommorrow we have our placement test and find out what classes we are taking, and when they are, and get our books, and all of that kind of stuff.. So thats kind of exciting.

Other than that though haven´t been doing too much... Mostly just haning out, sleeping and eating. (the food is qutie good, incidentally).

Toledo, Madrid, Spain!!

Well, Spain is quite cool. We´ve been doing some site-seeing these past couple of days... Finally got our cell phones today, so now I can finally call people/be called.

Today we went to Toledo, which was a pretty cool city. Lots of big, old buildings... The Cathedral was pretty cool/amazing, and definetly beautiful.

Can´t wait to get to Salamanca tommorrow night. Should be interesting. Apparently, the house that I´m living in is pretty nice, so thats exciting... though I think its one of the farthest from the University, but thats OK, just means I´ll get more excersize..

I can´t quite believe how much money I´ve spent in the past few days. Spains much more expensive than i initially relized, kinda scared. Hopefully though, once we get to Salamanca (and stop having to pay for meals..), it will become a bit cheaper. I guess you could say that right now, at least, we are kind of on ´vacation´and then as of tommorrow night we´ll be ´home´. Or something.

Madrid

I made it to Spain just fine yesteday, and have been wandering around the streets of Madrid ever since (well, except for a few hours when i went to bed, obviously=). Turns out I´m rooming with Breana, who´s from Colorado. At first, this was super cool - I didn´t in fact have to wander around by myself. However, as the day/night progressed... I decided that I wasn´t quite sure.

See, she´s a bit of a well... a wimp. Seems a bit scared to cross streets, if theres a car coming (even if its like 1/4 mile away!!) for some strange reason (this being despite the fact that shes lived in/around DENVER her entire frigging life...). And then, last night, after dinner when it was just barely starting to get dark around 9:30... she said, and I quote ´´I don´t realy like walking around after dark, especially in Madrid...´´ so, we went back to the Hotel, and guess what? She went to frigging bed. Obviously, this is WAY to early for bed for me (I´d be up around like 6:30, at the latest...), so I stayed up and read for a little while, before becoming bored and going out to wander around Madrid, at night, by myself. It wasn´t bad, but I couldn´t really find much to do, so in the end I settled for a beer at a random bar and then went back and read an listend to my iPod for a while untill I finally went to bed around 2am (and, you know what?? I *still* woke up before here - at 9:30am.. I just don´t know how people can sleep for sooo frigging long...).

In anycase though, so far Madrids been pretty cool. Lots of people (really, too many for my tastes..), and I think I managed to find the ´´happenin´´ section of town a little bit ago, so hopefully tonight will be more fun than last.