Salamanca: November flashback

Hi all! A while back I promised to post about my week-long trip to Salamanca in November, and I had written the post in January sometime. However, this was around the time that the photo-uploading site was down, and I abandoned the blog post because I didn’t want to publish it if there were no pictures. I didn’t remember it until recently. I have a couple of entries like this, but I decided just to publish this one because #1) it’s finished and #2) it’s pretty long, I promised to write it, and it would be a shame to let such a long work go to waste, haha. Enjoy!

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As promised, here is the blog on the trip that I took to Salamanca! Like I said in my last entry, Hurricane Midterm Season hijacked my computer during the month of December, and I found myself with very little (if any) sleep that month, with the prospect of the impending Christmas break and a chance to see my family being the only thing that really pulled me through. Unfortunately, that meant that my blog went neglected just until now, but this year, I will be faithfully writing weekly about my experiences to avoid another such mishap.

So. On to Salamanca! It is tradition for the second year and foreign exchange students of the Sciences-Po Poitiers Ibéroaméricain cycle to participate in a weeklong foreign exchange program at the Universidad de Salamanca, in Spain. This school year, the field trip was from November 15 to the 23rd. Two buses were rented out, and one hundred-twenty-odd students sang, slept, gossiped, and got on each others nerves for the ten+ hours of the ride. I went from between being fascinated with the journey, to chattily discussing what I thought Salamanca would be like with my neighbors while admiring at the changing landscape, to vexingly annoyed with the seventh shouting (singing?) rendition of “C’est nous les plus forts-orts-orts!”

We arrived in the sunny city of Salamanca on the 16th, which was a Sunday. I remember just walking around in groups, wandering around all the touristy shops and wondering what all the frogs were all about. There were frogs for sale everywhere you looked—smiling stuffed frogs, porcelain frogs, glass frogs, tiny frog cell phone charms, froggy candies. I bought my sister a crowned frog prince as a keychain for her bookbag, figuring I’d find out the significance of the omnipresent frog later on in the trip.

Later on during the day, we checked into the hostel. For a week, I stayed in a co-ed room with twenty other people. It was an experience. It took me long enough getting used to the mixed bathroom in Sciences-Po. Getting used to living with boys and sleeping with them in the same room was … well, was something that I really did not get used to, but tolerated because I had no other choice and the hostel was free, haha. Yes, there were sexual tensions, yes there were vapid girls who decided to walk freely about the room in just a bra and pajama pants and made the rest of us females roll our eyes, or the self-approving boys with four packs (I did not see any six packs) who smugly did the same. But most of the time it was just awkward, with me thinking “How do I change from my tanktop into this dress without flashing the entire room” and “Ohmygod there’s been a boy peeing in the toilet all this time I’ve been brushing my teeth!” (Our room had only one bathroom, and opening the door partially covered the toilet when you walked in, blocking your view).

The next day, we went to the Universidad de Salamanca, and attended the welcome presentation given by the Director of the Instituto de Iberoamérica, Miguel Carrera, and Flavia Freidenberg, the Co-director of the Institute. Olivier Dabène, the director of the Sciences-Po Poitiers cycle, spoke as well. Each day, we attended lectures ranging on subjects like the ambivalent left and citizenship in Latin America, to poverty and inequality in the region. The conferences were held in Spanish, with one of them—on the subject of the local and national politics of Brazil—instructed in Portuguese. I caught a couple of words in that last lecture: “São Paulo,” “cifra,” “65%”. But most of the time I nagged my Brazilian friend Maria about what was going on, and what was the time. I’m actually looking at my notes I took in my copybook right now, and on that day is scribbled “¡¡¿¿Portugués blablabla más portugués??!!” All in all though, the conferences were quite intriguing, and I appreciated the academic side of the field trip. Fortunately, though, the classes only lasted about three or four hours, so that gave us a lot of time to explore the city by day—and by night.

There is only one way to describe Salamanca—golden. There was nothing quite so delightful when walking to school in the morning, as watching the sun illuminate the stone of the blonde-colored buildings. Even the streets looked smudged a tawny grey, and the Plaza Mayor at night radiated a gilded hue of cafe.

The other colors were muted—the pleasant blue sky, the neat, even grass of the many little well-tended parks, the olive-charcoal wrought iron of apartment balconies—but deep, and clear at the same time. It was so different from Poitiers, where the color palette is a sierra of silvers and grays, and the sun is continually guarded by somber clouds, while the buildings and the streets are the color of slate.

During the pauses between classes, my friends and I explored the different boutiques, restaurants, bars, and nightclubs of the town. I also picked up a few cultural beliefs and discovered the reason behind frogs’ popularity in the town—they are thought to brought good luck! On the façade of the university, there is hidden a small frog. It is said that if you can find it, you will have good luck throughout your life. Apparently students in Salamanca look for it too, before passing exams. I bought another little frog cell phone charm, just in case.

I also got to see the most beautiful view of the city from the rooftop of the Church of San Esteban at night, when the sun was setting.

On the second to last day of the trip my friend Donique from Georgetown, who is studying in Madrid, visited and we talked about our study abroad adventures so far—what we liked, what we didn’t, and things we just did not understand. It was so nice to catch up, and to talk to someone who knew exactly what I was going through.

The last day in the town, I had tea with a friend one last time in my favorite café Valor, said goodbye to Salamanca and Donique, and we all boarded the bus back home to Poitiers. There was such a finality to it all. I wondered when would be the next time I would come to Salamanca, or to Spain, or see Donique. I don’t believe I really like goodbyes. I was really glad to leave that rickety bunk bed in the hostel behind, though.