Visitor

One of the great things about having visitors is that you not only have some one to make you leave your apartment, but you also have an excuse to go see all of the touristy things in the city and take pictures.
We didn't really do much during the 3 days that she was here, but we spent a lot of time in the sun and took a lot of pictures.

More storks

The tower by the Cueva de Salamanca

Storks in the courtyard of one of the academic buildings
El Palacio de Anaya, which is the language building

A monument to the growth of Castillian (the Spanish that they speak in Spain)
It says: The most beautiful city is watching, like the dashing painter of the gorgeous sky polishing all of the illuminated sky. Already with his light the brimming Tormes (the river in Salamanca) the flowers that garnish it banks attentively watch its white path and crystal waves. This is from Salamanca, the solid seat, the well of science, the source of miracles...
Lope de Vega (a Spanish poet and playwright from the 16th century)

The Roman bridge across the Río Tormes
A Celtic boar that guards the city. It lost its head when some naughty (likely intoxicated) college students pushed it into the river in the 1700's. They found the boar's body, but the head was never recovered.
A statue of Lazarillo de Tormes, who is the protagonist in the first real Spanish novel. According to the story, he was born in Salamanca.
Cathedral at sunset

More storks

My señora invited my friend over for comida, and we took some pictures from the balcony of my apartment.

The last picture is of the mountains. I don't really know for sure, but I think that they're in the Sistema Central

Stork Stalking

The storks are back!
In the spring, the storks come through Spain from Africa and leave huge nests all over the buildings and trees. They are giant white and black birds with bright orange legs and beaks and make this great clacking sound, and I love watching them and looking for their nests. A friend of mine warned me that they might take out a restraining order against me...
These are some stork pictures from Salamanca:


Hooray cigueñas! My señora also told us that storks are a sure sign that spring is here. It's just too bad that my camera doesn't have a stork setting, but I guess I'm lucky that it has a rock and mountain setting...

More Siccar Point

These are some pictures that I took from my friend...
There really was a rutabaga plant, at least we found some pretty convincing evidence.

Informational sign posts that are surprisingly helpful.

Rocks!

Rugged, Scottish coastline


My descent to the unconformity.

Unconformity!

A fun sign on the secret path from Cockburnspath to Siccar Point


Dunbar.

Valladolid

Last Saturday, we took a day-trip to Valladolid, which is the capital of the Autonomía Castilla y León, which Salamanca is is (an autonomía is like a state, and Salamanca is a province as well as a city).

Valladolid is very different than Salamanca. Its architecture is not as Spanish and it looks a lot more like other, typical European cities. Most Salamantinos think that Valladolid is ugly, but they're a little biased.
Also, Valladolid is in the dead center of a sedimentary valley, which means that there is a lot less variety in building stones, and a whole lot of brick.

Because it was a Saturday, and we are in Spain, there wasn't really anything open in the morning, so the first place we visited was the cathedral. It is not a pretty as the one in Salamanca (they only ever built half of it).
But it is made out of travertine, which is kind-of exciting.

Then we went to visit the Cervantes house museum. Cervantes is probably the most famous author from Spain's Golden Age (1500's), and he wrote Don Quijote. Incidentally, although Cervantes only lived in Valladolid for a couple years, and he lived in Salamanca for a much longer time, Valladolid still has the house where he lived, so they get to have a museum. I think the Cervantes house in Salamanca was destroyed by Napolean...

"Here lived Cervantes"

We got a little lost on our way to Cervantes house, and when we asked for directions, we got a taste of the legendary Mediterranean hospitality, since the couple we asked took us right to the house.
After the Cervantes house, we had almuerzo in the Plaza Mayor (almuerzo is the meal between breakfast and the gigantic comida, which is between 2 and 3).
There was a carousel in the Plaza, but the sign specified that it was only for children.
After almuerzo, we went to the Museum of Valladolid, which was mostly about archeology. They had a lot of really interesting artifacts from when the Romans were in Spain, including some reconstructed villas from the province of Valladolid. Valladolid does not have Celtic artifacts like Salamanca.
We ate comida in a chocolatería (hot chocolate store), where we could buy drinks and have a place to eat the sandwiches that our señoras packed us. We had to kill a couple hours during comida, because everything was closed, but it turned out to be a nice, sunny day, even though it was a little cold (the weatherman had predicted that it would be cold and rainy). Our last stop of the day was the National Sculpture Museum, which was good, but did not have any modern sculpture and far too many Piedads (Mary holding the body of Jesus), Ecce Homos (Jesus' face while he's being crucified), and saints being martyred for my tastes. The most impressive thing in the sculpture museum was how much more realistic the sculpture during the middle ages was compared to the painting.
After our quick tour of the city, we got back on the bus, and made it home for cena (dinner seerved between 8 and 9).
Here are just some assorted pictures of Valladolid:

Cultural Experiences

Some interesting cultural experiences from the past two weeks:
1. The Spanish version of Saturday Night Live. It's on Thursday after dinner (between 10 and 11pm), and it's not censored, so there was nudity, on public television.
2. My geo. prof. canceled class for the first 4 days because he had another class at the same time.
3. I found out that the queen of Spain is vegetarian.
4. The US needs to import Pasapalabras from Spain. It's a game show that is mostly vocabulary based. It's amazing.
5. People eat cuddlefish...

My apartment

I moved, and I'm now living in an apartment with a señora who cooks me 3 meals a day and cleans my room, which is extremely convenient, although there are a lot of interesting moments when we don't really know what's going on. I also don't have internet at home, which means that I carry my computer with me every where during the week, so I can check e-mail and do homework when I have a free moment. My señora is very nice, and makes us talk to her and corrects our grammar, which are all good things. She also has 10 children, at least 4 of which live in Salamanca, and one comes over for lunch nearly every day, and 15 grandchildren. One of her grandkids lives in the same apartment building as us, and is over every weekday from sometime in the afternoon until 8. The food has also been excellent. Every dinner, we have a plate of soup and a plate of either fish, eggs, or vegetables for me. Lunch is a little more varied, with 2 plates and fruit every day. Our apartment is huge, and it's actually 2 apartments converted into 1. My housemate (who is really nice) and I have our own half of the apartment with our own door and bathroom, which is highly convenient.
Here are some pictures:

This is our door. We live on the 9th floor of the apartment (in American floor numbers)

The hallway if you come in the door and turn left. The dinning room is to the right.

The kitchen with...

larvikite counter tops :)

If you go to the end of the hall and turn left, here's my room.

And my housemate's room

and to the left of my housemate's room is our bathroom

When you enter my room the first this you see is the desk.

Then there's a storage closet that's full of kid's toys, and the balcony.

The balcony looks over a really narrow courtyard.

My bed is next to the heater (which is only on from 12pm to 12am). There is also a secret room between my housemate's room and mine. There's a window we can see from the balcony and we hear people in this room, but we can't get to it, and there's a wall on the other side. Very mysterious.

and the closet

and the shelves with my birthday cards


and my birthday cards.

my plant

and my books. I felt like it would be interesting to compare them to my books from the beginning of last semester.

That's the grand tour.