Boy in the Spanish City- with pictures!

I feel like I have already been in Spain forever!  I think this is because some many changes have happened all at once and there are somemany different things that I have done already.  Information overload.

Ok, to pick up where I left off: 

- Sunday we went to the Maritime Musuem and then to a little tavern.  

-  Monday was our first real day of "school".  They purposely make sure that we never have too much to do

 on any day so that we have time to see the town and 

also recover from jet lag.  Anyway, we had our placement test to determine our spanish ability.

  This was a regular scantron test, but with the additional element of an oral interview during the test.  One my one, we were called away from our tests to be interviewed, just outside the doors of the testing room.  It was quite imposing to suddenly be faced with two smiliing spaniards talking rapid fire spanish.  However the questions were easy (Como te llamas- what is your name?  Cuantos anos tienes?- how old are you?) I felt

 pretty good about the test.

Additionally we toured the university a little bit- here are photos of the main building and the gym:

Finally, we all returned home for siesta and lunch (2:30).  Later, most of met for coffe (cafe) in one of the plazas in town for some delightful sipping and chatting.  We wandered around for a bit and then headed to the windy beach.  Right now all we have is wind and cold, but I hope later to get some real beach time in.

I headed to the computer lab at school, always an adventure, for you have to get the keys from the janitor, which is not easy in spanish.  Later I went with a couple others from the group to a ballroom dancing class- more on this later.

And that was about it for a night, on to Tuesday

- Today (Tuesday), was a day 

off.  I woke up early, however, and tried to take a run.  The only

 problem was the huge storm that suddenly blew in from the ocean and dumped water on me.  I can say for a fact that the streets of Santander are pretty bare at 7:00 am.  Anyway, after breakfast and devotions, I then headed back to the school to talk with our director of activities, Ken.  Ken gave us a rather long-winded explanation (as is the way of the spaniards) about the various trips we could take for the weekends.  We were told to go to the office of jovenes (youth life basically) and register and then take our money to the bank where we can deposit it into the youth life's account.  Apparently, spaniards do not trust each other much.  This sounds simple, but of course I got it mixed up, and went to the bank first, confusing the poor teller much with my statement that I had money to give to la oficina de jovenes.  And then I tried to help my groupmates find the office, but it took us a

bout an hour, thanks to my great knowledge. 

That was the morning.  

After lunch, it was time to shop.  There are stores upon stores upon stores near where I live, so it's to just walk around and spend lots.  Clothes are the one thing in Spain that are not cheap.  However, they have sales once a year, in January (extended to February because of the

 recession) that make things very cheap.  My friends and I were able to find some things after a good deal of wandering around (again thanks to my infalliable sense of direction).  We almost went to go see a movie, but in the end decided not to- everyone was way too tired.

The end.  I'm tired.