musto gucho.

Hi friends.

Found good old Voldy in Madrid. Avada Kedavra-ed the heck out of Madi in his honor.

Found some churros and chocolate...ten minutes after finding some mind-blowing gelato... P.S. Madi cute churro smile.


Bought our ticket to Paris for our trip after the program! That's $600 worth of train ticket in our hands right thurr.

Friday and Saturday of this week we went to Ávila, Salamanca, Toro, and Tordesillas. It was fantastic, just like everything here, but boyyyy was it cold. It snowed the whole time we were in Ávila, which made for some beautiful views, and also some frozen feet. Ávila is famous for it's outer walls, Las Murallas. They were so cool, it looked like castle walls from a fairytale. You can kinda see them surrounding the city in the background of this picture of Kim and I.


At the foot of the wall we passed some of these jagged rocks, and thanks to the LOTR kick we've been on lately, we couldn't pass up this opportunity. Just being ork-esque, it's what we do.


On our way out of Ávila we stopped at Los Cuatro Postes. Supposedly St. Teresa ran away from home at the age of seven, with the intent of becoming a martyr in battle with the Moors, and this is the spot where her uncle stopped her from doing so. Strange kid. Kind of sheds a little light on the story of The Ecstasy of St. Teresa. Apparently these oddities were not super out of the ordinary for her.

Next stop was Salamanca, and it's cathedral. To the flying buttresses!

The cathedral was really stunning, but my favorite part was the little bit of humorous restoration to its façade. There's something here that doesn't really fit....

Apparently they had to restore some of the detailing recently, and some jokester decided to include an astronaut and a dragon eating an ice-cream cone on the outside of a centuries-old cathedral. Love it.


We then went and toured the University of Salamanca, which is the third oldest in the world. Can you say thousands of books from the 15th and 16th centuries??? I like very very very much.


Our guide throughout the day in Salamanca kept telling us all the hoppin discotecas that we absolutely had to go to. Since it's a college town, it's known for its nightlife, apparently people come from miles and miles away to partayyy on the weekends. By the time we got back from getting dinner and shopping, we were pooped. Out of 25 girls, not a single one of us were out past 11. We are a bunch of old grannies and I love it.

Next day we took a little stop in Toro to see the cathedral there, which was a lot more simplistic in its decoration than some of the other ones we've seen, but I still thought it was gorgeous.

Oh whatup roomie! Elizabeth is the bomb. She can handle my crazy pretty well and is very patient with me when I'm being immature. Love her.

Last but not least, we stopped in Tordesillas and saw the convent where Juana La Loca was imprisoned for 49 years. You can google the story if you want, but the moral is that boys are dumb and they're going to drive us all mad. But that's a topic for another day. The best part of Tordesillas was completely random and serendipitous. On our way back into Plaza Mayor to find some food, we happened upon a little five-man band playing music and a group of the people of Tordesilla dancing up a storm. After a little hesitation, we all joined in. SO fun.


Welp. I guess I should probably start my homework. Lots of times I forget that I'm here for school. Mostly because school consists of learning a language I love and studying super famous art and then getting to see it in person. I mean, it's rough.

Hastaaaa luegoooo


NSP moment:
While walking home from the bus Wednesday night, Elizabeth and I met a quite charming young gentleman. Good teeth, great scruff, about 6'3", studying civil engineering. Not too shabby. And me, being the conversationally challenged fool that I am, as we were saying goodbye, blurted out "¡musto gucho!" Oy. If you speak Spanish you know that that phrase means absolutely nothing. Switch around a couple consonants and you've got "nice to meet you," but I got a little tongue-tied and butchered it. Everywhere I go just reinforcing the worldwide belief that Americans are blabbering idiots.