En las calles de Salamanca…

I’m happy to say that the past few days have given me some relief from the stress and worry that I was experiencing earlier in the week.  I’ve been keeping busy with classes and spending a lot of time with my friends here.  On Tuesdays, I have class at 1:00 in the afternoon for two hours.  I love that walk to class and back home for lunch.  The streets of Salamanca are almost always congested with people who are out shopping or strolling with their families.  On my way to that class, Business Spanish, I weave in and out of groups of students in the Plaza Mayor.  I smell the bread and pastries baking in the numerous panaderías along the facade.  I hear beautiful noise.  Everyday around this time, a man stands on Calle Toro and plays his saxophone so soulfully.  That’s a tongue twister…saxophone so soulfully, saxophone so soulfully, saxophone so soulfully.  Try saying that three times fast!  Anyway, as I’ve said before, Salamanca is new every day.  Each day, each hour, each minute is different.  I suppose that’s true anywhere.  I think that sometimes it takes a change of scenery for us to realize how dynamic life is.  It is constantly changing.  It’s resplendent.  On my walk home from Business Spanish on Tuesdays, or Thursdays for that matter, the streets are deserted.  Everyone has returned home or is at a side street café for la comida.  I’m usually starving when I get home because it’s about a fifteen minute walk from my class and we normally eat at 2:30.  By the time I get to our apartment, Angelita, Meredith, and Fabi have usually finished eating.  So I eat with Begoña, their daughter, who comes to pick up her children.  The boys, Fernando and Antonio, go to school right across the street from our apartment and come over every day for lunch.  I love having the entire family around.  It gives Meredith and me a chance to practice our Spanish even more.  The grandkids get a little rambunctious but they are so much fun.  We love our Spanish family.  On Wednesday, I went to see a movie with some of my classmates.  Yami, Tristan, Amanda, Robin, and I saw “La Cara Oculta,” a psychological thriller, and I had popcorn for the first time since leaving home.  I love popcorn!  My folks and I munch on popcorn all of the time at home.  Sometimes it replaces dinner!  My friends and I had so much fun walking through the streets that night, talking about our classes, and seeing a truly great movie.  During the afternoon on Friday, I got together with my friends Julia and Laura for café con leche in the Plaza.  Inevitably, when meeting a friend in the Plaza, you end up finding four or five others.  The Plaza Mayor is the center of the city and life in Salamanca revolves around it.  Late on Friday night, I met up with two other friends for drinks at a bar near my apartment.  Rachel and Andrea actually live in the same building as me and Meredith.  I got to know some students from another study abroad program, ISA, and it turns out that a few of them are in my classes.  It was so nice to meet new people and the sangria was so refreshing.  It has been unseasonable warm in Salamanca.  We’re all hoping for it to cool off a little bit this upcoming week.  Last night, I went out chocolate fondue and churros with a big group of friends at the best place in town, Valor.  I also got some ice cream for the walk home.  Talk about a sugar high!  It was perfectly decadent and absolutely worth the calories. 

I love that we can get a diverse group of people together and enjoy each other’s company so much.  We all have such different backgrounds.  In our AIFS Salamanca group, there are students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight.  There are people from Hawaii, California, Alaska, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, and probably a couple of other states that I’m forgetting.  But here we have all experienced the same anxiety, the same stress.  It’s comforting to have all of these people around me when I’m so far away from home.  Angelita and Fabi just got home from a long walk.  I don’t have much on my agenda for today.  I’m meeting up with the girls that are going with me to Prague in a couple of months.  And I think that I might go for a short run later in the afternoon.  This has been a very long blog post!  I sincerely hope that everyone is doing well back home, whether your home is in Illinois, Iowa, Texas, or anywhere else.  Hasta luego.