¡Vida!

I just took a test and think I did rather well on it :) and I also have an hour to do some random stuff, so here´s a post! Spain has been wonderful the past week and a half! I really do love it here and as time goes by, I can´t help but think I want to spend more time here. Who knows, maybe I will do a full semester here! More on that type of stuff later.

Last weekend, we went on an excursion to Santillana del Mar and Llanes. Santillana del mar was pretty fun, it was an little town with authentic shops and such and there was also a tourture museum that we went to! It was pretty gross, but interesting. There was a lot of gender seperation aspects with the tourture instruments--women had it a lot worse! I know that that was to be expected in those days, but that would never fly today, and I am so glad for that!

There were things that I had never even heard of, let alone seen! There was a real live chokey!¨{for those of you that have seen Matilda, you will know what I am talking about!} That was crazy haha.

Llanes was definitely my favorite place! Ahh I love it! I can´t forget the little adventure me and my friend Katie had in getting there, though. So the whole group drove about two hours from Oviedo to Santillana de Mar, then we got back on the bus to go about an hour to Llanes. Well the bus started having problems and we stopped and they discovered that one if the front tires was flat and off we went. We got to a bus station for our current bus to get its tire changed and for us to get on a new bus. Me and Katie get off the bus to go to the bathroom, and I was washing my hands and Katie comes back and is like, "How do you feel about walking?!" The bus had already left! Maybe we should have been worried? But we both just laughed. Luckily we were together and we both had Fernando´s number. So we call him and he´s like, "You guys aren´t on the bus? We started to count off (usually they count us all the time, multiple times) but then we stopped." He told us to stay there and that the bus with the flat tire would be done in about 15 minutes, so we waited and took pictures, that was fun. Riding a huge bus with no one on it was fun too! Good times.

Finally we got to Llanes. It is this little village right on the coast. There were lots of fishing boats and fishermen. It was really tranquill, not a ton of people, the weather was kinda rainy, etc. We got to see these huge cement blocks that were apparently put there to hold the barrier up long ago. Then some artist came along and painted sections of the blocks. It was a tribute to something, but I don´t remember what. It was cool. Then we climbed a bunch of stairs to this grassy view area, that was waaaayyyy awesome! You could see forever over the ocean. I loved it. We didn´t have very much time, but on the way back to the bus, we were starving, so we stopped at this pizza place and were asking about just slices (in Spanish) because it looked like they just had whole pizzas, and the guy responds in English and is like, "This isn´t America, there aren´t pizza restaurants on every corner. I know you guys have Pizza Hut and...." That was quite comical! We also stopped in a few little shops to look around. I found this quaint little hotel that I want to stay in someday! It was just cute how it was all tucked in on the beach. :) Little things like that make me happy.

The weather in Oviedo has been rainy the past few days, which I love! One night this week, we walked around just as the sun was setting and it was perfecto!! I´ve gotten a lot of use (and complements on) of my cute green raincoat :) Love it!! My umbrella is broken in one place, but that´s ok. I really want a paraguas (umbrella) from here--they´re totally legit!!! I just don´t know how I would get it home.

Yesterday, Rosa took me to Las Caldas and San Claudio, that was sooo fun!! I saw this cool castle, and some cool building and bridges. Rosa took me to her parents´house and showed me around. She also said I could come back and visit anytime I want! That was pretty sweet! ¡Estupendo!

Tomorrow, I head off to Barcelona for three days! yay! I´m loving life for sure!

xoxox Ash