Hi all!
I'm finishing up my 4th week here in Spain, and just about ready to start packing to come home. This week's been a relatively quiet one, lots of schoolwork.
One of the tours around the city was of the convents. They were both built about 4-500 years ago, one for monks and one for nuns. They're both still working convents with people living there! They're really beautiful, full of history, art, and chapels, of course. The nuns are known for making cookies, and they were amazing!! My friend and I bought 3 for 1 euro, tried them, and then went back and bought more!! Delicious.
Most of the music that I hear from the radio or out and about is actually American pop - I've heard a lot of Lady Gaga here, primarily, Beyonce, other misc. American pop music, and Nelly Furtado, a bit of Juanes, Diego Torres, David Bisbal, and of course Shakira. I also bought tickets to go see Shakira in September at Mohegan Sun!! Can't wait. :)
Most stores have rebajas for the month of July. Basically they're country-wide sales, which is good. The drawback of them, is when they run out of a product, that's it! Much different from our seemingly endless supply of merchandise back home.
Another thing that's a bit different. The design of most buildings around here are in the shape of a square, with an open area in the middle. It's designed like this to stay cool during hot weather, and originates from the Arab influence here in Spain back 1000 years ago. The windows here are large, without any screens. You might say, huh, that must mean they don't have flies. Well...that'd be wrong. There's no screens, and it's not infrequent to have flies buzzing around.
The weather here cooled down a bit this week and it's been much more comfortable. It's quite cool in the morning (60s or so) and then it warms up and is very sunny, and the sun stays out till 10 pm.
Last night my friends and I were tired of the dining hall food and of eating at 9 pm, and we had a 3-6 page paper about art due today, so we indulged ourselves in ordering Domino's pizza. We ordered 5 medium pizzas for the 7 of us. It was amazing. We ordered 2 pizzas Deluxe, which was meaty with some veggies, 2 pizzas de 4 quesos, which was interesting, because one of those 4 quesos was queso azul...fortunately I enjoy Blue cheese, but even for me it was a bit much of the blue...and una pizza Hawaiana. The people I've met here are great - in my program there's about 49 students of us, and almost everyone is a Spanish teacher, mostly all in the US. We also have another friend from another program who's from Portugal who we hang out with. We try to speak only in Spanish all the time, and we're all at different levels with different backgrounds, and it's really great to learn from each other. Buena gente. Also, last week we went out to una chocolateria, and had chocolate mousse! I have to go back next week and order churros con chocolate also. Mmm. :)
Tonight I'm going up to the North Coast, to Pais Vasco, to San Sebastian. It's supposed to be one of the best city beaches in Europe - can't wait! Unfortunately, the weather forecasts temperatures in the low 70s and cloudy, but that should be completely all right with me. I'm looking forward to seeing the Bay of Biscay. The city is right on the border of France, about 30 minutes or so, I think. I'll update in a few days about my adventures up there. :)
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