Halloween in Salamanca!!

Hola a todos!

I went to Salamanca for this past Halloween weekend where I met up with six other auxiliares in my program. Five of them are working at schools in Palencia capital and one is working in the Basque Country (in Vitoria). I had met most of them at my orientation in Madrid and had visited one (my friend Brooke) in Valladolid the weekend before (she is living in Valladolid, a much larger city, and commutes to Palencia for work.) Salamanca is known as Castilla y Leon's most beautiful city and it is one of its liveliest as well due to a large student population (Spanish and international). There are two cathedrals, many old university buildings, a beautiful plaza mayor, and other attractive churches and convents as well as many great tapas bars!

I arrived in Salamanca on Friday afternoon and the weather there was really HOT all weekend during the days. It got up to around 75 degrees which is very unusual for this time of year in central Spain. Once my friends arrived we set out to explore the city and walked around a lot on Friday afternoon and evening. That night we went to a lot of bars and scoped out ones with elaborate Halloween decorations for Saturday night. On Saturday we went to the Convento de San Esteban which was near our hostel and then met Brooke´s roommate Francisco, who is from Salamanca, in the plaza mayor. He had come to show us around and to go out with us on Saturday night. It was great to have a local with us that could tell us interesting things about the city and he was a lot of fun.

There is no tradition of really celebrating Halloween much in Spain except for in schools and bilingual programs that include Halloween parties and games as cultural activities. Salamanca turned out to be the perfect place to be to celebrate Halloween because due to foreign influence in particular, many bars host Halloween parties and a lot of students dress up in costume. On Saturday evening we made a quick stop at an Asian Bazaar to buy costume materials. I liked the witches' hats I saw so I decided to be a witch. I had plastic spider earrings already and borrowed Brooke´s red scarf to make a nice black and red witch costume. It was one of the easiest costumes to put together that I've ever worn for Halloween and I only spent 1 euro on it! Afterward we went to a bar where we ordered a bunch of raciones (platters of tapas) to share for dinner which were delicious and then we headed back to our hostel to get some much needed rest before going out on Halloween night. Going out that night was an absolute blast! It was fun to see others dressed in costumes in the streets. Most of the Spaniards that I saw dressed up were in more gory or traditional costumes (like ghouls, grim reapers, bloody brides, mummies, devils, etc, with a lot of face paint or elaborate masks) We didn't return to our hostel until around 5:30am which is the latest I've stayed out in Spain since I've been here this fall --definitely an accomplishment :-) Getting used to staying out as late as Spaniards tend to on the weekends (like until sunrise) takes awhile!

On Sunday we checked out of our hostel around noon, went to a bar for some coffee and then headed to the train station. Our train left at 2pm. It really was a marvelous weekend and I had fun getting to know the auxiliares who are working in Palencia better during my time with them in Salamanca. They are all really fun people and I know I'll be seeing them again soon!

More updates to come very soon as I'm still getting myself caught up!

Besos,
Dana

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