Internet problems

In case some of you are wondering, I haven´t been able to upload pictures to my blog because of the internet connection I have. I keep trying but it is very frustrating and so you might just have to wait until I get home to see more. Sorry! I will keep trying.

Salamanca

Ok well this is a good as i could do. My favorite pictures I couldn't put on my blog because of course they were the ones that wouldn't load. So after much frustration and loss of sleep, this is what you get. This is in Salamanca...I don't remember all the building's names. The guide said that all the buildings in Salamanca are built with a special stone that is white to begin with and over time it changes to a golden color. So they call this the Golden City. It is very beautiful. I have some pictures to shopw the diference in stone color...but not here so you can see them when I come home.

This is the view of the two cathedrals from outside the city. The new one and the old one...new meaning 1800's.

This is inside the old cathedral, and this is one of the oldest organs in europe. I think its from like the 13th century or something.

And this is a typical european style pulpit

This is in the new cathedral...the architecture style is Baroque...I don't know how to spell that.

This is the chapel in the University of Salamanca. You can get married here but only if you have a degree from this university. You should also know that Salamanca is a University city and this university is one of the oldest in europe. Its up there with Oxford and Notre Dame.

This is the side of the new cathedral and the picture above it is a Jesuit church that is huge. We were standing in the courtyard of the house of shells which is also a really cool looking building but I couldn't upload that picture either. When we were here it was like in the 70's and sunny. I loved it, of course. :) When I am able, I will post the rest of the pictures or you all can wait a couple months to see them. :)

My Room: Before and After

Ok so I have not posted pictures of my room yet because I haven't really like it and I wanted to show before and after pictures. Its still not exactly how I want it, but I'm only here for 3 more months...so this will have to be good enough. First we start with my desk..this picture is from the first week that I was here. Notice the ugly mustard yellow curtains in the picture on the left.
I moved my desk next to my door because I had to buy an internet cable and it wouldn't reach to the other side of my room. All those pictures on the wall are ones that my mom sent me...thanks mom:)

BEFORE - This is what the bed looked like whe I got here..well I was a little neater. Again, the ugly mustard yellow color.
AFTER - I moved my bed to go along the other wall and boought some polar fleece blankets at IKEA to make it look a little more normal. I know the pillow doesn't match, but those are just the sheets that the housekeeper gives me.

BEFORE

Not much change here...I can't really change anything with my closet. The doors are kind of crooked and they are hard to slide sometimes.

AFTER
I just got these curtains this weekend at IKEA and I think they look much nicer than the other ones. If you know me, you know that I love purple, so this suits me much better. I also got a purplr rug to go un front of the window and it matches perfectly.

Now you all have seen my room. It's definately not the nicest room, but I think I have made it my own. The part of Madrid that I live in is very old, so this is the kind of room that you get. The windows and doors are really old and they let in a lot of sound because they don't seal. The good part about living in this part of the city is that I am close to everything and I don't have to take the metro or the bus to go places like most of the other people in my program. So there are good and bad aspects about living here. I think for 5 months, its not so bad. I'm just happy that I don't have to look at those ugly curtains anymore :)

Sorry

Hello Everyone! I have been hearing some complaints that I haven't posted another post recently. Well I haven't been doing much lately because it has been cloudy and rainy here for almost a week. I have been staying in my room and working on homework. Last night I went out with one of my flat mates, Katie, and we got stuff to make tacos. She made chicken ones and I made beef ones. They were really good, although when we got home, we realized that we had bought moldy tomatoes. I had some in my room so we just used those.

Last weekend I went to my friend, Alexandra's house again. It was her birthday the weekend before, but as I was in San Sebastian, we couldn't celebrate. She had a party on saturday night with me and some of her friends from church. It was fun and we had pizza. This was the first time I had pizza since I got here...way too long. Here's a few pictures from that party.

Then on Sunday we went to another birthday party. It was for Alexandra's friend's daurghter who turned 1. It was really nice because her friend, Angie speaks english very well and she likes to talk so I talked wtih her for awhile. The food was really good there too. We had chicken soup, because in europe you always have soup before the main course, and some chicken that was very tender and yummy. Here are some pictures from that party.

Well that's pretty much all for now. I hope that you are all satisfied now that you know I am still here. ;) I am staying in Madrid this weekend and I might just walk around a little. This is the last week of the sales so everything should be marked down a lot. Maybe I can find some good deals.

San Sebastian

This weekend I went to San Sebastian and Bilbao with the group from my program. This was one of the excursions that is included in the price of the study abroad semester. S. Sebastian and Bilbao are part of the Basque country, which is in northern Spain on the border of France. The Basque country is kind of different from the rest of Spain because they speak a totally different language, Basque. It has nothing in common with any other language so its very difficult for someone to learn it who hasn't grown up there. In Basque, they call this city Donostia. They also speak spanish, which was good for us. Aparently some people in the Baque region want it to be a separate country from Spain, so there are frequent protests for and against that issue. There was one protest when we were there that was illegal so we had to stay away from it. The guardia civil was there and they had these big black guns that looked like they shot rubber balls the size of tennis balls. I wanted to take a picture but didn't think it would be appropriate. This particular picture, above, is still in Madrid when we were getting on the busses. Its kind of blurry cause people were moving, but you get the idea. We left at 8:30 in the morning and it was a 5 hour drive with a 45 minute break. We got there mid afternoon. These are just some pictures of the mountains, if you can call them that. They are kind of small compared to the Rockies, but they are bigger than what we have in west michigan.

We went through a lot of tunnels and over a lot of bridges because of all the mountains and it was really pretty. Its kind of hard to capture through the window of a bus. Surprisingly the roads are very smooth and new. I wonder what kind of taxes they have for that.

This was the hotel we stayed at. It was really nice and all of our meals were served there. We had roast beef and mashed potatoes one night and chicken the other night. It was very good and the hotel was decorated really cool. You can see the lobby decorations in the picture below.

This was at the beach when we just got there. We had a walking guided tour of the city. Its not that big so it took like 2 hours to walk and see everything. It was probably in the mid to low 70's depending on if you were in the sun or shade. Some people actually went in the water but I think it was too cold still. This beach is called "La Concha" which means, the shell, because it is shaped like a scallop shell. If you say La Concha in Spain, everyone knows that you are talking about this beach.

These are some friends. Two of the girls live in my apartment and the other is in some of my classes. That island behind us is called "Isla de Santa Clara" and it is perfectly situated because it blocks all the heavy waves and makes the water near the beach calm and just like a swimming pool. There is a spot further up the beach that gets more waves and is popular for surfers.

This is my favorite picture from San Sebastian because the water is so blue and the courthouse is in the background and the castle can be seen on top of the hill. It is so beautiful there. The castle on the hill has been turned into an amusement park and you can get to it by a cable car that goes up the side of the hill. Its pretty cool but we didn't get to go up because there wasn't time. I would like to come back and check that out.

This is a shot down the street from the cathedral. There are two main cathedrals in San Sebastian and they are built directly across from eachother. We didn't go any closer to this one, which is called Catedral Buen Pastor, or the church of the good shepherd, but I have some pictures of the other one because we got to go inside it.

I know there is something like this in the US. I just can't remember where it is. I know I have seen it twice....anyone remember? I want to say mackinaw but I don't think that is right. Anyway, it just made me think of that.

This is the view of the other part of the city across the Urumea river. That part of S. Sebastian has a lot of French influece. France is only about a 10 minute drive away, and Queen Isabella II built a castle here for vacation. She even had a personal bath house where she could change into her bathing suit and then get into a carridge with oxen that would take her down to the beach, which wasn't that far away. I have pictures of those things, but I can't show you everything right now! I have to save some things for later.

Here is a picture of the water....isn't it such a pretty blue? Well I thought it was nice...to bad it was too cold to swim. I have never swam in the ocean. I think S. Sebastian is on the Bay of Biscay which goes out to the Atlantic Ocean.

This is in the "Plaza Mayor" of S. Sebastian. I don't think that is what its called, but I didn't catch the name. Either way, its just a center where there are a lot of restaurants and outside tables to eat at and have some Cafe con leche. And there are apartments that overlook the square.

This is the other cathedral, Santa Maria. Its kind of sad that they built buildings all around it so that you can't really see the whole thing, just like the one in Toledo. I think this picture shows the best part of it though. The next picture is just a shot of the inside. Most of my pictures from the inside didn't turn out very well cause it was really dark. This was the best one. It was just the typical european cathedral.

This picture is my other favorite and Andrea, I was thinking of you when I took this one. I bet this would be a good one to paint.

It got kind of cold at night, but the breeze was still warm. We went for a walk along the beach and the pier goes all the way out to the tip of the mainland. That spot is called "El Peine del Viento" which means the comb of the wind. In that spot, there is a sculpture of something, I don't know what, and then there are a lot of steps and a wide open area. On one side of the open area there are 7 holes about the size of a softball and they go all the way down to the ocean. You can look over the edge and see all the rocks and watch the waves crash against them. When the water goes under the spot where the holes are, it makes a roaring noise, and when the tide is in, the water shoots up through the holes. We didn't get to see it when the tide was in, but we put our hands over the holes and when the waves come in you can feel a huge burst of air come up. Its actually kind of scary at night, like when we were there cause you can see the holes and you walk by them and all of a sudden you hear this roaring sound right under you. I have a video of it but you can't really see anything, I just took it to capture the sound. If you want me to post it, let me know and I will. The following video is just of the beach at night. I think the building that I start filming on is the Queen's bath house, and the other one is a day spa. Well I hope you enjoyed those pictures, and even though it is bitterly cold in Michigan, I hope these pictures will warm you up a little by just looking at them. It was so beautiful the day we were there and I'm very glad of that. I would like to go back in may when it is warm enough to swim and enjoy the beach a little more.

Bilbao

This is the Guggenheim art muesum in Bilbao, Spain. Bilbao is in the north of Spain, in the Basque Country just like San Sebastian. This museum is interesting because its all about American art, so it was kind of like being at home in a museum. We had audio guides so we could type the number of the exhibit into our keypad and it would tell us about the artist and the work of art. It was cool to see all the different kinds of art there. They had portraits of George Washington..the origional ones, and I liked those the best.

This is just a view from the museum overlooking the park nearby. I love the palm trees :)

I tried to get the fountains in this picture but I was kind of far away. The fountains in San Sebastian were like these, only the water came up from the ocean and shot through the holes when a big wave came. I couldn't take a picture of that cause it was dark when we were there.

This is me and Jana in front of the museun right when we got there in the morning.

This is me and Katie up on the bridge that is next to the museum. It was cool to look over the city from that high.

A better view of the bridge

This is a picture of the channel from the top of the bridge

I don't know what this thing is...just an art sculpture, but it looked kind of cool :)

This one is for you mom :)

Pretty flowers!! :)

I think I got everything in this picture, flowers, palm trees, the museum, and the bridge. Beautiful!

This was inside the museum. I don't know what they are supposed to be but they are fun to walk inside. It kind of creates an optical illusion when you are inside cause the walls are slanted and it feels like you are going to fall over when you are walking through.

This is the restaurant that we ate at on the way home. It was a buffet and all the food was genuine spanish cuisine. It was the best food I have had on this trip. I had paella (rice with seafood), spaghetti with shrimp, croquetas, empanadas and more that I can't remember. Then we drove home after eating and it was a 6 hour drive which was very long, but I listened to music most of the time and talked to friends a little. Overall, it was a really fun trip and I defianately want to go back to San Sebastian in May when it is warm and I can go to the beach.