Catching up

So the past week and a half I've been in Spain a lot has happened. I was chased by a drunk guy, I ate octopus, I've walked A LOT, and I've gotten to travel outside of Pamplona. But first I'll talk about all of the differences I've noticed here in Spain.

• Eating- Lunch and dinner are a lot different here. They eat lunch at around 2:30 and it's almost always three courses. It starts with a soup, salad or something similar. Next is the main course usually meat and something else. And finally dessert which is usually some type of fruit. Also, everything has olive oil on it and there is ALWAYS fresh bread. They buy bread everyday and get rid of it when it gets crunchy. Dinner is around 10:00 and is usually leftovers or have whatever you want, it's definitely not a big deal.
• Driving- Driving here is really scary. The streets and lanes are really narrow and there are crosswalks everywhere so you have to slam on your brakes when people decide to cross in front of you. In Navarra, the state/province I'm in, there are a lot of roundabouts, and people swerve out of the lanes to exit at the right spot. My host mom told me they decided to add more roundabouts instead of traffic lights because it's faster, but I don't know if faster is better... In short, I'm glad we're not allowed to drive.
• School- School here is definitely a lot harder and a lot more boring. You usually stay in the same class and the teachers switch around, but for some reason my classes change all of the time, so I never know where to go. All of the classrooms are very plain and they only have a chalkboard, no projectors or fancy smartboards. Finally, the school hours are a bit different. I have three classes and then a 20 min break and three more classes, but Tuesday and Thursday after the break I have two more classes, a 2-hour lunch break and then two more classes so those are very long days.
• City- Pamplona is very different from Crescent City. For starters there's about 195,000 more people and so far I'm liking it. I live 30 seconds away from my school, so I don't have to wake up very early to get ready. I also live next to a major shopping street/plaza so when I need something I don't need to make a special trip to Wal-mart, I can go to one of the many shops or malls.

I'm sure there's a lot more, but I'm really tired so I'll just have to add them later. Anyway, now I'll talk about the wobbly drunk guy. I was with two other exchange students, Julia and Abbie (all of the 8 or so exchange students in Pamplona are girls except me) and we decided to walk around the main plaza. While we were walking we noticed this short, extremely drunk man with a bottle of alcohol in his hand just wandering around. I guess he noticed us too because he started to stumble towards us really fast. The girls screamed like, well girls, and ran until they couldn't see him anymore. After we walked around some more we decided to go to an awesome Helado/Crepe shop. We bought all of ours sweets and went outside to eat in the main square. While we were eating I noticed the drunk guy creeping up behind the girls. One of them turned around, looked at him, and then we ran away from him all over again. The crazy thing is, between the area we first saw him and the area where he creeped up behind us, there are a bunch of intersections and it's pretty far (and he was really drunk the whole time) so I have no idea how he found us again. I saw him again a few days later in the same general area, I'll try to get a picture of him to put up.

Well it's 11:00 right now and I have school tomorrow so that's all for now. I'll try to get that picture :).

The place to get Crepes and Helado

¡Adiós!

Travis