Another weekend in Caceres:

I am having a hard time keeping track of all the things we have been doing this past weekend, but heres a good wrap up of the past few days.

Thursday night, a group of 6 of us, decided to treat ourselves to nice a dinner out on the town. We found a place called Big House that is apparently the best chinese/thia food in Caceres. We walked over to the restaurant at about 7:00 to eat, and walked into the part of the building that we thought was the restaurant. We were greeted by a lady in a robe, who asked us how many people we had. When we told her 7, she looked a little confused. We told her we needed a table for 7 people; for what we assumed we were referring to as a table to eat at. We quickly realized that the place we were at was not the waiting room for the restaurant, but for Big House Massages. No wonder the lady was shocked when we said we wanted a table for 7. Ohhh how funny language barriers can be. We eventually made our way to the restaurant and enjoyed one of the better meals I have had in Caceres yet. It was a very fun evening and a nice treat from the normal food we have at home.

Friday was spent running errands in the afternoon as well as enjoying the beatuiful weather! It has been so nice out lately, so we have been trying to spend as much time outside as we can. We went to the bus station and bought our tickets for barcelona, as well as picked up flowers for our mom for valentines day. We decided to stay in friday night to try and spend some time with our other roommate Bengt, who was going to be leaving the next day. It was a nice night to catch up on some sleep and hang out at home.

We said our goodbyes saturday morning, and promised to keep in touch. It has been nice to have another student here who can help show Ginny and I the ropes, but we are excited to be able to use the extra room now for us:) Saturday afternoon, Ginny, Sean, Andrew and I took a bus out to a park just outside of Caceres. It has a lot of open land with a few lakes and lots of boulders. The landscape reminds me of a mix between New Mexico and Boulder Colorado. The mountains to the north of us are snow covered, but the area we were were at was fairly dry and mainly sheep grazing grounds. Although we didnt have a lot of time to spend out at the park, it was nice to get out into the "real country side of spain." We spent the rest of the day relaxing and getting ready for the night.

Saturday night we attended Catholic mass in one of the older churches in town. It was interesting to see how worship is done in Spain. Although I am not Catholic, it was cool to see the service done in Spanish and pick out the similiarties of routine from here and the united states. Its a neat experience to know that even though these people are speaking in a different language and are on the opposite side of the world as us back home, we are all worshipping the same God!

We went out to a few bars after mass, but Ginny and I went home early to try and get some sleep. We knew we had a lot of homework to catch up on for today and wanted to make sure we didnt fall too far behind for this upcoming week.

Gotta go get started on some of my homework! Wish me luck.

ps-my computer crashed on me this past weekend, so I may not be able to update as often as possible but will try my best! My roommate Ginny has been letting me use her computer, so I should be able to get by fine, but hopefully I can find a better solution in these next few weeks.