A view of an older part of Salamanca in the pedestrian mall area.

The first real post!

Bienvenidos a todos,

Well I arrived in Spain this past Sunday after some flight delays and was then unable to connect with my ride to Salamanca. I ended up hanging out in Barajas for several hours waiting and trying to contact my contact person to little avail and finally gave up and got a hotel. Shortly after that I was got a hold of my contact in Salamanca (thanks to help from una amiga buena in EEUU)
and arranged for transport on Monday morning. I had a nice meal and a couple of cervezas and called it a day. Monday I arrived in the lovely city of Salamanca and met people and was shown around and moved in to my apartment. Tuesday was a sick day---the travel and stress caught up with me. I have subsequently been doing a little work and a little orientation every day until today (Friday). Today the students arrived and we took the charter bus to Barajas airport in Madrid to collect all of them and bring them to Salamanca . . . easier said than done. Due to snow back in the states and a plane crash on thursday in London many flights were disrupted. 25 of the group had arrived by 2 so around 2:30 we sent them back to Salamanca on the bus and we waited for the other 6 arrive. Esperamos . . . . esperamos . . . . and finally by 7 the last two were here. We rented two cars and drove them back to nuestro ciudad and delivered them to their new familias and I got back to my apartment by midnight . . . a long day for all involved. But they are here now with the exception of one who arrives tomorrow. Mañana comencemos la orientación.

new purposing of the blog . . .

Okay, I've decided that I'm going to use this blog for the time being to record my (and my group's) experiences this semester in España. I will also begin to try to do follow up thoughts on classes once I start teaching in february which was my original idea for the blog but things got off track due to too much work and general angst. I hope that this proves to be a fun and interesting side project.