Home Is Where the Heart Is

So, first of all I must express how extremely happy I am to have someone I know in my same time zone!!! Brianna has been in Florence for about two weeks now, and it has been so nice to skype with her. Spain is a full nine hours ahead of California, so it has been very difficult to talk to you all because you’re never online when I am! As I told my mom last night, I am convinced that you should all simply adjust to my time zone for the next three and a half months so that I can talk to you more lol. But I did anticipate this, I suppose, and thank goodness I’m blogging so you can keep up with me and the craziness that is Spain!


This last week has been quite eventful. My roommate, Hanna, was having trouble sleeping in the bunk bed that we shared, and she requested to have a single room. Because of the housing arrangements at my residencia, there was not a single room available for her, so she ended up moving out and into the other residencia. This was a little hard on me because I was basically alone, with one other girl in the residencia, but I have gotten used to having the nice, big room all to myself. The other Spanish students (six in all) moved in on Saturday, and so far they seem pretty friendly. However, I can’t tell you how intimidating it is to sit down to lunch with eight other students all speaking to one another in Spanish at the same time, and attempting to talk a little without sounding like a complete idiot! For now, I’m primarily listening and trying to understand what they’re saying; they speak very quickly and with multiple accents, so it will definitely be a work in progress. The other API students will arrive on Friday, and I believe three or four of them will be living in my residencia, so it will be nice to have some English-speaking companions.

Over this last weekend, seven of the other API students and I went on a little trip to Caceres and Merida, located in the region called Extremadura. Salamanca is in the region of Castilla y Leon, so Extremadura is just south of us. We took a three hour bus from Salamanca to Caceres, and were appalled at what we found when we arrived. Caceres had experienced a major storm just the day before, complete with massive flooding and extremely large hail that wreaked havoc on the city. We walked out of the bus station and on our way to the hostel, I probably saw about fifty dead birds lying on the ground, which was pretty upsetting for me. After about 20 minutes of walking, I realized that the kids didn’t even have a real map of the city, and we didn’t really know where we were going. We stopped a middle-aged Spanish man and asked for directions, but all he could tell us is that we were definitely going in the wrong direction. The other kids just didn’t want to pay the few euros for the taxi, but when you arrive for the first time in a new city and don’t know exactly where your accommodations are, it really is best to pay just for the convenience and security. So I decided that I was going to pay for the taxi and go myself. Everyone else walked the distance totally unsure of where they were going. Let’s just say that I’m sooo glad that I did that trip with my brother in the summer and learned how and how not to travel because I got to the hostel a good half hour before everyone else, picked the bed that I wanted, and watched out the window while it started to pour outside. Everyone was just a little upset, tired, and very wet by the time they showed up. But at least we made it!

It was my first experience in a hostel, and it actually went surprisingly well. The hostel cost 20 euros per person per night, including breakfast, and six of us were able to share one large room together. It was centrally located, clean, and perfectly adequate for our group, and as long as I’m careful, I think hostels will be a viable, inexpensive option for my other traveling excursions. In the hostel, we met a guy from New Zealand who was traveling the Camino de Santiago on foot with two family members. The Camino de Santiago or the “Way of Saint James” is an approximately five week long pilgrimage. Originating in the Middle Ages, pilgrims would walk hundreds of miles from southern France and across northern Spain to pay homage to the remains of Saint James in his namesake city. Today, people still take the journey, some on foot and others on bikes. Some take the journey for religious reasons, others are trying to change their situation by getting away and reflecting on the direction that their life is headed. He told us that he had gotten into some “alternative lifestyle habits,” and although he was a little on the strange side, I thought it was wonderful that he was pursuing such an admirable goal to turn his life around.

The modern city of Caceres is not impressive, but the real treasures lie within the city. There have been settlements in Caceres since prehistoric times, but the city itself was founded by the Romans in 25 BC. The historical center is a completely preserved medieval town with meandering, cobblestone streets, lovely churches, medieval palaces (mostly owned by wealthy conquistadors that returned to Spain), and a stone wall encircling it all. We spent Friday night and most of Saturday walking this area and sight-seeing. And most exciting of all, we bought sweets from the nuns, just like I had read about in my Spain travel book! Convents all over Spain are famous for different sweets and pastries that the cloistered nuns make and sell through little turntables in the wall. We walked into this small room off the street, looked in their display window to pick out what we wanted, and then approached the turntable where a nun peaked out the side to ask for our order. I paid the nun two euros, and after a moment, the table turned and there was a large bag of seven “tortas de hojaldras,” which are a kind of crispy, sugary pastry. It was such a fun, cultural experience, and we took lots of pictures because we were all so excited! Later in the day, we went to a little Middle Eastern restaurant/hookah bar (most people weren’t there for the hookah) called Arabia, and had cold drinks in the vine-covered terrace in the back. It was so quaint, with a Moroccan style fountain, plush, brightly-colored cushions, and mood music. It really inspired me to try and make it to Morocco while I’m here! We had an amazing time just relaxing and talking about how fantastic and lucky we are to be having this experience in Spain together…

That evening we took a train ride to Merida, formerly known as Lusitania, which was the capital of the Roman Empire in the Iberian Peninsula. We found the Plaza Mayor and did some exploring, but came back to our hostel early (for Spain, that is) because we were all pretty tired. This second hostel was not as nice as the first, but for 15 euros a piece, it was perfectly fine. The mattress was a little shabby looking but I wasn’t worried because I used my handy-dandy sleep sack that Jo gave me before I left. In this hostel, we were divided up and two girls needed to share a double bed, and since I’m pretty easygoing, I volunteered. Elisa was my roommate, and she and I had quite a laugh because after a little while, it became very apparent that there was some passionate, LOUD, how shall I say it?…canoodling going on in the room next to us! The next morning, as the rooster crowed (literally) it happened again, and we just laughed it off, but it was kind of weird. Sunday we had a full day visiting the Museo Nacional de Romano and exploring the Roman ruins, which included an amphitheater, another theater, and a large aqueduct. After going to Rome and Pompeii this summer, I knew I would think these were interesting, but I was pleasantly surprised at how impressive the ruins and the giant, reconstructed mosaics in the museum were. We also went to a Muslim fortress, with an amazing passageway that leads to an underground reservoir.

So after a very busy but totally enjoyable weekend, we got on our five hour bus back to Salamanca. As the cathedral spires came into view, I became so elated to be back home in my beautiful little city. But what a funny word “home” is….I’ve only been here for three weeks and yet, this has become my second home, a place where I feel happy, comfortable, and cared for. It’s a lovely feeling, the same kind that I get when I drink a cup of hot chocolate, put on my fuzzy pink socks, and cozy up on the couch for a marathon of old movies. I will always, always be happy to come home to California, but in the meantime, I have learned that home is where your heart is, and right now, my heart is here in this lovely Spanish city.