Welcome to Spain!

I arrived at my homestay on August 29th at about 9 a.m. My roommate and I met our homestay madre, Conchita, an adorable grandmother who is full of energy and does not speak a word of english. We then proceeded to sleep for the majority of the day until she came into our room yelling "ALMUERZO! YA!" telling us its time for lunch. These first 2 weeks in Spain have been awesome.  Instead of jumping right into classes, the Duke program sends us on 2 trips- one to Galicia (region in the north) and one to Andalucia (region in the South). In all of the locations we have tour guides that speak only spanish and travel with us.

We were in Galicia from September 1-5. We went to Santiago de Compostela and A Coruna. Above is a picture of me at Plaza Mayor in A Coruna. In Santiago I went into the cathedral and we were allowed to climb up to the roof and walk around which we pretty neat. From there we went to San Andres de Teixido where we could see the Atlantic Ocean from the cliffs. Then we spent the weekend in A Coruna, a gorgeous beach town.  The professors went back to Madrid for the weekend so we were free to do whatever we wanted. One thing that definitely stood out on the beach is that european women don't seem to own bathing suit tops...I don't know how I would feel about that happening in Stone Harbor.

On the following Tuesday, we left for Andalucia and stayed there until September 12. We started off in Granada where we visited La Alhambra which was absolutely insane. The gardens were beautifully constructed, always with some sort of fountain and every color flower you could imagine. Every room had intricate designs on the walls- I can't even imagine how they created this so many years ago. We climbed to the highest tower and were able to see all of Granada from there. Wednesday night we got on a bus and headed for Sevilla. One of the things we did in Sevilla was visit a Flamenco museum where we were given a 1 hour flamenco lesson. I think dancing just isn't really my thing. I'm going to blame it on my genes, but it was still a great time. Next, we went to Los Reales Alcazares which is a royal palace in Sevilla. It was very similar to La Alhambra with its intricate designs and sculptures in every room. Some of the rooms had tapestries that were made in the 1500s that had to be about 50 feet wide.  On Friday we visited the Cathedral of Seville. It is the largest gothic cathedral in the world and the 3rd largest church in the world. Holy moly is right. At the end of our guided 2 hour tour throughout the cathedral we climbed the Giralda, which is the bell tower in the cathedral. It was about 35 flights of stairs high but it was all ramps- quite the workout. From there you have a great view of Sevilla and can see the roof of the cathedral which was cool as well. It's a good thing I'm not afraid of heights. Finally, on Saturday morning I hopped on a train at 8 a.m. and headed to Cadiz, a famous Spanish beach town. Cadiz has a great mix of old and new city aspects. It still has huge city walls and lots of plazas. It is currently the most ancient city that is still inhabited in all of Western Europe. Almost everyone from my program chose to go to Cadiz for the weekend so we stayed on the beach until about 6 p.m. We were even lucky enough to somehow come on a weekend when they were having an air show so I got to see lots of cool planes doing some crazy tricks!

In front of La Alhambra