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From Marta, iD Spain staff:

If you haven’t done so, check out www.internaldrive.com/photos. I’ve uploaded over 200 more photos and they’re all pretty fun to look at so enjoy! Remember that the location is “University of Cadiz.”

Estimados Padres,

What a week it’s been! Kevin and I and all of our awesome students have been constantly on-the-go visiting places and experiencing ,first-hand, the life and culture of Spain. There is so much history to all of the places and activities that we do. It’s simply amazing. This teen study abroad program in Spain is action-packed! Have fun reading this blog post.

The schedule for this coming week will slow down a bit with all of our students going to class from 10 until 1:30 in the afternoon, going home for lunch and a siesta or to relax and then go to film class from 4 until 9 in the evening–unlike last week, where not only were we doing all of that, but were also fitting in a cultural activity almost every day in the late afternoons. Even though the schedule was busy, each activity helped to instill even more of an appreciation for this beautiful country.

Here’s a little overview of the cultural activities we did each day last week:

Monday: One of the Mundo Lengua instructors, Yaye, helped us cook an authentic and delicious Spanish dish called Paella. Paella consists of rice, saffron and olive oil. Scatter about some veggies, meat and seafood of your choice and you have one of the tastiest dishes in Europe. Each student helped slice and dice, season and stir, so you should all ask your kids to cook it for you when they arrive home so you can taste a little bit of Spain for yourself. (Whether they will actually do so, is not up to me…

Tuesday: We went on a walking tour and explored the La Catedral and El Barrio Pópulo in Cádiz. The Cathedral (also known as the La Catedral Nueva–the New Cathedral.) actually stands on the same location of an older Cathedral that burnt down. The current Cathedral’s construction began in 1776 (while we were gaining our Independence, the people of Cádiz were busy building Cathedrals) but it wasn’t finished until 116 years later! The inside was enormous (though not nearly as big as the one in Sevilla), and there were two people singing up in the balcony, which added to the atmosphere and beauty of the building.
After that, we walked along a narrow, but picturesque cobblestone street right next to the Cathedral called El Barrio Pópulo where we learned more about the walls of the old part of the city, which are actually parts of the original walls that were there when the city first was built. We then saw the location of a famous Admirals house–which was an entire building. We couldn’t see too much of it, since it was undergoing a complete renovation, as are many of the buildings in the Cádiz because the everyone is getting ready for the 200 year anniversary of the signing of the constitution in 2012.

That night, we rented out a discoteca and had a costume party just for our iD Spain group and the other students who were taking classes at Mundo Lengua (but weren’t part of iD). Abuelo Gaupo (Kevin) came in full attire that night as made sure to keep all his little nietos in line…and of course he showed them a move or two on the dance floor.

Wednesday: This was our day off from cultural activities and so everyone had a good five hours in the evening to catch up on all of their editing from the footage that they had captured earlier in the week. It was awesome to see their work in progress. So far, I’ve seen some great intros to videos.

Thursday: We all learned how to dance a traditional dance of Spain. Understandably so, the guys weren’t so crazy about it, but I was happy that they made the effort to at least try to learn how do it. I tried to let them know that someday the girls would go crazy if they knew how to dance a Spanish dance, but that didn’t convince them too well. Our two girls in the group, Hannah and Kayleigh, enjoyed the lesson though.

Friday: Our last walking tour of our trip included meeting at the large stone gates of the that separate Old Cádiz from the newer part and then walking through the city on the cobblestone streets and learning more about the history of the people who lived there. We then walked along the beach and had a breathtaking view of the vast ocean that surrounds Cádiz.The beach was pretty enticing because the weather was hot, but we stopped by a street vender selling ice cream, slushies and water.

Saturday: The weekend is a time to relax, so instead of running around all day, we simply met at 1:30 and had had lunch together. Lunch consisted of variety of tapas that we passed around and shared as a group. Everything from octopus to chicken was devoured within a couple of hours. Cádiz is very well known for their seafood, so everything was so fresh you could almost taste the ocean water on it.

Sunday: The day was left to sleep in and hang out in Cádiz. Then at 5:00 we met to go to Puerto de Santa Maria, a city nearby, to see a bullfight. We took a ferry over, which enabled us to get a perfect view of Cádiz from the water. We made it to the bullfight and watched one of the most common cultural sports of Spain. The crowd went wild and while our group had mixed feelings about it, we all enjoyed the experience of seeing it and being in the atmosphere of the people.

As you can tell, we’ve packed a lot of fun things into an entire week and we have been busy! This week, we’ll continue to focus on on the Spain documentaries so everyone has the best film possible by Friday when we show them to the entire Mundo Lengua staff and other participants! It will be a great cinematic debut for our students.

That’s about all I have for now…I can honestly say that I’ve really enjoyed getting to know and spend time with every single student. Each one brings their own unique personality to the program and it will be hard to say goodbye in a little over a week. However, I won’t think too much about that just yet.

If you haven’t done so, check out www.internaldrive.com/photos. I’ve uploaded over 200 more photos and they’re all pretty fun to look at so enjoy! Remember that the location is “University of Cadiz.”

As always, feel free to call of email with anything….thanks for reading!

¡Hasta pronto!

-Marta