Settling in

So here's my first blog entry from Spain. It's been 3 days now since I've been here in the city of Oviedo. So first a little info about this place. Oviedo is a small city located in the province of Asturias, almost at the northwesternmost point of Spain, with one province in between here and Portugal. It's about 45 minutes south of Spain's northern coast. The weather here is like paradise after coming from snowy Amherst. When it's "cold" here it's about mid 50's F at night. Ha, in Amherst it was around 19 F when I left, and that's during the day.

Here are some mountains I saw while on the plane ride from Madrid to Oviedo.

As the one hour plane ride from Madrid to Oviedo drew near the end and we lowered altitude, I could see thesurrounding countryside outside the city.

The mountains are very close to us here, when I look out my 8th floor window of the apartment I'm staying in, I see green peaks not too far in the distance with a large, lit up statue of Jesus, arms outstretched, and as a matter of fact I walked pretty close the other day to the edge of the city, and the mountains appeared to be quite close.

The part of the city I live in is in the commercial center of the town where the most activity is. When I open the door to the elevator on my floor, that's right, I said open the door, because the elevators here have doors like a house that you pull open to enter, I push the 0 button to go to floor 0 because that's the first floor of a building for them here. -1 is the basement haha. I learned the hard way today that negative numbers around here next to floor numbers always mean an underground floor when I walked into a portugese for spanish natives class on the wrong floor but the right room number at the university today and had to ask the teacher where to go as the students laughed at my confusion, I thought it was pretty funny because the class got a kick out of watching me talk back and forth with their teacher.

Anyhow, so here are some pictures of the room I'm staying in.

Here is the view at night looking downward from my window.

Here is the rest of the apartment, it winds around a corner in an L shape. This is the entrance, note the large, centered doorknob haha.

And this is what you see once you open the door and enter.

Upon walking down the hallway the first room after the bathroom is the kitchen, on the right. We eat dinner at this table together around 9 PM every night. "We" includes myself, my host Helen, and sometimes Victor who is another student who stays here who is from this city and rents another room in the apartment from Helen. I have not eaten yet with Helen's son, a 42 year old lawyer, but he too has his own room here that he occasionally stays in.

This is the living room where Helen watches her shows at night and also converts the couch into a bed and sleeps here.

I was surprised to learn they have "high speed" internet here hooked up to a wireless router. This is because a student from Japan who stayed here last semester installed the router, figures... haha. I was surprised about the internet because other students from my program are in houses or apartments that don't even have phones let alone internet.

Well this is all I feel like posting for now as I do have much more to write but must go attend a dinner/meeting at a Sidreria, a hard cider oriented bar/restaraunt that caters to the customs of this region which have celtic roots. The cider here is a big deal for the locals and is more popular than beer and wine. Apparently there are a whole set of special rules and actions to follow when partaking in this cultural event of going to to a Sidreria so I guess I'm going to go see them. I'll take some pictures tonight and post them later. Tomorrow I want to try to get some photos of the university, as I've been so busy I've not had the time to take any.