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San Froilán and keeping busy in León

October 24th, 2011 secain13

¡Hola!

Not too much is new with me here. I’m still having a great time here in León and at times, it still feels surreal that I’m actually here. I feel so lucky to be able to call this city my home for the year. My friends and I were casually walking one night and as we passed by the cathedral, we all stopped and stared up at how beautiful the cathedral is when lit up at night. I walk by it nearly every day and every time I pass by it, I am still in awe at how gorgeous it is. Its crazy to think that there is so much history in this city, including the cathedral, which dates back to the 13^th century.

For the first two Wednesdays of October, we were lucky enough to not have classes due to one holiday in León and a national holiday throughout Spain. For the local festival in León, San Froilán, there were many different celebrations and traditions in the city. For example, we saw some traditional Leonese dancing, known as the Jota, as well as a procession of “carros”, carts that were decorated by the surrounding pueblos and were led by horses, cows, and donkeys. There was also a procession of banners along the streets and a medieval marketplace with local merchants selling hand crafted items. The city streets were filled with people and it cool to see the traditions that are centuries old.

I’ve been keeping pretty busy with classes and meeting new friends. I’ve also starting tutoring English to a couple different families so that I can earn a little bit of extra spending money here. I play games with younger children and teach them vocabulary and I also spend an hour per week conversing with 2 university professors that are looking to improve their English. Even though everyone is required to learn English here, the people here don’t have a lot of opportunities to practice speaking with native English speakers. So far, the classes have been fun for me and it’s always nice to earn a little bit of cash!

This weekend, my friends and I will be heading to Barcelona! This is one of the trips that the university offers so we will be taking advantage of the great opportunity. We’re all really excited to go and I will be sure to update the blog upon my return!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 24th, 2011 at 10:28 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.