Ahh, Europe...land of priceless works of art and culture. Above is my favorite sculpture in town, partly because I just can't believe it exists, and also because it was one of the first landmarks I could find my way back to my apartment from. There are many other sculptures around town:
This one is another landmark, meant to represent maternity, affectionately referred to by the locals as "La Gorda" (the fat lady).
And, lest we forget:
Notice that he is walking without his glasses. Poor guy. They constantly get stolen. As far as I can tell there is a statue of him here because a few years ago they gave him an award and he said some very nice things about Oviedo in his acceptance speech, among them being that it is very clean (which it is) and that it is a fairy-tale city which shouldn't exist. After seeing this statue, it makes you wonder why he didn't include it in the background in a scene in Vicky Christina Barcelona, just for fun.
The other day it was sunny and I had no classes (I wasn't skipping! I genuinely had nowhere to be!) so I wandered around town taking pictures. Here are some more:
The Cathedral.
Something old and picturesque on the side of a church. (Yes, it says 1679)
A cute little street. At the far end the clock tower you see is part of their "City Hall" building.And, well, it looks like the picture uploader is being stubborn, so that's all I can put up for now.
Things are looking up here in Oviedo. Rather than being annoyed by the bureaucracy and the boring classes, I'm taking advantage of all the free time to mosey around the city, hang out with French and Belgian people (as well as Brazilian, Finnish, Romanian, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian, Scottish and...oh yeah...Spanish), and plan voyages elsewhere. I finally feel relatively adapted. The "weird" things don't seem so weird anymore, and I'm really starting to see the benefits of a midday siesta. I love that no matter how much I don't rush I always seem to be 15 minutes early for everything. This is all because I finally registered with the University and hopefully won't have to have any more bureaucratic dealings for the rest of my stay.
I've become good friends with one of my roommates, and I'm so excited that she also wants to travel. Right now I'm looking at going to Milan, Venice and Bologna in early April, Portugal in May, Andalucía (southern Spain) in late May or early June, Rome and Florence in late June, and Malta and Sicily in July, with trips to places within 4 hours from here scattered throughout the weekends. I'm particularly excited about the Malta trip. So far the only thing I really know about Malta is that St. Paul went there, and I only know that because one summer the Vacation Bible School the Catholics and Baptists teamed up to put on decorated the Baptist church basement look like "Malta", which actually looked a lot like Hawaii, and they put on plastic leis and we made seashell friendship bracelets. But my roommate Danielle has a friend who is from there, and he has a friend who has his pilot's license, and they were planning on flying a private plane to Sicily and Southern Italy, which actually seems to be quite common among the Maltese. Never in my life did I think I would ever talk about taking a private plane from Malta to Sicily but it actually is kind of fun to say and makes me feel like I'm in one of those novels about the crumbling British aristocracy which doesn't know what to do with itself. I wanted to go to Austria too to visit a friend but I'm not sure how I can possibly fit it in...I would also like to go back to France around May...maybe after Portugal. I'm also very excited about going to Italy. We are going to Bologna because we know two people that will be studying there, and also because my guidebook says that it is the best food city in Italy (!!!), and Venice, because, well...it's Venice. We booked our tickets round-trip for about $70 (and, believe it or not, that was about $30 more than we expected to pay but the ticket prices rose).
So, as you can see, there is a real benefit to having classes that don't demand anything of you and which don't take attendance. My other roommate complains a lot because she is taking very hard classes which are way beyond her level and involve translating documents from the Middle Ages from Latin to Spanish. I try not to talk about how happy I am around her, so mostly we just don't talk.
My classes aren't all *that* bad, though. I enrolled in a English-Spanish translation course because I was so bored and I knew I had made the right call when the first text the professor gave us to translate was "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" from C.S. Lewis! So not only was it challenging and fun, I also found within it quite a few good arguments which expressed exactly how I feel about the government! yay! It was quite an unexpected surprise. So far that course has been very fulfilling, engaging, and informative...exactly the way I wish my other two courses were.
I think my days of getting frauded out of Euros are over, now that I'm a little more street-wise. I continue to buy cheap produce and have cut back my hot chocolate habit from every day to once a week, now that I have internet at home and don't have quite as much reason to indulge in those cups of wonderful melted bars of goodness.
I currently feel quite continental with my dinner of freshly-baked bread, a platter of different cheeses, and thinly-sliced sausage. The only thing that would make me feel more Spanish is if I were now planning to be out drinking for the next 12 hours. But it's not going to happen. Actually, I have a combination of sinusitis and bronchitis which gives me a cough that sounds like my lungs are rattling and makes small children run. So I'm taking it easy while my two roommates, along with most of the Erasmus kids, run around the beautiful city of León. I am actually really enjoying feeling like I am 24 again (and not 19) and find Oviedo to be quite pleasant when it is Erasmus-free. Not that they aren't nice people, it's just nice to have a break.
More pictures coming soon!
