Ice cream and a bookshop run by nuns

Sorry about the title. Frankly, I thought it was more interesting than "Day 2 of Class", plus, both of those things happened to me today, so it wasn't a lie!

So hello, everyone, welcome back, I know, 2 blogs 2 days, but I felt today was sufficiently interesting to merit a short post, so I made one.

So I had a bit of a lie-in this morning, but fortunately my alarm worked (I was concerned after yesterday when I woke up on time only by sheer willpower and a large amount of luck), so it wasn't too much of a lie-in. I went to an uneventful breakfast and then on to my lit class, the only one I hadn't had yet.

And I really enjoyed it. I'm not so sure about the rest of the class. But I am a lit major, and it was a pretty lit-majory class. We talked about the history of publishing, and the different periods of Spanish literature, and the idea of canon, and the definition of "Spanish Literature". It was great.

So then I walked back with some of the other people from my dorm and chilled for a while. I went to lunch and made plans to go get ice cream with some of the others.

Then I took a 2 hour nap. I love Spain.

At 5 the girls who I was going to get ice cream with knocked on my door and woke me up and after I freshened up we went to go get ice cream. There is a plaza behind the cathedral with this store that sells all manner of unhealthy but delicious things: chocolate, crepes, pastries, and ice cream. It was glorious. I got mango and raspberry and it was wonderful. I'm not actually sure whether it was ice cream or gelato or frozen yogurt or sorbet, but it was great. I'm doing that again.

We ate our ice cream in the plaza under some orange trees and chatted. We then picked a few oranges (I haven't tried the street oranges yet, but it smelled really good) and went to explore. We went in this bookstore that looked pretty normal, but turned out to be very Catholic, and I'm pretty sure was run by nuns who don't wear habits, but it was interesting. We then walked down this avenue of shops and ducked in a paper/school supplies store where I exercised great self-control and didn't buy some GORGEOUS journals. At the end of the street we found a park with some giant trees that I really wanted to climb and then we turned around and went back home. I did some homework (yes, I had homework) and then went to dinner.

For the past couple days I've been trying to find Spaniards to sit with to expand my horizons and get talking to the locals, and today I succeeded. I met some lovely girls from Spain and sat with them. They are studying dentistry and vet medicine respectively, and we had some interesting conversation. After dinner I came back up to my room, had some tea, took a shower, talked to my parents and now I'm off to bed. I do have class in the morning unfortunately.

Ah well, it is STUDY abroad, not eat ice cream and take naps abroad. Plus, I do like my classes.

Hasta mañana!

Katie