¡Fútbol y Segovia!

As usual, I have neglected my blogging duties. (I apologize to everyone relying on reading these posts to procrastinate on their homework). In an attempt to catch up, I'm just going to combine everything that has happened since my last post into one mega-post. And by "everything" I mean briefly describe the highlights of what's happened.

I started classes 3 weeks ago (Feb. 11).  Later on this semester I'll probably dedicate a longer post to describing my classes, so for now I'll just lay out the basics:

• I'm taking normal classes with local Spanish students at the University of Salamanca, the oldest university in Spain! 

• I have class Monday - Thursday, which is typical of college students here (I didn't have to try to get my schedule like that, there just aren't really any classes offered on Fridays).

• I'm taking 4 classes: Programación II (Programming), Historia de España Actual (Recent History of Spain), Cultura Hispanoárabe (Hispano-Arabic Culture) y Metodología de la Enseñanza Español (Teaching Spanish as a Second Language).

Partido de fútbol de Real Madrid

The Sunday before my second week of class (Feb 17), ISA organized a short trip to Madrid to watch Real Madrid take on Rayo Vallecano in soccer. We didn't leave for Madrid until 4pm. It's crazy that I can just hop on a bus and travel across the country. Everything seems a lot closer than the US, since Spain is so small. It was only about a 2 hour bus-ride from Salamanca to the stadium. We got there about 2 hours before the match started, so we had time to explore the area around the stadium a little before the game. We ended up stopping at a bar to soak in the ambiance (along with the heat) and grab some tapas (snacks) before the game.

After checking out the street vendors and resisting the urge to buy a vuvuzela, we found our seats in the upper deck. Our section was about as high up as you could get, but it wasn't a bad thing. We had a great view of the entire field, were right next to the outdoor heaters the stadium had, and were under the roof. It was raining and cold, but it was dry and warm-ish in our seats! 

I thought it was a great game to watch. Real Madrid dominated for the first 10 minutes, scoring 2 goals. Just as it was looking like it would be a complete blowout, one of Read Madrid's players got two yellow cards within a minute, resulting in a red card for him... which meant Read Madrid had to play a man down for the rest of the game. That made the remaining 80 minutes pretty competitive. The final score ended up being 2-0, but it was entertaining.

After the match, we wandered around for about half an hour looking for the bus. It turned out we had been walking down the wrong street, and eventually found the bus driver and headed back to Salamanca. I didn't make it back to my house until around 2:30am and had to get up for 9am recitation the next morning, but it was definitely worth it. ¡Gracias a dios por las siestas!

Side Note: I have never seen anyone wear so much hair-gel while playing a professional sport as Ronaldo. I suppose he thinks it will help his case if he looks good while complaining to the referee about a call or faking an injury.

And yep, as you can tell, I'm a preeeeetty big Ronaldo fan.

Segovia

Saturday, Feb. 25th I went with ISA on a short day trip to Segovia, a small city about 2 hours east of Salamanca. There were a lot of interesting sites to see in Segovia, but I recommend picking a warm day to visit... it was below freezing out, which made it really difficult to concentrate on the tour guide while standing outside the Cathedral as she gave a brief synopsis of the history of the world (or maybe it just felt like that).

La catedral

The seats had a ledge so you could rest while standing
during the really long masses!

We started off the day with a presentation/demonstration from a pottery artist. He showed us how simple bowls and cups were made by hand, and then made fancier bowls using a pottery wheel. Pottery artists used to be one of the most important professions because everyone needed them to get cups, bowls, plates, etc. Now it's just a hobby for people.

Next we headed to the Alcanzar, a royal palace that has been around for almost 900 years. A fire in 1862 completely destroyed it, though. It was rebuilt and is now used as a museum. It was interesting to see the architecture inside, but slightly less impressive once I found out about the fire and that pretty much everything in there was just replica of the original.

I was amused that there is now a fire extinguisher in
the room where the fire started that destroyed Alcanzar.

A room filled with models of old kings of Spain

We stopped by the cathedral after the Alcanzar. It looked very familiar because it was designed by the same architect that built the Nueva Catedral in Salamanca. Then we ended the tour at Segovia's famous Aqueduct. The aqueduct was built around the end of the first century by the Romans using granite blocks without any mortar! (I noticed no one was standing under it...) It's pretty impressive that they were able to design and build that massive of structure almost 2000 years ago!