Today was our first day of studies in Salamanca. We arrived at Enforex with a slight day-2-jet-lag-hangover, but all in all much brighter than yesterday. Today the students realised for the first time exactly how fast Spanish people can speak if they really try. And the weird thing is, they don't even have to try that hard, they just speak really, really fast. After studies we went home for lunch and a siesta and then returned to school for a tour of Salamanca. The tour lasted three hours, and one pedometer-toting group member reckoned we hit 14 000 steps yesterday. So for anyone that thought I might have been exaggerating when I warned we would be walking over 10kms per day, turns out ... not so much. We had our first day of lessons today from 9-1 , followed by a typical Italian pasta lunch in a quaint restaurant and a fantastic 2 1/2 hour tour of some of Verona's Roman antiquity. After that we set off for the best gelateria in town. Tonight: mangare, Italian homework and sleep. The SofL kids are in good spirits and over jet lag. Here are some photos from the Palm Sunday parades in Salamanca. (No, it's not what you first think. The Spanish owned this hundreds of years before it was co-opted and corrupted in the US).
We arrived in Salamanca yesterday afternoon after leaving Australia at 10:30pm Friday night. If we got up at 6am on Friday, like I had, then we had been out of bed for around 45 hours, because it was about 3am Sunday morning in Adelaide when we arrived here. I can't say I'd been awake for that long because I have a supernatural ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, but a few of us were looking pretty ragged. Not as ragged as the poor Italian team, who arrived in Milan to find that only two of their 12 suitcases had followed them there, but ragged nonetheless. We quickly retired last night and most people slept the night through. I think Chau was the winner with 12 straight hours, but I dont think she was alone in hitting double figures, not by a long shot. This morning Parky, Valerie and I ambled into Plaza Mayor looking for a café con leche, not so hard to find in Spain, and stumbled across the first of the Easter parades in Salamanca. Whilst we were there the plaza filled up with a few thousand people, the sun was shining, the parade was parading and it was just a wonderfully pleasant afternoon. We all met at the plaza, under the clock tower as planned, at 4pm. We took a quick stroll to the School, learned the route, strolled back to the plaza and went our seperate ways. Major calamities have so far managaed to avoid us and everyone appears to be having a pretty good time, me included. As I've said before, there are worse jobs. 😉 . |
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