Another Monday

I just realized yesterday that when new acquiantences ask the inevitable question, "how long are you here for" I can no longer respond "two and a half months. Now it's only two months. Shoot fire. The more time I see pass by me, the less I understand how and where it goes.

Anyway, I would title this last week as "the beginning of normalicy." I have started falling into somewhat of a routine, in which I do approximately half the things I wanted to/planned on doing every day and know that the same thing will happen tomorrow. But it's nice to have some structure to life. I have four hours of class a day, beginning at 9:00 and ending at 2:00 with an hour break in the middle. Then I return to my homestay for lunch at around 2:30, and do homework/check my email/play soccer/plan trips/take a siesta/explore Salamanca until dinner at 9:30, and continue with more of the same after dinner. Life is pretty laid back.

However, the meal schedule somehow manages to leave me either starving or stuffed beyond comfort. Breakfast is not a widely respected meal in Spain (mine is usually a very small muffin and a glass of orange juice), and because lunch is so late I am usually packing a powerful appetite by the time I get back from class. Then, after eating the mountain of food my señora feeds me, usually because it´s good and sometimes just because I don´t want to be rude by leaving something on my plate, I can do little more than stagger into my room for a nap. Yet somehow I am miraculously hungry again by 7:00. at which point dinner is still a solid 2:30 hours away.

This last weekend, I went on an excursion to a national park and to Ciudad Rodrigo with my program. The park was slightly different from the typical American park, because it mainly consists of tiny little towns that have been making a living off the forests for the past 1000 years. Only recently have they begun to reap a new harvest, that of tourism, so even today the majority of the park looks like overgrown farm land. However, it was a wonderful break to get out from the city, and the influx of tourists in the last three decades has yet to wipe out the small village feel of the towns that we stopped in.
Ciudad Rodrigo, with it´s almost completely intact mideival wall, was equally charming, though the food left me somewhat worn out. After trying the local local dish, which consists of a egg drowned in grease with some sort of fatty sasuage and a side of french fries, I felt as if I had consumed all of my calories for the week. The next day in an attempt to cut back I ordered a vegetable sandwhich. This would have been a healthy choice, had the bread not been fried in grease and had the 'vegetables' not been a bit of cabbage suspended in half a liter of maynaise. I returned to Salamanca a few steps closer to a heart attack, but overall very content. I am now going to attempt to upload some of the photos that I have been accumulating for the past month and a half. If i´m successful, you will have already seen them before this post.