Sofia Somewhere

April came along, and before I knew it, I was down to my last two months in Spain. In between my last couple of weeks at work, I took the weekends off making trips to visit friends and see more of Spain, to make the most out of it all. A quick round up below :) 1 - In the first weekend of April, I made the long train ride down to visit two friends in Huelva . I was excited to visit since it's the only province in Andalucía I hadn't been to yet, and of course, I was missing some Filipino company. I arrived on Thursday evening and caught up with my friends over dinner and white wine. We eventually had to call it a night for the next day we headed to Aracena , a town in the Huelva province. I made the trip with my friends Lia and Nice, plus her coordinator who had invited us, another colleague of Lia's, plus two interns who were working at her school. Quaint Aracenas Aracena is famous for its Gruta de las Maravillas (the Cave of Wonders) which is a 1km route of li...

Several weeks have come and gone, and here I am apologizing again for the lack of blog posts. So again, here is my attempt at getting back into the groove. December flew by pretty quickly. After my Salamanca and Segovia weekend trip, I had more classes, headed to Murcia and Granada the next weekend, and then after another week of classes I was on the plane to Manila! I spent the holidays in the Philippines soaking up the sun, eating too much food, and spending time with family and friends. It was a much needed (warm) three week vacation. Come January 9 it was back to Spain and the cold. Things will be quite tranquil for me over the next couple of weeks. I'm working on saving up for some upcoming trips in February: Stockholm, Sweden to watch my cousin's show, and an Asturias meet-up with some college friends around Spain who are also doing the  program. Then in March, my sister and I have a trip to Morocco planned for Spring Break. So the plan is the have some quiet weeks a...

For the first puente (long weekend) in my stay here I decided to head to Madrid to visit Marina, a good friend who just moved there from Barcelona, and to drop by the Philippine Embassy to register as an overseas voter. It was the last day too for registration, so it was perfect. Lyle took the bus in from Granada and we met at the metro near the embassy. It was fairly simple and we got it done in under an hour. Success! After the embassy we headed to Tetúan so Lyle could grab some filipino goodies at the Asian store, then we went to Bar Vi-Valdez for lunch. Filipino food is always yummy, though the taste was a bit different from the last couple of times we ate there (change of cooks perhaps?).  We had a couple of hours to kill before Lyle's bus back to Granada so we headed to check out the Rosaleda and the Templo de Debod. It wasn't the season though so the Rosaleda was pretty much empty, with only several roses here and there.. I could imagine though what a beau...

For my second time around doing the auxiliar de conversación program, I opted for a change of scenery. I lived in the north (Pamplona) back in 2008, and then in the south (Granada) last school year, so I went for something more central this time around. I originally wanted Madrid, but Filipinos aren't allowed to choose Madrid for the program, so I chose the next nearby thing: Castilla y León . Time rolled by and the next thing I knew I was assigned to Valladolid . My school is actually in Arroyo de la Encomienda , another city, but still in the Valladolid province. But it's very close to Valladolid city, a mere 8km away, or a 15 minute bus ride. There isn't much in Arroyo, so I chose to live in Valladolid, and make the commute everyday (the bus is €1,40 one way, which isn't too bad). Life in Valladolid is quiet and simple. It's a decent sized city, good for comfortable living, but there's not much to do . It has its fair share of shops, bars, restaurants, a...