Days off.

Can I just say that days off from school really suck? I walked around a bit today and it looks like the only thing you can do on Sundays in Spain is (1) drink at a bar, (2) smoke at a bar, (3) walk around, (4) go to the park, (5) find a way to the beach. I went to the park and sunbathed for a couple of hours. I walked around. I bought a Coca Cola Light at a gas station and the old guy cashier thought I was from Italy. So maybe my Spanish accent is more or less convincing? Who knows.

So, Sundays are probably going to be extremely hard for me during this program. If I were in Utah right now, Paul and I would be taking the girls for a walk on the Jordan River Parkway or letting them loose in the dog park. Here I could let her run around off leash in the Campo de San Fransisco and let her make friends with all the other dogs. This place is dog crazy. Everyone has one.

I tried getting my camera cables to work at this Mercado/Cibersitio but they don´t work. So I´ll have to wait until the lab opens up at school. But here are some photos Paul took of my cute Samara bean.

Update.

So here´s an update on the past few days.

Friday we had our espicha with our professors from UniOvi and the U of U as well as all 45 or so of us students. It was HOT in there. Spaniards don´t really do the whole air conditioning thing, and we had a 20x20 foot section of floorspace to congregate around two food tables. There were traditional Asturian musicians and dancers (think - bagpipes, felt outfits, ridiculous hats) which was pretty fun. I didn´t feel all that well because the bus ride made me nauseous, but the food was amazing. We ate tuna empanadas, cornbread (the only way I know how to describe the shape is like an eyepatch - we had eyepatch cornbread!), and my favorite, potato tortillas. They´re made out of egg, potatoes, and probably other stuff, but they´re shaped like a big fluffy quiche or something. They were amazing. There was also unlimited sidra (the traditional alcoholic cider beverage of Asturias) and red wine. I drank too much and ate too much (as Americans do) and may or may not now have the reputation of the girl who barfed in the bathroom (aseo) at the espicha. Boo. It was really hot in that restaurant! I took pictures. I´ll get them posted really soon, I promise.

Saturday was our excursion to a monastery and the beach in Gijon. The monastery was interesting but I was starving, so I ate this delicious giant chicken sandwich that Val made me. Spaniards make the best food. When we got to the beach, the girls and I took a nap on the beach and my arms and legs got a little burned. Not too painful, not a big deal. Nicole and I then stayed up until about 2am because we went back to this tapas joint (owned by a super nice guy named Jose) for dinner. We also wandered around the city, of course. Tons of people stay up super late here. Some clubs are even open until 6am in the morning. Since Oviedo is a college town, I guess it´s really popular for the college students to go out and party really late on the weekends. Not really my thing, but it definitely makes the city seem safer when there´s tons of people out and about.

I´m using the internet at the Mercado around the corner from my house and so I didn´t bring my camera cables; I wish I had, because words are nothing in comparison to the pictures I have to show you all!

I don´t know what I´m doing today. My classmate might be going to the beach with her mom and her mom´s boyfriend - if so, she said I could come along. I don´t really know what Spaniards do on Sunday. Things are open, so I guess it´s just like another Saturday, but with work or school the next day. I´m really excited to go back to school tomorrow ... the weekends seem kind of long, and there´s not a whole lot we haven´t seen already. Nicole and I are going to ask some of our professors tomorrow if they can recommend places to go and things to see that we haven´t already done. So far, there´s only one thing we haven´t done that was previously recommended to us, which is to visit the Campo de Invierno (Winter Park). It´s supposed to be really beautiful.

Next Tuesday is a holiday in Oviedo (I´m pretty sure it´s called Martes de Campo) so I won´t have school and nobody will have work. It´s a local holiday, so people get together with their families and go out to eat or hang out in the park with a picnic and wine. I don´t know what I´m doing yet but maybe that´s the day we´ll try the Campo de Invierno.

After reading this entry, I feel like the more Spanish I learn, the worse my English gets. Oh well.

Aqui!

I´m here in beautiful Oviedo, where it rains and rains and rains. Here is a quick rundown of my trip so far:

(1) I got to Dallas on time, but my plane to Madrid was delayed two hours. By the time I reached the Madrid airport and got to the bus station, it was 1pm. Caught the 2pm bus, arrived in Oviedo at around 7:30pm, walked to the Cathedral in the pouring rain, and met up with my host family. I did not have a second to breathe. I missed dinner (they eat at, like, 10pm here, not even exaggerating) because I wanted to go to bed - part of it was that I was tired of trying to understand rapid Spanish and felt delirious and jet-lagged.

I was picked up by Maribel, my host mom, and her daughter Isa, Isa´s husband, and her 1.5 year old son, Daniel (Dani). When we got to Maribel´s apartment, where she and her other daughter (Val) live, she showed me around the apartment. (Sidenote: it took me until Tuesday to figure out how to work the doorknob and lock. It shouldn´t be that complicated, but it was hard, and Maribel kept trying to explain how to open it in Spanish and I only understood, like, twelve words.) I have my own set of keys, even. She then introduced me to her cat, Muffy, who, she says, loves ear wax. So she uses used Qtips to lure Muffy out of the living room where she scratches furniture. Yup.

(2) Monday. My class was to meet at the Cathedral and then walk to school together. On my way to the Cathedral, a woman with missing teeth asked me for money for breakfast. I told her I didn´t speak much English and then asked her how to get to the Cathedral. Once I met my class, we all walked to class together. Apparently I live right around the corner from the University of Oviedo, but because I was so confused about navigating the city (because I had to walk to the Cathedral, not school, this morning) I spent an hour looking for my apartment. I found my apartment at 3pm, my host sister served me ¨lentejas¨ for lunch that Maribel made, and since Val is learning English, we speak really great Spanglish together. It´s awesome to be able to communicate with someone. Monday night, some of the kids from my program and I walked around town, eventually getting lost. Guess what kind of sordid folk we ran into? MORMON MISSIONARIES! One is from Washington state and one is from California. They were super nice and pointed us in the right direction.

(3) Tuesday. Nicole and I got lost after school when we were exploring. Some good news, though; (a) I successfully bought a phone. Using only Spanish. And I was really damn good at it, too. (b) Guess who rain into the missionaries again after being lost for two hours? That´s right. Oviedo isn´t that small, so I must just be lucky. They even replaced my crappy, torn up map (yeah, already) and told me where to find an internet cafe. They really are super nice. I´m going to try to remember to buy them lunch before I leave Oviedo. My host mom and friends have my phone number in case they need to contact me (and vice versa). Long distance calls are super expensive so I probably won´t call anyone in the states (Estados Unidos) with it but I have it in case of emergency.

(4) Wednesday. Giant soccer game between Manchester and Barcelona. We didn´t go, obviously, but everyone hit the bars and cafeterias to watch the game on tv. Nicole, Lori and I found this amazing little restaurant where we went for tapas. The owner was so nice and patient. And he took a picture of us at the dinner table - hopefully I´ll get a copy of ut up on here soon. Also, Nicole and I both had delicious local Spanish beers and we watched the game with our host. His name was Gose or something unusual like that. After that, the three of us were going to hunt for dessert but lots of things were getting ready to close (it was about 10:30pm), and then we ran into a different girl from our program who convinced us to stay up pretty late. We hung out at a couple of bars, watching Spaniards and embarassing Americans from our program, stumbling through the streets. Some guy harassed Nicole and I on the way back to our apartments, so I kneed him in the balls. Nothing too exciting.

(5) We were so tired at school today. I´m glad it´s over. I went home and because my host mom is at work, Val served me a new batch of lentejas that Maribel made. I´m certain she made it again because I´ve been raving so much about it. Now I´m at the internet cafe/bar that the missionaries told me about. Just checking my email before I head out to meet a group of people from our program. I need to find postcards, anyway.

I want to talk about food in Spain for a moment, too. It´s amazing. They cook things from scratch and don´t live on fast food and canned food. Everything is fresh and groceries are cheaper than in the United States. Let´s just do a run down on what I´ve had so far:

Monday: toast with butter and jam with coffee for breakfast at 7:30am, a yummy cookie (galleta) that wasn´t as disgustingly sweet as American cookies for my midmorning snack at noon, lentejas (lentil soup) for lunch at 3, and free chorizo tapas at my neighborhood cafeteria for dinner at 10.

Tuesday: breakfast was toast with butter, midmorning snack was a cookie and a banana, lunch was potato fries, bread soup and calamari (calamari was not my favorite thing ever), and for dinner my host mom made me a giant slab of salmon and a giant garden salad with sidre and olive oil dressing.

Wednesday: 2 pieces of toast with butter for breakfast, a galleta and a pear for my snack, potato and vegetable soup and a small bowl of strawberries for lunch, and then I went out for dinner for tapas with the girls.

Today: coffee and Coca Cola Light (way better than Diet Coke!) for breakfast (my school cafeteria makes it SO good), midmorning snack was a galleta, a pear, and a nectarine, and lunch was a different lenteja stew from before.

I don´t know what dinner is yet, but I´m going to get so fat here. Also, my host mom is vacationing to Portugal tonight through Sunday night, so she won´t be around for awhile, and Val will be taking care of me. She says we´re having chorizo for lunch tomorrow. Yum!

Oh, and by the way, my plumbing (aside from being kind of lo-flo toilets and not knowing if I should let ït¨ mellow or flush it down) is not scary. Some of my classmates got host families with scary, old plumbing, but I was glad that at least something here reminds me of America. My terlet.

Hasta luego!

Three days until departure!

In three days and eleven hours I will depart Salt Lake International Airport, catch my transfer flight to Madrid in Dallas, and arrive in Madrid at 9:55am on Sunday, May 24, where for five hours I will be on a bus headed to Oviedo, Spain. For five weeks I will be living with a host family that speaks no English and studying Spanish at the Universidad de Oviedo.

Instead of sending mass emails to everyone in the states, I thought it would be more efficient to have this blog so everyone could receive somewhat daily updates of my studies and excursions abroad. If there are no technological problems, I'm hoping to post pictures as frequently as possible.

If you would like a postcard during my travels, email me with your mailing address at u0520495@utah.edu so I can get right on that. As soon as I can figure out how to succesfully communicate my way through a transaction at the post office in Oviedo, I will mail you one!

My program begins bright and early at 9am on Monday, May 25, and ends on June 26. At that point, I will be spending some time in Barcelona and Madrid. I will be departing Madrid for the United States on July 4. If you need to contact me via email, I will only have internet access Monday-Friday for about a half hour during school, so responses will likely go out around 24 hours after you send yours. Also, I will no longer be at school after June 26 so if I have any internet access at all, it will likely be erratic, and I'm not sure exactly when or where I will be able to access email.

Feel free to comment on my blog! That's what it's here for.