Erasmus Expiditions

Our first day at the university was last Wed. We didn't actually have classes, just an orientation and placement test for which class we would start with. There's this program called AEGEE Santander and ERASMUS, both groups of international students studying at the Universidad de Cantabria, (or UniCan) I've met people from France, Germany, Holland, Lithuania, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, England, and the list continues. Everytime another international mets a few of us, they automatically say, "Oh your from the US, you must be from North Carolina too." Our very blunt German friend Mark said, "26 of you, Damn that's an invasion." There's one guy from UNCC here on his own, but besides that the "Carolinos" as we're called are the only Americans in this semester's Erasmus group. On Wed. Feb 10, our entire international group took 4 charter buses around Santander and got to see the whole city in daylight finally. (Since our flight caused us to arrive in the city at dark the first night.) We went up to the Royal Palace where Alfonzo III used to come with his queen for vacations from Madrid. The views were amazing of the Atlantic ocean to the north and bay to the east. The rocky cliffs in this part of Santander remind me a lot of the coast in California. There was a beautiful, slightly eeire lighthouse on an island by itself off the coast as well. A great opportunity for more pretty pictures in my black pea coat :). (It's very true the Spanish are much more stylish than Americans, but more on that later.) Next the buses stopped across from a few of the major beaches and famous spots in Santander. There was even a small "zoo" complete with penguins and sea lions! Never thought I'd see a penguin swimming around in Spain! This area is where all the good surf spots are apparently. The scene was beautiful with the water crashing and spraying up on the rocks as waves rolled in. There were some replicas of the 3 boats Christopher Columbus had. The man who drew the map for Columbus was from Santander, and the street I live on is named after him! (Juan De La Cosa)

The next day the tour buses headed to the Picos de Europa, which is the largest mountain range in Spain. For the first time in 22 years, on the 11th of Feb. it snowed in Santander and the Cantabria region. We didn't get to go up on the sky-lift in the Picos like we were supposed to, but we went to the National Park museum. One thing Spain should invest in is heat for National Monuments. They are very energy efficient with drying all clothes on the line and conserving electricity, but this particular museum only had heat in one movie theater room! Other than the lack of heat and blizzard outside, the Picos were very beautiful. The ride there was a little scary on a huge charter bus swerving through the mountains with snow on the roads, but they take little caution driving anywhere here. (Which reminds me, all the streets for cars downtown are brick, so it's difficult to tell which is the sidewalk and where cars can go. There are crosswalks everywhere, and the little smart cars that zip around always have to stop for anyone that's crossing. Us Americans still wait everytime and then give the "thanks for stopping wave" which no one does or understands here.) Back to the Picos, after our tour entirely in Spanish we got to see a really cool nature video about the park during all of the seasons. (This was the heated room) Dad- you would have loved this; it was a 10 minute video of nature sounds :) The buses of ERASUMS went on to a little town that looked like a Bevarian Village that would be in Switzerland. The actual snow looks very different here too. Instead of flakes it all looks like vanilla dip-n-dots ice cream! UniCan put together a really great orientation to the area for us.