Week 4, OR, How I Among 26 Other BYU Girls Get Mistaken for "Lezbatrons"

January 23
Pilar's paella that we had Sunday is the best thing I've eaten in Spain thus far, and every time I see this picture my mouth starts watering.

January 24
Why is Luisa covered in Bueno bars and other packages of candy, you ask? Bueno bars have become the food of our program--chocolate covered wafers filled with hazelnut cream=HEAVEN! Our whole group is so addicted to these bars that when Luisa and I went to buy them at Carrefour (Spain's Walmart) they were all sold out. The ENTIRE section. Desperate for Bueno bars, we ran from tienda to tienda in search of our chocolate fix, and finely found them in a little mercado and bought a bundle of them along with other candy. Forget the pastries here, it's all about the Bueno bars.

January 25
Becca and Katy modeling their matching sweaters. What I thought was a joke when they tried them on, actually turned out to be a 6 euro purchase on each of their parts. Not only are these sweaters 80's-tastic with the giant pic of a girl's face on the front, they also have bat wings that might possibly allow for flight.

January 26
Roccio, our flamenco teacher, and Luisa. Our university has free flamenco lessons every Wednesday nights, which Luisa and I plan on attending each week. This was the best spent hour of my day and probably my week.

January 27
Museo Panteón de Goya, or Goya's grave. This is a lovely little cathedral that houses Goya's final resting place. During his lifetime, Goya was actually commissioned to fill the ceiling and walls of the cathedral with his paintings, but once the benefactors realized that the art filling the cathedral was too important to be used as a cathedral, they moved the church services and buried Goya here after his death. The picture makes things seem a little gloomy and ominous, no?

January 28a
The city walls of Ávila, one of the thriving cities in Castille y León. I thought the Great Wall was in China, not rural Spain.

January 28b
Plaza Mayor in Salamanca. Not only is this my favorite city in Spain thus far, this is my favorite place to visit because of the beautiful architecture. I'm in love with the lights on each terrace that flood the plaza with light, and casts a golden hue on the white stone making it appear like it's made out of gold--when the plaza was actually being built, the white stone was chosen specifically for this desired effect.

January 28c
Just a fraction of us who went clubbing in Salamanca. It was Alyssa's 21st birthday at midnight that night, so of course we had to party in style! While we were in the first club though, the locals actually thought that we were lesbians because we arrived together and were dancing with one another. We actually thought the club we went to was a gay club (some of the people there probably were), but it turned out they just thought we were gay, which proved for a VERY interesting night.

January 29a
A cathedral in Toro, which is famous for 2 reasons. First, the architecture of the cathedral is intriguing because it was started by the Romans and then finished by the Gothics. Second, they have one of the only statues of a pregnant Mary, which is highly uncommon. Although fact #1 is cool, I find fact #2 to be thrilling.

January 29b
Me in front of the cathedral in Tordesillas. This cathedral was phenomenal--this was our first little taste of the fusion of Spanish/European architecture mixed with Arabic influences. I would have taken some pictures of the fantastic arches and ceiling art, however, though every cathedral has a "no picture" policy that I can usually skirt around, this cathedral actually enforces it--there was a security unit that followed our tour guide group, and would have taken any one of us out if we even thought of raising our camera. Usually I'm fine with crossing the lines into the illegal or "gray" area, but not when there's a GI Joe lookalike staring me down.