Valladolid

This past week was the start of my new classes and the good news is I like all of them.  My favorite class is my conversation class, my teacher is really enthusiastic and I get the chance to practice my Spanish speaking skills.  I also had an intercambio this past week which is when I meet with a native Spanish speaker who is in the process of learning English to practice speaking and listening and help them with their English skills.  It is such a good idea and a great way to practice Spanish! Each time at the beginning I am constantly thinking about what I have to say but by the end of the meeting I am speaking without thinking.  My intercambio from last week introduced me to his group of friends here, who all live in different parts of Spain but are all studying at the University of Salamanca.  I hung out with them one night and I was loving listening to all of the Spanish and by the end of the night I was thinking completely in Spanish.  Whenever I have experiences like this or come back from four hours of Spanish class I always have trouble switching back to English quickly and often times my English sentences come out structured incorrectly if I don’t think about what I say first.

This weekend our API group went and toured a vineyard in Valladolid, a city two hours north of here.  Saturday also happened to be the first day that the weather dropped below and eighty degrees and it actually felt like fall.  We spent the beginning of the day walking around the outside of the vineyard which was also home to wild pigs (which look nothing like regular pigs) and many deer.  The tour guide said that the family who owns this vineyard and all the land is one of the richest families in all of Spain!  After our outside tour we went into the cellar where they make the wine and were walked through the process of crushing all the grapes, making the wine, bottling the wine and letting it sit in the cellar for years.  The cellar was filled with bottles of wine piled from the floor to the ceiling, filling every shelf, I couldn’t even capture it in one picture.  After that we came back up to the big fancy dining room for a wine tasting and got to try some of the soup that is known in this region which I loved.  After this, we got back on our bus and left the Vineyard and headed to a medieval market in the city where we got dessert and walked around for a while.

I had a really relaxing weekend and got the chance to skype my family and friends which is good because from now on our weekends start to get really busy considering how many different places we are going!  Every time I look at my calendar I’m amazed at how much I’m doing over the next two months and am reminded of how two months isn’t really as long as it seems.  It’s just a constant reminder to keep doing as much as I can while I’m here and to take in all of Spain while I have this great opportunity!