Home, Sweet Home

Hello All!
I am now on my 3rd official day here in the bella ciudad of Valencia, and I apologize for not having written earlier, but frankly, there hasn't been a lot to tell. The last couple of days have been pretty chill, and I started classes today. Anyway, here's what I've been up to.

So Saturday I woke up, ate breakfast, packed, and we got on a bus. On that bus I finished American Gods (Good book, highly recommend it), and started re-reading The Fault In Our Stars (another good book, also recommend it). We stopped at a small bus station somewhere in the middle of Spain. Actually, it was more middle of nowhere Spain. There was nothing around. We had lunch in the cafeteria there and chilled for about an hour before getting back on the bus. I tried to write some on the bus, but I got a headache, and I looked out the window some, which was cool, but there wasn't really a lot to see. I finished The Fault In Our Stars, and cried again, and started on the Hobbit. By this time, we were within an hour of Valencia and the countryside began to get more interesting. There were some nice hills and lakes and such. It was all lovely.

It was 5pm by the time we got to Valencia. We got our rooms. I'm in a room by myself. It's not spacious or luxurious, but it's clean and nice and comfortable and plenty of room for one person. I spent some time unpacking and chilling in my room once we all got settled in. We had a little tour of the dorm, which is likewise very nice and very comfortable. Lots of common areas. We had dinner around 9, which is late for us, but early by Spain standards and then I watched some TV and went to bed, and everyone else went out.

At 5am that morning, I heard a ruckus outside my room, and I assumed that it was the others returning from the bars. There was a lot of noise and since the Spanish students have finals right now, we had been warned against that. I figured they would probably quiet down soon and just tried to ignore them when I started hearing knocking on the doors next to mine. My first thought was, "great, they made noise, somebody complained, now we're gonna get in trouble. I just hope they recognize that I've been in bed for 5 hours." Then I hear a knock on my door. Great.

So I get up and I unlock my door and there are four guys in masks making noise outside my door. I was very confused and more than a little startled. They welcomed me to Valencia and gave me a high-five before letting me go back to sleep. It was odd. At the time, I probably would have said annoying, but now that it's not 5 am, it's certainly funnier.

The next morning I woke up and went to breakfast in the cafeteria in the dorm. We then took a walking tour of Valencia, including showing us where the cathedral and the central plazas and most importantly (for us anyway) the university.

I admit that when I returned to Valencia with the group, I was a little lost because we were not in sight of any of the landmarks that I had acquired during my stay here and it was like having two pieces of a puzzle and knowing that they belong to the same puzzle, but not having a clue how they fit together or which piece is missing. The tour helped that, and I can, more or less, start piecing together the puzzle that is the map of Valencia.

We are actually quite close to both the Cathedral and another church, which is nice, since I can hear lots of church bells from my room. One set of bells rings on the hour, making it a lovely timepiece at all hours of the day, while the other.... honestly, I have no clue. They just sort of ring randomly, like the highly melodic cellphone of an international businessman.

So after the tour I went back out with Elena and Alexz, who are the director of the program and our TA in order to purchase that which one needs when one lives in a place for 4 months. First we went to  a store called "Suerte Suerte" which is right around the corner from the dorm. It's like a poorly (but eclectically) stocked walmart meets an expensive dollar store, but it got the job done. We then went to el corte ingles, which is like walmart meets macy's meets academy. It's like a mall, but it's all one store. It's... terrifying and large. Like 8 floors of EVERYTHING. But we went for the grocery store. I bought myself some tea to make in the kettle I bought at suerte suerte. I then returned and indulged in the grand Spanish tradition of a siesta. I see why they invented that.

After the siesta I talked to some people, chilled out, read, cleaned up. Nothing big. I then went to dinner around 8 and returned to watch Sherlock. The final episode was last night and I spent the night trying to watch that. After it finished I went to bed in preparation for my first day of class.

This morning I got up and ate breakfast and we all met to walk to the Universitat de Valencia's Facultat de Filogia. Which is basically the languages department of the university of Valencia.

My first class was Spanish Culture and Civilzation. We did the first day of class thing. We read the syllabus, we talked about what we already know and what we want to learn and introduced ourselves. The teacher is an older Spanish gentleman, and bears a passing resemblance to Einstein. In that class we're going to be doing field trips to various parts of Valencia and learning all about the different cultures that have been here and the history of the city and of Spain. Which I think is really cool, especially in Valenica, which has a pretty fascinating history.

My next class was Spanish film. There are two teachers for that one, both of them fairly young guys. They will be teaching separately, one of them in January and February and the other in March and April. This is kind of sad, because together they are hilarious. Apparently we're going to do a lot about Spanish history and culture through film, which seems pretty awesome to me. It'll also focus a lot more on modern Spain, which is great, since most of what they tell you about Spain happened before the year 1600.

After that class we had a nice little welcome ceremony where we met all the teachers and then most of us headed back to the dorm. As a point of pride, we got there without a guide.

I then went to check on phone situation and get sugar from my tea. Another point of pride, I remembered how to get there and didn't get lost. I also wound up in a phone store translating for a guy from the UK who was trying to buy a phone but didn't speak Spanish and the manager didn't speak English. This took more time than I had really planned, but, hey, there's my good deed for the day, and Spanish practice always helps.

I came back, ate lunch and went to class. It was the last class of the day, and it is in the dorm, which is GREAT. Our director, Elena, is teaching it, and I quite like her. This class is also Spanish culture, but focus more on modern Spain and art and current events and architecture. I think it'll be pretty fun. We played a Spanish trivia game that my group won thanks to my superior ability to randomly guess names of Spanish provinces. (But not to spell them).

Afterwards we had a group meeting and learned about all the cool stuff that we have the chance to do this week, so I should have more to write about next time! Since then I've been chilling, writing, and talking to some friends from back home. Dinner is coming up soon and I think I'll turn in early tonight, this morning came earlier than anticipated!

Hasta luego!