Settling down in my Spanish City…

So here’s where I start to brag about how amazing Leon is and how much I like the city already. After about three weeks of orientation grammar/culture classes, I have just had my first few days of classes. I’m loving my time here as I’ve begun to feel more at home in this city and my friends and I have been figuring out our favorite places to go to hang out. I’ve also been feeling a lot more comfortable with my host madre as we’re starting to get to know each other more. I’m pretty relieved to finally start classes because, like most HC students, I’m used to always have something to do. I started to get homesick when I had so much free time on my hands, so I am glad to be keeping busy with classes.

In our free time, my friends and I have enjoyed going out for tapas in the city, which is something that is really unique about Leon. Tapas are like appetizers and Leon is one of the few cities in Spain that will give you free (yes, I said free) tapas with the drink that you order. Each bar has a signature tapa, including pizza, potatoes with alioli, chorizo, ham, tortilla, and morcilla, just to name a few. There are a ton of different bars in the city so normally when people go out for tapas, “tapear”, they go to a bunch of different places for a variety of foods. The food here has been great, to say the least. Even though I would normally consider myself to be somewhat of a picky eater, this experience has allowed me to try tons of new dishes, most of which I’ve really enjoyed!

In the past couple of days, we’ve also started to meet some of the other university students, mostly the other foreign students, who are also studying in Spain for the year. There are a lot of different students, especially from all over Europe, and the university offers a lot of activities for us throughout the year.  For example, there are trips throughout Spain during the year offered exclusively to the international students. These trips are included in our tuition and include places such as Barcelona, Salamanca, Asturias, Andalucía, and Valencia, to name a few.  I’m extremely excited to take advantage of these trips because I’ll be able to see all around Spain as well as get close with the international kids here.

This past weekend, we went on our first of many excursions of the year. Our first trip was to Las Medulas, former gold mines, and Astorga, a small city with a beautiful cathedral, ancient roman walls, and a building designed by Gaudi. Las Medulas consisted of a lot of walking and hiking to see the beautiful mountains and the mines. It was a very cool sight and I didn’t think I would see anything like it! Also, Astorga is famous for its chocolate production, as a chocoholic, I definitely enjoyed it! Both cities are located in the province of Leon so they were relatively close by. Overall it was a great day!

Thats all for now, I will keep you updated as to how my classes are going soon!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Settling down in my Spanish City…”

1. Jeannie LaPlatney says:

   October 14, 2011 at 2:47 pm

   Hi Shannon,
   These pictures are great! Be sure to save them for the photo contest next year!

   Jeannie

2. rrreed says:

   June 19, 2012 at 4:38 pm

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