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Photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xionpkz9gkd1usz/AACT-dfgf4fFCI1Cn9JI18qwa?dl=0

 Last night I couldn't find my iPod nano. It was sitting on my desk while I was doing math homework, and then I couldn't find it after dinner. I spent about an hour last night looking for it everywhere in my room, in my stuff: behind the desk everywhere with a flashlight, under the bed, under the mattress, in all my bags (very throughly). At this point, my best guesses are that the dog took it, or a bird came in through the open window and took it. No sé nada.

School was fine. I'm understanding things and learning vocabulary. We got official certificates at the end of today right before our daily out trip, which was an activity in the plaza Meyor. We had to ask members of the general public for information on statues and stuff. It was a bit scary to use minimal Spanish on unsuspecting people, but we survived.

We are with our group again now after lunch. It's raining quite a bit at the moment, which is actually nice because it reminds me of home. We got croissants and coffee, I got nothing.

Now we're exploring the tower of the cathedral of Salamanca. All the passageways are really skinny and dimly lit; I tried to take photos but it's hard to see much inside. There are spiral staircases (twisting clockwise upwards as always- enemies ascending I'll not find it easy to swing their sword if right-handed) and small passageways. Each room seems to be displaying a certain aspect of the cathedral. The first room is all about music. There is an early (very early) version of a stand up bass, as well as old flutes and oboe-like instruments. There is an example of sheet music from an era a bit after the era of giant choir books, it's so interesting to see the gradual progression to our system that we use today. There is a clear key signature, but still no clef. There are barlines, but the number of beats in each bar is not constant. Some have six, some have four, others have twelve. It is still very confusing to read for the modern musician, but at least there are notes and a general rhythm unlike the leather choir books with only a string of black diamonds one after the other.

Some of the books and letters her are from 1400's. That's awhile ago… And some are still amazingly intact.

There's a room in here called "Pieza Angular" in Spanish. I'll look that up when I can. It seems to be a very special room where the families of the grand monks would live. It's really tall and atmospheric, they have speakers in here that play medieval choir music and the sounds of various catastrophes that have happened here over the centuries. There was a big fire in 1705, and an earthquake in 1755. You can see the holes in the side of the wall where wooden boards were placed. It looks like there were at least four floors and an attic. There's a small corridor off to one side where the bathroom was, on the bottom floor. It was also a temple and place of music.

From the tower you can access a sort of ornate catwalk around the whole interior of the main cathedral, giving the higher-ups a place to really be higher up, looking down in comfort on whatever the main event was in the hall.

This system of catwalks also connects to a lot of outside walks and balconies. And spiral staircases. So many. I can imagine how many people fell down and just kept falling because it's so steep, and bumping into other people coming the other way along the uneven unforgiving stone staircase lit by small torches on the wall.

I still can't find my nano. I'm so confused as to what happened, I have a picture of it on my desk from right before I left, I can back and it's gone.

The language faculty is the oldest of the university. The courtyard here is covered in "victory" symbols: variations with the letters "VICTOR". When you finish a doctorate here at the University of Salamanca, you get to make your own letter design and paint it on the wall of this original courtyard (built 1220) along with your name and the date. Historically these designs were painted in red, with the blood of bulls, but now it's paint, red or black. It's interesting to see the different incorporations of the letters in "victor", some are much more complicated than others.

Again, there are storks living in big nests on top of the towers surrounding this courtyard. 

There are old victory graffitis in bulls' blood on the outside walls. They're a bit worn.

We get to visit the sky of Salamanca "Cielo de Salamanca", a ceiling painting from 1473 depicting all the stars and constellations in the sky of Salamanca. It was transported to a safe location to preserve it, I think it was originally in the entrance of the university. It's in a dark room, humidity-controlled etc to preserve. I recognize some constellations, others not so much. Leo, Scorpio, Libra, Virgo, Hydra, and the centaur are pretty obvious. Then there are more, a person driving a cart pulled by crows, a chariot that has sun lines coming out of it (actually I think that's Appollo), and a guy burning on a stone slab (it says "Ara"). They all have words underneath, some are worn off. Aries is a centaur holding a sacrificial lamb. There seems to be one that says Hercules. It's very cool and detailed, and a prized possession of the university.

Here we are in the plaza Meyor, the losers of the bet from before about to do push-ups and sing oh Canada. Here we go. The sun came out a bit for this.

That was great. I'll post a link to the video as soon as I can. So many people watching, Italian students I think, and Spanish. Sharing Canadian pride through push ups and the anthem.

We went churros-ing and shopping; I bought a dress and another shirt. And earrings for Christina, whom I babysit for often. They're very pretty, I hope she likes them. Now I just have to find wonderful presents for her kids.

We came home around 9:30, and had dinner. Maribel was just going out (Friday night and all), so Eryn and I ate alone. Alfonso came home and then went out again. Eryn and I started packing: we're leaving tomorrow at 8:30. Later, Maribel came back. She gave us lunches for the road tomorrow. And all our laundry was dry for today so that's good (clean underwear, yes!).

Still no ipod. I thought maybe it was at the salsa club where we went yesterday, that it had put it in my jacket and it fell out, I don't know. But after dragging Eryn on a fun adventure at 11:45pm to walk to the place and ask (we got briefly accosted by a homeless guy- I pretended not to speak a word of Spanish), they hadn't seen anything. I shared this hypothesis on Facebook with Liane (one of the teachers on this trip) and she seemed to have something to tell me but I was in the shower at the time and I missed her by two minutes (she has no wifi in her hotel room and she went to bed before I could ask what's up). So who knows. Who can never be sure.

I guess the only hope now for my nano is that the thing Liane was going to say was "we have your nano in our bags, wow good thing we found it and so weird that it's here". So I'm saying goodbye to my red nano with green case full of all manner of music from Deckshoo by Radio Radio to Arutunian Trumpet Concerto to First Circle by Pat Metheny to Sing Sing Sing with Benny Goodman to every Coldplay, Stromae, Lorde, Led Zepplin, and Supernatural soundtrack song in existence. It also had a plethora of podcasts I hoped to listen to. I have all this music etc at home, but I won't have it for the next week or so. Bit sad. Also that small losable brand-name MP3 player cost a lot of money. And I don't like paying money because I lost something (had something stolen/eaten by a dog/taken by a bird/????). It's all a big question mark. I need Sherlock Holmes for this mystery.

At least I still have my pennywhistle. And my voice. Musical entertainment à la 18-19th century.