SALAMANCA

Hi everyone! Well, I just arrived in Salamanca, Spain. It's about 3 hours drive northwest of Madrid. I took a motorcoach, which was super nice: leatherseats, A/C, footrests, a middle compartment to store sunglasses and little things, a fold-down tray to eat; they even had TV screens and played a movie! The best part was that there were two busses and my bus had only three other passengers while the other bus was full. I guess being late to the terminal paid off in this case.

Tim went up to Oviedo last night to get settled into his apartment for the summer. He should be arriving here in Salamanca in an hour. We're gonna check this place out for two days and then he will go back to the university in Oviedo to meet the UofU students for their study abroad program while I will go back to Madrid to hang out with Marc Stillman (who is in Paris right now with his parents). Oh, for those of you who don't know Marc...I think all but Kristen and Abby R....Marc is my friend from SLC. We were advisors for Salt Lake Peer Court. He's been doing the study abroad thing in Madrid for the last year. I crashed at his apartment last night while he was gone. His roommates are way nice...they are students too and are from Russia, Portugal, and Mexico.

So I tried posting pictures and videos last night. I've taken over 2000 and narrowed it down to 200 I want to share. I think I need to narrow down even further, as it takes quite some time to post just one photo! So, please be patient. I also tried uploading a video onto the blog, without much success. I'm new to this so if anyone has advice on how to do this, let me know!

Statue of Cristobal Colon, aka Me at the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca

Christopher Columbus, pointing towards the

"New World"

Well, hope all is well with everyone. I need to read the SL Trib and CNN.com to find out what else is going on in the world!

FYI, here's my rough itinerary for the next few days:

May 25th-26th Salamanca
27-28th Madrid
29th Toledo
30th-31st Cordoba
June 1st-3rd Sevilla
4th-5th Gibraltar
6th-9th Malaga
9th-12 Brussels
13th-14th Antwerp
15-19th Amsterdam

Ciao ciao!

Patrick =)