And I've glued myself to a computer for the afternoon because I'm sick. After 4 weeks of no problems with any food or drink here, it finally caught up with me and my stomach is being just annoying enough to keep me from thoroughly enjoying this town. Last night was Salamanca, which is an insanely cool town. It's a very college town, the people are young and fun, and the places to go have plenty of variety. I was shown around the town by Soph, who was a fantastic tour guide for dinner, ice cream, coffee, and one of the coolest clubs I've ever seen. I had a blast that day. Thanks, Soph!Unfortunately, I think either breakfast or lunch in Salamanca did it for me, and by the time I got to León by bus I was in sick mode. Unfortunately, I spent the night in a hotel room watching a Jackie Chan movie in Spanish while the whole town celebrated outside, with tons of fireworks, fiestas everywhere, and the stories the next day definitely sounded interesting. Regarding the previous post, I don't want to give the impression that I'm being an ugly American. I was given permission to start being more comfortable by my surrogate parents here through a series of small lectures - 'you say thanks too much,' that kind of thing. Carlos, my father, isn't anything like an evil guy, anyway. The relationship seems to be very give-and-take: he'll lecture me on something, or request something specific (usually about not making noise, I'm not a noisy person but the walls are all paper-thin), and because he's a very assertive guy by default it seems a little authoritarian to the average American dude. But then he'll turn around and do me a great favor, like help me arrange travel plans, make me food to take on trips, or drive me to school in the morning. It is, very much, a 'live and learn' kind of situation. I'm still learning new things every day, my family is much more comfortable asking things of me, and when I get home tonight it'll be the first time that I request a specific food - a soup not unlike chicken noodle.