I thought I´d give you all an update of my second week here in Salamanca.

On Saturday, we went to Salamanca, and saw inside the cathedral. this is a picture of the inside of the dome, and the ceiling above the altar area.

I also went a bit further to the east of the city and saw a statue of Christopher Colombus, who I believe is connected with the unversity. I also took a few pictures of another church in that area.












Back to La Alberca, where they were in the middle of a bmx competition, which seemed to have been sponsered by Monty... Anyway, I got to try out a Monty unicycle, which was pretty nice and really easy to ride (mmm, aluminium goodness).

We went on to another village, where everyone was asleep (siesta time). I thought the local stonework was interesting.

Note the skull and crossbones at the bottom of the cross.

There was also a Plaza de Toros (bullring) in the village, which looked a bit decrepit, we were imagining some old guy whipping a cow around the pen (I´m not sure if I´d like to be a spectator if there were a real bull there).

Oh yes, and here´s a flower someone found growing on a vine while we were there.

A couple of days ago, while I was teaching a lesson, we noticed that the field behind the school was burning. Apparently a stork landed on the power lines and shorted some of them. We evacuated everyone and the fire was put out fairly quickly, but it did scare some of the kids, who were all asking whether the school was going to burn down. 12 year olds are interesting, you never know when they´re going to act like 6 year olds and when they´ll act like teenagers or older. A case in point is on the way to La Alberca today, I was at the back of the bus when I saw some of the kids slapping and punching one of the boys. I went up to try to sort it out and asked what they were hitting him for. One of the girls answered that he was being really boring, discussing Pythagoras and Newton! I guess there will be a few more surprises coming in the next few days, with the way these kids are...

Here is a guest writer on the blog, one of my students:

Dear Diary,

On Thursday, we went to the swimming pool and Lara wants to kill Julian and Jonathan in the water. I was tired for the night.

On Friday, we had a disco night, and I played poker with other friends, it´s very good. I like it. Before, there was a fire over the school, there were a lot of people scared (girls mostly) said a lot of stupid things (my clothes, my money, my mobile).

On Saturday we got up late, and Lara was more slow than the growth of a cabbage.

Good bye,

Sara

By the way, congratulations to Alastair for passing $50,000 on his blog´s worth rating!

"My Blog" being Alastair´s one, not my own, which is still worthless...

Also in the news, Mark´s blog has slumped to below $1700. Better start writing about China, eh Mark?