First week of school and off to Ávila January 14

Settling in with my host family has been easy. The mom, Sonia, is super nice and the two boys Sergio and Alvaro are really funny.

On Monday I had to go to the University and take a placement test to see what level of classes I would be put in. I did relatively well and got placed in the classes that I needed to be in. This trimester I am taking 3 classes: a grammar class, a literature class, and an art history class. All the classes are taught in Spanish by native speakers. Also, my literature class deals with famous writers and poets from Spain and my art class is all about famous artists and architects from Spain. The cool thing about my art class is that we learn about the Puente Romano (Roman Bridge), ancient bull sculpture, architechture of the Catedral Nuevo, and the façade of the University and then I can walk 10 minutes down the road and see these famous works of art with my own eyes. It also makes me appreciate these landmarks more because I know the history behind them.

My classes are actually in a special part of the University called “Cursos Internacionales.” In my classes are students from all around the world that are learning Spanish. I have kids in my classes from Japan, Philippines, France, Taiwan, and many other places. The cool thing about this is that the thing I have in common with these students is the Spanish, so in order to get to know these people we have to communicate in Spanish.

When the school week was done we had an excursion to the city of Ávila. Ávila is a pretty small city. Around the outside of the city are the “Murallas” which are ancient walls. They were the city’s defense against intruders in ancient times. The walls are made out of stone and there are little windows where people could shoot arrows at intruders. We got to go walk around on the top of the walls.

Another cool thing about Ávila was that Saint Teresa used to live there. Connected to the Catholic Church there is one of the rooms of her house. We also saw a little museum that had some of her stuff in it. In the museum were some of her original writings and her cane. The weirdest thing they had there was one of her fingers.

After this we went to a supermarket. In it there were a ton of booths selling different things. One booth was full of fresh fruit, another had whole fish. The booth that was most interesting was the booth selling parts of a bull. They do not waste any part of it. They had tongues, testicles, the snouts, and even a big block of their blood. Eating bull is a delicacy. 

So far it has been a nice, eventful week. Next weekend we go to Toledo.

-Steph