A day for Museums

Hola! I’ve been in Spain for 5 weeks today!

Today in my language class we worked on the subjunctive. Again. Only 2 more days of this before my final exam. I can’t wait! We still have 2 days of class after the exam, which I don’t understand at all. I have a list of museums and place to see around the city before I leave and it would be a lot easier if I didn’t have class after the final. Oh well, la vida es así.

In history we finally began learning about Isabel II. She is an interesting person, if only for the fact that she was a woman in power in the 1800s. My professor also told us that, historically, students bought good grades by giving their professor’s ham. It is certainly not difficult to find ham around here as almost every other shop has pig legs hanging from the ceiling. Then we moved on to the first Spanish republic. It lasted for a grand total of 6 years before it collapsed back into an absolute monarchy.

In literature we discussed the Spanish novel of the 1950s. At least it’s not as depressing as the previous topics. I am nervous for the final exam on Tuesday because she said she’d have us compare the different writing styles. I’ll just have to study on the bus to and from Portugal.

In culture we had our tapas competition. There were 7 tapas total: peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a cookie with nutella and banana on top, a brownie with peanut butter on top, gazpazho with garlic bread, bread with a topping of chorizo, cheese, and tomatoes, and English muffin thing with peppers, cheese, and mayo mix, and lastly bread with garlic and fig on top. Needless to say, out PB&J didn’t win, the bread with chorizo did. The winners got a chocolate coin.

Lunch was a vegetable stew and these white sausage things. They are not my favorite thing I have eaten here, but the vegetable soup is always good. After lunch I went on my own to 4 places of interest around the city. First I stopped by the cathedral. The new cathedral (built in the 16^th century) is free but entrance to the old cathedral (built in the 12^th century) is not. It is an incredible building and very old. I couldn’t take pictures of some parts of the old cathedral, so I will just have to save my memories of them. The first room entered into the church, which I took plenty of pictures of. But then there was a museum and I couldn’t take pictures there. Mostly it was a lot of ‘resting places’ for people important to the church and statues of bleeding Jesuses. It has come to my attention that these cathedrals are pretty morbid places, and that’s not even counting the mummified hand of a saint they have in the new cathedral.

After that I went to the museum of Salamanca. It was a little disappointing because they didn’t actually have anything about Salamanca. It was all painting. The most exciting part was the archeological stuff but they barely had any of that. Downstairs they had a temporary exhibit on gold mining back in the roman times, and that was pretty cool.

I then made my way to The house of the shells which is free to the public. It is basically just a building with shells all over it. I took pictures. I know it has historical significance, but I forget what right now. It wasn’t much to see inside.

I walked across the street to the Pontifical University and took a tour of that. I was pretty proud of myself because I understood most of the tour that was conducted completely in Spanish. We looked at this gorgeous, old staircase and then went into the courtyard to see where all the classrooms looked out on. Lastly, we went to the church that was beautiful despite being located in a university.

I then went home and relaxed a little before my dinner of a foot long sandwich. I was unable to finish it. Now I think I’ll go to bed early in order to prepare for Portugal tomorrow!!!