Melissa, Amanda and I taking pictures with the peacocks here. This was in the park of the "Palacio Real", the royal palace that is a short walk from my house. The park used to be the private yard of the king and queen who lived in the palace, but they no longer live in the palace. Now, they have a nice park with lots of beautiful peacocks!
A nice sunset from a different park by my house... reminds me of Madison
Graffiti is EVERYWHERE here. This is one of my favorite ones at our university. As you can tell, the graffiti here is usually happy. The photo below is of a "Victory" sign on a wall of the University of Salamanca - traditionally graffitied onto the exterior walls after a student completed his PhD. It is really interesting seeing the graffiti everywhere... while it is sadly sometimes on historic monuments, it is typically seen as an acceptable thing.
This is Ruth (roommate from UW) and I in front of the large Gothic cathedral in Sevilla. It is the largest example of Gothic architecture in the world! This picture sort of gives you a sense of the plaza - a large place to hang out, usually with benches and fountains. There are plazas everywhere! In the twenty minute walk from my house to the city center, I walk through seven or eight plazas. It is so nice to have pedestrians be the focus of the cities here, rather than cars.
My roommate Marissa and I in front of the Temple of Debod. This is an egyptian temple that was reconstructed in Madrid as a gift to recognize Spain's help with saving some other ruins. We got to enter the temple! It was really amazing being able to see the carvings not in a picture, but 1 foot in front of my face. The Temple is actually in a large park that is right next to the apartment that I will be moving into! We went to the temple with our señora after we all went to watch the changing of the guards at the Palacio Real... a nice touristy day :)
Me in Salamanca. I did a day trip there yesterday with two other girls from my program. In this picture, I am standing on an old Roman bridge, and you can see two cathedrals in the background. Salamanca is another beautiful city, with lots of open space and cool old traditions. On the facade of the University (the oldest in Spain), there are intricate carvings. If you are able to find the small frog in the carvings, it is said that you will have good luck on your exams. After at least ten minutes of craning my neck, I found it! Similar to my previous weekend in Sevilla, it was nice to get out of the big city of Madrid and see "old" Spain. Salamanca is a couple hours away by bus, and I was able to see a lot of smaller Spanish towns that are actually quite run down.
These are just some random photos from my last few weeks here! Today I went to the Reina Sofia, one of the big art museums here with more recent collections... including Picasso's Guernica. It is absolutely amazing - it is so large and humbling, it was hard not to tear up thinking about the Spanish Civil War, the reason he painted it in the first place. We saw a lot of other Picasso and Salvador Dali pieces also! One thing I love about Spain is that Sundays are really family days. There are always people out for long meals (often over 2 hours), hanging out in the plazas or visiting the museums, which are typically free on Sundays. I also went for a long run today along the river and over some of the neat bridges that they have. The river here is not very impressive, but they are working on beautifying it by putting in nice wide biking and running paths, playgrounds for children and rows of trees. They blocked the river off for the winter to make construction easier, and I am looking forward to the spring so that they open it back up again. My intercambio buddy, Julia, lives just on the other side of the river, so today I explored her neighborhood. I saw her a few times this week - we went to the "Museo del Jamon", a bar with cheap beer but with pig legs hanging all over. I'm glad I went once, but I told her that was probably enough, haha. She's in the middle of her exams from fall semester, but I'm looking forward to spending more time with her once she's done!
I have a big week ahead of me... I'm going to Morocco and Granada! There are 6 of us from my program going - we're flying into Marrakech on Wednesday morning, going up to Tangier (on the coast) on an overnight train Thursday night, taking the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar and then on to Granada for a couple days. I'm sooo excited for it all. Morocco is one of the places that was at the top of my list for travel destinations - my professor for my Islam class suggested a number of places for us to go, so it should be a really great trip. I happily told Sam that we will be on the same continent again for 48 hours :)
On a family note, I have changed my computer background to the cutest picture of Tim and Addie... she is so adorable! I feel sad that I am not able to see her and how much she is going to be changing in the next several months, but at least I am able to see pictures! I will update again after my trip this weekend! Love, Bonnie
Bonnie, You are SOOOO lucky to see the Guernica painting - I hope I see it some day! Am so enjoying reading about your adventures and that you are having such a good time. Have a fun trip next week....
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