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Published: March 20th 2010
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Our second morning started bright and early with the same wonderful breakfast spread, albeit sans smoked salmon. Annoying. Once fattened up it was off to the buses and back to the University of Cantabria. There we broke into small groups to discuss our situations at our various schools, the Andorran contingency and the Cantabrian contingency having been paired up. Our moderator from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid was wonderful and, despite the fact that it seemed like all we did was hate upon some of our issues with the school system, I thought it was very productive and eye-opening given how incredibly different the experiences of the Cantabrian ETAs were.
After almost two hours of that it was time for our "cultural excursion" to Altamira and Santillana del Mar. Altamira is the location of the world's first-discovered prehistoric cave paintings, a UNESCO world heritage site. Unfortunately the actual caves have been closed to the public for some years due to the damage done by C02 in human breath, but we had instead the opportunity to visit a museum that had a full-scale replica of the caves. I was disappointed that we weren't actually going to see the real ones, but
it is not as if that could have been arranged anyway. Oh well...
Our next stop was Santillana del Mar, known as the "Town of Three Lies", since it is neither a Saint (Santo), nor flat (llana) and has no sea (Mar) as its name might suggest. The town itself is very quaint with wonderfully-preserved historical buildings, some of which were strangely reminiscent of the Bulgarian National Revival style (at least to me). Unfortunately it was overcast, but the weather was by no means bad. Our lunch there was quite good - a hearty cocido (Spanish stew) with sausage and beans, followed by delicious hake (a white fish) in a creamy sauce. In the bathroom there I was lucky enough to find a 1€ toothbrush dispenser, thus solving one of my many problems sans-luggage.
Back at the University of Cantabria we had round two of our small group discussion and continued to discuss our roles as culture ambassadors, what we have gotten out of the program, and so on and so forth. This was followed by presentations by the full-time researcher grantees on everything from Azeotropes and Spinal Cell Reconstruction to Post-Islamic Spain and Bilingualism in Catalonia.
Dinner back at the hotel was a blur, perhaps because of the constant flowing wine, but the rest of the evening was a total blast. We headed out with some of the new friends we had made and spent a good deal of time in the city's main plaza filled with bars and whatnot just sitting outside, imbibing, and having good conversation. Some of you may remember our having gone to a drag show in Madrid during our Spain-Andorra conference in September, and, as luck would have it, we stumbled upon one in Santander as well, though extremely amateur. Finally we ended up at a club until around 4 when we thought it would be best to call it a night given that we had to be up in another 4 hours...
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Jarek
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fajne zdjęcia...
...jednak, czemu Ciebie na nich nie widać..;(