Salamanca

Hi Everybody,

This is the last blog post of this adventure and I’m quite sad about it. I can’t say that I’m excited go back to the reality of exams and school starting but at the same time I am looking forward to seeing everyone back at home. Kelly told me the other day that she’s “getting tired of this” lol! I guess me traveling for too long and the time difference has really impacted our communication. However, my friends on the east coast and in Europe have really been benefiting from the time zone change. Guess it’s time to start bugging a different lot of friends now.

Salamanca was wonderful. It wasn’t the trip I expected but it was heartwarming all the same. My host mom is taking care of her sister full time right now, and her sister Irene is hooked up to oxygen. So most of my days were spent watching television and getting angry at the telenovela protagonist when he/she did something dumb or trying to guess the outcome of the movie before it finished. It was a real party at our household lol! 

Here's the balcony view! So as you can see, staying at home during the trip wasn't bad at all when you've got a view like this, plus great company. 

Since we were watching so much tv, there were ads and I saw one for this movie called “The Danish Girl” set in the late 1920s. It looked so good, so I told everyone about it and then Irene told her daughter about it and before I knew it there were half a dozen of us around Spain sitting down to channel 5 at 10pm. Weeelllll the movie was about a transsexual married man in Paris and his artist wife. I was like of course this happened to me! There was no way you could have known the subject based off of the 60 second ad. Luckily Espe and Irene are super modern and loved the film. Unluckily it opened a whole can of worms for dialogue and I had to explain the medical logistics of a sex change with two eighty year old women. You can’t make this stuff up if you try!

Keeping up with these ladies was not easy I don’t know how they do it. Every day they went to bed at 3 am or past 3 am and were up by 8:30 or 9 am. I literally was like the loser kid who couldn’t keep up with the older siblings and went to bed early at 1:30 am, always halfway through a movie of course. 

But guys, I lived like a total princess, didn’t have to clean, didn’t do my laundry, didn’t have to cook. The only thing my host mom let me do was set the table and bring the dirty dishes to the kitchen. Love her! Can I just bring her to LA with me? Let’s just say apartment living is going to be a rough transition after this first class service.

Coincidentally one of the Polish women I lived with in Malaga was doing a second program in Salamanca. On my last day we met up for chocolate and churros. Espe was so excited to meet another one of my friends that we sat there for three hours! 

I had so much fun walking around the plaza with Espe afterwards looking for my old hang out spots. 

I even went to the University of Salamanca because legend says that if you find the frog you get a year of good luck in your studies. I’m not sure if it totally counts since this is my second time finding it, but I’m going to take it since I couldn’t remember exactly where it was after five years.

We went to the cathedral.

And the library.

Then the Plaza Mayor.

Back during study abroad on my walk home from school I would stop at this one shop to get gelato at least three or four times a week. I swear I tried all the flavor twice. So I couldn’t walk home from the plaza without a gelato! It's tradition!

Irene was so excited to hear about our adventures when we got home. We were all getting kinda of sad but I tried to keep the conversations light and funny. We even put on a silly cooking competition with celebrities from olden times who were quite the characters. We were sitting there laughing and eating our dinner there was a fireworks show that we could see right out the window! Not a bad send off for a princess hahaha. Irene joked that she had them ordered just for me. 

Let’s just say that leaving today wasn’t easy, but I know that I’ll be back. Someway or another I always end up in Spain again in my travels. So until next time Espana!

Love you lots,

Carolyn