Seeing as I've not really kept up to my own expectations of trying to blog about everyday I've decided to just try and consolidate the past week.
On Thursday we were supposed to meet at 9 to go through the old city but my alarm didn't go off and I slept till 1, so I missed that part of the introduction to the city. Later that day though we were supposed to meet at the bar Boogaloo, so at least I was able to attend something.
We meet up outside the bar
around 9 and Toni showed up 15 minutes late (as usual I guess) and told us that she had to go to work or something so she left us to our own devices. Raquel, one of the other coordinators of the Caceres program actually works there as a bartender so we spoke with her a bit and found a spot in the corner to occupy as the American's corner.
The bar was pretty small, but it was supposed to have live music and they didn't disappoint surprisingly, and the bassist was quite g
ood. I have two
videos of them and my camera did a great job dealing with the high sound levels! I was thoroughly impressed. As per europe, it was smokey and pretty darn packed once people started coming out, but as we were those weird Americans who went out before 11 we secured a pretty big portion of the tables. Drinks are expensive all over, I ordered a coke, a 200ml bottle cost me 2 Euro and a glass of Bailey's cost 5 Euro. Yeesh. Bringing a bottle of water next time...
<= This guy was not with us.
The music was definitely too loud, but not painful thankfully. I stuck around till about 1 or so and then left as we were supposed to meet at 10 the next day to go to the university, but apparently a group of girls after leaving Boogaloo after I did went around to another bar and stayed out till 4 or something. Definitely going to have to get used to this late culture.
Friday morning I definitely got up in time and we took the bus over the university. It's about a 20 minute bus ride, so a bus pass is a must. It's cost about .50 Euro to ride when you buy a card with 11 rides on it that costs 5.50, but the monthly pass is 27 Euro which ends up actually being more expensive if I only use the bus to go to class
and back by about 11 euro. First we meet in the old district to sit in this cool
room where they talked about how much opportunity there was at the university, and then we actually went to the university.
The university seems fine, we didn't see a whole lot of it as all of our classes are in one building, but it is pretty small compared to ISU. After being forced to sit in a classroom listening to people talk I was getting super hungry as it hit 1. By about 2 I was swearing under my bre
ath about how hungry I was and when Toni asked for more questions to answer I said "Podemos salir?" (Can we leave?) and she looked at me and she said I needed a nap, but I said "no, I need food,
ahora." So she let us go and I ran down to the cafeteria and bought a candy bar. Aaaaahhh....
We ended up walking home just to see how long it took, and it's a solid 65 minute walk, mostly uphill, so I think I'm taking the bus.
Later that night we went out to El Gran Teatro to see a free Jazz concert. The building is gorgeous, but unfortunately the place was way too crowded to even barely see the band. I took a
video 
of them as I could not for the life of me get any good shots of the band once they had started since it was so crowded and smokey. Since it was not too exciting being really hot, squished, smokey, and lacking a view, we left after a few songs and headed out into the
streets. We stopped at a pastry shop right before they closed at 8, and got some goodies which were delicious.
We ended up going to another bar called, La Divina Comedia. It was such a cool bar. Great themeing, music wasn't too loud (and I liked it as it was a mix of american and spanish rock, pop, and dance), was pretty much deserted before midnight, and the drinks were pr
etty cheap too. Annoyingly enough a 200ml coke cost me 1.50 and the wine and mixed drinks are only a euro. blah. Make sure you check out the
video of the bar, it gives a much better description of the bar than I can, or my low light pictures can.
Saturday we were planning on taking a bus to the small city called Trujillo. Tim, me and Sarah were the only ones really interesting in going so we planned to meet at the Estacion de autobuses at 10 as the bus left at 10:15 for Trujillo and cost something like 3 euro. I google maped it and set off in the morning ready to go. I met up with Sarah part way there and so we walked together trying to figure out the maze that it Caceres. Needless to say, we got lost as there are no freaking street signs visible to the average person. After hustling through a 2 km walk and asking some old lady where it was, we got there after the bus had left, and Tim, had left us. The next bus left in 2 hour, and we really didn't feel like waiting since Tim was the one who knew where stuff was there anyways and we would be totally lost in the city.
On the way back I got some pictures of some really cool
graffiti (although I have trouble calling it that as it's gorgeous). Some of the other ones were more amusing, but I also really like
this one for it's awesome surrealism appeal. You can check out the rest of them on facebook as they didn't need to be stitched together in photoshop.
Since it was a saturday and there were no required meetings, we sort of wandered around
Caceres. We stopped at a shop called Chocolat and ordered 10 churros con chocolat which was pretty much fried bread with a large cup full of melted chocolate. I mean, this stuff was freaking thick, like chocolate syrup thick but tasted like chocolate. They weren't too bad but the chocolat was too much and somehow Laura Drum drank the whole cup and took another girl's to finish off... Later that day and found a cool little garden area. We
met a friend of one of the girls who was a Caceres native who showed us a few other bars, none of which I liked as the Gaudi Club was very noisy, fulled of testosteroned up guys shouting, yelling, and fighting, and we weren't really welcome by the looks we got. The other one was tiny, and at that point we just sort of stood outside the bar and talked for a while before going back home. I spent the night editing photos and watching Scrubs till 3 am. That last part was probably my most relaxing night yet.
On Sunday we took a hike up the mountain they call "La Montana," which is simply the mountain. It was very physically draining as it was a practically like climbing Uncle Mikey's hill for 3 km. It actually got rather cold as we neared the top, and the sunset and the view were gorgeous. I took way too many pictures which leaves me with the arduous task of going through them, which I have yet to do except for two. I'll leave you with one of my favorite pictures so far:
