Today marks one month since my arrival in Oviedo! Man, time flies. I can't believe I've been here that long, it barely feels like a month. Believe it or not, as the Spring approaches, I will be traveling even more than I already have been. And then I'll be home! Wow. So as a gift from me to you, as I finish up my first month here in Spain, I have created another page in my blog documenting Spanish food and drink! I will continue to update this as time goes on, with a bit more frequency, since I now know that I want to keep track of the food I eat. All I can say about the Spanish is: if you were to take their ham away from them, they would die (ironically, I don't have any pictures of ham yet...).
I met with my exchange partner for the first time today! I emailed a few weeks back to a program that sets up Spanish students at Universidad de Oviedo with foreign exchange students who want to practice a foreign language. I finally was emailed back about a week ago and I met with my partner, Adara, today. We met at the train station, which was awesome because I live really close to that, and we walked to a café nearby for coffee while we chat. It was so much fun. :)
We started off in Spanish and spent about half the time in Spanish and then I made her switch to English. She was really worried about her English, but I think her English is probably only a tiny bit worse than my Spanish. I think that we're going to learn a lot from each other. I definitely had a blast. I had high expectations for this program because I want to meet a "real" Spanish person, and really practice Spanish with them, without any English. It's also awesome because she's my age, actually a year younger, and she also studies Psychology. The only awkward moment we had was when we switched to English and couldn't think of anything to talk about at first, so I'd call that a success! :) Honestly, I walked home probably the happiest I've been while in Spain - basically skipping, haha. We're meeting again next week, which is exciting. We are definitely going to learn a lot from each other - we already have.
I managed to go to the bank to pay my deposit for the trip to Galicia this weekend, even though the banks have as bad hours in Spain as they do in the States. So this weekend I will be going to Santiago de Compostela and La Coruña - two cities, one night, two 5-hour bus rides. People I know from Umass and from class are going, and I will be crossing my fingers for not TOO much rain...but I won't hold my breath.
Next weekend (is it really next weekend? I thought I had another week...) we (Umass) are going to Barcelona for Carnaval (aka, Mardi Gras, except it's ALL weekend). We have Monday and Tuesday off (the 20th and the 21st) for the holiday, so Umass organized a trip for us. We are leaving Friday night, taking an overnight train, arriving in Tarragona on Saturday, spending the day there, taking a train the next morning (1 hour) to Barcelona, and spending three days in Barcelona before taking another overnight train back to Oviedo on Tuesday. What you should take from that sentence is that I will be arriving in Oviedo at 8:30am on Wednesday for my 9am class. Yup. But I'm not going to worry about that right now, hopefully I will be able to sleep on the train. I'm just so excited that I don't have to worry about anything for this trip (it's included in our program fee and I don't have to get us there...), all I have to do is organize my own site-seeing (which we are getting reimbursed for, up to 25€!).
Anyways, if you have kept up with my blog for the past month, thank you so much! And don't worry, things are going to pick up again, starting when I get back from Galicia on Sunday!
¡Hasta Luego!
*Besos*
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