This week marks the end of orientation classes, which are three hours a day. Starting this weekend, we have a nine-day break before we start our real classes in October. And by "real," I mean classes that have been dumbed-down for us international students, but have subjects beyond grammar and oral skills. I have chosen to take Spanish culture and art history. Can you believe I passed up Spanish business? Sounds fascinating...heh. In October, we also start intercambios, when we'll be paired with a Spanish student who is learning English. The deal is, we meet a few times a week to have an hour-long conversation: half an hour in Spanish, and half an hour in English. I'm looking forward to this; conversing one-on-one with a student my own age should really help my communication skills improve...ideally. I know it's only been two weeks, but I'm starting to get impatient. I've been told that it usually takes at least six weeks of immersion before you can feel comfortable with the language. Anyone who says you'll just "pick it up" has clearly never been in this situation. The only way you can effortlessly pick up a foreign language is if you're under six years old. Patience is key.

If anyone has any ideas for interesting things to do around Salamanca or surrounding regions, I would love to hear them. I'll have nine school-free days, and I'm eager to see what this city has to offer that I have missed during my settling-in phase. Last week we had a historical walking tour, and right in the middle of it, it started pouring. Good times. I have a few photos that I'm going to try to post here. So if you see a lot of image icons with red X's in the corner, that's me trying to figure out how to host images on this site. I've discovered that no matter how many times I resize these photos, they still come out extremely elongated. Bear with me while I try to fix this. 

This is my bedroom.

This is my roommate after his Body Pump class at the gym.

This is the Patio de Escuelas, a courtyard at the University of Salamanca.

These are some of the sites from the historical tour.

This is the picture I took of the inside of the cathedral, before our tour guide told us that flash photography was not allowed. See, there she is in the lower left corner, crossing her arms at me. 

I'll post more later. And I promise to take more interesting photos in the future, maybe even with some people!