Frohe Weihnachten und Frohes Neues Jahr!

    Christmas in Germany was a dream, and as you can probably tell by the title I am now fluent in German. Or..maybe not. But it definitely gave me respect for those exchange students who go into their year with no experience in the language at all. Going into this year I had six years of Spanish under my belt, and could already communicate freely with everyone. Upon arrival in Munich my German conversations ended with "Hallo."

    However, I managed to communicate with every one in English (the Germans are astoundingly good in foreign languages), and I had an amazing time. I stayed with friends of our family who live in a beautiful village about a 30 minute train ride to the south of Munich, complete with quaint Bavarian style houses and a blue-and-white maypole in the center of town. 

    Christmas in Germany is celebrated for three days, starting on the 24th and continuing through the 26th. On the 24th, we went to church where I sang Christmas songs in German, trying not to butcher the pronunciation too much. Then we went home and Christkind (the flying baby Jesus) brought gifts. In Germany, unlike the U.S., people open presents on the 24th. The tradition is that Christkind (aka one of the parents of the family), rings a little bell, and on the third ring, everyone is allowed to enter the room. The family I was visiting puts real candles on the tree, and each night we bet who could pick the candle that would be the last to go out (although you can be sure that there was a fire extinguisher on hand, just in case).

    Other highlights of the trip included visiting the Christmas markets in Munich and Bad Tölz (a little village in the countryside). I also got to take a beautiful hike in the countryside to a tiny town that only has about 5 houses to have lunch with some other friends of my family. On New Years we got to do Fireworks ourselves at midnight, although I was too afraid to actually light one. 

    Surprisingly enough, I spoke a good deal of Spanish while in Germany. There were two boys, one Mexican and one Costa Rican, at the high school in the town where I was staying, who were there on an exchange year learning German. There was also a friend of the daughter of the family I was staying with who had done an exchange year in Argentina last year, and her host sister from that year came after Christmas to visit for a month in Germany. It was really interesting to hear all the different Spanish accents come together in a completely different country!

    Finally, I got to go skiing in Kitzbühel, Austria, which was absolutely incredible. While we didn't have a white christmas, it started snowing toward the end of my stay, and we ended up having really good snow in the mountains of Austria. 

    All in all it was amazing to get to spend some quality time in a culture that is not Spanish and not American, and I really enjoyed it.

 

 

   
   

La Reina de los Autobuses

    I should now officially be dubbed La Reina de los Autobuses, The Queen of the Buses. I am not only the commander of the Salamanca public bus system, but also now of the Cadiz public transportation service and the national cross country bus service. 

    In Salamanca I ride the bus to school and to the gym every day. I have a bus bonus card, which makes me feel like a native almost more than anything else. I brandish that card with pride every time I place it on the high-tech card charger thing, glad not to have to deal with the grouchy look of the driver when changing coins and giving out paper tickets. I must look somewhat authoritative about the buses, because Spaniards have started asking me questions at the bus stop.

    'Does bus number one stop here?' an older woman asked me the other day at the stop.

    'How often does this bus come?' a younger girl asked a different time, obviously trying to get to the train station and worried about missing her train.

    Today I was waiting for the bus with a 20 something guy, watching every other bus go by but ours. A light rain dribbled down from a grey sky, and he was clearly impatient. Finally, after number eight to Aldehuela passed, and our bus had still not come, he exclaimed,

    'Anda narices! Ahora nos toca a nosotros!' Anda narices literally means 'walk noses' but what it actually means is just 'jeez!' So what he was really saying was 'Jeez! Now it's our turn!'

    He then looked at me commiserating ly, shaking his head as if to suggest that it was barbaric how long it was taking the bus to come. 

    I have also come to command the bus route from Salamanca to Cadiz, a nine hour cross country power route that stealthily winds through the night, finally dropping you in your destination. Cadiz is a beach city on the southern coast of Spain, where the waves lap against a beautiful harbor and walled ancient part of town. Salamanca is nine hours north of Cadiz, and around three hours west of Madrid. The first time I took this route, I was leaving Cadiz and heading for Salamanca, hoping to never look back. The government, however, had other plans for me.

    I had already applied for my residency card in Cadiz before leaving for Salamanca, and when I showed up at the government in Salamanca to arrange it, something was wrong, and that I had to go back to Cadiz to fix the situation.  What was actually wrong, I'm not sure I will ever know for sure, as it stirred up some definite regional friction.

    'Down in Andalucia,' my regional coordinator from Salamanca said, 'they do things badly. They don't take things seriously.' Andalucia is the large region in the south of Spain, that includes Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, Granada, and others. They have a heavy accent, and my host coordinator seemed to think, a bad way of doing things. 

    When I arrived in Cadiz after a nine hour bus ride, the coordinator there blamed it on the government of Salamanca, saying essentially that they needed to remove the stick from their butt. 

    'Those Salmantinos,'  said the coordinator from Cadiz, 'they don't ever stop to enjoy life.'

    The regional friction doesn't just exist between Andalucia in the South, and the rest of the north. It seems like everyone wants to be there own state. The Catalan people in Barcelona want to be their own nation, as do the Basque people of the north. The Galicians in the north west are also a people apart, in their forested land of mystery. In Cataluña they speak Catalan, in the Basque country they speak Basque, in Galicia they speak Gallego, in Valencia they speak Valenciano (which I'm told is very similar to Catalan) and in Andalucia they speak Andaluz (which is just Spanish with a very heavy accent).

'The people of Madrid and Castilla y Leon,' my host mother says, ' are the only true castellanos. In Salamanca, we are the real castellanos.' 

    Not only does each area maintain it's regional pride, but they do it in a semi-hostile way. It seems to me that they enjoy putting down the other regions in favor of their own. My cross country bus traveling has showed me a wide slice of Spanish life, and what I have noted most is that many regions are first Galician or Andaluz, and then Spanish, not the other way around. I'm not sure if this phenomenon exists in the U.S. and I have just been blind to it, but it seems to me that talks of secession in the United States haven't been serious since the civil war.

    Despite all the regional friction, I seem to have fixed my residency card situation, and will be allowed to stay in the country. I'll be going to spend Christmas in Germany with some family friends, but I will be back in Spain for 'Los Reyes Magos' which is the typical Spanish celebration of the three wise men, which used to be the main winter celebration, before Santa Claus robbed it from them. 

    Happy Holidays!

    

Salamanca Christmas Tree

Here is a video I took of the Christmas Tree in the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca!

Snow!

    As the days toward 'La Navidad' tick down, so does the temperature in Salamanca. When I leave my apartment every morning for school the temperature hovers around -5 degrees Celsius, piercing through my thin uniform jacket and creeping into the soles of my feet through my black ballet flats. Granted, I am from Southern California, but the Salmantinos complain of it too, wistfully looking forward to March, when they assure me that it will be a bearable climate again. We had our first snow this week, and spent our recess at school scraping the snow off the black top to hurl icy balls at each other.

    The city of Salamanca has kept spirits high by putting light displays all over, including a massive metal tree -like- light -show in the Plaza Mayor. On my bus ride home from the gym every night I am greeted by the cheery twinkle of the lights hanging above all the streets, glistening against the sky. 

    This week, despite below freezing temperature, my art history teacher decided to take us on an educational field trip through Salamanca, visiting the two Cathedrals (supposedly Salamanca is the only Spanish city with two) and various other famous sites, like the University of Salamanca. School field trips at my school in the U.S. usually consisted of the class visiting the tide pools for biology, or going to Sea World for fun, which does not compare at all to visiting the architectural marvel of the Cathedrals and the University of Salamanca, parts of which were constructed as early as the 1200s. It almost makes me feel guilty sometimes, because I go about my life normally without even thinking about the fact that the buildings surrounding me were built long before America was even discovered by the Europeans. As I drudge home from class, stomach growling, I often forget to stop and realize how old the buildings around me are.

    My class gathered in the Plaza Mayor at 9 a.m., (sans uniform!) for our little outing, already complaining of the cold. Within an hour of staring at the outside walls of the 'new' cathedral (new is a relative term here), talking about the different styles of architecture used to design the facade, we could not feel our feet at all, and our legs were beginning to lose sensation. I didn't know this before, but the girls put tights under their pants to give a little extra warmth, a trick that really works. After a tour of the outside of the cathedral, we made our way in, and then up, walking around the top of the cathedral, where there is an incredible view of the city (though not for those with a fear of heights).

Here are some pictures from the trip, and just the city in general.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Hasta luego!
 
 
 
 
 

 

The People of Walmart

    An interesting archive arrived to my host brother's email today. I get the feeling that it has circulated around the U.S. a lot, but it has now arrived in Spain, and you can be assured that the Spanish think it's pretty funny. It is entitled "The People of Walmart" and is a slide show of pictures of Americans wearing completely outrageous outfits while shopping at Walmart. Many are extremely overweight, many have their bottoms hanging out of incredibly short skirts, some are wearing bathing suits, unitards, face paint and outfits that generally look more like Halloween costumes than clothing.

    Neither host mother nor brother knew what Walmart is, as thankfully Walmart hasn't sunk its super-sized- claws into the Spanish market. In general, the Spanish seem to favor smaller, family owned business to the larger likes of your standard Walmart or Target. For instance, a Spanish pharmacy is usually a small hole-in-the-wall establishment, owned by a family who stocks all the medicine you could ever want, but is surely not a Rite Aid or Walgreens. The Spanish culture has preserved a very face to face feeling about business. Unlike Americans, they shy away from ordering things online, and prefer to buy groceries in a small market where they know all the check out girls. That is not to say that larger chain stores do not exist. El Corte Ingles is a national department store that carries everything from food to sports gear. Mercadona is a huge grocery store where you can buy peanut butter (an anomaly to the Spanish, who expect peanut butter to be sweet, and are generally disgusted by the taste).

    The way I explained Walmart was by saying that it is like a cheap cross between El Corte Ingles and Mercadona. It's not a very exact definition, but they seem to understand. 

    "And people go there dressed like that?" my host mother asks, more amused than disgusted. The first time she saw it she laughed so hard she had a stomach ache for hours afterward. 

    I shrug, not entirely sure how to explain the cultural significance of Walmart in the United States. How to explain that it represents the impersonal consumerism of American society, and that we Americans like to make fun of it, while still buying in to it. The outfits the people in the slide show are wearing illustrate perfectly how impersonal shopping in the United States is, that you can go to Walmart wearing a unitard and not care. You would never show up at a store in Salamanca wearing any of those outrageous outfits, because you have a much more face to face, personal relationship with the people in the store. The attitude about commerce in Spain seems to be on a much more human sized scale, in which you generally don't feel the weight of a massive company on your shoulders as you shop.

    "Well at least they can express themselves," my host brother says, smiling as he looks at a picture of a man wearing a women's bathing suit under a pair of sweat pants. 

    The thing that almost baffles both of them more than the crazy clothing is the amount of obesity in the pictures. Many of the people are strikingly fat. The Spanish have a much different relationship with food than Americans do. They do much less snacking. I was talking to a Spanish friend the other day, who did an exchange for three weeks to the U.S.

    "I could never figure out when the meals were," she told me, "because everyone was always eating non stop."

    It's true. In Spain, there seems to be a very organized meal schedule. There is breakfast, which is usually small, sometimes only coffee or hot chocolate. Then many people have a mid morning snack. Lunch is around three in the afternoon. Then there is another afternoon snack. Then dinner around ten p.m. The Spanish do snack, they just have a specific time for it in the day, and so they don't eat continuously. They don't sit at their desk munching chips. Instead they wait for snack time, and then they have a yogurt or a coffee, then get on with their day. At first, this confused me, because I was used to going to the pantry when I'm hungry and grazing a bit. Grazing is not something we do in my Spanish house. Merienda (snack time) is optional, but always there to relieve you of your mid afternoon hunger (ironically spanish snack time is after the time I would have eaten dinner in the U.S., but that's a different story).

     On some levels, I think that I expected that because Spain and the U.S. are both developed, western countries, they would be relatively similar. Sure, I knew things would be different, but I didn't expect them to be so different. The way of life is so un-American that it is sometimes hard to find anything that reminds me of home, but I am to the point in my exchange where I understand the differences, and even enjoy them. I like the relaxed late night dinner. I enjoy the fact that I can ride the bus anywhere I want. I am no longer afraid when people who are having a conversation with me stand so that there nose is practically touching mine. 

    But, on a different level, I often catch myself noticing that people are people, no matter where they are. I sit in class, and forget we are even speaking a different language. It feels so normal. The only thing missing is Walmart...

Dinner Conversations.

    The other night at dinner (a meal which almost always consists of a panini style sandwich), I was sitting with my host mother, as usual. Dinner is an informal meal, almost an afterthought to the day, sometimes eaten at a time I would normally go to bed in the United States. The thin overhead light flickered on the white tiles, a few drops of water dripped from the faucet onto the unwashed plates from lunch. The refrigerator hummed a low song.

    The conversation had landed on horoscopes, which is actually not very unusual for our house. My host mother is a certified expert.  You can tell her anyone's birthday and she will know their star sign, and likes to prophecy a little bit about their personality based on characteristic traits of that sign. Luckily the names of star signs in Spanish are very similar to those in English, so these conversations are pretty easy to follow.

    Her son, my host brother, who is 26, is a scorpio. "He has such problems with women," says my host mother, "it's because he's a scorpio. The girls are just too attracted to him. It's not his fault." She scratches her face with long painted nails.

    "Is there a problem with his girlfriend?" I ask. It doesn't seem nosy because she is kind of part of the family, if you consider sleeping at our apartment every night part of the family. My host mother sometimes jokes that she is a creature of the night, because she comes at around 8 or 9 at night, and leaves at around 8 in the morning. She is a Taurus, the same as my host mom. The week before the two of them saw on the news that Taurus women would be feeling very jealous soon, and that they should carry quartz around with them to ward off the feeling. They went out and got some quartz. 

    My host mom shakes her head sadly. She wears a thick blue line of eyeliner on her lower lids, a sort of homage to aztec art. "Natalia is very jealous of Paris' lady friends," she says. Natalia is the girlfriend. Paris is the brother, named for the greek hero. "It's just that scorpios attract this kind of attention and they can't help it." She stops thoughtfully. "My ex-boyfriend was a scorpio too. We had such problems in the end, because scorpio are very changeable and in the end he seemed to change personalities."

    I nod. I know all about the ex boyfriend. I have seen pictures. He sports a thick mustache and works for the Spanish postal service. She broke it off with him recently, even though they still love each other, because of situations including two other women, one of which is his ex wife. The problem is that the notion for the break up was not mutual, and suave Mr. Antonio calls persistently, saying he will never move on.  I was warned not to open the door or buzz anyone in at the front door of the apartment for fear that it might be Antonio, having made it from Tarragona to Salamanca to beg her forgiveness. If I call the home phone from my cell phone, she will not pick up because she thinks there is a possibility that he could have taken one of his friends cell phones to call her so that she wouldn't screen him. It is mildly frustrating when I need to speak to her and she is playing these call screening mind games, but she feels that it is necessary, and I have never met him, so I don't really know.

    My host mom continues. "Never date a scorpio man," she instructs me, "they only bring pain. They may give their whole heart to you, but never their whole body. They will always be surrounded by women. Look at Antonio, look at Paris. Exactamente Igual! Como padre e hijo!"

    I am not sure how to answer this so I just nod again, picking at the crust of my sandwich a little. The neighbor is practicing guitar in his room, plucking softly at the chords. 

    "You're a libra, aren't you?" my host mother asks. I nod. She smiles knowingly, "Very balanced. Maybe you wouldn't have so many problems with scorpio men. Although I believe that the best match for a Libra is another Libra."

    She has curlers in her hair, and they keep falling out on the floor as she shakes her head dramatically. They are blue rounds, with silver clips holding them in, and as they fall, the metal clips clack on the white tile. "My first husband was an aquarius. Too hard headed, made decisions too fast. To teach Paris and Victor how to swim, he threw them in the pool and let them go." She shakes her head disdainfully, a curler falling out. She has been divorced for almost ten years, and talking about her ex husband still leaves her with a bad taste in her mouth. "Aquarius are notoriously hard to date. We were both too independent. I'm surprised we managed eighteen years of marriage. Was is eighteen?" She counts on her fingers for a minute. "Yes," she decides, "eighteen is a long time."

    We are quiet for a minute, and the neighbor continues playing his guitar. I think of the night before, when we had been looking at pictures on her computer and she skates quickly over the ones with Antonio, saying that she didn't like to look at him anymore. 

    "Scorpio men," she mutters, and then segues on to the topic of the ice rink they are putting up in Salamanca, behind the huge department store. 

I thought I would put some pictures I have taken around Salamanca as well, just because I haven't added any yet!

 

 

 

 

 

Colegio Montessori

The favorite phrase of all my profesores en el colegio: "hay que saberselo." A rough translation of which is, 'you just have to know it.' (or rather, one just has to know it).

    My lengua teacher speaking about spanish morphology: "Hay que saberselo."

    My geography teacher about the knowing how much rain each climate in Spain gets: "Pues, hay que saberselo."

    My art history teacher explaining what the difference between a gothic and romanic cathedral is: "Es que, hay que saberselo."

    What they mean, essentially, is what the Spanish education system is all about: memorization. Memorization. And more memorization. 

    The last two years of Spanish education are optional, and are called Bachillerato. Primero de Bachillerato is the equivalent of Junior year, but it is mostly just preparation for Segundo de Bachillerato, their senior year, which is the defining year in any university bound student's life. At the culmination of Segundo, there is a test called Selectividad, which, unlike the American S.A.T., is based on your knowledge of each of your school subjects, not just your general smartness. It is about how much random stuff you can remember about climatic diversity in Spain, not if you can read a passage and answer questions. The last year of Spanish education is centered around preparing the students for the test, which I suppose you could say is like a series of A.P. exams, all in a row. 

    Bachillerato is divided into three sections: Humanidades (Humanities), Sociales (Social Sciences), and Fisica y Quimica (Sciences). A few years before entering Bachillerato, the students begin to try to figure out which of these paths they want to take, and by the time you get to Bachillerato you are defined in one of these categories, and most likely also know what you want to study in the university.

    I am in Sociales, and my classes include: Historia, Filosofia, Geografia, Economia (I like to think of them as my four "ias"), Ingles, Matematicas, Historia de Arte and Lengua (which is the equivalent of English class in American school, only in Spanish. I hope you can figure out what each of the others is. They are pretty obvious.) We catch the city bus at 7:45 and school starts at 8:00. We have three hours of class, then recreo for half an hour, then another three hours, and we are out at 2:00. Then I catch the city bus home. Unlike American school, the students don't do any extracurricular activities in school, partly I think because the universities don't care if you pad your resume with all kinds of interesting things. They only care about the grades you get in Bachillerato and your final grade on Selectividad. 

    For students in the Humanities and the Social Sciences tracks, life is about memorizing a text book. Literally. On my geography test my teacher rolled a dice, and whichever number it landed on was the chapter we had to write about. There was no prompt for the test, we were just supposed to vomit up as much information about that chapter as we possibly could for an hour. Unfortunately, no one thought to explain this to me, so I was left staring around at all the pencil tornadoes, wondering what to write about.

    Memorization, it seems to me, plays a much more important role in their system than what I am used to. In American school names and dates and obscure details were less important than understanding large themes and knowing how to express yourself eloquently and knowledgeably. Maybe this was just my experience in my school, I'm not sure.

    Generally the day to day activity in class is that the teacher takes out the text book and reads the important parts and we highlight them. So some days I spend six hours highlighting a book and I go home with yellow all over my hands. My school is a private school where we wear uniforms and have to stand up when a professor enters the room, but overall I really like the atmosphere of the school and the kids have been super nice to me.

    I hope that wasn't too confusing!

It's the little things...

These are just some little things about my life in Spain that amuse me on a regular basis, and I thought I would share them.

• I wear a tie with my school uniform. It is maroon and very ugly.
• I now know how to recharge my city bus card on the actual bus! That is a triumph in itself. It is surprisingly easy. You just hand the bus driver a five euro bill when the bus card machine says "tarjeta sin saldo" and you're good to go.
• Edward Cullen is just not the same when speaking spanish. Sometimes I feel like dubbing can change the entire perception of a character.
• When crossing an ancient Roman Bridge (aptly named the "puente romano") on the way back from a run I am confronted with the most gorgeous view of a massive gothic cathedral.
• A meal without bread is unfathomable.
• To study for a test at my school you memorize a bunch of chapters of the text book. Then the teachers rolls a dice and whatever number it lands on is the chapter that you are tested on, and you basically write everything you can possibly remember about that chapter for an hour. There is no prompt. You pretty much just rewrite the chapter.
• We sometimes eat dinner around the time I would go to bed in the United States, but it seems completely normal.
• Americans are super easy to spot in the crowd. You can just tell.
• Harem pants are super in and very ugly.
• I have actual Spanish friends. We go to the movies and go shopping and all that normal stuff together, but we do it all in Spanish. I sometimes go days at a time without speaking any english. It's pretty cool.
• We eat fruit, yorgurt, or flan after lunch and dinner. Religiously.
• It's really cold here. Which isn't very amusing when your uniform jacket doesn't exactly give much warmth.
• There is a product being advertised on TV that is called "la cuchara que sopla." literally, the spoon that blows. If your soup is too hot, you can use this spoon, and rather than using your own lung power to blow on the soup (oh, the horror), you can press a button on your spoon and it will blow air for you. Who comes up with these things?
• There is no Starbucks in Salamanca. I think it might be the only place on earth. And that is not a bad thing.
• I can walk basically anywhere in the city.
• They are putting up christmas decoration all around the old part of the city, and a massive metal christmas tree in the plaza mayor!

These are just some of the little things, because it's very hard to give a good impression of my life in Salamanca. More to come! Happy Holidays!

More travel

    On the bus to Salamanca from San Fernando, I sat next to a nice Columbian lady. She asked me where I was from and I said the United States, and then she wanted to know why I was here and I told her. She used the formal ‘usted’ form with me, which normally doesn't happen because I am young, and moreover, I look ten years younger than I am most of the time. I don’t know if it was just out of politeness or if that’s just the way they do it in Columbia. She told me she was going to Zamora, and then to Madrid to take a plane to Columbia. Nine hours of flying, she said. Tell me about it.

I’ve been trying to get the cheek kissing thing down, but I still have some doubts. Like, do I make the air kissy sound? Or not? Because some people do and others don’t, and some people do it sometimes and other times they don’t. Does it reflect your emotional state or your affection toward the person, like if I’m happy and I like you I would make the kissy noise. And if I’m angry with you I don’t. Some people just slap their cheek up there and peel it away as fast as possible with no noise or anything. And if their cheek is warm it might stick a little to yours, and there’s a little skin on skin stickiness. This is a gross analogy, but sometimes it reminds me of when a dog meets another new dog, and they sniff each other’s butts. I know that is pretty disgusting, and maybe it will scar you for life, but we get so up in each other’s space pretty quickly. It does relieve some social tension though, because you always know what to do in any situation. There’s no fooling around with shaking hands or hugging or just a simple wave. You just slap your cheek up there and you’ve got it covered. 

I'm in Salamanca now, and it's rather cold. When there's more to say I'll update, but for now all I can say is that it's pretty awesome and the buildings seem old (not very descriptive, I know).

Here's a picture of me all bundled up to go outside in Salamanca. They've told me it will only get colder, and I'm excited!

Some random stuff...

    We had trick-or-treaters on Halloween. That is apparently not supposed to happen here, and we were completely unprepared. I think these kids were kind of just mooching off of the idea though, because they totally hadn't put any effort into their costumes (aka, they put red lipstick on their faces and called it blood). That is officially not a halloween costume. I wanted to tell them, feeling self entitled on an American holiday in Spain, but I refrained because a little infusion of holiday cheer would be good for this country, especially considering that their economy is in the tank. Even if the holiday cheer is in the form of ghosts and witches.  These kids had plastic grocery bags, but observing the level of candy in relation to the little bag, I would say that the majority of Spanish people in our apartment building were not expecting trick-or-treaters either. We offered them this form of cookie-cracker hybrid, which I personally think is delicious, but they weren't interested. Their loss. 

Also, on a completely different topic, I have noted that the Spanish language is much more direct than English, and so I have to constantly remind myself that even though it sounds to me like their tone of voice is implying that I should go hang out in a port-o-potty for a while, the Spanish are generally speaking to me in their different sense of politeness. Please and thank you are virtually not in their vocabulary. You only say excuse me if you trip someone so badly that they fall and bloody their nose. That's just how it's done. So here I am, at the dinner table, saying: "If it wouldn't be too much trouble could you please pass the water?" and I use my polite voice and I smile nicely. But they would say, "Pass the water," and the tone of voice implies death if the command is not completed. It makes me feel kind of good, in a way, to leave out all my usual verbal affectations. When I leave out a please I feel a surge of rebellion. When someone knocks against me in the hall, I don't say excuse me and I pretend I'm Spanish too. Yeah, I'll knock against you, and you're not excused either.

I'm going to Salamanca today! On a nine hour bus ride. I have been informed many times that snow is a possibility there. Not immediately, like tomorrow, just in general. My geography of Spain textbook (that class is the bomb. Who doesn't love learning about the oregenies and tectonic movements of the iberian peninsula?) has informed me that Salamanca has an average of 9.6 snow days a year, so I'm dreaming of a white christmas. Nine hours on a bus sounds super fun too. I hope I get to sit next to someone who doesn't mind speaking broken Spanish with an eighteen year old American. Broken on my end, that is. Not so broken anymore though, I might add. I sometimes give myself a gold medal in spanish speaking. Sometimes it's bronze though. It depends on the topic. So, Salamanca here I come!

A smart car, just because I think they're funny, and even though we have them in the US now, they still make me think of Europe...