February 12

As you will see in the photos that I will be uploading, the city is positioned in a valley between different mountains. It’s not flat here either, but I’m not living on a mountain (at least I don’t think I am). The mountains appear green, or more usually blue, in the distance. I’m not sure how far away they are, but it seems like it would be very possible to bike to them and spend a weekend somewhere in a town and in the mountains. Ximena and I want to bike there if there is a bicycle shop in town that rents bicycles. I would do it if the bicycle shop would buy the bicycle back used at the end of the semester, but we’ll see. There are lots of bicycle shops to try, three within a five minute radius of the apartment building.

In the apartment, there are four of us: me, Ximena from Chile, Erika from Lithuania, and Clem from France. Clem studied here last semester and is leaving for France at the end of February. Taking her place will be another girl from France, Aline. Erika and Aline both arrived this semester, like Ximena and I. Ximena and I spend a lot of time together, sharing our food and meals. It’s good in a place where no one has roots to have someone with to be a little like a family, or to make the apartment more homelike. Erika is away a lot of the time at friends’ apartments and doesn’t talk to the rest of us a lot when she is here. Clem works a lot, so she is not here much either. The apartment is only a five-ten minute walk from campus, and I go between here and there for classes and to use the wi-fi internet on campus. The old part of town, where most people gather for the weekends, is only a fifteen minute walk from the apartment. Nothing is very far away if you are willing to walk.

The schedule here is different than in the US. I eat breakfast after waking, then I might eat a snack, or just wait until about 2:30 or so to eat a heavy lunch. At 8:30 or so we eat supper. Here, lunch is like supper, and supper is a light lunch. The stores here are open from 9-1:30 and 4:30-7:30 or later. The bars are open all day, because they make money with food and other drinks besides alcohol also.

Today I had a Spanish language class for foreigners. There are eight students in my class. It is conversation based, which is very good for me. There was not enough conversation and application of the language at Ball State, nor would the students have applied themselves to take the conversation class seriously had there been more application of the language. I will take this class twice a week for a total of three hours each week. With registration in this class I have access to many programs to practice vocabulary, movies to borrow, and books to read. I think that I will be spending a lot of time there in the library of the Centro de Idiomas.

It’s now about midnight, so I’m going to call it a night. I will post this tomorrow. Hope that everyone at home is doing well.