Guadalupe y Trujillo

Speaking of food, check out what my madre brought home the other day:

Yes, that's an entire leg of jamón serrano (complete with foot hidden behind tin foil decoration). When I told my madre I wanted to take a picture, she made me wait until she decorated it and put her cake in front of it (it's called a gypsy's arm- white cake rolled with homemade plum preserves as filling).

Last weekend, my program took us on an excursion to Guadelupe and Trujillo, two towns not too far from Cáceres. Guadelupe is famous for its monastary in which resides the most famous statue of the virgin of Guadelupe. Apparently, many people make pilgrimages here to pray to her. The monastary was beautiful and it was interesting to be in such an important religious building. There was actually a mass going on while we were taking the tour.

Courtyard (it was actually green because it had just rained!)

One of my favorite parts of the building was a room in which the old choir books were kept. Old as in massive hand painted leather-bound volumes, so heavy they had wheels attached to the bottoms to make it easier to move. Also, in order for everyone to be able to read from the same book the writing was huge! With the music, there was probably less than a sentence on each page. The drawings were very  beautiful, with crazy detail and lots of gold paint which I liked.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the church, or else I would have some crazy things to show you. There was an entire room dedicated to the crowns made for the virgin (diamond and gold and filled with precious stones). There were also all these wooden hands and when I asked what the significance of them was, I realized that they were actually hollow and contained the bones of saints. It was pretty crazy.

We finally got into the room where the statue of the virgin was and it was pretty hectic. It was really crowded, and there was a line that formed so people could file past the nook where she was and kiss a picture of her. I didn't kiss the picture but I did get a pretty close look at the statue. It was surprisingly small although dressed in an incredible (and very triangular) embroidered dress and was wearing a super fancy crown. The thing that was most surprising was that the actual statue was made out of wood, and so it was dark skinned, which was slightly shocking after seeing painting after painting of white saints and religious people. The story behind this particular statue is that it was found buried in the ground (and according to the paintings came out glowing), although these stories were made up in order to have a miraculous background.

At this point we were all starving, but our professor had us walk to another part of the city to see a hospital type building.  Walking through the curving cobbled streets was really awesome, because between the buildings you could see the incredible landscape. The countryside where Guadalupe is is gorgeous, filled with mountains and valleys.

This is where people used to come to get water.

Although the hospital where the monks used to make medicines wasn't very interesting because we couldn't go inside past the main courtyard, there was a great view from the stairs in front.

After that, we all climbed back on our bus and drove to Trujillo, a very historic city where Pizarro (the conquistador of Peru) was from. Apparently many of the Spanish conquistadors were from Extremadura because since it is a poor region of Spain, they had the most to gain from treasure seeking in the new world.

The city was cool because it was built on a hill and as you climbed away from the main plaza, you were in a way walking back into time (Catholic -> Roman -> Muslim). It was an extremely beautiful and I felt really cool walking through such an old city. When we reached the top of the city we were at the oldest part, where there was a castle that we got to walk around in (not really in so much as on- it was pretty much turreted walls with towers at the corners). It was my first castle experience and it was pretty cool. A little bit scary because the turrets are far enough apart and low enough in between to make you nervous.

That tower you see in the upper left was separate from the rest of the castle so that if it was overtaken they could destroy the middle bridge and strand the enemies on the tower

That's all for now. I've got to go write a paper and prepare a presentation for school tomorrow (I still don't understand how they think they can give us homework here). I'll leave you with a view:

The food here is amazing but...

And so it begins.

¡Buenas! (as in buenas tardes or good afternoon)

Life here never stops (except on Sunday's and between 2 and 5 every day, but nevertheless...). I started my University classes last Thursday, so this has been my first full week of school. I've switched from Archeology of Rome to International Migration. I had gone to class that fist day and not understood a single word of what the professor was saying except something about needing prior knowledge of Roman culture. When I approached her after class, explaining that I was an international student and was slightly confused she didn't slow down her talking at all! Pretty terrible first day experience. International migration is slightly better. The prof is still super hard to understand, but there is another girl from my program and a German ERASMUS (the European international students) who are struggling along with me. The proffesor does a lot of dication of definitions and it's funny (but slightly not at all) because when I read over what I wrote down later, there's tons of made up words and things that just don't make sense at all.

The teaching english class has been good so far, easy (although I feel like I'm cheating slightly) but a great place to meet Spanish students who want to improve their english. Also it will be super usefull if I ever want to teach abroad. A lot of the stuff we're talking about in class so far is activities and introduction type stuff that we did all the time at camp!

Whoever told me we don't ever have homework was exaggerating slightly. Or maybe I'm taking the wrong classes, because I definetly have homework. Papers and presentations in 4/5 of my classes. Long papers. Like, 8-10 pages (in Spanish...). On top of that, we've started our ICRPs (Inter-cultural research project). I am going to be working at an elementary school a few days a week helping out in the english classrooms. I haven't started yet, but I think it will be pretty fun. Spanish kids are SO cute (not to mention better at spanish than me).

Don't worry though (Mom and Dad), even though I'm busy I'm still having a great time. This weekend, we're taking an excursion with our program to Guadelupe and Trujillo. I missed the informational session on it today because I had a meeting for my ICRP, so I'm not sure what we'll be doing or seeing, but I'm excited to see more of Spain.

Hasta Luego