3 weeks / First Weekend Trip

I've been in gone from the US three weeks as of today! This is the longest I've been outside of the country. I took a tour of the Complutense, the university at which I will (eventually) be taking classes at. I really liked being back on a college campus. It is huge! But laid out very nicely and easily - each Facultad / Department has an obvious sign so it's hard to get lost. Overall UCM didn't seem too different than Umass except maybe a little more run down and less greenery. Fun fact: Franco operated out of the buildings on the campus and stationed troops there during the end of the Civil War in 1939, when Madrid was about to fall.

FIRST WEEKEND TRIP 9/21/08

I wrote this entry on Sunday, but I didn't publish it because I couldn't get all the pictures to work. Alas they still don't:

This past weekend about half of the IES kids went on a trip to Northern Spain. First we stopped by the town of Leon and toured a very old gothic cathedral, which was impressive. The coolest thing was the residents of the town still attend mass at the cathedral, even though it's more of a tourist destination. The town was really cute as well.

Leon was only the first stop on this trip and from there we travelled to the mountains, Los Picos de Europa. We stayed in a tiny town called Posada del Valdeon. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. It had maybe 60 residents?? That is a pure guess. We talked to one old lady who was walking with a bunch of long sticks who asked us where we were from and she told us her sister has lived in the US for 30 years. The people live off the land, but probably really make a living from all the tourists/backpackers that come through to see the beautiful mountains. IES provided dinner and lodging in the town and we had a nice relaxing night there. It turned out we needed that rest because we went on a 9 km "marcha" or hike the next morning! While this sounds impressive and outdoorsy we actually walked down the road, downhill most of the way, and didn't go on any trails. Haha but it was still really nice and fun. Despite being downhill, I was sore and I still have shin splints worse than I ever have before from my feet slapping down on the pavement.. I would describe the mountains but I can't seem to do that right now....instead just check out the pics:






We left Los Picos de Europa on Saturday afternoon and proceeded to Llanes in the province of Asturias on the northern coast of Spain. I never do well with buses but I swear our tour bus WAS going to fall off a cliff. The roads we took were treacherous in a bus - very narrow, windy, and adjacent to huge cliffs. We kept rounding sharp corners with no idea what was around them, as in other cars or trucks. After that I was happy to arrive check into a hotel and walk around the beach!!