Confessions of A Working Girl

This weekend was the first excursion that ISA had. It was a two day, one night trip. Yesterday morning (Saturday the 16th) we met up at 9, and drove about an hour to the first stop on the list, Mogarraz. At Mogarraz is a walking trail called ‘Camino del Agua’. The people kept saying that the route was ‘facil’ –that is, easy–and on the map, the route didn’t look that bad, so I didn’t think anything of it.And at first, the walk was pretty easy. Of course there were several groups though. One group of people pulled in front immediately…I stayed towards the middle. That way, if I got lost or unsure where I was going, I could wait for the ISA people to catch up. I found a bunch of what I think are called ‘horse chestnuts’. I also found an acorn, but not the short squatty kind. It was the Totoro kind, except for the color. Shortly after that, the walk started getting harder.

Later I realized that I had neglected to look at the bottom of the map where it explained that the walk was first flat, then uphill, downhill, flat, downhill a lot, uphill a lot, then flat again. That kind of walk–no, hike–is a bit harder than it sounds. It took about two hours to walk the whole route, which was…someodd kilometers that I think someone figured out equaled approximately 4 or 4 1/2 miles. One of my ankles still hurts from forcing my feet into the awkward position of walking down the ‘hills’!

We got back to the bus and ate lunch…and also waited for the people that had been walking in the back. As much as ISA insisted that we be there on time, they were not about to leave without everyone.

Next we went to La Alberca. There, we went into a house that had been turned into a museum. We were told that it was an example of a typical house in that town. The way the rooms were set up, it seemed tiny, but when you had actually seen everything, you realized that they had more room than you had originally thought.

We had a little bit of time, so I walked around with Eve, a girl named “Sylvia” and a boy named “Raffael.” We explored the area near where we had visited the museum house.  We found a path that was really quiet, and that had horse chestnuts all over the ground, because they kept falling off the trees. Several times we heard a noise, and when we looked, it was just a chestnut. Towards the end of the path there was a stretch that, instead of being dirt or cement was ‘paved’ by broken pottery.

The last stop of the day was ‘Peña de Francia’. It was this church on top of this wicked huge mountain. I felt better, seeing the mountains, since when I’m at school normally, I see them every day. I took a whole bunch of pictures, which I’m going to upload most to facebook, since last time I put them here it didn’t seem to work so well… I loved the mountain though. Sometimes I’m afraid of heights, but this was not one of those times. I was able to look straight down and feel only peace upon seeing the view.

Of course, on the bus ride, the other kids would not forget that we were driving up/down this huge mountain. On the way up, they didn’t seem to think so much of it…maybe because until you look down from the top, you don’t realize just how high you are. But on the way down, there were plenty of comments. It didn’t help that every now and then, the bottom of the front of the bus would brush against one of the guardrails. Some of the kids called comments like “Here we go again!” every time there was a corner. And once, I heard one kid call “Hey guys! There’s a bus down there! That’s what happened to the last group of ISA students!”

We drove to the Ciudad Rodrigo, where we’d be staying the night. I ended up with Aly as my roommate again…for about five minutes. Then we were offered a chance at having our own rooms. Since Aly jumped at the chance, I didn’t say anything, and ended up with my own room as well. I was going to go with Aly and a group of kids to dinner, but I waited downstairs for a while, but they didn’t come.

Another group of kids came down though, and they invited me to go with them. I said that I was waiting for Aly, and they waited with me for about ten minutes. When she still didn’t come, I decided to go with them anyway, figuring that Aly would figure out that I’d gone with another group. I vaugly recognized most of the kids from the group, but one I remembered meeting a few days ago, at the first theater meeting. His name is “Richard.”

We walked around for a few minutes, not sure where to eat.  We found a pizza place, and Raffael was determined to have pizza. That didn’t sound like a bad idea, so I said that if he was staying, then I’d stay too. Another boy “Jon” also stayed. The others decided to continue on in search of chinese food.

Jon, Raffael and I had just ordered when the group that had gone looking for chinese food came back. We moved our table over to theirs. They had just ordered when the group that Aly was with walked in! There was no more room at our table, so they put together several other tables to make another long one. When we counted, there were about 30 of us there! (And Aly did say that she had figured out that I had gone with another group and it was no big deal.)

During dinner, I was sitting next to Raffael and Jon, and I was across the table from “Harry.” We talked about all sorts of random things…but it was a little hard because it was so loud! Towards the end of the meal, Jon asked “Do you mind if I smoke?” I hesitated–my lungs had kind of had enough for the day, what with the walk earlier and all–but I said “I guess not.” To my surprise, he insisted “If you mind, then tell me. I don’t like when people smoke, and I don’t like second hand smoke.” he also mentioned something about ‘hating cigarettes’. So my question was “Then why do you smoke?” He kind of laughed, and said “Addiction is a funny thing.” He did go outside to smoke. When he came back in, when we were leaving, I told him thanks for being so…I think I used the word ‘courteous’, or something similar. Any other time I had given that response to that question, the person had just gone ahead and smoked…although some of them don’t bother asking. So that was something that really caught my attention.

We walked back to the hotel. Some of the group stayed there, but me, Richard, a boy named “Nick”, a girl named “Ashley”, a girl whose name I forgot (sorry! I told you I was bad with names! >.<) and Raffael decided to go in search of a store that was open. Raffael and Richard were still hungry, and the rest of us didn’t seem to really care, just wanted to go anyway.

When we got back to the hotel, it was about 11:30. We went to Richard and Harry’s room and watched a movie. Apparently, it’s called ‘Dear Reader’ and it is a soundtrack that you play over the soundtrack of the first Harry Potter movie. A parody. There were a few parts that I didn’t like, but overall, it was pretty funny. A whole bunch of people came and went during the movie. And Richard had a bottle of wine that he shared. It was actually pretty good–especially since I heard someone say that it had only cost 3 euro. I made Richard laugh with my typical wine tasting line–”It needs more sugar.”

I got back to my room about 1:30 am.

This morning, I was the first person down to breakfast. I had been sitting there for only a few minutes though, when another person from our group came in. He sat across from me, and we introduced ourselves. His name is “Leon.” He let me talk about James Dean for close to thirty minutes. I was amazed, especially since he was actually interested in the information. The James Dean talk started when he had asked me about where I live, and I was talking about Cape Cod. He had asked whether the bridges were draw bridges. I had said no, they were permanent, and they had been built in…1935. I was pretty sure that was the year, I said, since last time I had gone over the bridge I remember thinking that James Dean had been 2 years old when they built the bridge. Leon laughed and said that that was an interesting way to remember, and that was how I started talking about James Dean.

A little while later, while we were waiting for everybody, I decided to wait outside with two boys who were already out there. One is “Drake” and the other is “Jack.” We talked about movies. I suggested that they watch the movie ‘The Great Race’ since that has one of the best villain side-kicks that I’ve seen. (Of course it was Peter Falk) and yes, that did go with the conversation because we had just been talking about Muttly and what’s his name…Dastardly (though we couldn’t remember the name at the time.)

We, that is, the whole group, walked around for a while–I got a ton of pictures–and then we visited another church. This church is actually a historical site, and it’s called Catedral de Santa Maria. The neatest part was a…a…sculpture thing. It had Mary standing over a glass coffin that had Jesus in it. To either side was a Saint (San Domingo and San Fransisco). On top, above Mary were two angels (they had pretty wings) and in between the angels was another saint, San Diego de Acala. He was holding a cross, and there was something about the way that his face had been sculpted that makes me want to research about him. I could have sat there staring at him for a long time…but of course, we had to look at the other things in the church, and I hardly even noticed the wicked old songbooks.

After that, we had free time for lunch. I went with Richard, Raffael, Harry, I think Jon was there…a girl named “Tiffany”, a girl named “Flora”, a girl named “Lila”, a girl named “Cara”…and there was one more boy, but I can’t quite recall who. I do remember that there were ten of us, five boys and five girls..Oh! And Nick was there. The chinese place we went to was nice, but they were a little slow. We ended up having to ‘run’ back to the hotel, since we were supposed to meet up at 3:15, and we didn’t leave the restaurant until 3:15.

Then it was on the bus, back to Salamanca. I made sure to exchange phone numbers with several people, since I know that they go out at night a lot. This way, I’ll end up going out too…because I had fun walking around with them last night, and it seems to me that it’s a little silly to spend every weekend locked in my room.

Well, I have a nine o clock class tomorrow, so I better check and make sure that I didn’t have homework!

2 Comments » AUnt Roz:

October 17th, 2010 @ 5:00 pm Hey Wedny-

Sounds like a very fun weekend. And interesting sights. Two thumbs up for going out at night rather than being locked in your room all weekend. (-:) Salamanca is supposed to have a great night life.

Adios!

Danielle Galbreath:

October 17th, 2010 @ 5:33 pm Hey looks like your having a fun time in Spain(-: Hey you been taking pictures, need to see some soon(-: Keep having fun and remember go to a bar at least once (or more) while your there its awesome lol ttul