Last week we went to Valencia, the third largest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona. We had gone there with the entire group several weeks ago for a day, but we had run out of time to get to all the major sites. We hadn't even made it to the Aquarium, which is known to be the best aquarium in Spain and maybe even all of western europe. The aquarium was awesome. They have several different buildings, mostly underground, all connected by tunnels and walkways. One building is dedicated to Mediterranean fish, another to Tropical or Caribbean fish, another to big ocean fish like
sharks and whales. There was an Arctic building and even and Antarctic which was supposed to have penguins, but they were MIA. The aquarium is slightly out of the major part of the city, but it is grouped together with a science museum and art museum. We went to the science museum, which was exactly like Science City or the Science Center in St. Louis, except everything was in Spanish.
After the museums we took a bus into the center of the city and walked around for a while, before catching the train back. There was a Medieval Market in the marketplace, with gypsies and renaissance people everywhere. It was pretty intense, people back to back and everywhere you looked. I got a chance to meet up with two friends from high school who are studying there, Kelly Connor and Angela Miller, which was really nice. We grabbed a quick dinner, then were back on the train.
Taking the train was so easy. The train station in Alicante is about a 10 minute walk from our apartment and the trains usually take you right into the middle of the city.
Classes have started and are going well. I am taking a Spanish Classic Literature class through my program, then two classes on the University of Alicante campus. One is Medieval Literature and the other is a Court Translation class. The translation students at the university are required to know at least three languages, they call them A, B, and C. A would be the language you grew up with, followed by B, C, D...who knows. It's amazing to hear them translate things so easily. We look at actual spanish court cases in the class; it is really interesting.
The weather hasn't been that great here lately, but it at least there's no snow! It has gotten into the upper 50's each afternoon, been overcast, a few sprinkles here and there. Nothing terrible, just could be better. They say that by March things should be decent.
That's about it. We did watch the Super Bowl, the first half we watched the whole time with it dubbed over into spanish, then at half time the waitress figured out how to switch the tv over and we got to watch the second half in english. I saw the half time show, but no commercials. Oh well, next year.
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