Andalucía

"La vida es como un elefante que sólo sabe ir hacía delante."
Life is like an elephant that only knows how to move forward.
-A quote I found among the writings on the bathroom walls at the Complutense.
I really like the idea behind it; that there is nothing that can change what has already happened, which I think the entirety of the human race has a hard time coming to terms with. In a desperate attempt to connect this to what I have to say: My friends and I had to move beyond the fact that we took an eight hour bus at midnight and then had to walk over an hour in the off an on rain to get to where we were staying because we were in CÁDIZ! Later on that day, the sun came out quite a bit, and we went down to the beach. Only three people actually swam, but I put my feet in the water ans we all enjoyed the sand and the waves from the Atlantic; one of the first things we notices when we got off the bus was that you could smell the ocean in the air. Because we were late in planning our trip, there were no hostels open, however, one of the listings on the hostel website was Casa de David. We sent two nights in in rooms of David's apartment that he rents out to travers. He is an extremely nice guy, a transplant from Buenos Aires with a lot of travel experience and an extensive language repertoire.
The coolest experience for me was seeing the cámera obscura. Near the top of a tower, there is a completely darkened room where a series of mirrors reflect an image onto a concave white screen where a moving image is progected. You could say its an antiquated form of streaming video, and it was the first one in Spain. On the top of said tower, there is an amazing view of all of old Cádiz and the ocean. There's something I find very personal about seeing a city from above. On the ground there, no one would expect that most of the roofs are red, you can also see everyones laundry hanging out to dry :P On the ride back, we saw all that we had missed by taking a night bus there. The scenery is absolutely wonderful and ranges from small rolling hills to flat land with what might be olive groves to mountains (that we knew were there withoug even seeing them because of the obscenely windy part of the ride Friday night). Another interesting fact, we the sunrise on two of the three mornings of the trip :)
Now, seeing as I'm here as a student I should probably talk about classes. We had our first week of real classes las week, and my favorite so far is the Taller de Teatro Contemporáneo (Contemporary theater workshop), but thats no surprise. The professor is so enthusiastic and engaging, two things which are lacking in my Complutense class. I'm not sure what exactly is the deal eith that class yet. I can understand the professor well enough, but she speaks very quietly and people in the class make a lot of noise. There are also a lot of other "extranjeros" in the class, which im not excited about, but its expectid I guess because is is a firt year course.
It occured to me how much more my apartment (0r any place, I suppose) feels like home when you return after staying the night elsewhere. I'm enjoying the process of getting to know my flatmates better and looking forward to future bonding time. I also like meeting roomates of friends from the program and getting exposure to so many different kinds of accents and the people that go along with them whether they're from Spain or not. Its still early, 10pm here, but I've got the "all I want is to go to sleep" bug now.
If you ever have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer in my next post!