Llanes, aka my new love

So...today we went on an excursion to Santillana del Mar and Llanes. They're off the northern coast of Spain about 2 hrs and 1 hr from Oviedo. I love that these excursions are part of our grade because they're always ridiculously fun! It almost feels wrong to be having this much fun at a school activity. :) Our first destination was Santillana del Mar. It is an old town with a beautiful Romanesque church and a torture museum, which my friends and I decided against visiting after witnessing the looks of horror on our other classmates faces as they walked out. It was a beautiful little town with lots of good scenery and architecture...but my real love was Llanes. Holy cow, it was like Scotland all over again! There was this tiny little beach with rocks (I love rocky beaches) My friend Gail and I took some pictures down there and then we hiked up a little trail until we got to the top of this wall/rock formation. But the ground was all grass. It was amazing. The view on either side was breathtaking. I couldn't quite capture it with my digital camera, but some day I will come back with a much better camera. All you could see was ocean for miles. I couldn't get enough of it. I decided that one way or another, I will be proposed to there. Ha ha. Try to enjoy the pictures...I wish they captured even a tenth of the beauty.

Oh Spain

Holy heavens, this has been another amazing week! And I can't believe that I only have 3 left. It has gone by so fast. Even though we have class every day and I try my hardest to learn the language, it still feels like a vacation. But also a dream. It's incredible here and I'm learning so much about myself. I already treasure the memories and friendships I've made thus far. I just hope the next 3 weeks can be as fantastic as the last two have been! There is so much to do in Oviedo. On Thursday we went running in a beautiful park at 7 am. Bright and early. But it was worth it. After class that same day we went to an aquarium in Gijón. I felt like a little kid! I ran around to every tank taking pictures of all the different fish. I'm just excited because I have a picture folder just of fish on my computer and every time my niece Rachel sees my computer she says "fishies!" So we go through and count them and say what color they are. Well, she's going to have fish overload now! It'll take us weeks to get through them all. :) On Friday after class a few of us went to Pizzbit for lunch. It's this cute little place across the street from campus. It's like 5 euros for a personal pizza, (which is ginormous) a drink, and helado (ice cream)! Pretty dang good deal. This is where I took the picture of the inappropriate bathroom stall, which can be seen in the aquarium slide show. After Pizzbit we went to a beach in Gijón. It was beautiful and the water was so nice. It was nice to just relax on the beach after a long day of classes. (When I say a long day I exaggerate a bit. We only have class for 4 hours a day) I'm still getting used to all the nudity on the beach. And men wearing thong speedos. Old men. GROSS. After the beach we returned home to eat dinner with our families and then met back up for chocolate con churros. I can't get enough of them! They call it "hot chocolate" and I guess if you take that literally, they're right. But it's definitely far from traditional U.S. hot chocolate. I love it here. I decided that I just want to live on vacation. :)

Gijón and Sidra!

Hello all! I can't believe my first week is over and I'm already into the second. Sweet sassy molassy, time goes by fast! This last weekend was a blast and a half, to say the least. On Friday night we went on an excursion to a bar called Tierra Astur. Basically, I got a grade to watch my classmates and professors drink. I had a lot of fun though. In Asturia (the region of spain which includes Oviedo, Gijón, and Aviles) they have an alcoholic drink called Sidra, which is native to the region. When served, it is poured from a giant keg and then you catch it quite a ways away with your cup. It is kinda crazy. You can see in my picture! Anyway, I wanted to pour some, but obviously not drink some. It took my entire arm span to reach the bucket. Ha! They also served us tapas, which are like appetizers. They also had free bottles of coke (the glass kind) which me and my non-drinking friends used to toast with everybody else! One of the professors had a friend who is in a band so he brought his guitar and played for us. He played a lot of Beatles, CCR, and Eagles. All of us were singing at the top of our lungs, including Rubio our program director. It was hilarious to watch us all. I think that everybody else in the restaurant wanted to strangle us though. We had our own area, but it was only separated by a half-wall. They all stared at us as we left. I probably would too if a loud group of 50 foreign people walked by me. :)

On Saturday we went on a trip to Gijón. It is a beautiful city, but since the tour was in Spanish. I can't really tell you a whole lot except that one of the streets we drove down is where people go to jog, run, or ride their bikes. Ha ha. After Gijón we went to the beach. A-MAZING. Seriously, well you can see by the pictures! And the water was not as cold as I expected it to be. It was less salty than the Pacific Ocean too. Random. No worries though, I fried my back. It's SO red. And now it's a hassle to get dressed and walk all around the city with my backpack on. We walk everywhere here. It's great exercise. It's about a 15 minute walk from my house to school. And anywhere else from there takes about 20-30 minutes. (It's all uphill too.)

I have a monster truck

This is Katie and I at La Corté Inglés, a big department store in Oviedo. They have like 4 of them here. I'm pretty sure people thought we were way weird hanging out in the little kid play area...but I think they had doubts about us long before this. Ha!

Pictures!

The first picture is The Beast. Pictures are so much better than words. The second picture is the Cathedral in Oviedo. As you can see, it's really beautiful.

Finally in Spain!

Hola todo el mundo!

I finally arrived! Yay! Getting a taxi in Madrid was a joke, seeing as we had too many bags. They wouldn't take three people and 4 bags. So...what'd we do? We put my smaller suitcase inside of my bigger one. No worries, we're pretty crafty! Anyway, we finally got to the bus station and caught the next bus up to Oviedo. Meeting my family was hilarious. My foster mom, Juliana, came in to get me and I made the two kisses on the cheek way awkward. No worries, leave it up to me to be the awkward American. Ha. The next feat was lifting my beast of a bag into their car. That was funny. My foster dad, Chema, speaks English. Which is helpful, but I'm going to try to speak as little as possible in English. Solo en español! They have two daughters, Marta y Deva, who both speak English as well. They are both very close to my age. Juliana speaks no English. I have my own room, and they cook every meal for me. (they eat really healthy too!) I feel so lucky! They are so kind and patient with my spanish.

Today has been an interesting day. First of all, I had the weirdest dreams last night that my mattress had bed bugs. But no worries, I remedied it with cinnamon. Apparently dream bed bugs are killed by cinnamon. Today we met at the cathedral (the one in the picture) and walked to the Universidad de Oviedo, where we will take our classes. During our break I decided to buy a new flat iron even though I brought mine and a converter. I heard they can still break pretty easily. We arrive at the store and the first flat iron we saw was 2,99 euros! Basically $5...stuff is cheap here! It doesn't look super crappy either, but, as Deva says, we'll see how my hair looks when I use it! I just had my first successful conversation since I've been here. It was with Chema. He's a very nice man. And what are the odds that he's an anesthesiologist, which is what I want to be? Some deity must love me. =)

Airport

So here is my flight itinerary. SLC to Atlanta on Delta leaving at 9:35 am (or so they said) then Atlanta to Madrid arriving at 9:35 am. There was a later flight out of SLC to Atlanta but my mom booked me on the earlier flight to give me more time. It's a good thing she did. With all the delays it is leaving a whole one (1) minute earlier than the later flight. =) Love it. Can't complain, I got to people watch at the airport for an extra hour! Ha. Also, a special shout out to my brother-in-law Marc for getting up at 6:30 to drive me to the airport. Good karma is coming his way.

Oviedo here I come!

Hello everybody! If you care to follow me while I'm studying abroad in Oviedo, you've come to the right place. I'll post pictures and stories on here about my experiences. Seriously though, I'll be making a fool of myself on a daily basis. This will be good stuff. Don't miss out. I might even crack a joke every once in a while.

Love,
Alyx