Afternoons in town

Hangin out at the UIMP Buckley, Lauren, Heather, Myself and Holly.
The University International Mendez Pelayo is a small college aproximately two blocks south of the beach. It's location and laid back teaching style is a perfect fit for a study abroad program.


Price and Buckley enjoying an afternoon on the beach. After class, most students walk down to the beach.
Lauren poses on the dock.
We found a secret swim spot behind the guard house of the Palacio de Magdalena. The dock is carved out of the rock and is submerged below the tide.

Here are some locals enjoying the very cold spanish ocean.

Night's in Santander

All the girls catch a street performace in the Plaza de Canadio. This is the last night and we all went out together.
This night they had rigged up a tight rope, other evenings they had aerobatic shows and sometimes were broken up by policia.


Rebka and I, Rebka is from Hungary.
The Plaza is surrounded by the some of the cities finest bars and night clubs. Typically young spainards take their drinks out to drink in the plaza and to mingle.
Cintia and I.
Cintia is from France, and has a great sense of style. We spent afternoons shopping in Santander's downtown. They have a great selection stores like Zara and Levi.

Mi Familia! Myslef, Jazmin, Darius, James, Damian, and Lela.
Jazmin, and Damian are from Cuba, and Darius and James are students from Washington D.C.
In spain lunch is the biggest and most important meal of the day, its usually around 2:30


Mi Madre! Jazmin is a sweetheart,
Viva Cuba!
The Love of my life!
Roger ( pronounced Ro-Hey)
This little man is barley two and he already dances the cha cha better than most guys I know.
I already miss him stumbling around our room.

UIMP

Sally and I at the University! She goes to school in Warick, England where she studies literature.
She has an absolutly wicked accent, and usually travels throughout europe in the summers. It is very common for European students to travel and typically when you visit Spain, you dont just meet Spainards. This summer I spent time with Italians, Hungarians, and my personal favorite the britts.

A photo of Matt from Maryland, Clair from England, and Axel from Austria.
My profe Monica, She was from Madrid and had spent some time in the U.S. The teaching style in a Spanish University was very different from the U.S. or the University of Florida. The grades were made mostly of one final and daily participation. This makes the tests a very important part of the final grade.

Summer Festival

Im sitting in the airport in madrid.
I think I might luck out and get to sleep in a bed tonight in New York

Analise (from France) Heather (Texas) Buckley (Florida) Rebka (Hungary) and Cintia (France)
On the beach for watching fireworks.
The eve of Santanders summer festival is July 24th.
Everyone got together all the city's workers and students all came out to enjoy the fireworks and to drink.
We watched the show on the beach,

Usually the night life start's on the beach or at the Casino
and then works it's way downtown.
My favorite thing about spanish night life is the phenomena of the plaza.
Here in small city squares everyone from around the town gathers, buys a glass of wine from the surrounding bars and stands, chats, sits on the sidewalk, or watches the street performers.
You can spend your saturday or even a wendsday night with your mother, your professor, and your class mates.
Theres a familarity with the people, everyone stopping to say hello
Im going to miss this the most.
Myself, Machal (from denmark) and Lela (from Texas) on Sardinero Beach

Buckely and Price having a go at some warm up stretches
Holly and I sitting on a boulder on a hillside

oh no piqous

This weekend past the group went hiking in the piqous.
The piqous are a chain of rocky hills and mountains similar to those that can be found in the midwester united states, according to Buckley.
(juiliann, Me and Heather at about 2300 km above sealevel.)
We road a cable car up the mountain,
It gave me the wierdest feeling in my stomach.
It was funny because the other women in the cable car did not understand when i spoke english
but they said they understood what i ment when i grabbed the hand rail and said oh no!

We hiked about 12km that day,
It was all downhill, which at first seems like it wouldnt be very hard.
It turns out that the mountain side even on the dirt paths is so steep that you have to tighten
all your leg and butt muscles up to keep your balance or to keep from slipping on loose gravel, so
We all ended up getting a pretty good working out.

World Cup and Discotecas

Buenos Dias!
Every tuesday night the university opens up a discoteca at the palacio.
They play 1980´s dance remix, and I love it.

The last two times we´ve gone its rained haha.
The dance floor is conviently located outside,
But theres been a serious heat wave this week, so the rain is really the only relief from all the heat.
Theres no air conditioning in Santander.
Its rumored that the Caja Cantabria Bank downtown has it, but i have yet to find it at the university or at home.
Makes me miss florida. If anything works it is definitely the air haha

(to the left Derek, Me and Paul at a discoteca in madrid)

Exams are coming up next week, A day after my birthday! Looking forward to those days, but im sad our time here is running out.
The bullfights start next week, as the Feria (Summer festival) begins,
I dont think I want to see a bullfight,
Someone always gets hurt either the bull or the matador.

Lauren Heather and I watching the world cup game, France vs. Italy
The soccor games are huge in europe and even though Spain was no longer in the running the final game was very important. Spainards cheered for Italy that night.

Toledo!

A view of the city walls. Toldeo was built up on a hill and has city walls that wrap aroound the older sections of the city


This city was by far my favorite,
Here are a few more photos of the cityMe and Buckley sitting in the window sill at my favorite iglesia!
The church was built to honor the king and queen of spain,
after a civil war that broke out over the issue of whether the king was infertile or not.
It is the most beautiful church

Our first excursion was to San Sebastian
It is the rival beach to Santander.
here Ashley, Juilianne, Me , Liz and Christina are standing
atop a mountain overlooking San Sebastians coast.Lauren, Me, Holly, Lauren and Price are eating outside a cafe in San Sebastians downtown.
We spent a morning in the city and visited bilbao in the afternoon.

This weekend past we went to Salamanca!
A college town, rumored to have atleast 3,000 bars/discotecas.
The night life was fun and the city was beautiful.
(to the right is a picture of the Catredal de Salamanca)

(night view of the Catredal de Salamanca)
When the Cathedral was built it was built with stone from the river that cuts across the city.
The stone had an orange color and is what makes it glow at night.

If the weather is nice, and its been really hot this week, we all usually walk down to the beach after class.

We have two more weeks left before we all scatter,





Piqous beach, also my favorite

Yesterday we hiked up to one of Santanders two light houses.
We have been in Santander for almost a week now, and I have gotten past the stage of getting lost or feeling the shock of a completely spanish culture.
I love the university here,
The city is wrapped around a long stretch of beach






With the city rising up the hill twords the mountains.
It is a understatement to call Santander a beautiful place,













Lela and I after our hike.

Madrid!

¡HOLA MIS FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!
The flight to Madrid was an intresting one.
I spent a night in Queens New york after missing my connecting flight to Madrid due to inclimate weather.
(Pictures of Queens will come later)
Queens is much nicer in the day than at night, Nontheless I am happy I had the opportunity to experience Queens for myself.


Above Barajas Airport in Madrid.

I am now in Madrid at the Mona Husa Hotel.
So far I have visited the Prado and seen the Palace Real.

We´ve Spent the past two days wandering around.
Iv mett loads of people and seen lots of lovely and intresting places.
I love the streets in this city, and the tiny auto´s
Its remarkable the hush that falls over the city streets every day at siesta time.
The Lighting is just lovely
Above Calle Princesa
The restuarntes and the botiques are all usually small and you can see the
pride of ownership in the peoples faces.
A few of us, We ate at a small cafeteria and the owner asked us questions about where we were from and what we were doing in Madrid. He was very kind and offered us a special spainish dish on the house.
It was a potato and fish dish, very yummy.
Before we left he was kissing me on the cheeks and making jokes about trading palces with the fellas in the group and
going back to the states with me and julia. (Apartments above street shops )

Above Paul de New Zealand
I stupidly forgot to turn off my flash, and got lots of nasty stares after snapping this photo.