So I've gotten quite bad at putting entries here I suppose! Oopss. However I have lots of new things to add to here about what i've been experiencing and seeing during this adventure here! :) Since the last entry, I have gotten a lot of school out of the way, which is going well. Classes are interesting and not too hard, as i thought they might be with being in spanish and all completely. My literature class is the only one that gets boring really because of the teacher talking about pretty much nothing or in circles! Yikes. My Español de America is good, we have a big group project we'll be doing for the final grade in the class instead of really having a final. So my group has started our work on that, watching a movie called 'La estrategia del caracol' and I'm intrigued to find out about it and watch it. It was recommended by our teacher actually! The Spanish for foreigners class is really easy actually. We do a lot of little grammar exercises all the time and some writing along with talking a lot with each other in the class. A slight bit of work to get done but nothing hard! My cinema class is really interesting. It's all about movies and history from the 70s here in Spain and we watch some interesting movies, like 'el puente' and 'asignatura pendiente' and others. It's all interesting! But to be honest, even though school is a big reason I'm here, none of us feel that school is that big of a part of the Erasmus experience and doesn't need to take up all that much of your time! Which is super nice and true. As long as you get some stuff done when you need it to be, then we all are comfortable with thinking about other things here. Traveling has been amazing! I've now been out to Madrid to visit a friend, been to pretty much all the close cities close to my town in Galicia, been to Barcelona, all along the coast of Galicia, and am off to Portugal for a few days starting this Friday. I'm way excited! And theres a possibility of going to Morocco the end of next month, plans aren't set yet but that would be awesome. Seeing so many new things is just amazing to me! My mom and neighbor Linda came to visit from the 3rd to the 12th this month and that was a lot of fun! She loved seeing Santiago and I loved having her here to show around! It was a good time, we also got over to Barcelona, and took a big city tour bus to see all the main things in the city. Stopped at La Sagrada Familia which was just awesome. Even though it has been under construction for so long, it's still awesome. Just the height and detail of the outside and inside that Gaudi created and now other people are adding onto. His other buildings he designed in the town are neat too. While there I also got my Starbucks fix :) which I was quite pleased with! It's hard being here with no Starbucks and with no coffee thats similar even. Just getting plain coffee with milk or an espresso are the options here! We also made it to Vigo, a port city nearby which I heard was just kinda ugly and industrial which turned out to be somewhat true but at the same time it had some awesome views of the port and sea! Finally to A Coruña with her we went and had a great time there. When we got to the train station to ask about where our hotel was, they said it was far away and would be a few busses to get there or an expensive taxi, even though we made sure on the map before booking it everything would be good. So we got a little discouraged and thought we really were in a pickle then. But someone helped us and helped figure out it wasn't so far and that it was only a 7 euro taxi ride away! This guy was super nice for helping us out and helped us get to the hotel no problem. When we arrived the owner of the hotel, or manager, we weren't sure exactly, was so nice to us showing the rooms and telling us about the city and then tells us he'll take us on a trip around the city to see what we can! That was extremely generous of him and after talking a minute decided to take him up on the offer! We saw a really old lighthouse, some parks, some other big neat sculptures, drove past the quite populated beaches, and walked around the center of the city wandering around! And the next morning there was a market right next to where we were staying so we went and walked that and got me some good fruit and a nice new purse and sunglasses heh and mom got a new tablecloth that was really neat. All the people along the way in our journey while they visited were so nice and helpful, which is a pretty big commonality here people being good and helpful. I just get so amazed when I can see the sea or ocean in my adventures here, it's breathtaking really! Easter here was surely something to see! There were processions all week long leading up to Easter Sunday and those were quite interesting! There were people, from the different church organizations, carrying big statues or like Mary and Jesus and in different stages of what happened during Holy Week, called Semana Santa in Spanish. So I went to some of those to see the different statues and people in the processions. It really gave me a taste to how things can be so differently celebrated in different parts of the world! Easter Sunday was awesome though. We all went to the cathedral for mass, thinking it was the main Easter mass but we had gone to the one earlier than the main one heh. But it was a really nice mass and nice to be in a church with so much history and so much of a presence there on that day. I love being in the cathedral all the time, even though the downfall is it gets quite cold heh. After I had heard about the final procession so therefore we thought we'd go check it out! It was amazing. There were so many people in this square waiting, and we were wondering why it was taking so long to start, but then some people began all filing in along one side of the plaza that were part of the processionals and then lots of people watching. There then was a group of people on one side with a new statue to bring in to the plaza of Jesus resurrected and to meet Mary who hadn't seen or heard about Jesus being resurrected yet. When they 'met up' in the plaza and to my assumptions signifying when she saw him and that he wasn't in the tomb anymore, a little girl dressed as an angel was lifted onto this statue to unveil Mary's face and also signaled so many doves to fly over the plaza. It was pretty awesome! And a nice way of getting to celebrate Easter here especially with having visitors here with me! I've been having lots of fun hanging out with all the friends I've made here and having lots of laughs together going out or hanging out in the park, or whatever it may be! They're all really nice and a lot of fun. It's just amazing how many countries right now I know people from and everyone's background where they've been and studied and everything. I finally got to see Alice in Wonderland last night, awesome movie and I have been patiently awaiting its arrival here in Spain for quite some time now ;) I highly recommend it! We got to see it in 3D but also ended up in the first row to watch it, which ended up giving us all a good neckache after. But it was a fun night at the movies to see a good movie! At some point or another though I do need to see it in English so I can hear the real voices, but I understood just about all of the movie in Spanish so I was proud of that!
Really not too much else to add here, the city amazes me all the time and trying out new things all the time is just adding so much always to the experience here.
The pictures I'm posting are from a park in my city that we all explored while Mom and Linda were here first and then the other from when I went on an excursion around the coast of Galicia and thats in a place called As Catedrais. Beautiful place really! Both of them :)
Well thats enough to be able to read for now, more soon!
lots of love, Ashley
