The Week’s Adventures & Segovia Saturday
- Kayla Pretzer
- Jun 4, 2017
- 5 min read
I swear, without pictures, I would be absolutely at a loss for words about everything I did each day during the week. Our schedule is so jam-packed while we are here, it is insane!
Each day, we go to school from 9:30-2:00. Our school is about a 30 minute, 1 mile walk from our house. By the time I get home from school, I have almost 7,000 steps! I am taking a literature class in the morning and a culture class in the afternoon. During each class, we have a five minute long break to grab a snack or coffee, and then we have a 30 minute long break between the two. My professor for literature is Cristina and for culture, my professor is Alfredo. Alfredo has magical handwriting – it looks like calligraphy and is absolutely amazing! He is my favorite; we discuss a lot in his class and I feel like I am learning so much about Spain.
After school, we go home for la comida and la siesta, also known as lunch and a nap. Usually, I never take the nap because there is always somewhere I need to be in the evening and I feel as though I would be cutting it too close.
Monday after school, my friends and I went to Campo Grande, which is this huge park in Valladolid. There are wild peacocks that roam throughout the park and they are not afraid of humans at all. It actually is really common to buy them food and feed them! Pictures cannot portray the pure beauty of these animals. It was really nice to just have a quiet night filled with laughter and ice cream (because let’s be real, we eat ice cream almost every day).
On Tuesday, we went on an excursion with our professor from Akron, Kirstin, to Peñafiel. Peñafiel is an extremely small pueblo, or town, located about 20 minutes from Valladolid. It was a bit rainy, so we basically ran through their plaza for photos. The main attraction in Peñafiel is their castle. While I couldn’t feel my legs after climbing to the top, the view was breath-taking. Everything in Spain is so old, but it is maintained and appreciated. After we came home, our group grabbed churros and chocolate. I’m pretty sure we pissed off the store owners because we had no idea how to order them, and we wiped them out for the night.
Wednesday, our host mom, Mar, invited us to go with her to Medina de Ríoseco, her hometown. She was meeting up with a few friends for a drink, so we explored and came across this beautiful canal and walking path. They also had a beautiful cathedral. After our mom chatted with her friends, she took us into their famous bakery for dessert. I bought an abisinio, which is basically fried dough topped with sugar and filled with cream. It was so delicious and it reminded me a little bit of home. Mar had to run some errands after while she was out, so we went with her. She took us to the farms of Valladolid, which is known as el campo. Again, pictures cannot capture the pure beauty. There was absolutely nothing but land and sky for miles and miles. On this little errand run, Kelly and I found out more about our host family’s history. They have a summer home in el campo, which has a plaque on the side of it. Mar is a widow, and she told us that her husband did wonderful things for this one small town, so they placed a plaque on their house to honor and appreciate what he had done. At one point, we drove by where he was buried and it was a pretty special moment, because obviously that is an emotional subject. We went to check on their plots of land, where they grow and sell lentils, sunflowers and more. We were amazed at how many plots of land they own. I decided to stay in that night while Kelly went out with a friend from school and I really enjoyed myself. I got to know my host family a little better and before I went to bed, I helped one of my host brothers, Fernando, write a scholarship essay to study abroad in the United States. It was such a cool experience, especially because I had to apply my Spanish knowledge to explain things to him. While he is really great at English, there are some things that are very different between the two languages.
At one point this week, our group went to the beach to relax and attempt to get a tan. We went with a couple of the girls in our group, Emily and Morgan, and some of the boys, Isaac, Austin and Austin’s roommate from another college, Jacob. It was great to get away from everything and just lay in the sun and chat. Kelly and I went out with the boys that night to explore some bars and we had a great time. We ended up meeting one of the boys’ new friends, George from England. Kelly also made some friends in her class from China and we walk home from school with them every day. They live in an apartment on our street, literally 10 steps from ours!
On Saturday, we went to Segovia. Segovia, hands down, has been my favorite excursion so far. About 30 minutes outside of Valladolid, our bus broke down on the side of the road. We had to wait about an hour for a new one to come pick us up, which sucked at the end because we lost an hour of free time in the city. One of our UVa professors, Alfonso, is always our tour guide for excursions. He knows so much about their history, I cannot believe it. It is incredible that the aqueducts are still standing strong, and all of the history within the cathedrals and castles is amazing. I bought a lot of gifts while in Segovia, so if I like you, yours might be from there! ;) When we got home, we grabbed some ice cream, ate dinner and then went out to some bars with our friends and one of our host brothers. The Madrid soccer game was on, so everyone was cheering and celebrating everything that happened. I also bought my first book in Spanish, which you can read about in my blogs for next week!
Sundays are always for church, cleaning, homework and relaxing. This morning, Mar took Kelly and I to a mercadillo, which is a flea market in Valladolid. It was a bit overwhelming and surprisingly, I bought nothing. However, we did eat fresh churros and chocolate for breakfast – and what was super cool is that we watched the woman make the churros. The machine is intense! (Also, the chocolate you get with your churros is very liquidy – liquidy enough to drink it like it was hot chocolate!)
This upcoming week seems like it is going to be pretty intense. We have a lot of different excursions to go on; I’m pretty sure we have something every single day! I might be exhausted by the end, but it definitely is going to fly by.
I cannot believe I have already been here for almost two weeks!
Comments