Well, Here we are in Oporto, Portugal! Thursday night everyone went out for dinner and to explore the town. I had one of Oporto’s famous sandwiches called the “Frenchy”. It is covered in cheese, has about 5 different kinds of meat, and is served in a bowl filled with gravy. It was pretty darn good!

On Friday we were taken on a guided tour of the city. We got to drive down a road that is being set up for a vintage Formula One car race, we saw an old castle, a cathedral, and a bookstore with a beautiful stairwell. We even got to go on a tour of a wine cellar and have a port wine sampling. For the afternoon, we all decided to go to the beach. About 10 of us tried surfing for the first time! I only got about twice on the board and spent the rest of the time getting tossed around in the crashing waves swallowing about half the Atlantic ocean! I had a blast though! …I am worried about my muscles for the next couple days… I thought my arms were about to fall off from paddling so much!

Tomorrow we’re leaving for Santiago, Spain. I’ll keep y’all posted!

Hey y’all

We got to go to Barcelona on the weekend of June 13th. The first night we got there, nearly everyone went out at night to explore the town. It was one of the most interesting places I’ve been.  There were a ton of English speaking tourists there also, so it was one of the easiest places to get around at yet. The next day we went on a city tour and saw the Sagrada Familia church designed by Gaudi. It has been under construction for 127 years and still has at least another 20 years to go. We also got to see the beautiful Montserrat Mountain range just outside of Barcelona. On Saturday a handful of people decided to spend the day at a Mediterranean beach. We played in the freezing cold water and played pong ball all day. On Sunday we hit the road to go back to Ciudad Real. We did make a stop in Valencia for lunch on the beach. Valencia had some very obscure, interesting architecture. I wish we got to spend a little more time there!

Well, we have a 3 day school week, and then it’s back on the road to visit Porto, Portugal and Santiago, Spain!

Well, we’ve been here so long that I’ve already lost track of days! This blog is going to be about last weekend, May 29th- June 1st.

On Friday, we took a trip to Madrid to see a construction site. They were building a 6km long subway tunnel to get from one part of town to the airport. The interesting thing about this project though was that they were digging the tunnel by hand… literally. If you look in the video you will be able to see guys with jack hammers and shovels slowing making a tunnel! While in Madrid we were also able to see the royal palace.

After Madrid we went to Segovia. There we saw a castle… complete with moat and draw bridge, and the Roman aqueduct. The cool thing about this aqueduct is that it is one of the few (or only) working roman aqueduct, and it was built without using any mortar!

When we were leaving Segovia we took a trip to a dam, a drinking water cleaning facility, and a waste management facility… which was extremely smelly, as you could imagine. the most disgusting part there was that there were all these life savers hanging on the fence in case you fell into the sludge water!

We’re in Ciudad Real now, and nothing too much has been going on, except for lots and lots of school! I should have another update in a week when we get back from Barcelona!

<!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE <![endif]–><!–[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]–> Day 3 (Sunday, 5/24): Today was our last day on our own. We managed to get all of our luggage onto the bus, change buses, get to the airport, and find everyone! After waiting at the airport for a few hours, we finally got on a bus to Toledo. (I’m pretty sure everyone was at the airport by 2 p.m. and we were just waiting for Dr. Hogan who arrived at 4!). As we were driving, we passed this castle and fortress looking place and all started joking around about how cool it would be to stay there …and guess what! We were! We had to unload all of our bags onto a smaller van since the streets were so narrow the Bus wouldn’t be able to fit between the buildings. We then had to walk up one flight of stairs, 6 escalators, and another quarter of a mile of steel cobble stone streets until we reached our dorms! We all got settled in and then just started wandering around Toledo exploring.

Day 4 (Monday, 5/25): Well, today was our first official day of Spanish survival classes! We learned how to conjugate the “to be” verbs and some important words to get around. I was told that my two years of Spanish I took in high school would all come back to me once I’m immersed in the language… but it hasn’t! luckily I’ve been making friends with the fluent speaker and try to have them by my side any time we go out! After class we met with some of the university professors and one gave a lecture on water management. We were all dreading having to start our engineering classes today, and were all pleasantly surprised when our professors decided to just give a quick over view of the program and call it a day! Around 5:00 we all met to go on a scavenger hunt around the city. Now, you may be thinking “what a nice way to get to see the city, casually walk around and take photographs of statues and landmarks.” WRONG! This was some sort of cruel joke. All of our clues were given to us in Spanish, but our fluent Spanish speakers in each group were forbidden to talk! Too add on to this, if you wanted a shot to win this competition, you had to sprint from location to location (after figuring out what the clue even meant!) up and down steep, slick, cobble stone roads! Anyone who does not regularly run 10 miles a day was utterly exhausted when the event was over!

Day 5-7 (Tuesday, 5/26 - Thursday, 5/28: We had more Spanish language and culture classes today. We learned all the good stuff like how to go shopping and how to order at a restaurant! During culture class we got to go to a market that was I guess comparable to a flea market. I bought a watch that looks like it should be owned by a 10 year old boy, but it has the time and an alarm, so I’m happy! Engineering classes are officially underway. Luckily it’s not too difficult for the mechanical track yet, we’re just reviewing previous classes. I’m sure it will all pick up next week when we start 4 hours of classes per day! On Tuesday and Wednesday we went on guided tours of Toledo. We saw everything from cathedrals to synagogues, and even how to get a boyfriend or girlfriend in Toledo!

How to get a boyfriend/girlfriend in Toledo:

Day 1: Our trip began at DFW with a 10 hour plane trip to Amsterdam and then another 2.5 hour flight to Madrid. Our first day in Madrid was a bit interesting to say the least. We arrived at our hotel, which ended up being in the business district of Madrid and there were NO places to eat anywhere in sight! After talking to the hotel receptionist (who luckily spoke English!) we found a way into Madrid’s city center on a quest for Mayor Plaza. As we were walking to the bus stop, a bus arrived and we rushed to get on it! Unfortunately, this was the wrong bus! We somehow found our way to a subway station trying to navigate our way through the city… which is pretty darn difficult when no one in our group knew more than un pequeño españo! We finally hoped onto a subway that would take us close to our Plaza Mayor destination… only once out of the subway we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in the “red light” district of Madrid! …So, after venturing around Madrid for 4 hours, we were all jet-lagged, starving, and irritated… not a very good combination! We finally found some food and our way back to the hotel and all passed out around 9 pm!

Day 2: Today went a little batter then day one since we all had about 14 hours of sleep! We finally found our way to Plaza Mayor, a very odd place to say the least. There were statue people, Disney characters, and the nastiest Spiderman any of us had ever seen! We also made our way to a Royal Palace and toured the Gothic Cathedral right next to it. Every single square inch of the place was decorated with intricate designs and artwork. It was beautiful! Next we went to an art museum which housed tons of painting by famous artists. The only name I can remember right now is Greco. This museum had so much art that it could only display 15% of its pieces at once… and it was a huge place! Eventually we made our way to the hotel to get some rest. Tomorrow we will be meeting up with the rest of the group and heading to Toledo! ..I hope we can make our way back to the airport on the public bus with all our luggage!