Today I am officially a resident of the city of Santiago. After looking at a few places around town, I decided to live in a five bedroom flat in the new zone of the town. It is a pretty nice place, complete with all the modern amenities, including a kitchen, two bathrooms, and four Spanish roommates! The two I have spent some time with are great, and I think that my Spanish will improve mucho (es necessario. Ellos no hablan ingles). There are still some things that take a little getting used to, like the entire town shutting down from two to four for siestas, but I am getting more comfortable with the city now that I am out of the hostal. Classes are great too, and I get to walk right in front of the nine hundred year old cathedral when I go to north campus every morning. Those church bells are always, always on time.

The food here is great. We get fresh seafood everyday, the specialty of Galicia being octopus (el pulpo), and the little bocadillo shops around town offer some pretty good sandwich-type things for relatively cheap (cheap in Euros, that is…). I am in completely love with La Tarta de Santiago, this little almond cake covered in powdered sugar, so much so that the nice ladies that hand out free samples in the streets won’t give me any more until I buy something. Oh well, still delicious. I’ve tried a ton of new food, my favorite place being this Brazillian bocadillo place, owned by the nicest Brazillian man and his wife. And no, I have not been to either McDonalds or Burger King since being here (Santiago is actually trying to put a warning label on one Burger King burger like the labels they have on ciggarettes. Apparantly, the Spanish government determined that it alone has more calories than is healthy for a human to consume in an entire day)

All for now, and I will try my best to get more of these up. We are pilfering wireless from someone in our building and it only works on the other side of the piso, so it happens when it happens I guess.