Sofia Somewhere

I haven't found a good site to upload my pictures for you to see, so I've posted a few here. With the Encierro statue of the San Fermines festival Pamplona is popular for.

The program I'm doing now in Spain is called the "Bridge Year Program." It was designed as a gap year between high school and university or a first degree and employment. We can build our own schedule and program based on our own personal preferences and projects. Since I'm not exactly sure yet what I want to do, this year will help me reflect and think about my future. It will help me build my character and person, and of course learn and immerse myself in the Spanish language and culture. For the first semester, I will be taking most courses from ILCE (Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Españolas) and one class in English, European Media Culture. In the second semester, when my Spanish is better, I will take regular university classes with Spanish students.

Living in Pamplona has been very different from Manila, yet the differences are nice and refreshing. The center that's in charge of my apartments is called Larrabide, and it's a Club Universitario. Larrabide has five apartments each with three girls, and I live in one of them. Larrabide is an Opus Dei Center, but so far it's nothing really scary. We have some house rules and curfews. The Larrabide center is on Iñigo Arista Avenue, a few minutes walk from my building. The center has a chapel, living room, computer room, and study room. It extends to the next floor above, where there are sleeping quarters. My apartment is in a building on Calle Esquiroz. The apartment is nice and I have my own room. My room is not too small and not too big. There's a lot of space to move about, I could easily do yoga in my room. (Not that I do yoga.) There are two bathrooms and I share one with Marina. Bea gets het own bathroom since she's the head of the apartment. We have a kitchen

Since September 8 I've been taking an intensive course for Spanish. But the past week was the official welcome week for the International Students. Tuesday morning we registered, and I was overwhelmed by the number of students. There were so many! I met a lot of people whose faces I remember but names I forget. Aft er everyone registered they ushered us into a conference room and began the orientation. We were introduced to a bunch of important people who told us a lot of stuff. Most of it was in Spanish but I was seated beside a guy from El Salvador who was nice enough to translate the important points to me. There was a lot of talk about the International Office, registration of classes, University Clubs, and other things. After the orientation we were divided into smaller groups and went on a tour around the campus. At the end of the tour we had lunch outdoors and they served us paella from the "Paella Gigante ." It was a HUGE paella, and very delicious. I ate with and

The Pope was in Lourdes from the 13th-15th of September to celebrate the 150th year anniversary of the Apparitions (of the Immaculate Conception to Bernadette.) I had classes on Saturday so I opted to go for the day on Sunday with my flat mate Bea.