Coca-cola, good food, great friends. :)

Yesterday was an interesting day.  I wandered upon a flea market practically right behind our apartment building.  It was huge!!!  They had absolutely everything: from clothes, shoes, jewelry to fruit, vegetables, and hot dogs.  The even had stands that were selling curtains, towels, and baby clothes!  It was really overwhelming at first because there was SO much stuff and all the vendors were yelling their "cheap prices" out, but it was really nice to be able to wander around.  I wound up buying a thin sweater and a cardigan both for really cheap!  I didn't bring that many winter clothes because they weighed a lot in my suitcase, but I think I'll have enough to make it through the semester.  I also bought those two sisters of mine another part of their Christmas presents! :)  I even found a "dollar store" (well, pretty much) right behind our apartment building and I was able to buy some bandaids and some ziploc bags.  I had bought some snacks to take to school, but most of their snacks are not individually wrapped, so I was going to buy ziploc bags at the grocery store the other day.  Then I realized they cost a FORTUNE (well, for frugal me at least), so I decided to hold off.  Glad I did, because I bought a box of 50 for 80 cents.  I also got a thing of 30 bandaids for 75 cents, so I was pretty happy. 

Today we met one of our professors at the University to get a quick tour of the building before classes start next week.  The building is actually where the old tobacco factory used to be and it could not be arranged in a more confusing manner.  The room numbers have no specific order to them so you could have room 3 beside room 18.  Totally confusing!  Oh well, Allegra and I are going back later this week to find our classrooms so we went be lost on the first day.  We also found out that there is no class on Monday (the day we thought we started classes), Tuesday is the day professors will present the syllabus (I only have one class that day at 1pm), Wednesday there is some kind of strike all over Spain so there is no class, so really we begin classes on Thursday.  So next week will be a kind of crazy/stressful week.  Apparently it's not uncommon for professors to not show up for class the first week or for them to randomly change the room number of their class without notifying the students.  I guess it'll be an interesting week.  :\

After our tour of the university, a group of us girls went to the same restaurant that I went to the other night.  They were all just as impressed as I was with the food.  I did try something new today, and I have to say that I'm quite proud of myself for trying it, even if I didn't like it --- octopus.  It was interesting, but just not my choice of food.  We got marinated tomatoes that were fantastic, stuffed eggplant, eggplant cooked with honey (one of my favorites), bacon and cheese stuffed chicken with an almond sauce, and the same bread and cheese/jam that I had last time (aka my new favorite food).  For all five of us (including 2 cokes a piece) it was only 30 euro.  So taking out the cokes, we each paid about 4.50 for lunch.  Not bad at all.  Plus it was delicious.  After lunch, we got a coffee because we were missing our siesta for a tour of the Cathedral.  It was delicious and it was nice to be able to sit and talk with friends.  Plus we were right by the Cathedral and it was a gorgeous view and it felt really nice outside. 

Then we got to tour the Cathedral.  I took a million pictures, but I'm only going to post a few because the pictures do not do it justice at all.  It's one of those things you just really have to see in person.  It's the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world.  It was purposefully built extremely "tall" to represent the bigness of God and the smallness of humans.  It is awe-inspiring and breathtaking. 

La Giralda - aka the tower.  This is what we climbed.  While it was ramps, but still there were 34 levels.  Nice workout. :)

Pretty and HUGE stained glass window.

Just to show how big it is. 

Me and Camilla at the top!! :)
(ps: Camilla, now YOU'RE famous b/c you're on my blog!!!!)

Me and some pretty awesome people. 
(Tiffany, Allegra, Shannon, Camilla, and me)

And to top off my really amazing day, I got to talk to Allegra on the way home about my crazy addiction to coupon clipping/using.  I know it's really nerdy and all, but I just love being able to save money.  And it was really nice to be able to share with someone who also enjoys coupons.  :)