Ayer y hoy (Yesterday and today)

Bueno, son las ocho y cuarenta de la noche el sábado y estoy en casa durante un partido de fútbol muy importante para Espana. It's 8:40 p.m. on Saturday and I'm at home during a very important soccer game for Spain. I was planning on going to the Plaza Mayor to watch it again like last week because it's really cool to see there, but I took a longer siesta than I expected. It's nice to know that I can just walk over there when I want, but you know how naps are...they make you lazy!

Anyway, yesterday was the last day of the ELE international Spanish teachers conference. Overall, it was "okay." I was looking forward to learning more applicable ready-to-use activities in my classroom. It was more theory-based and geared toward teachers at the college level. After the conference I went home to eat and then met some friends to experience Salamanca at night. People don't really start to "go-out" until after 11 and the discotecs stay open way into the morning. A lot of the music was in English too.

Earlier today I took a tour of the city of Salamanca with some friends. I'm beginning to like it here more and more as I'm finally having an opportunity to see what it has to offer. We went to a couple of places. First, La Casa Lis, which I thought was really cool. It's an art nouveau and art deco museum. They had a pretty big Picasso exhibit, creepy looking dolls from France and Italy, glass and metal figures and sculptures, etc. Also it looked really pretty inside with stained glass flowers everywhere. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take any pictures though. On their website there are pix. http://www.museocasalis.org/ I also had some traditional Spanish hot "chocolate," which was AMAZING! After the art museum, we headed to the New Cathedral (see picture) and also toured inside. Then on our way to this old monastery we found this historical site called La Cueva de Salamanca (the cave), whose history is mixed with old literature. We were able to then climb up some stairs and see a pretty good view of the city from there too (see picture). Then we tried getting into the monastery but it wasn't open--I guess it has a really pretty garden. From there, we headed for lunch at the usual Spanish lunch time between 2 and 3 p.m. We ate from a menú del día. First, we had bread and wine/water. Then, we had salad/gazpacho. Then, the main meal chicken. Then, vanilla ice cream for dessert. The lunches are like dinners here :) Anyway, I'm going to go see how the game is going on t.v. possibly. I keep hearing horns from my window that are echoing down the street!