Wow, I must say you guys really inspire a girl to post more given the astonishing amount of interest you've shown. But despite the fact that I get the feeling that none of you have even looked at this yet I'll post again. The day after my last post everyone else arrived and despite the fact that a lot of the group is from Vassar, I really don't know very many people. Ali and Julia both know Aapta and I know that the rest of you have at least met Seth Tannebaum, but the others are all more or less new faces to me. So far everyone is really nice and friendly and of course I've made friends with a couple of them. There's a really nice girl on the trip from Harvard who actually knows Abe Reisman, a friend of my from back in the day. After everyone arrived I went on a variety of walking trips throughout the city with the newcomers; I'm actually pretty good at navegating already but thats not much of a feat considering how small the city is, despite the crazy layout.
For those of you who don't know, Santiago de Compostela is supposedly the resting place of Saint James the Apostle (Santiago means Saint James). Because of that, since at least the 12th century (and I think earlier though I'm not sure) there have been tons of people who come here on pilgrimages. In fact, the people in Canterbury Tales are on their way here. The old part of the city is a very typical medieval city whose focal point is the HUGE cathedral and various other religious sites, mostly smaller churches: again, once I have some good pictures and put them on my computer I'll make sure to post them somewhere that everyone can access.
While we're in Santiago, we're taking a couple of classes every day to get accustomed to Spanish and using it in a more formal setting. My first class of the day is Galician literature (Galicia is the province in which we are located). We're reading a variety of styles meant to give us an idea of the literary tradition and evolution of Galicia. That class has written assignments pretty much every night as well as some reading. The other class is "the History of Spain." I must say, it is a little weird to spend only two weeks learning the entire history of a country but it seems like it might work out. We're also taking a "class" about culture and language, which really means we're going to be taught what is expected of us in the homes, what Spanish kids do for fun, and how to order food a drinks (and other useful things we may need to know, like words to use if we have to go to the doctor).
Other than the classes, groups of us have been paired with Spanish students who are taking us around the city and showing us the cool places to go for food and nightlife. We went out for dinner last night to a "Pulperia" which is a place that sells octopus, among other things. I have to say I couldn't bring myself to try the octopus, it just looked absolutely disgusting. They don't even try to cover up the grossness with friedness or anything else that might actually not make it look disgusting. I am going to try other kinds of seafood while I'm here, though we'll see if I actually like any of it.
I still haven't figured out the cell phone situation yet but I do have internet access for now so if you want to contact me thats definately the best way to do so. I do have a Skype account, although we're 6 hours apart (from the East coast) and I'm often not around because I'm off enjoying the fact that I'm in a different country but if you do get Skype and want to talk to me, you should let me know and I'll try to "call" you when I am actually online. Anyway, I've given up my siesta to post this and now have to get going to the culture/language class I was telling you about. It occurs to me that people who don't know Spanish might not know but Inseños isn't a real word...it's just meant to sound like both Madrileños and insane. Please guys, don't just look at this post, comment, or I definately won't keep this up because I have no way of knowing if you have any interest and if no one does I'll stop wasting my time. I <3 you all.
Os escribiré pronto. ¡Adios!