hola, que tal!?
tommorow is the first day of classes. they have really shown us a lot around the city this weekend, it was very jam-packed. today we had our last orientation and we got to meet all the professors that we will be working with this semester. everyone seems really nice and since the classrooms are literally 1/4 the size of a small room (they have accordian partitions) they assured us we will be spending little if any time in the classrooms. all my teachers sound interesting and fun, can't wait!
after our orientation we got a lesson in taking the tram to the beach. it was absolutely beautiful. today was the best day to go, it was the first sunny day since we've gotton here (although it was still pretty cold!).
today i also got my first experience at the central mercado, it was amazing! there are over a hundred different stands selling everything you can imagine. the only frustrating part was when i bought philidelphia cream cheese and then went two stands down to find fresh creme de queso with chives. oh well, next time! also my spanish has definately improved in just these last few days. the only time i needed my phrase book at the market was to ask for "guva" which i eventually found. everything was pretty inexpensive considering the quality and quantity. the only thing that really caught me offguard was that an anchovie was 1.69 euro! maybe i misunderstood but that seemed like a lot! i ended up getting freshly sliced nova which i have eaten everyday since i've been here...who would've thought!
this past sunday i got a chance to go to a picasso exhibit. it was awesome, i never knew he wrote. it was all about a play he had written called "desire caught by the tail". the exhibit was really interesting and showed a lot of the liberation of paris. after that i went to the oldest church in valencia which was beautiful. a baptism had just ended and afterward when we were walking behind the church we saw the family throwing candy in the street to all the kids, which they told us was the tradition after a baptism.
later that night we all went on a walk in the riverbed park accross the street from our apartment. the river is dried up so when ur in the park the city is above you all around, its pretty wild. we walked past a lot of futbol games and a circus that was perfoming in the middle. we also went to the fountain thats in the new video i posted and this GIANT playground that you have to see to believe, its a huge playground made out of a gulliver statue, i cant even really explain it. me and a couple of friends headed over to a resturaunt after that and got some sangria and called it an early night around 11, it was sunday after all!
Your dad