Not a very creative title, I apologize, but I figured better something than nothing, and better late than nether. I started this blog with the intention of updating it every few days when I was on a trip, yet here I am sitting on a park bench in Segovia (just close enough to a café to use their wifi connection, shh) having been here a week, and I’ve yet to update it once!

In terms of what we’ve been doing in España, each day follows a predictable routine and yet each is remarkably different, bringing excitement to the familiar routine I’ve settled into having now lived here for a week. We have classes in the morning–learning about the history of España and more specifically Segovia, a small city with a remarkably rich past, and our last class deals with the Spanish language, taught by a teacher who is, as we say, un poco extraño! Right now we’re learning (or in my case, relearning) different tenses, solidifying our knowledge of the basics of the language before moving onto new material. We have an hour or two after classes to sit at a café and chat while getting a bite to eat (firstly because you must order food in order to sit at the cafés and secondly because we’re still not used to the late meals here and get hungry easily) or maybe go shopping, something that has become something of an obsession among the girls in the group (I am not excluding myself from this statement…I have a recently discovered obsession with white tank tops and sundresses)!

In the afternoon, we have “excursions” to various places of historical significance in  and around Segovia–so far we’ve seen places such as El Alcazar, El Escorial, and La Granja, as well as walked around the city in an effort to better understand the historical context of the city we’ve come to known as a home.

This city is quaint and beautiful and not at all what I expected but more than I ever hoped for.

Today during siesta I started reading “The Happiness Project” and I’m feeling all-capital letters INSPIRED. I don’t think I’m going to start my own happiness project–not yet–but it’s definitely something to keep in mind as the year goes on.

Tonight we’ve just been standing in the square, talking and trying to immerse ourselves in the local culture…and get wifi 🙂