Now that I have been in Spain for five days, I have finally stopped asking what the weather will be like for the day. It is always warm and sunny, and I have fallen in love with the great city of Valencia!
I arrived at the Madrid airport safe and sound on Friday, May 28, where I met up with other ISU students and took a shuttle bus to our hotel. There are almost 90 students on this program. Unfortunately, my luggage did not arrive and there was some confusion with the hotel, but my professors were great and helped me out. From what I understand, the airport delivered the luggage to the hotel just as they said they would, but when I talked to the people at the front desk, they said there was no luggage. They thought it was someone else's luggage and had placed it in storage.
We spent the weekend in Madrid walking around, going to some art museums, and touring the city and the Royal Palace. I was in the group where the tour guide only spoke in Spanish. I was able to understand quite a bit during the city tour and the tour of the Royal Palace (similar to Versailles without the gardens) but I had a lot of difficulty understanding the Spanish at the art museums. This could partly be due to the fact that I wasn't incredibly interested in the art, but it was mostly due to my lack of art-vocabulary knowledge. The art was either very traditional (neoclassical or paintings of royalty) or abstract (Goya, Picasso, and Salvidor Dali.) Madrid is fine, but it seemed like a lot of other cities. I told my roommate today that Madrid is like oatmeal, but Valencia is like oatmeal with Craisons and honey! There are some old buildings and statues, but a lot of cities in Europe have that and much more. It was a great chance to meet other students, though, and I was able to ease back into Spanish.
We spent most of Sunday riding the bus to Valencia where my roommate Kendra and I met our host mom. She is in her 50's with two little dogs. The one is fine, but Asthma is a little annoying and likes to bark a lot. Kendra and I were a little confused because she kept talking about Asthma, and we thought she was saying she has asthma! She only speaks Spanish which is great because we have been learning so much. Carmen, our mom, has a husband and 30-year-old son that are in the house now and then, but we do not see them that much. We live in a neighborhood really close to a school and looks directly out onto a little park/playground. There are two other girls from ISU that live in our neighborhood so we ride the city bus to our university in the mornings.
My roommate Kendra is great, and we have been exploring the city together. We walked around the city for around five hours yesterday afternoon/evening after orientation, and today we walked with some other girls to the beach (about one hour west of the university by foot) before walking back to our neighborhood which took a little over three hours. Keep in mind that it was 34 degrees Celsius (about 90 degrees F.) There is a huge garden called el Jardin del Turia that stretches through most of the city with lots of trees, futbol estadios, and running/walking paths. I love it and cannot wait to go back. Valencia is also a wonderful place to see a wide range of architecture from old cathedrals to modern opera houses. My back and legs are really sun burnt right now, but I do not care. I do not think I could ever get sick of sunshine!
Today was our first day of official classes. I am taking a Spanish course with a professor from the Universitat de Valencia (it is named Universitat instead of Universidad because there is a local dialect from Valencia.)
I will try to write more later! I have to go- I have very limited access to internet because the computer lab at the Universitat will not let the ISU students get on with the password they gave us, and they are supposed to finish it eventually.
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