Flamenco y Chupitas

¡Hola a todos!

It has been a week since I have last written so I have much to update you all on!

For the past week I have been taking an intensive Spanish grammar class with my fellow IES students. The class was taught by a professor from the University of Salamanca. We pretty much reviewed a lot of vocabulary, learned some new Spanish phrases, and found out more about the culture of Spain. So for the most part of each day this past week, I was in class. However, we did have some fun activities this week! We learned how to Flamenco and played some fútbol!

Flamenco was pretty interesting. I thought it harder than Salsa, but that's probably because I have no rhythm and when I don't have a partner who's keeping the rhythm for me, I sort of fail. But it was still fun all the same. My favorite part of this week though was playing fútbol with some real españoles!! We had a little indoor tournament with some students from the university. It wasn't us versus them or anything, the teams were mixed. Unfortunately, my team lost. However, the españoles were very impressed that I could actually play soccer (I hear that if you are American and can dribble they are surprised) and called me "Messi." BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I wish.

Anyway, but we made some new friends and they took us out to a more "Spanish" bar that night and then later to a discoteca. YAY for Spanish friends!

Yesterday, we went to Toro and Zamora. Toro is famous for its wine and so we went to the place where they make the wine, were given a little tour, and did some wine tasting! Needless to say, we all enjoyed that very much. It was really cool. They have this big machine that crushes the grapes and then the juice goes into this HUGE metal vats, and after they are in their for a while at the right pressure and temperature, they transfer the wine to barrels and let it age before they bottle it up and let it age some more. We tried red, white, and rose wine. I liked the white the best. Had more of a citrus fresh fruity flavor. After that, we drove to Zamora, a cute little rural town where one of our IES leaders is from. He gave us a tour and then we went to lunch. Lunch was a very interesting experience. First of all, we drove to the outskirts of Zamora where there is like nothing and walked down this little dirt path almost out in a field. The restaurant was underground so there was this door sort of built into the ground that you walked down to get to the restaurant. The restaurant in itself was a really cool place. The ambience and the food reminded me of barbeque. Actually, that's exactly how I would describe the food - Spanish barbeque. You could tell all the meat had just come off a grill or something. We ate chorizo, some kind of pork/bacon thing, and then ribs. And they had this sauce that you dipped the ribs in that reminded me a lot of Eastern-style bbq sauce. It was definitely vinegar based. At the end of the meal they brought out "chupitas." Chupitas are shots taken after dinner to help with the digestion of the meal. We were given these little shot glasses in the shape of tiny beer mugs and you poured the liquor in (I have no clue what kind it was) about halfway and then there was a flavoring that added to it. You had two choices the green, which tasted like green apples, or the red, which tasted like cherries. I tried both. It was pretty good. I'm sure it made the shot easier to take at least.

So yes, that is what has been going on here for the past week! I hope you are all doing well.

I miss you and love you all!!

LOVE AND PRAYERS,

Hope