Carnival!

This weekend has been amazing! It was Carnival, which is basically halloween, everyone gets dressed up and there are parades and lots of festivals, just no trick-or-treating- I found out that's a very American thing. But everyones costumes were so great and creative! A group of girls were dressed up like there were in a roller coaster, probably the best costume I've ever seen. But a group of us went to a town called, Santona, about 35 minutes away to a festival for carnival. There was a live band so I finally got to dance a little bit which was so fun! I took pictures with all the penguins <3 Also, found a group of girls dressed as owls, so I asked to take a pic with them for Mal. I told them that my roommate back home lovesss owls, it made me miss her!

Our excursion Friday was to Santillana del Mar and an museum on the Cuervas de Altamira. The museum was pretty interesting, they have created a replica of the caves, and all the ancient drawings that are in them. We learned about how they were discovered and about all of the inhabitants of the caves dating back over 18,000 years. Right before we were leaving I noticed that I didn't have my phone in my pocket anymore, so I was freaking out running around the museum asking everyone if they had seen a phone! Luckily, one of the guys in our group picked it up and had it! Don't know what I would've done if had lost my phone in Spain :/ After the museum we went into the town of Santillana del Mar and walked around and ate lunch, such a cute little place.

Saturday I went to the fish market with my madre, another girl from our group and her host mom. It's a huge market in the middle of Santander! The basement level is fish, and upstairs is pork, chicken, cheese, and other red meats. Then outdoors there are vegetables and fruits. It was so so awesome. We literally bought the fish, fresh at 12 and ate it a few hours later at 2:30. I absolutely love how the food is so much more fresh here, not as many preservatives! And the diet coke is nothing like the diet coke in the US, which kind of sucks, but at least I can wean myself off of it for this semester!

I've officially been in Spain for a week! It seems like just yesterday that I got here. I've already met so many people, and seen so many beautiful places in the short amount of time that I've been here. I cant wait to see what is in store for me in the next 3 months!

Carly and I are thinking of taking a trip to Morocco the first weekend in March. It's an all inclusive deal with hotel reservations and meals for only 190 euro, and we would get to ride camels!!! So I really hope that works out. I really want to do a lot of traveling around Europe while I'm here.

Tomorrow is the first day of class! I'm actually really excited to start my classes and begin having a routine while I'm here because this past week has felt more like a vacation. The first two weeks of class are just Language intensive classes, so it will be more like a review of all the stuff I learned last semester, but that will definitely be helpful!