This week was a great week. The city is still very excited about the world cup win and after going to bed relatively early Sunday night, it took a while to fall asleep because cars kept honking their horns as they drove outside my house. Even the next morning some people showed up to my culture class with flags still painted on their faces. The team came back to Spain Monday and Sagrario and I watched them arrive at the airport during lunch and then by dinner time the parade was on television. All the news outlets are constantly replaying the winning goal and footage of the team celebrating, so it’s obvious that the country is very happy about the success of the World Cup team.
This past Tuesday was my birthday and it has definitely been one of my best memories here thus far. After class Sagrario made soup and lobster for lunch. They were the tiny kind of lobster so we had fun cooking them and watching them crawl around prior to cooking them. Then Sagrario surprised my with postres, which are little desserts, from the bakery across the street. They were so delicious. And it was fun to have real dessert because in Spain fruit and yogurt is considered dessert so that little change was nice. After that I met some friends at the pool. It was a nice, hot day so we spent the afternoon relaxing and doing a bit of work for classes. Later that night I went with friends to a restaurant to have dinner. We went to Café Luna, which is very close to the University, and got a three-course dinner for only 10 euro. I really appreciated that my friends suggested doing because the food was delicious and it made my birthday memorable that everyone wanted to celebrate with me and make sure I had a good time. After that we went to a few bars and I had to answer lots of questions about why I was wearing a crown. Apparently wearing a crown on your birthday is not customary for Spanish people to do.
The next day it was back to work. I had a History of Art exam Friday so I lot of time was spent preparing for that. Many of us don’t have wi fi in our houses so we all normally find places where we can use it and meet there to do work. Recently we’ve been going to the McDonalds, which is about 5 minutes away from my house. It’s nice to be able to use the Internet but I really doing want to spend a lot of my time in Spain in a McDonalds so I’ve been trying to find other convenient places to go.
On Friday night I went to mass with Sagrario. It was a very interesting experience. Mass was exactly the same as it would have been in the United States, expect for of course being in Spain, and communication was very disorganized. Instead of filing pew by pew to the front to receive communication, everyone basically charged the altar so that made moving around a bit difficult. On the way home Sagrario pointed out all of her favorite shops to me and we had a really good conversation. I feel like every day it becomes easier for us to communicate. Before I leave I want to go to mass at the huge cathedral on campus. Our time here is almost half way over and I don’t want to miss out on all the experience there is to be had here.
A definite highlight this week was our visit to Toledo. I had never walked up so many hills in one day as I did Saturday and but it was worth it because Toledo is a very beautiful city. First we stopped across the river at a scenic view that overlooked the city. It was gorgeous and we could clearly see the cathedrals that we’d be visiting. The first church we visited was called San Juan de los Reyes. It had very high ceilings, a beautiful painting behind the altar, and lots of beautiful sculptures craved into the walls. It was breathtaking. The second cathedral was even larger and more detailed but of course we couldn’t take pictures at this one, which was disappointing because it was incredible. After the cathedrals we had free time so we found a shady spot in the city and had lunch. After free time we saw El Greco. That was very interesting to see because we’d recently studied it in history of art, so to saw it in person and know the significance of it was a very cool experience. After that we took the downhill trek back to the bus. Everyone was exhausted so we all slept for the majority of the ride home. I have a feeling that the bus ride home from Andalucia next weekend will be very similar.
Church in Toledo
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