Un Semestre de Aventuras: 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: