That afternoon we arrived in Salamanca. It’s a really cool college town that had a pretty neat city center.
Salamanca is famous for being on the way to Santiago. It is covered in seashells because that is one of Saint James’s symbols.
An old BYU professor volunteered to give us a tour of the city and show us all that he knew because he had been to Spain over 30 times with many study abroad groups and many more private ventures. He took us to the cathedral which had some interesting carvings.
Can you find the astronaut and the ice cream cone? The inside of the Cathedral was very beautiful.
It was one of the perfect examples of Gothic style with the arches and such that allow for higher vaults and such.
Here is Mr. George Rhyscamp and a pretty cool looking Coat of Arms.
He was telling us all about how the coat of arms used to be like a language to people and anyone could look at one and know a ton about a person. Now people do studies and spend years learning was any 14 yr old boy off the street could have told them 700 years ago. It’s pretty crazy how that stuff works. Anyways, I found out why there are always little slits in the floors of old churches. Back in the day, when people died, they chose which church to be buried in and rather than be buried in the church cemetery, which didn’t exist at the time, they were buried underneath the floor of the chapel. So, they’d pull up the tiles and bury people with a bunch of limes to speed up decay, and then take all the bones out and have a mass bone burial. I decided I needed a photo to commemorate the learning of a long time curiosity.
There was some cardinal who, for some reason or another, needed to be buried with four pillows and two angels holding his head up.
That is some crazy devotion to church leadership. Apparently, in Spain, even statues bleed and make marks when their heads are chopped off.
I wonder how authentic looking those marks are. We need to get CSI in here. Katie, this one is for you.
This picture was another of my masterful designs.
Sometimes I look back and think, “Where do these ideas come from?” I don’t really think I was supposed to sit in this chair.
Anyways, after the cathedral we walked around the city a bit and Mr. Rhyscamp showed us where Franco lived and had his base of operations during the Spanish Civil War.
In the Civil War museum lobby we saw an awesome reproduction of Guernica done completely with other small photos.
It was really cool. Each of these trips we go on I appreciate art more and more. We went from there to the University and somewhere on the wall there is a frog that will bring luck and marriage within the next year if you find it without any help.
Luckily, Andrew showed me where it was so I have at least a year.
The school was cool and here is a funny story. There was a famous professor who was caught up by the inquisition and was in prison for five years and when he was released everyone crowded into this room to hear his first discussion after prison, thinking it would be something amazing about what had happen and he started off by saying, “As we were saying yesterday” and then continued talking.
(People were pretty disappointed.) Salamanca had a bunch of really cool stuff.
Brazil?
There were roman bridges and all sorts of places to have fun at.
We set up the timer for a pyramid but accidently cut of Erika’s head.
Then we all fell down.
We wandered a bit more after.
That night we went to a comedy club and it was interesting to hear some Spanish humor.
There were three about a mirror and a crazy. There was also a really cool farmer’s market we went to in the morning.
From there we headed off once again into the great expanse of Spain!
Our gate keeper, José Maria, was a stud and gave me the keys to the kingdom…kind of. 
The altar was really awesome and pictures just don’t do justice.
The coolest part was probably the underground cavern part of the cathedral.
There they had San Pedro with the same keys that José had just allowed me to hold.
I was pretty impressed. The story of the basilica is a funny one and can be expressed through a comic strip carved over a tomb.
So these 3 poor Christians were being crucified (No, I don’t have any idea why they thought that that was crucifixion.) and along passed a Jew who started laughing at their misfortune. To punish him, God sent a snake to eat him and so he started to feel sorry. (Although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t true sorrow. Something about having to be eaten by a snake makes me think that he cared more about his own life still.) So, he repented and the snake went away and to thank God he built a church that was later remodeled into a larger basilica. I was going to confess but saw somebody having fun in the confession booth.
From there we went to the wall.
It was really cool, as was I.
There was a pretty awesome view of the nearby Cathedral. 
However, it started to become apparent why my hair needed to be cut.
What a mess! We tried a timed group shot but those don’t always work out.
Sometimes they do.
As we headed out we stopped for a Backstreet Boys moment.
On the bus we grabbed a quick bite.
Juan and Eva make us sack lunches for the first day of our trips and for some reason they always make 2 sandwiches and one has just cheese and the other just meat. Notice the thickness of my cheese sandwich. We usually stack the two and eat both at once to try to balance it out. So, it was shaping up to be a pretty darn fun week.
I got a strawberry milkshake and a banana chocolate crepe. That morning proved to be the most beautiful day yet.
However, the 3rd world status was still prevalent.
This was the restaurant we had eaten at on Friday night.
These two kids thought they were all hard core.
We went on a relaxing stroll on the beach.
People were there playing soccer and it looked like so much fun.
More than anything else I wanted to play a long hot game of soccer and then just run and jump into the cool water.
Andrew was having such an internal struggle over getting into the water.
I have never seen him choose his own wants over others. He was all excited to get into the water but when others didn’t want to he went with what they wanted. It was so nice of him. I had also wanted to get into the water and when people had brought up, a week earlier, that it might be too cold I voiced my opinion that it didn’t matter and that I thought we should still go. A team A typical comment was made in all sarcasm. “Ya, JC, we are going to go all the way to Africa and not get into the water. Honestly” As I sat there looking out into the ocean it began to dawn on me in full force who these people were. Anyways, we still had fun and it was so nice that it made up for it. I wrote my name (Charlie) in the sand and just as I finish a wave came. But you can still see it.
Good bye beautiful beach.
Every single hotel room had a sticker on the desk like this.
How cool!
It was at this point, standing in the Airport that I began to realize a lot about what was going on. I realized that I had started to lose some of my identity. I had said and done some stuff that was pretty typical “me” on this trip and people were shocked and surprised. For example, we were eating lunch and a group came up and looked at the restaurant and I yelled out, “It’s delicious! Come eat here!” and everyone was so shocked at me. I noticed that I wasn’t being true to myself here in Europe and was trying too hard to be accepted but something about Africa made that go away and I decided I wanted to go back to being true to myself. I also realized that there were plenty of people that I could hang out with and didn’t have to limit myself to a certain group. And with this determination I left Africa behind.
But I was unable to leave behind the consequences.