Presentation Day

Hallå!
(That's hello in Swedish! Sounds kind of like "hah-low-a") 


So today was in fact the big day, and I think we did pretty well! Professor Lair of course rocked it as usual; I feel like I did alright but there's definitely room for improvement (as always). We did have quite a few questions and suggestions from the audience, but, in Lair's words, no one eviscerated us, so that was good! haha. It was super intimidating to be up there in front of a bunch of academics who make their living doing research, but at the same time really great experience for me. It was helpful to be able to observe Professor Lair and the other presenters ask and respond to questions and to get a feel for the way other conferences work. After seeing several other presentations I feel like our research fits in really well with the other topics in this conference and at the same time is something new that no on else is really looking at. I was actually surprised that there weren't any other studies on the minimum wage! In any case, it went well and I think it was well received. From observing other presentations I also feel like I've gotten some good ideas about how to and how not to give an effective presentation which is extremely helpful. 

Doing great work! 

After our presentation we took a break for coffee and delicious carrot cake! We also made a friend, a lovely economist from the University of Vermont with whom we chatted about academic things for a while and then she gave us some tips on what to see in the city on our day off. Before lunch I went to a session on gender bias in recruitment which was really interesting! The presentation that was most interesting to me was a comparative study of women in IT jobs in Germany and India, ask me when I get back and I can tell you more about it if you'd like.

After lunch I came back here to the hostel to do some work before the big gala dinner this evening. Professor Lair and I made plans to meet at the train station so we could head over together (the best laid plans...). Turns out we both had different meeting places in mind and I forgot to bring my directions to the place with me so the fancy dinner didn't happen unfortunately. But, I did go to another kebab place and had a fun interaction with the waiters there. I handed the dude my credit card and a copy of my passport and he looks up at me and goes "United States of America!" with this big goofy grin on his face and I said, "yep." Then he says, "91! Young!" with the same goofy grin. I laughed at this (attn.: Sarah & Brian). Finally he handed me back my card and ID and asked if I was working in "the Stockholm" to which I informed him no, just visiting. After getting my food I sort of wanted ketchup and although I knew it was kind of a long shot I got up to look at the counter to see if there were condiments. The waiter saw me and was like "what do you need? salt? salt? the salt is right here! salt!" So although I really didn't want any salt, I felt obligated to take a couple of packets haha. Despite that weirdness it was cool to sit in there and listen to everyone speaking Swedish around me and have no idea what was going on. It is a really neat language to listen to, to me it sounds like a combination of French and German and before you ask, no, they don't all sound like Beaker or Dr. Bunsen. 

So that was my day, now I'm back here at the hostel about to do some reading. Tomorrow we're going to explore the city for a bit which I'm really excited about! That means I'll have more cool pictures, which I hope you're excited about too! :) 

Goodnight everyone! 

Swedish metro, Swedish President, Swedish hors d'oeuvres, but no Swedish meatballs.

ILPC Conference - Day 1


Today. was. awesome.


7:30AM: Breakfast, a delicious ham, cheese, and lettuce sandwich with a glass of orange juice, barefoot in the most adorable trendy hostel cafe.


8-9:40AM: Chillin' in the hostel, reading some Weber, updating the blog, etc.


10:15AM: Meet Lair at Cityterminalen (the main bus station) and (SUCCESSFULLY) navigate Stockholm's super easy metro (woo hoo!). Observations: Swedes seem to be quiet, reserved people and dogs are allowed on the metro. Also "upp" seems to mean "up" and "under" seems to mean "under." 


10:45AM: Arrive at Stockholm University and on the way to the Aula Magna meet Joan Greenbaum from CUNY, one of the keynote speakers. She's sort of lost too, so you bond over that (cool). Here are some pics of the campus:

several of the buildings on this part of the campus were done in this same kind of lodgy-lots of windows style

the next two photos are of the hall where the opening reception and key note speeches were held, very rustic feeling!

11:30AM - 4:45PM: Listen to a couple of keynote speeches, be really lost when they start talking about theory; thankfully Prof. Lair the theorist is there to fill me in! (THANK YOU!) Attend some really cool presentations about work life balance (more on those later, I left my notes with Professor Lair), learn a new (British?) term: banana time (google it!), and pal around with some real life sociologists. Turns out there are delegates here from 26 different countries, 6 of us are Americans! Eat a small cheese, lettuce, and red pepper sandwich, the cheese here is SO GOOD. Start to get really excited about the presentation tomorrow.


5-6PM: Work feverishly on calculations for the presentation tomorrow. 


6:30: Reception at the Stockholm City Hall (complete with wine and interesting hors d'oeuvres) in the Golden Room where they hold the Nobel prize ball every year, nbd. Learn there are "over 18 millions of mosaics" tiles and 10 kilos of gold in the room, cool. Be welcomed by Margareta Björk, Madam President of Stockholm city council, super cool. (Fun facts: of the 12 city council members, 6 of them are women and of the 101 city council members, 54 of them are women!) Get your picture taken with Madam President of the city council, NBD. This day: boom, roasted. 

 Stockholm city hall from a distance

 some other cool building (perhaps the congress hall?) across the road from city hall

 inside the Golden Hall, this is the goddess of the lake who holds Stockholm (the center of the world) in her lap

 Professor Lair and I with Madam President!!

 view from the back of city hall. you can see the old town to the left of the photo. 

 more city hall. it was finished in 1923 but a lot of the architecture is strangely Arabic/moorish looking. 

the old town

8:30PM: End the day with an apple and a giant chocolate chip cookie from the 7/11 down the street? Feels just like I'm back in Gettysburg. 


Presentation tomorrow morning at 9, wish us luck! 


katie

I made it! (Or the adventures of Katie and the astounding globalization machine)

Hello everyone!

As indicated by the title of this post, I'M HERE! Professor Lair and I made it successfully through three airports (Heathrow is HUGE) and the accompanying security checks, two flights, and the first night here in Stockholm. The hostel I'm staying at (City Backpackers) is awesome, very clean, very cool, very friendly. It's only been one night and already I'd highly recommend it if you're looking for a cheap place to stay in Stockholm (free pasta 24/7! attn. Brian Denu: tonight there is a thing called the "Swedish Meatball Experience" in which we get to learn how to make traditional Swedish meatballs!! the picture on the flyer is in fact of the chef from the muppets.)

super grainy photo of the outside of the hostel

my home for the next couple nights

Anyway, here's an observation: Sweden looks like Earth.(i.e., looks like Maine, looks like Spain, etc.) I'm not sure why, but I always expect each new country I go to to look in some way distinguishably different from each other country I've been to, but this in fact has not been the case.

#2: Holy globalization, batman! Now I experienced this feeling on multiple occasions last semester while studying abroad, but it is still a little disconcerting to me to travel a day and an ocean away and arrive in a place that quite frankly looks like it could exist anywhere. On the bus ride into the city and during the short jaunt to our respective hotels last night, we passed HP, LG, Ford, Burger King, 7 eleven, what appeared to be a large shopping complex just outside the city, McDonalds (of course), a handful of kebap places (one of which we ate at) that looked just like the ones I saw in Spain, a whole slew of Chinese restaurants... you get the gist. However, we did see one thing that I have never seen anywhere else, a place called Holy Monkey! Is it uniquely Swedish? Who knows.

For those WGS 120 kids out there reading this, I am made acutely aware of the privilege I enjoy as a result of being a native English speaker (invisible privilege!). Find me a major city in the US where every street sign/restaurant menu/important info sign is written in Swedish as well as English (good luck with that). It's crazy to think that I've come to a country that speaks a language I have zero experience with  and still get around with very little trouble just because I had the great fortune of being born in a country that speaks what is quickly becoming a universal language (although Prof. Lair and I did establish that we can say 'thank you' (tack) and 'exit/out' (ut) if necessary). Oh and you know that whole adage 'when all you have is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail'? Well that's me, my hammer is Spanish and all foreign languages I don't understand are nails; every time I hear someone speaking a language I don't understand I start speaking Spanish in my head as if I spoke any other language besides English they might understand. Weird, huh? haha.

For my Urban Soc friends reading this, check out this cool building! I think it's a great example of the whole 'now we can build with steel and glass and it looks really cool so we're going to build it that way' thing:

I apologize for the bad image quality, I couldn't get my camera ready in time to get a better shot.

It's kind of hard to tell but the entire building is made of glass and it of course has the whole flat roof thing going on. Also it's out in the middle nowhere! Somebody show Gibbons and see what he thinks. On a related note, the streets in the part of Stockholm I'm in are very much done after the Parisian model we talked about, wide open and tree lined for the most part.

I know, at this point I'm sure you're just blown away by my picture taking skills. 

In other news, I blew up my hair dryer! 1875 watts > the 1500 watts my adapter apparently supports.  

Well, today is the first day of the conference, hopefully we don't get lost on our way there and I will have more interesting/nerdy things to talk about soon! 

Thanks for reading and enjoy your Tuesday everyone!

 

On the road again...

Hello all!

As some of you know (and some of you don't), I am off travelling again! I'll be spending the week in Stockholm, Sweden which is located here:

and looks like this: 

I am writing to you from Dulles airport (which is oddly quiet right now) where I'm waiting to catch our first flight over. I am travelling with my academic and research adviser Professor Craig Lair and we will be presenting our summer research on time and the minimum wage in the European Union at the International Labor Process Conference. We will be arriving in Stockholm at 5:00PM their time on the 26th, which will be 11AM your time. It should be a great week, there are a whole ton of interesting presentations I want to check out as well as just explore the city a little bit. For those of you that have Facebook I'll be posting the links on there, but for those of you that don't, check back often, I'm going to post once a day while I'm here. 

Hope you all have a fantastic Sunday evening and I'll be back tomorrow with  a (hopefully) more interesting post!

kate 

existential crisis

So, I went to Spain. It was pretty cool.
Now I'm back and I have this blog and I'm not really sure what to do with it. I don't really want to post just to throw stuff out there into the interwebs, and I don't really have a vision for this thing as of now, but I have really enjoyed writing the entries. So I'll be thinking. Maybe once I'm working/studying again something will come to me, I'll keep you posted (ha. ha.). I did recently come into quite a few thought-provoking books so maybe this will become my stream-of-consciousness outlet working through those. I don't know, we'll see. Anyway just in case any of you out there were on tenterhooks awaiting my next post (ha. ha.), this is your cue to chill out, take your mouse off the refresh page button, and return to one of your normally scheduled online haunts. Unless of course you've got an idea for this blog, then lay it on me! And thank you for reading, it's been a trip.

Peace out, kids :)

ps. I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. 

Spanish lessons

This is sort of a stream-of-consciousness post, I hope it's not too scattered to follow, and I hope you laugh. Or at least crack a little bit of a smile.

So my dad has taken a sudden interest in Spanish and has asked me to teach him some phrases. Those of you that know my father will probably take great pleasure in reading this. Those of you that don't, this is my dad:

No, that is not his real hair. Yes, he is a BAMF, and yes, he is a gun-toting, immigration disparaging, hegemonically-masculine, "if you come to America you better speak English," conservative republican. Although we rarely see eye-to-eye on such matters, I love him and he'll always be my hero. 

These are the words/phrases he has asked for: 

     Cauliflower: what? why do you want to know how to say cauliflower? ok, well, in anycase, it is coliflor. He didn't try to pronounce this one, just nodded his head in acceptance.
   
     "my child" or "my daughter": mi niña (mee nee-nyah) or mi hija (mee ee-hah). His attempts at pronouncing these were as follows: "meeeneeena...meeeeena..is that it? am I saying it right? mee neeena? what was the other one? meeeha? heema? mee-ha!" Yep, close enough.
     
     "the dumb dog" (directed at our puppy, Pauly. My father has always had a strange way of showing affection): la perra tonta (it's a she, also I don't recommend using this phrase unless it is explicitly clear that you are actually speaking of an actual female dog). "meeaa pero tonto...tonto pero! what is it again? mee peara tanta...(followed by several other variations on this theme, but finally) mee peara tonta!" Go dad, look at you learning Spanish!

     To preface this last one, my dad is a little obsessive compulsive about the bathroom we share. The other night around 11 he rousted me out of my warm snuggly bed in order to instruct me on the proper way to enter and close the shower curtain (I wish I was kidding). This is the conversation that followed: "Let me show you something, let me show you something, how do you get in the shower?" Through the side farthest from the showerhead of course. "No, that is not acceptable, you go like thiiiiiissss (showing me how to open the shower curtain from the side closest to the showerhead), and then like thiiiiis (how to get in), and then you go like thiiiiis (how to close it), and everything is hunky-dory. Kate, say this, 'I am a slob.' I'm going to call up that lady you stayed with in Spain, how do you say 'Hello! I am the father of the slob that just left your place!' in es-pan-ol?" I did not translate this for him.

In other news, I made my first tortilla española today!

And another photo of my dad just because it's a good one, he loves that thing. 

Peace, ladies and gents.

The Shock of Teapots

"...Travel returns us in just this way to sharpness of notice; and to be saturated in the sight of what is entirely new - the sun at an unaccustomed slope, stretched across the northland, separate from the infiltrating dusk that always seems about to fall through clear gray Stockholm - is to revisit the enigmatically lit puppet-stage outlines of childhood: those mental photographs and dreaming woodcuts or engravings that we retain from our earliest years. What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, imprinted, eternally seen. Travelers regain this ghost-seizing brightness, eeriness, firstness.

     They regain it because they have cut themselves loose from their own society, from every society; they are, for a while, floating vagabonds, like astronauts out for a space walk on a long free line. They are subject to preternatural exhilarations, absurd horizons, unexpected forms and transmutations: the matter-of-fact (a battered old stoop, say, or the shape of a door) appears beautiful; or a stone that at home would not merit the blink of your eye here arrests you with its absolute particularity - just because it is what your hand already intimately knows. You think: a stone, a stone! They have stones here too! And you think: how uncannily the planet is girdled, as stone-speckled in Sweden as in New York. For the vagabond-voyeur (and for travelers voyeurism is irresistible), nothing is not for notice, nothing is banal, nothing is ordinary: not a rock, not the shoulder of a passer-by, not a teapot.

     ...This is what travelers discover: that when you sever the links of normality and its claims, when you break off from the quotidian, it is the teapots that truly shock. Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey. Nothing shakes the heart so much as meeting - far, far away - what you last met at home. Some say that travelers are informal anthropologists. But it is ontology - the investigation of the nature of being - that travelers do. Call it the flooding-in of the real...When travelers stare at heads and ears and necks and beards and mustaches, they are - in the encapsulated force of the selection - making art: portraits, voice sonatinas, the quick haiku of a strictly triangular nostril.

     Traveling is seeing; it is the implicit that we travel by. Travelers are fantasists, conjurers, seers - and what they finally discover is that every round object everywhere is a crystal ball: stone, teapot, the marvelous globe of the human eye."

     -from "The Shock of Teapots," Cynthia Ozick

Just found out I will be traveling once again, in March I will be off to Stockholm, Sweden for the International Labor Process Conference! woo-hoo!

Home

This morning, after almost 11 glorious hours of sleep, I was awakened by a warm, wet sniffling sound next to my head and in quick succession the warm, wiggly, furry body at the other end of that sniffling leaping onto me and my bed! She's not yet fully grown, but even at about 30 pounds having this: 

Pauly

jumping all over you first thing in the morning is a little chocante. But, she decided it was time to get up and that was that. I've also been welcomed home by my first snow of the season! 

Upon leaving my room the first thing I heard was my mother say, "Oh no they're going to kill her cows!" I have no idea of the context or the meaning of this, all I know is it is good to be back home with my quirky family once again (my father also asked me randomly if they have microwaves in Spain...sigh). Also for breakfast I had a giant Crispin apple and toast with PEANUT BUTTER! (Allison if you're reading I know you will be really excited about this haha). 
     As a side note, besides the houses and highways some of the first things I recognized from the plane on the flight in were baseball fields and swimming pools, lots of them! Welcome to amurrica, errbody. Also my flight from Madrid to DC was filled with about 30 other students returning from studying abroad in Spain so we all had a good time chatting about our respective experiences. Of course most of them had been to la Noche Vieja in Salamanca so that was a little depressing to hear everyone talking about how incredible it was, but as is life. 
     During my layover in Dulles I stopped at an Auntie Anne's for dinner (great life choices?) and I had the hardest time understanding the woman. She was speaking English but I was still listening in Spanish and I had to keep asking her to repeat things. Finally when she was getting me my drink she asked me what I thought was "Quieres arreglar el dinero?" or something about the money because she had rung up the sale wrong, but after the 4th time repeating I realized she was asking "Strawberry or regular lemonade?" Woah, buddy. 
     Anyway, I'm safely HOME and about to enjoy leftover Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I hope all the study abroad kids had/are having a safe trip home (welcome home!) and the rest of you are enjoying your weekends! 


God bless :)

leaving Salamanca

So here I am, sitting in the Madrid Barajas airport, people watching, chillin’ out, trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’m leaving this place in a little less than 15 hours. The despedida from Salamanca was as bittersweet as they come, complete with long-awaited hugs, sort-of-awkward duplicated and triplicated goodbyes, homemade sugar cookies (thank you Kara!), a few tears, and perhaps the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen since I’ve been here in Spain.

                After packing and repacking my suitcases a few times to get the right balance of weight and saying adios to my apartment I wandered around the city for about an hour saying goodbye to some of my favorite places. (A side note - if you are still in Salamanca or if you have plans to go, one of my favorite places to go and just sit is this ledge that is off to the right side of la Facultad de Ciencias y Ciencias Quimicas. It’s just the right size to hop up on and sit comfortably and you’ve got a great view of the river and the part of the city across the river. I’d sometimes go there at night just to sit and be with my thoughts; it might seem a little sketchy but it’s really quite peaceful.) Anyway, after exploring a bit I went to tomar un café with Kara and then we made sugar cookies! After taking the exam for my language class we were off to la fiesta de despedida which was a wonderful way to end my last day in Salamanca, I got to see all the students from the program as well as some professors and las señoras.

                I cannot lie, I definitely got the waterworks on the bus driving away and watching the Cathedral and the city disappear into the distance.  Thinking about all of the people I’ve gotten to know and the inevitability of losing contact with some of them is the most painful thought. However, in between the moments of melancholy I think about how excited I am to see my family, their welcoming familiar faces and voices after three and a half months of newness and unfamiliarity. I am also beyond excited to see my dog!!! I’m excited for home cooked venison stew and cuddling all cozy in my bed with a book and watching the snow fall on the trees outside my window. I’m excited for all the smells and sounds of home, for midnight mass on Christmas, and for DRIVING (I miss driving so much, roadtrip anyone?).

                As sad as I am to leave, I take comfort in the fact that Salamanca and all my experiences here in Spain have left such an impression on my heart and soul and mind that I will not soon forget them. And of course time and prayer heals all things so this heartbreak will not last.

I guess I just want to end with a thank you to IES Abroad and all of the Salamantinos (by birth and by choice) that I’ve gotten to know, you made my time in Salamanca the indescribable experience that it has been. J 

¡Abrazos!   

Ps. this post is a little behind, I am now in Dulles in DC waiting for my connecting flight to Pittsburgh, it is so strange to hear so many people with American accents speaking English again! 

lost & found

Things that I have lost here in Spain:

1. One old Canon PowerShot complete with 4GM memory card. I hope the person who has it enjoys it.
2. One grey ambidextrous glove in Madrid.
3. Little pieces of my heart all over; some will stay with people and some will stay here in my favorite nooks  and crannies in Salamanca.
4. My fear of public transportation. (don't laugh city slickers)
5. Fear of travelling alone.
6. Fear of being in a whole new country where the people speak a different language.
7. My drinking-a-whole-glass-of-an-alcoholic-beverage virginity.
8. Occasionally my mind.
9. Stereotypes of Spaniards (at least most of them).
10. Countless hairs and skin cells that are now scattered all around Salamanca. (betcha didn't think about that one, didja?)

Things that I have found:

1. An acorn, a small jar of dirt, and a pinecone on el Camino de Santiago.
2. A vibrant and beautiful spiritual community that is living here from which I hope to take back home bits and pieces.
3. Beautiful, beautiful, people - a few of which I am very proud to call friends (from all over the world!).
4. New shoes.
5. A different perspective on everything from religion to sidewalk etiquette.
6. Another home and family away from home and family.
7. A different sense of independence.
8. That sometimes crosswalk lights really can be useful (Sarah & Brian I give you permission to laugh).
9. A desire to speak Spanish, lots and lots of Spanish.
10. A taste for mushrooms and salad dressing made mostly of olive oil.
11. A new appreciation for fútbol.

And un montón of other things, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind.
4 days!?

Baby, it's cold outside

Hello all!

To be completely honest I'm writing this post in order to avoid studying for final exams...I hope you'll enjoy it all the same. :)

The last week has been spent just enjoying the city and the people around me, I've been trying to soak up as many memories and as much of the language as I possibly can. This week is special because of la puente - two Spanish holidays fall in the same week, Tuesday was el Día de la Constitución Española and today (Thursday) is the Immaculate Conception - so basically Spaniards take the whole week off. Combined with the weekend it makes a great time for a quick vacation or in my case, time to enjoy the place I'm in just a few hours more. Because we didn't have classes on Tuesday, Katie, Allison, and I all decided we wanted to take a day trip so we put on our hiking gear and took the autobús about an hour south of Salamanca to a little town called Béjar. From there we hiked a little under two hours to another smaller pueblo called Candelario. Candelario is a tiny little village at the foot of a mountain, which I believe is part of the Sierra de Béjar. It was at one time a Moorish village and se nota in the architecture and city planning. Alongside the streets runs fresh water that started as snow hundreds of feet higher in the mountains. It's a gorgeous, quaint, quiet little place. After wandering around there for awhile we hiked another couple of hours into the mountains around Candelario. Pictures can't capture the beauty of that place, but they're better than words, so enjoy:
(Thank you Allison for the photos! Check out her blog here: Dancing Through Life!)

 Our first glimpse of Candelario.

 ¡vacas en las montañas!

 conquered rock

 a bit of Candelario

 my favorite part about the day: FRESH AIR.  

 Candelario again.

 The water running alongside the street. 

The weather was perfect for senderismo and we had an amazing time just hanging out in the nature all day.

Today, as it is the Immaculate Conception, Allison and I went to mass and we invited a few friends that we've met at En Vivo. I can't be sure, but I think at least they didn't hate it ha. Again I was struck by the oddest feeling of being at once at home and being horribly out of place, the gestures and structure of the mass are all the same but the differences in language and execution of said gestures are enough to make the service feel very foreign. In any case, I feel like I understood a lot more of what was being said this time in comparison with the first few times I went so I take that as a sign of improvement in the language!

 On my walk home I took a different route than usual and thought to myself wow, this could be the last time I walk this sidewalk and see these trees and buildings and people. I guess it's time to start saying my goodbyes, with 8 days left and the majority of those days filled with studying/exam taking/packing...time is flying.

In keeping with the season, my señora decorated the apartment for Christmas! We now have a beautiful nativity/Bethlehem village scene set up in the hallway and various other Christmas appropriate decorations scattered throughout the house. The city has decorated too, there are vibrant Christmas lights hanging over all the streets and streetlights. I've also begun listening to Christmas carols in earnest...'tis the season!

Well, I should really continue studying...thanks for reading again, I hope you are all having a wonderful Thursday. :)

BONUS FOTOS! 

 Katie, my housemate, and I at a little cafe in Madrid! 

 On top of el Palacio de Comunicaciones in Madrid.

 Inevitable picture of me drooling over sweets... 

It's cold here now, I miss this weather :( 

Christmas Eve

     So this evening I was walking through the city a bit, just kind of existing, and I stopped in front of this building. This building that has stood there for almost 800 years. 800 YEARS. And as I stood there trying to find some kind of context in which to contemplate this building, everything it has stood through, I found that I just couldn't! Standing there in the cold in the dark with my head craned back and my brain all a-jumble, I felt like Christmas Eve.
     You know on Christmas Eve when you're frantically trying to finish wrapping the gifts for your family and it's already almost midnight and you have to get up early to open presents or go to church and you're on the last gift and it's a basketball, or any other really incredibly difficult-to-wrap gift, and you're struggling with the wrapping paper but no matter how much tape you use (or how much wrapping paper you use) there are still holes on either side and part of the gift is sticking out and the paper just won't fit? That's how I felt standing there, as if Salamanca, bueno, Spain rather, were the awkwardly shaped gift and my brain the wrapping paper that just couldn't quite wrap around it.
     But in the end you always leave the gift wrapped as best as you possibly can because, even with parts showing through, you know whoever receives the gift will enjoy it just the same. So that's what I'm left with, my brain only partially wrapped around this wonderful place and only 16 days left to enjoy it and try to add some more tape.

time just keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping...

So, let me start by saying the thing that has been occupying my mind for the last couple of days, I have LESS THAN 3 WEEKS LEFT. ACK! I have such a mix of feelings about this, I am at once elated that the day is approaching when I get to see my home(s) and family and friends and sad that my time here is quickly winding down. I've done and seen and learned so much but there is forever more to do and see and learn! In any case, I will be aprovechandome (taking advantage) of the time I have left here in Salamanca to continue getting the most out of this experience [or at least trying to do so :) ].

Last weekend I went to Madrid with my housemate, Katie, and another of the Gettysburgians here, Allison. The city was awesome, easily my favorite of all the big cities I have been to. We ended up staying at Way Hostel, which I highly recommend if you are ever travelling to Madrid! The hostel has such a great vibe, it was very clean and comfortable, and we met some wonderful people there. Apart from the hostel, we saw a lot in the city (we also walked a LOT). In about two and a half days we saw el Real Jardin Botánico (Royal Botanical Garden), El Prado museum, Palacio Real (the Royal Palace), an authentic (albeit displaced) Egyptian temple, beautiful vistas of the city, innumerable tiny side-streets with cozy cafés and bars, Gran Via (the main shopping street), calle de Alcalá (famous for it's imitation of the architecture and street planning in Paris), a whole ton of elaborate beautiful buildings, la Plaza de Cibeles (a plaza with a giant fountain of the Roman goddess Ceres that is kind of iconic of the city), el Oso y Madroño the symbol of the city (a female bear eating fruit from a strawberry tree), el Palacio de Comunicaciones (the former post office, now you can take tours of the building and go to the lookout on top for a great view of the city), lots of prostitutes, the Plaza Mayor, demonstrations against 20-N (the presidential elections) replete with a whole ton of policía in full SWAT gear, street performers, homeless people, a National Geographic store (we were really excited about this), and lots of people! I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but those are basically the highlights. Unfortunately as I didn't have my camera I only have a few pictures; they were taken with my LG camera phone so the quality is not that great, but better than nothing!

 The Egyptian temple

Not sure exactly what this building is but I liked it.  

Part of the Royal Palace 

Snapshot of the Royal Botanical Garden

Thursday was of course Thanksgiving, and we had our own little IES family Thanksgiving dinner which was delicious. I of course missed all of my fam at home but being able to share the evening with great friends and great food here was wonderful. All of the following pics are stolen from Joe Sharp; if you want you can check out his blog here: http://lifeisnotawaitinggame.blogspot.com/

 wine (of course), water, gravy, and blueberry sauce (apparently arándano, the Spanish word for cranberry, is also the Spanish word for blueberry, oops!)

 yum :)

 It was a good try Spain, but your pumpkin pie just does not compare with that back home. Although edible, it was a little heavy on the pumpkin and light on any other kind of spices. 

 ¡hermanas! 

Our table :)

I've just been enjoying a quiet weekend here in Salamanca, catching up on news in the US, writing postcards, and walking around through the city. Something I've come to realize: I see more dogs here on a daily basis than I have seen children in the entire 3 months I've been here! So many dogs, so few I can pet. 

Today I went for a stroll through the city attempting to get lost and discovered that it is nearly impossible, at least within the city center and surrounding area. However, I did find some cute streets that I had not been on before and it was just nice to be out and about enjoying the city without having any particular place to go. 

I'm not sure if this counts as full-fledged creeping or not, but my neighbor in the building across the street is a painter (who frequently leaves the blinds open when he paints) and occasionally while I'm here at my desk working I watch him paint (reminds me of countless hours of watching Bob Ross as a child). Today he was painting a portrait of a man with sunglasses who looked scarily like John Belushi. I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure that's who it was. 

Anyway I hope you are all enjoying your weekend and successfully recovering from Thanksgiving/Black Friday. Until next time, ¡love and un abrazo! 

ps. it is 22:33 here as I am finishing this. neat! 

pps. I also discovered this week that there is a significant population of Jehova's Witnesses here in Spain, who knew??