Thursday, Completion of a Week!

¡Hola mis amigos!

You can always tell when I am writing my blogs at the institute about the day before because we use a spanish keyboard and I can do upside down punctuation, haha! This ones a long post so here goes!

Last night, we didn´t end up salsa dancing, but went into the Plazas instead. We found a cute little bar and actually ran into some Americans. Turns out they are from UVA and Hamden Sydney and know some of my sorority sisters. SMALL WORLD is an understatement. We could spot them a mile away on the street with their typical HSC attire in Spain, pretty funny.

Today, we ate toast for breakfast.. getting a little bland if I do say so myself. We had a shortened class time today because we had plans to go on different tours of the buildings in the city central! Our ¨question of the day¨ yesterday was what was La Lonja, one of the buildings we will be visiting. All of the students started off the day by walking to the city center (about a 20 minute walk). We feel like we walk for hours everyday here, but we eat three times as much as we walk off. So much for exercise!

The first site visit was at the Cathedral to experience the Tribunal de las Aguas. The tribunal is actually a group of judges who are elected by each section of Valencia (very democratic for Spain..weird). The group has been meeting every Thursday, on the steps of the Cathedral, at 12 noon for hundreds of years. Because water is so respected here, there is certain laws about when you can water your plants in the countryside, ect. If people feel as though there has been a misuse of water, they can call the accused to the Cathedral on Thursdays and the judges can hear the case. It is not formal, you can´t be arrested, it is just tradition and nothing is written down. Recently, there has been a decline in cases because there are less and less people in the countryside. We were lucky enough to see a case today, which apparently hasn´t happened in the last few years. I guess they knew we were coming!! We couldn´t really hear anything though because the spanish was fast and the kids in front of us kept talking. We did learn, though, that one of the punishments of the Tribunal de las Aguas is to make the accused pay for the sweets for the poor compound in their area for a year, which I thought was awesome and hilarious. Such an unusual way of handling politics..

(Tribunal de las Aguas hearing a case)

(A nun Katie and I spotted in the crowd)

The second site we visited was La Lonja, and old trade center for the city. The building was beautiful and the columns were insanely high inside. We still can´t figure out how they built these structures back then. The third site was the Mercado Central (central market). The market had every section of fresh food possible: meats, fish, sandwiches, candy, fruit, ect. I hated the meat section because often the heads would still be connected to the bodies. By far the weirdest thing I saw though was a snout of a cow. Apparently, that is normal for Valencians, not to me.

(La Lonja)

 

(A casual pig head in the mercado central)

 

(The dome in the mercado central)

 

By the time we had finished our site tours, Katie and I were grumpy and starving. Toast doesn´t get you far off little sleep and a lot of walking. We were still surprised though that we had such an appetite after seeing all of that interesting food. We ended up eating at Subway to get a little American food in our system. It was very similar to the one we have back home, just better meat and fresher bread! After Subway, a big group of girls headed to the beach to get some time in the sun. It seems like everytime we go, there are more and more topless women- which still shocks me when we see them. The weather was pretty nice, but a little windy. I had a nice layer of sand over my entire body after I fell asleep for a little while. Something tells me I will still be finding sand on my body a week from now..

(Katie and I on the beach!)

After the beach, we all went to a pizza and pasta place near the metro line. I ordered hawaiian pizza again and it was absolutely delicious. (Yes, we were still hungry even after subway!) We rode the metro home long enough to change our clothes and head back to the institute. The professors at the institute had asked us to attend an english class for spanish students learning our language. They had the class set up "speed dating style" where we talked with a spanish student in english for ten minutes before switching. It's really weird to have the roles reversed and be speaking your language slowly for others to understand. Now I know why people we talk to in spanish often speak so fast, we do too- we just don't think about it.

We met up with our intercambio (spanish friend), Carlos, after the english class. We have another intercambio, Mae, who came along this time too! They took Katie and I to a tapas bar and we had a few tapas and a drink while we had a converstation in english then spanish. Carlos is a 29 year old who is learning english for his job. He has only lived in Valencia for 6 years and is from the Canary Islands. Mae is 27 and she has lived in Valencia all of her life. Both intercambios are really sweet & speak pretty good english! They told us where the good places in Valencia to go and the inside scoop on stuff (a different beach, stuff like that). We are supposed to  meet up with them again on Tuesday to hangout more and practice our conversation skills. So far, Katie and I have lucked out with an awesome family and amazing intercambio partners.. I'm hoping the trend continues!!

When we finally made it home for dinner, our host mom brought us dinner into our rooms so we could work and eat at the same time- she's a Saint. Otherwise, we would have been up really late working on homework. We were so full from eating so much earlier, that we just couldn't finish everything.. She had made us a sandwich with sausage and cheese, potatas bravas (homefries basically) and cheese & crackers. We ate most of the potatoes & the cheese. We couldn't finish the sandwhich- so we ended up hiding it in a plastic bag in my desk drawer when our host mom left the room. (WE FELT AWFUL BTW)

(patatas bravas with ketchup)

(The remains of our sausage sandwhich....)

 

As we started getting ready for bed tonight, we noticed a funky smell in our room. Turns out, the sausage smell had seeped through the bag and was stinking up my drawer and our room. To get rid of the evidence, Katie and I may or may not have thrown the sausage (not the whole bag) out the window. Again, you gotta do what you gotta do! Once the smell was gone, we could sleep soundly haha. More to come soon!! Hasta Luego!