on the go

It has been a busy week.

Classes started this week, well just one class, but it’s for four hours a day, so it’s pretty much the normal amount of time to be in class. My class’s professor is Javier, he’s just great. Most of us are pretty grounded in the Spanish language, so we’re just having fun learning how to interact with Spanish people properly and he’s spending some time telling us about the culture. We’ve got a project due on Thursday and our final exam is on Friday. Then Intensivo is over and the other classes start. I really feel like I’m beginning to really understand the language and my Spanish is coming along. I still have plenty of trouble at times, though. It is unbelievable to me how I ever thought I would learn the Spanish language with only 4-5 hours of Spanish a week. I’m fully immersed here, speaking and listening to only Spanish, and it’s still coming at a slower pace than I’d like. But what can you do but just keep trying?

We get a little break during the day in which we can go get café, tapas or just walk around. Luckily our classroom is near the cathedral, so we went over and checked it out a few times this week. There is a cute old man who just hangs around the cathedral and talks to whoever is around. He showed us around and helped us find a few things that are not like the other in the decoration on the outside. A few new things were added when the cathedral was being
renovated, can you tell?

i spy.......an astronaut??

We went out a few times in the evening to meet other students and walk around. It was probably the only week during the semester that we wouldn’t have class, so we tried to take full advantage of the free evenings. We did tapas once and then went to a bar/club one night and watched a Spanish band play. That’s exactly what I am looking for here, and Laura and I were so thankful to finally find some music in this city. And much more to come in that department, we hope!

the cathedral at night.

On Friday we had classes only until 12, as there is no class in the afternoons on Fridays. Another thing I LOVE about this culture (along with the afternoon naps and the staying out late.) After lunch, Maggie and I went to work on our project for Intensivo, because we’d be gone all weekend. In the evening, we went and got tapas and then met up with our professor and woman who is involved with a student ministry and we went to a café and just talk about possible places for us to get plugged in. She was wonderful and turns out that she lives just a few blocks from our apartment.

We got up early on Saturday morning and met the group at one of the Plazas at 7 to leave for Toledo. We arrived in Toledo around 10:30ish and walked to one of the great Cathedrals in the city. We toured this and walked around and got the full tour from Jesus (our program director, one of my bosses, but not the main one), who I think knows every fact about Spanish history that exists. After that, we walked through the city to the Jewish Synagogue in the city and checked that out too. Both of these places I’d been to before, but I can’t say that really retained much of the information from three years ago.

the cathedral in toledo

So after that we went to the hotel, ate lunch and had some free time. Laura and I walked out back of our hotel and took some pictures of the river.

bridge to toledo


From about 5:30 to 9 we had free time and Laura and I thought it’d be a good idea to get as lost in the city as possible and then try to find our way back without a map. So we walked and walked for maybe an hour and a half or so, enjoying the narrow alleys and frequent graffiti, and then finally turned around and tried to retrace our steps and make it back to the center of the city.

Can’t say we made every turn right, but we finally made it to our desired destination and hung around and just people watched. We saw a flyer for an “Acto Politico’ that would take place around 7:30, so not really knowing what that meant, but being intrigued all the same, we stayed there until a little before 8, only to be disappointed by nothing really happening at all that we had assumed. No protests, banners or nothing, kind of a bummer. Dinner was at the hotel at 9, and then the night was ours to explore yet again all Toledo had to offer. We went out to a few bars and clubs hoping to find some live music or something, but seemed to come up completely short, until we stumbled upon this small looking bar, that actually turned into this great music hall, which had a band playing. We hung around for that for a while until they were done and then again, tried to get home, which proved to be a bigger challenge than we though. It took the five of us about 45 minutes to find our hotel. Not the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me, but close.

toledo

So the next morning, we set out for Segovia and stopped at a Palace in La Granja. We hung around there and toured the snow covered gardens for about an hour and then left there for Segovia.

palacio real de la granja

We got to Segovia around 1:30, and took some time to look at the Aqueduct that runs through the middle of the city. These aqueducts were constructed about 2.000 years ago, 2000 YEARS! That blows my mind. And they were made without any cement or anything. These massive stones just stay together because of gravity. And if you can’t tell from the pictures, the aqueduct is ENORMOUS. Can anyone explain this to me?

aqueducts

So we had time for lunch, which we got at a cute and cheap little café off a side alley. We met up with group around 4 and went to the Alcazar de Segovia, a palace that Queen Isabella used to live in before she got married to old Ferdy.

alcazar from the tower

So we toured around some rooms and then we got to climb up into the tower and look at the city of Segovia from a huge patio far above the palace. It was breathtaking; the landscape didn’t really look real. It was all burnt colors, reds, oranges, browns and greens, so beautiful.

view of segovia from the top of the castle

outside segovia

So we left Segovia around 6 and returned to Salamanca around 8, tired and not so ready to do homework, but glad to be back with our family. I am so thankful to be living with Rosa and Sylvia. Gosh they are great and I really missed being away fro them, even just for two days. I’ve made my home away from home.

That’s the news for now, but before I leave, a few things...

1st- I heard an Iron and Wine song on the TV the other day on a commercial for ham.

2nd- In Segovia, I saw a poster for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, the documentary about global warming that features Al Gore.

Just a little slice of home…

Love y’all, take care.

-C