Hey guys, I hope everyone is having a good week. Things in Salamanca this week have been crazy with tourists. Every town in spain has a patron saint, and each year there is a two week celebration for the patron saint. The festival called "Feria" started monday 9/7 with the best fire work (fuebos artificiales) show ive ever seen in my life. The fire works were followed by a concert in the plaza mayor. The plaza mayor is known as "the living room of spain", its an inclosed outdoor plaza filled with shops and resturants. Its the perfect place to sit and nurse a cup of coffee. Like I mentioned before the celebration goes for two weeks, and each night there is a different concert in the plaza. In addition there are little stands of food set up outside all over the town to sample what the different resturants have to offer. Its similar to the italian festival held in lawrence each year. Everything else in spain is going great, you truely learn something new each day. This week I learned that in the 1200s when a student was tested in the university he had to sit in a chair in the center of a square room and answer questions from more than 13 professors seated around the room. My home stay is going very well. My roomate evan and I get along very well, each night we watch the simpons in spainish before cena (dinner) at 9:00 PM. My senora candy continues to cook new creations each day. The only thing i said no to this week was a banana and a hard boiled egg. Other than that i have been eating everything she has made, including asparagus salad. The other night we were telling her how much we love to eat bacon and eggs in the U.S. and later that night she made us an egg and bacon bocadia (Sandwhich). It was the cardiac special ive been craving for two weeks.

The weather over here has been great, mid 70's during the week but it cools down at night. Ive been in Europe for two weeks and i saw rain for the first time today. The classes are going well too. Its very different from the U.S. in some ways, for example we have class for five hours a day straight from 9-2, and we take our final exam tommorow but the class ends wed, go figure. This past saturday we took a walking tour of salamanca, and went into some of the chapels that date back to the 1100's. The alters and stain glass were amazing. This thursday I start my fall break and I will be traveling to southern spain with my program then I will be spending two days in madrid with some friends in my program followed by five days in Rome with Shelby. I will be back sunday 9/28 and I will post more shortly after. Until then I have added all my photos thus far on facebook. Have a good couple weeks.