Once again, it´s picture time!

Hey everyone! Things have been kind of quiet around here since our trip got canceled last week. But we went traveling again and saw a lot more interesting sights. We started out by going to Segovia. We saw some beautiful old churches, Ferdinand and Isabella´s palace, and a Roman aqueduct, and I got pooped on by a pigeon! It was really exciting! Actually I got pretty lucky because the pigeon pooped on the girl next to me and only a little of it splattered on me. I felt pretty bad for her because there was so much that she had to buy a new shirt. There are a ridiculous amount of birds in Europe and you´d be surprised how often an occurrence this really is. Other interesting events in Segovia was getting yelled at by the locals. We really attract a lot of attention, especially in smaller towns. As we were walking to the palace a boy was yelling all the English swear words he knew at me to get my attention, and another boy yelled at my friend to take off her clothes. I really don´t understand these tactics. What do they intend to accomplish? I really have no idea.
Next we made our way to Salamanca. We went to the nunnery and sang hymns in the nuns´chorus to hear the acoustics. The nuns there are cloistered so they don´t see people and they barely even talk to each other. I´m still trying to figure out how they earn a living in there. Maybe admissions to see the church. Some cloistered nuns sell cookies or nuts through this intercom system so they don´t actually see you, but I still don´t see how that could support them all. Anyway, after that we went to a church that was actually two churches built almost on top of each other, but just in different styles. Then we went to the famous University of Salamanca and read some poetry, and then we got free time to explore the city. That night we went down to an old roman bridge that was discussed in one of the 16th novels we read for class and reread the portion that occurred on the bridge. Pretty fun!
Today we got up and wandered around for awhile before we head back for Alcala. We stopped in Avila (that is where I am in the picture) to see the last fully walled city in Spain. If you look closely you can see that I bought a University of Salamanca sweatshirt out of desperation because it was freezing there. When we got here the weather was unbearably hot, but then it went through this rainy/cold phase and the only thing I brought with me was a very thin zip up. But now that I actually have something warm it will become stiflingly hot again. Okay, I´m boring so I´ll move on to the pictures. Oh, and I was experimenting with different picture layouts, and it didn´t exactly turn out that great, so sorry for the awkward organization.

This picture is actually taken in the same place where we took the Avila picture. I´m not sure
exactly what this is, but it was really beautiful so I thought I´d share.

This is in the Palace of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was full of suits of armor and they even had models of horses and riders decked out in their battle gear. I´ve just realized that the feet of the armor in this picture don´t show, but their shoes are metal but the toes are really long and pointy. Referring to the pointy-toed shoes that are in style right now, our director said, ¨You can see that their footwear is actually quite modern.¨ It was pretty funny.

In case you were wondering, I haven´t recently become a giant, 7-foot-tall Amazon. Spanish people are actually pretty short, but that doesn´t even compare to how short they used to be. All the inner doors in this nunnery were no more that 6 feet high.

Many old buildings here are covered with a ridiculous amount beautifully detailed carvings. The weather can be pretty extreme and sometimes they´ll use materials as weak as plaster, so a lot of modern restoration goes on so as to not lose completely the building´s facade. When the restorations occur, the artesans sometimes include modern details to record the time period in which the work was restored. Our director asked us if we saw anything in the facade that wasn´t supposed to be there, but the carvings, like the one on the left, are only a little bigger than a hand, so we didn´t see anything strange

at first. Then, I noticed this little beast for his sheer creepiness. As I looked closer to examine him, I

realized he just happened to be eating an ice cream cone, two scoops.

I then looked up a little ways and was even more surprised to find this guy. They defininitely didn´t have space suits back then. They like to include all sorts of weird stull like this in the decorations. A different facade was decorated with a lot of skull carvings and one of then had a frog on its head. In Salamanca, a frog is a sign of luck, so if you see the frog skull, you´ll have luck all year. All of the tourists shops have little skull and frog figurines in case you want to bring some luck home with you.

And speaking of luck, in the church we went to there, they have a very interesting custom for bringing luck. There is an ancient tradition that seniors at the University of Salamanca would perform to prepare for their final exams. They simply go to the cript of a specific bishop--all cripts have lifesize carvings of the deceased lying asleep over their coffin--and touch the carving of the bishop´s feet. You can touch with your hands or your feet, the luck comes either way. They would even do these quiz sessions where the student would sit touching the feet, and all of their professors would stand around asking questions while knowledge flowed into them from the dead bishop´s casket. Then, if they passed their exams, they got to write their name on the outside wall in bull´s blood. You can still see a lot of names written on the university walls. It´s really weird, I know.

This is a walk-up window at a McDonald´s in Madrid.

There is a certain street in Madrid where they have what is called a book fair. They whole thing is lined with kiosks buying and selling books. Some of them are really old and kind of odd. But we did find something familiar. If you look at the dark blue book in the center you will see that it is a Spanish Book of Mormon. We were just passing random tables and we saw it laying out there with all of the other books. We looked inside and it was obvious that someone had been using it for missionary work. There was a picture of the family who had given it, along with their names and their testimony. They also had written prayer instructions, all in spanish. I have no idea how long this place has had it because the book was the pre-footnote edition and all of the family members had some majorly horrendous big hair and their clothes looked like they were from at least 1975. I´m really tempted to go back and buy it.

This was our dinner one night. It still had eyes, legs, antennae, and a tail. Thankfully, our host mom knows I don´t like seafood and only made me eat one. This is how it happened: she first shows us how to remove the head, tail, legs, and shell and puts them on our plates. I tried to avoid looking it in the eyes while I ate my dinner, but it was impossible to completely avoid looking at it because its atennae were so long that they stretched across my entire plate. My roommate like seafood so she started to eat one. As she pulled off the head, she squeezed too hard and its brown liquid brain oozed out everywhere. I was horrified. I waited until it was the only thing left to eat on my plate before I began the process. I used a napkin to pull off the head to control any brain leakage, and I just got really grossed out by touching it. Then I pulled off the tail and discovered another brown liquid that looked suspiciously like excrement, so I squeezed that out and wiped in on my napkin. There is only about two small bites once you take everything off that is inedible, so I just popped in the whole thing because I knew once I´d finished the first bite, I probably wouldn´t be able to take another. I chewed it on the side of my mouth so I could taste as little as possible and then tried to swallow the whole thing at once, which made me gag, but I eventually got it down. My host mom asked how I liked it, but saw my uncomfortable smile and knew I hadn´t. I said, ¨It had eyes.¨ ¨Well, so do cows.¨ ¨But they aren´t on my plate.¨ She laughed again and that was the end of dinner, and hopefully, of seafood.

This is one of the Barbies from the exhibit I went to. It is supposed to be Queen Elizabeth.

Apparently, after the U.S., Spain is the second highest country for immigration, which means they also have an extremely large amount of illegal immigrants. The African border is really close, so people come from there, but also South America and all over Europe. It seems to me that U.S. politicians try to be pretty tactful when they talk about it and not take a stance that will greatly offend people. They don´t really believe in that here. This is one of two anti illegal immigration posters that are plastered everywhere around the city. This one says: Don´t be an ostrich. When facing illegal immigration you shouldn´t hide your head. The other one says: Not even one more. They are sponsered by a group called ¨Habitable Alcala.¨ I really don´t think people would even try to get away with that in the states.

Mmmmm, kelp soup! And by ¨mmmmm,¨ I mean really weird with awkward texture and completely without flavor. You can even see it hanging off of our spoons. Spanish food leaves much to be desired, it can´t wait for Italy.

Wow that was really long and hopefully I didn´t bore you all. This trip is just slipping by so fast, pretty soon I´ll be home to tell you guys what I did in person. I hope everyone is well!

Gianna