Los Jeronimos

I woke up quite early having still set my biological clock from home for 9 o'clock while here was 8. I tried to stay a bit more in bed and enjoy being morning lazy but didn't work out. I was already awake. Vio was still sleeping so I had a short shower and opened my laptop. I started working for a while until we got a message from Andres, our mentor, asking us if we'd like to join the volunteers who'd go on Saturday to help clean the areas more affected by the floods that happened in Murcia region just the week before our arrival.

We were thinking that well, this is what we came for, to volunteer and be helpful, yet we had our plans for Saturday to go to the beach and we had the reservation and everything. The decision was quite hard to take but we gave up on the 2 Javier (Javier was taking us to San Javier) to join the activity.

We started to prepare our lunch when Alvaro, our flatmate, came. I have to say it was a very intense conversation that I had with him: "Hola" and then he was already in his room. Barely saw him after. Presumed to be caveman.

We prepared to go to Los Jeronimos, the other name of the Monasterio de San Pedro de la Ñora. We took the tram from Plaza Circular. Despite not being so far away from the centre we had to change the tram and wait for about 20 minutes until ours came. The voice in the tram resounded loudly “fin de trayecto. UCAM Los Jeronimos”. The monastery starts to appear in our sight from the tram station itself. For us it was not the end station, but the beginning.

The monastery was start being built at the beginning of 18th Century, to which one of the most important architect of the area of Murcia, the Friar architect Antonio de San Jose, brought his contributions to the monastery. After having passed under several rulings, at a time of Mendizabal's seizure of church property, the monastery was plundered and despoiled, losing many of its original art works.

The monastery was taken by the Fundacion Universitaria San Antonio, the owner of the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), was restored and adapted to host the headquarters of the university, while the architectural ensemble around was easily transformed into classes, laboratories and other needed facilities for the educational purposes.

Despite being given in the care of the university, there is the possibility of visiting the complex for people outside UCAM, free of charge. And really, it worth the trouble of coming all over to here. It is settled in a peaceful, quiet location that offers splendid views to the mountains around and to the monastery itself.

Getting back to our job here, we met Andres, our mentor, Mr. Mendoza, the head of OPRI department, and Tisco, our coordinator from the sport department. We sat down, talked and decided the actions for the next week when the work itself is to start happening.

We found out we had no more place in the buses for the Saturday cleaning activity as a prior registration was needed. And yes, we have already have cancelled the trip for San Javier so we were to make new plans for the weekend.

After the short but productive meeting we went back to the city. We have just received the first month's allowance so of course it was productive. We stopped on the way to Druni, one of Vio's favorite places around the house, a shop with cosmetics. After perhaps more than half an hour I managed to drag her out of there and go home for dinner.

I was surprised to see the big amount of plastic wraps at the fruits and vegetable stands of the supermarkets, thing that I didn't quite enjoy. I also found out many differences in the products available here and truth to be told, as a cheese eater and yogurt drinker (real one, without sugar), I'm just hoping I can survive 1 year without the white goodies.

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