27 Abril: Nothing new here

Hola! Yeah, life still going: homework, rain, siesta, study, cafés etc etc etc

More exciting: FOOD. Yesterday for lunch we had this garlic soup that was garlic, fried bread, eggs, and ham. It was a really weird texture. And then we had "hamburgers" (yum) with fried peppers and lettuce. And for dinner we had a tortilla francesa (omelette made with only eggs. that's it.), tomatoes and garlic, and a yummy fruit salad of kiwis, bananas, and strawberries! Mmmmmm :) Today for lunch we had the most amazzing lentil soup with ribs in it, a beautiful salad of cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and onions, and more strawberries for dessert. I absolutely gorged myself on everything and subsequently went into a food coma.

for dinner we had an awful political "discussion" (read: rant). that was no fun.

Day 7:
1 Thing I am looking forward to about being home: 2 sided conversations at meals
1 Thing I will miss about living here in Cáceres: Teresa's cooking

Day 6:
1 Thing I am looking forward to about being home: FRIENDS WHO LIKE HUGS. I need more hugs.
1 Thing I will miss about being here: the accessibility of the people here. We have nothing to do but hang out with each other!

Hablamos pronto!

25 Abril: Yeah I know I lied

Hola! So obviously the whole blog everyday thing didn't really work since I already skipped yesterday, but my life isn't super exciting.

I...went to cafes and did homework? both days. So yeah... that's basically it. We gave our bunny to the grandkids, who have named him Coco and are seriously the happiest humans about it, so I'm glad we did :) Fernandito, the little one, keeps calling to tell his grandparents about the latest adventures they've had (like 3 times a day haha). It's quite adorable.

Otherwise, Teresa is trying to make us all the foods she hadn't yet so we don't miss out on anything. Tonight for supper we had a traditional Basque soup of carrots, potatoes, shrimp, clams, and fish. It was really yummy.

During a class in which we're giving presentations this week, I randomly got really emotional about how much I'm going to miss everyone when we go back. The other kids in my program are just the greatest group of people; I've been so blessed.

Then,  this evening we bought our train tickets to Madrid for when we go home. It's starting to be real that we have to leave this amazing place so soon.

Pepe, our favorite waiter at Manómetro blew me a kiss as I was leaving today. I blew one back and almost teared up on the way home, realizing I need to cherish these last few days.

And the virgen has brought rain to Cáceres finally! Real rain, we could hear it outside the window during dinner :) and I say the Virgen brought it because it's some holiday where the virgen comes down the mountain today, and Teresa said it always rains on this holiday.

Otherwise, I turned in my last paper for my art history class today and I only have 4 more days of class (including finals days), 2 more essays to finish, and 4 final exams or tests!

Day 9:
1 Thing I'm looking forward to about being home: having my own room
1 Thing I'll miss from Cáceres: sharing life with my wonderful roommate, Hannah

Day 8:
1 Thing I'm looking forward to about being home: DOLLARS ($1.30=1€)
1 Thing I'll miss from Cáceres: coins that are actually worth something (coins go up to 2€)

Hablamos pronto!

23 April: 10 daysssss

Hola amigos! Yes, it's true. I only have 10 more days in Spain. I have so many conflicting feelings about this, I can't even put it into words. To honor the my last ten days, I plan on blogging every day for the rest of my time here.

Oh, Happy Day of San Jorge! San Jorge is the patron saint of Cáceres and so the entire city is closed today-including the University, of course. I'll tell you more about good ol' George in a minute, but want to hear about this weekend?

It's been a super long weekend, because two of our teachers are randomly in Poland right now (?) so on Thursday I only had one class, and then we don't have class on Fridays so it's basically a 5 day weekend since we don't have class today either. Oh and they're still in Poland tomorrow too so I have 2 classes instead of my usual 5. Hm,  I might have already told you that. Sorry!

So yeah, Friday I hung out with my friend Luke in the afternoon, just enjoying Cáceres. My roommate and I found an awesome bakery on Thursday so I took him there and we went to the park and stuff. It was a really nice day out and it was good not to be just sitting around all day.

Happy Spanish moment of the day on Friday: Luke and I went to Sanchez Cortez and the cashier asked him where he was from, and when he said the US she said she thought he was Italian and then she turned to me and said, "But you're Spanish, right?" Hehehe

And then a bunch of us saw the Hunger Games in Spanish so that was cool, but I definitely want to see it in English when I get back to Amurrica :)

On Saturday, I slept in really late and skipped breakfast, then did homework until lunch-which was PAELLA!- and then we had tea that my mom had given her, then we went to Manómetro to do homework for awhile with some classmates, then I just hung out all evening. Hannah got me hooked on a new show, 2 Broke Girls, and it's pretty funny so I enjoyed that. In the evening, we went out with Alice and Katie for a super chill night and we were home at a decent time, which was good because

on Sunday, Hannah woke me up and told me that the parents had decided we were going to take a trip to Leandro's pueblo for the day.

Leandro was born in and grew up in Granadilla, a tiny pueblo about an hour and a half north of Cáceres. Apparently, between the 50s and 60s, the government (recall: in those years, Spain was under a dictatorship) ordered that everyone leave the town permanently. The town was abandoned and never used again. Leandro is one of the last people left from the town of Granadilla. Now, it is a tour place and students volunteer to help restore it. There was and is no running water or electricity there, no one lives there, and there are no shops or anything. The only things to really do there are walk around and see the ruins and the castle, which was pretty well preserved. It is a beautiful pueblo- it's like taking a step back in time and into paradise, surrounded by green and water. There are sheep running around freely as you drive toward it. The thing is, someone could totally live there- the restored houses are really nice and there are lots of crops still being grown there: olives, figs, pomegranates, oranges, apples, lemons, bananas, etc. There are sheep and cows. It's not close to anything though, which would suck. It really was gorgeous though.

We saw the castle, and then the city closed for siesta (why, may I ask, would a city without shops or anything close?) so we had a super legit picnic at a table outside the pueblo's muralla of tortilla de patata, chicken fillets, potato chips, salad, fruit, bread, etc. Afterward, we just hung out on by the water and in the pasture area. There was a play ground and there weren't any children, so Hannah and I got to be little kids for awhile, which Teresa found endlessly amusing.

Then we took a walk on the wall around the city so we could see it all, and then we went to see Leandro's old house, which was cool but sad. All in all it was a really lovely day. Here's the picture version of all of that:

 The restored houses

 

The wall that surrounded that city that you could walk on

 The original homes (and next 3)

My Spanish family in front of Leondro's house

Oh and on the way home, we stopped on the side of the road to save a baby bunny. He's our pet now and Teresa named him Sandy. They are so cute about it, they talk about him constantly and today I walked in on them on their hands and knees playing with him. They are really excited.

Oh, but yesterday doesn't end there! Almost immediately after we got home, Hannah and I went down to the plaza to get frozen yogurt and wait for the rest of our amigos so we could celebrate San Jorge with the rest of the town. The plaza was packed! We waited for hours and finally a few of us went and got Döner Kebabs (they apparently don't exist in the US but they are DELICIOUS). While we were in there we could hear that it was starting so we pushed our way through the crowd back to our friends and were we in for a treat!

Props to Cáceres for putting on a truly amazing show. We were, maybe 8 rows back from the stage, and it was so cool. The music was beautiful and super intense, in Tasia's words, like The Lord of the Rings in real life. It was louder than you can imagine, you could feel every beat of the drum. It was like Arabic music, accompanied by a very intense dance show that told a story through the dance. It probably lasted at lease 45 minutes, with lots of dancers, rope-and-pully systems to assist the acrobats, horses, amazing costumes, breathtaking music, and a fantastic spectacle that ended in the burning of a giant constructed dragon and a truly fantastic fireworks show over the main building of the plaza. It was absolutely something worth seeing and I am so glad I was in Cáceres for it!

Alice's pictures aren't the best but Luke's aren't up yet and I feel bad leaving you hanging, so here's a tiny look at San Jorge in Cáceres:

 

Day 10: 

1 thing I'm looking forward to about being home: being able to make my own coffee

1 thing I'll miss about living in Cáceres: being treated like a princess, waited on hand and foot :)

Hablamos pronto!

20 April: It's been too long!

Hola! I know after all this time you'll be expecting a spring break entry, but I'm afraid that's not what you're going to get today.

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last blogged, but here is the reason why: as a type A person, I can't stand to have things out of order and since I haven't blogged about spring break yet, every time I think, "I should blog about this!" I fret about it being out of order. 

But! This way I'm not going to have any memories of these last two weeks recorded, and that's a shame. So, I promise that some day a spring break entry will come (a girl I went with recorded EVERYTHING and she's going to make me an outline to go off of so I don't forget any main points :)) but today I'm going to tell you about the random things I've done since I've gotten back.

The week we got back, our host family did everything in their power to show us that they had missed us. We told them about our trips and they told us stories, Teresa made yummy food, she washed all our clothes right away and anticipated anything we could possibly need so it was done before we even realized we needed it, they called us "mis niñas" and "mis hijas." It was so so sweet and it was very clear that we were loved and missed in the house. I am going to miss them so much.

Upon coming home, it was like a giant family reunion, not just with Teresa and Leondro, but with our whole program! Everyone was so happy to see each other and catch up on everyone's trips and hang out with each other. It was amazing to see how everyone's trips were so perfect for each of them, and a blessing to see that everyone had been kept safe and was still friends with everyone they traveled with and those they didn't ;)

That Wednesday, I went with two other girls on a spontaneous day trip to Trujillo, one of the pueblos mejor conocidos de Cáceres. A kid in our program's host mom teaches English there and she offered to take us, so we went up there for a couple of hours and checked out mostly the old part of town and then sat and drank coffee and ate pastries in the plaza mayor while we studied for an exam we had the next day. It was a relaxing way to check out a place we had been told we should see! Here are some pics:

 Orange cake with chocolate. Yuummmmmmm.

So yeah! That was an adventure. The next day, I aced my exam woot! haha So maybe it was good luck to have a fun day the day before :)

Unfortunately, the following evening I was pretty sick-I had to cancel everything, including skype dates  (sorry Abbie & Kelly) and my parents blamed it on Trujillo, which it absolutely wasn't, but it could have been all the changes in weather (it keeps going from really hot to really cold) in addition to fatigue from spring break etc. I was basically lazy for the rest of the week.

On Saturday, our parents took us to Coria, where their other house is! We were going to go for the whole weekend, but because it looked like it was going to rain all weekend (which is kiiiind of on and off did, but it was mostly just gloomy) we decided to only go for a day. It was really sweet, we drove up there and they pointed out lots of things on the way. When we got there, we got a tour of their "house" (like if you turned a house into an apartment, but it had three floors!)

and then we went on a walk with Teresa. She bought bread and traditional cookies of Coria for us to try (yum, I've never had anything like them) and then we walked around the city and saw their church, the old part and the castle, the cathedral, and the museum-where is kept what is supposedly the table cloth that was used by Jesus and his disciples at the last supper. Leondro met up with us halfway and took us up a tower and walked around with us some.

 The wall around the old city

 The cathedral!

Inside the cathedral-so beautiful

The last supper table cloth

 The castle.

 A view of the city from the tower

I think Coria must be an aging town, because when you enter the old part, plastered on the doors are notices of who has died recently, and everyone stops to look at them. And whenever we ran into anyone Teresa knew, the first thing she asked was who had died. They ended up going to a funeral that night before we left.

Then Teresa made us a delicious lunch of some kind of tuna pasta thing. Afterwards, she asked us if we wanted to watch tv with Leondro. We went into the sitting room where there was some kind of heater. I sat in a chair with my feet in front of the heater and fell asleep immediately, where I stayed for the next two hours! When I woke up, Hannah and I read while they were at the funeral. When they returned, she made us tea from "hierba buena" in her garden (I think it's just mint?) and then we walked around the city once more, under a sky threatening to rain any moment, until we met Leondro at the river where he was waiting with the car to take us home. It was a lovely day trip :)

We were verrrry lazy for the rest of the weekend, but I think it was a rest well-deserved.

This week we've tried to be less lazy because it is starting to hit us that this semester is coming to a close. Two weeks from right now I will have already been home for over 8 hours! I can't believe it. If I am completely honest with you, I go back and forth between being very ready and very very sad.

In phonetics this week we watched a strange movie called Una Casa de Locos, and it's about the ERASMUS program (I think I've mentioned it before, it's the continent-wide European study abroad program). Our teacher Marisa assured us that we were going to love it, find it hysterical, and completely identify with it. I don't think many of us found those things to be true, although it was entertaining in a strange sort of way. I think everyone would agree that we identify more with these two videos, which you can feel free to watch or ignore, but I find them hilariously accurate.

Except, of course, I'm not drunk all the time. But still, amusing.

School's been pretending to be real and stuff lately, so I've actually had a decent amount of homework, exams, essays etc, but I've decided that I'm going to enjoy these last two weeks to the fullest so I haven't gotten overwhelmed and am just taking it slowly.

On Tuesday Marisa decided to "have class" at the Gran Cafe with churros and coffee and then surprised us at the end by paying for all of us. It was so nice and a wonderful way to spend time together speaking in Spanish. I think it was there, watching my classmates converse and laugh with each other and our teacher, that I realized how little time we have left here together and it made me sad about leaving, whereas I had been so homesick during the weekend, because...

Oh! I can't believe I forgot! That Friday before we went to Coria was Teresa's birthday! Hannah and I had each gotten her little gifts from different countries while we were traveling over break, which made her really happy, and then that night the WHOLE family came over for dinner-both her daughters and her daughter's families. It was craaaziness! Lots of loud fast Spanish talking and intensely Spanish food. It was quite the experience. At the end, Leondro brought in a metal bowl that he lit on fire! It was some kind of alcohol, sugar, coffee mix that he let burn for about 5 minutes, ladling it out of the bowl so the fire would rise and fall. It was ... an experience! Quite the experience. After he blew it out (Heather style! Mom, Dad, and Dawson will know what that means), we each (except for the little kids, of course) got a little bit of it. It was sweet and firy. Indescribable, really, but interesting. The bowl of fire. Anyway, I think that having the family all there together reminded me of our family reunion last summer and it made me miss my own family. Families are special and I'm excited to see mine soon :)

Also on Tuesday, a friend and I went up the mountain for a lovely relaxing afternoon. It was very windy, but possibly one of the few nice days we have left, as it's been gloomy so far for the rest of this week and the forecast doesn't look too good.

When I got home, Teresa had surprises for us! Albondigas and arroz con leche. Yum! This week, I asked her if I could have some of her recipes so that I can cook Spanish style at home. She was more than happy to dictate them to me, but I'm afraid my notes are very sketchy, filled with measurements like "a dinner glass of this, and a breakfast mug of that" and ingredients in Spanish that I will have to google translate, but I hope I'll be able to recreate a few of them :)

If you aren't keeping up with Spanish politics (haha), you may be interested to hear that the king went elephant hunting during this crisis, and while in Africa, fell and broke his hip. The country was in uproar that they didn't know that he was there! (Side note, did you know the king killed his older brother who was meant to be king when he was about 14 years old? The entire country accepts that it was an accident though...) Also, the Spanish national gasoline company Repsol bought out a failing Argentinian company YPF a few years back, and this week, the Argentinian president declared that Argentina now owns YPF again. Just declared it. I really don't understand how she could do that, but apparently she can, and Spain is furious. So yeah, that's what's going on here right now.

On Wednesday I had an interview and was selected to be part of the ISU STARS program in the fall, which gives the campus tours to prospective students, so that's exciting. I also did some job/internship hunting and concluded that I need more skillz with computers, so I'm taking a computer science class over the summer. It was also registration day for honors seminars, so I'll be taking a class on the logic of paradoxes in the fall, which I'm really excited about. So Wednesday was a good day.

And then yesterday, I only had one class, after which Hannah and I walked back from the University and spent the morning in a cafe doing homework. In the afternoon, we hung out with some friends and went out for margaritas in the evening. Tonight, we're going to The Hunger Games! Today is it's first day in the theater in Cáceres, so we get to enjoy it ... in Spanish of course :) I'm quite excited.

Coming up, we have a four day weekend this weekend, because Monday is the day of San Jorge, the patron saint of Cáceres so everyone has off (that's weird, but cool), and Sunday night they have a huge party where they burn a dragon in the plaza to remember San Jorge? I don't know, but it should be fun. This is our second to last weekend, so those who are here are living it up Cáceres style :)

So that's been my life since spring break! Crazy as always, but full of blessings.

Praises to God for:
-safety over break
-the sweet welcome we received home
-good friends
-good family
-good food
-endless opportunities
-love and laughter
-that I have almost two more weeks to enjoy here
-my temporary home in Cáceres

Love to you all, thanks for sticking with me <3 Hablamos pronto!