My Last Week

I can’t believe it is already my last week here in Spain! I’m stressing about all the work I need to get done to finish up my classes because I would much rather be enjoying the city and Spain. I can tell it is going to be a good week though. Today I decided to do a little shopping before I left because there are state mandated “rebajas”, or sales, in all the clothing stores in Spain during the month of July but I have been holding out because the Spaniards told me they get even better towards the end of July. Well sure enough I went shopping today and found this very euro chic leather jacket for 20 euros! But, when I went to pay for it the lady said (in Spanish) 9.99. When I looked confused and said what she looked at me like a dumb American for not knowing my Spanish numbers and pointed to the screen on the cash register that said it. I decided not to inform her that I in fact knew how to say numbers in Spanish but that she was ringing me up wrong and gave her a 10 and got out of there. But moral of the story, I got a really cool leather jacket for 10 euros (about 14 dollars). Then after my classes today I decided I should go and look at the Cathedral of Toledo. I have been there for mass, but they don’t let you look around after because it costs 7 euros to enter if you want to look around. It is a huge cathedral which the people of Toledo will tell you is the best in Spain and maybe in Europe, so I finally shelled out the 7 euros to have a look around today. Well when I got there there was a table of impromptu tour guides set up and they asked me if I wanted a free tour. I said yes and there happened to be no other Spanish speakers who wanted tours so I got a private tour. The cathedral was really amazing and I’m so glad I went. It really is the most impressive cathedral I have seen in Spain so far and it is more like a museum than a cathedral. It is filled with paintings by famous artists that even I have heard of like el Greco, Goya, Velázquez and Rafeal. The tour was really helpful because the guide explained all the different architecture to me and who constructed what portion and important stuff like that. My favorite part though was in the end when my tour guide told me that my Spanish was very good and that I spoke “casi perfectamente” (almost perfectly). Granted I was talking to him about easy things like where I was from and what I was studying and he was probably just flattering me but still it’s nice to hear after struggling for five weeks! Anyways I’m hoping the rest of my week is as good as today was! I head of to Sevilla and Cadiz on Thursday after my last day of work and I’m really excited.

Hola!

Hi everyone! Welcome to the English version of my blog. It’s not going to be as fancy as the Spanish version because I’m not getting graded but hopefully it will be more fun since I can write about whatever I want. First of all please excuse any spelling errors as I switched my computer language to Spanish when I got here to try to fully immerse myself so now I can’t spell check the English. Okay well anyways I guess I’ll give you an overview of what I’ve been doing here so far. I’m taking two classes, one which is the Spanish culture and technology class where we make the blog, and the other is a “curso de practices” where I have class in the morning and then the rest of the day I work at a summer camp for the YMCA Toledo. Most of the time I am a regular counsler and then for an hour a day I teach an English class to the kids. This is probably the biggest challenge I have encountered here as the kids range from 3 to 13 and speak no English. A lot of the time after trying to get them to calm down and listen to the lesson I give up and revert to teaching them an English song or game like the hokey pokey. It’s really fun though because I am definitely learning more Spanish from them than they are learning English from me. The rest of my time here is usually spent going to the pool, playing soccer, meeting with Spaniards for “intercambios” (a meeting with someone trying to learn English where you speak half the time in English and half in Spanish), squeezing in a museum visit, and of course checkin out the Spanish night life. The time is really flying since I am so busy during the week and then gone traveling every weekend but I’m loving it. I can’t believe I only have less than two weeks left! It’s really too bad because I am finally starting to see some legitimate improvement in my Spanish skills and starting to settle in and I already have to leave. I’m just going to try to make the most of it and get everything out of this experience I can in this short time. I’ll try to keep you updated!

Travels

eng blog

Here is a photo album with some pictures from my travels. The first ones are mostly from Toledo. The next weekend I went to Madrid and Valencia. Madrid is an amazingly cool city because it is a perfect blend of old and new Spain. Valencia was definitely more “modern” though it still had some of the most beautiful old churches I have ever seen. The beach in Valencia was definitely worth the trip. The next weekend I went to the Southern region of Spain, Andalucia. First we went to the Mezquita in Cordoba and then to Granada where we went to the Alhambra which is probably the most popular tourist attraction in Spain, for good reason. It was unbelievably huge, the tour lasted for three hours. We also went to a flamenco show in a gypsy cave at night which was awesome. If I figure out how I’ll post a video on the blog but we were so close to the dancers that we were literally getting drops of their sweat on us. Last weekend I went to Pamplona for the festival of San Fermin. I am having trouble describing how crazy Pamplona was to people. There were thousands of people everywhere you went, all dressed in the same red and white outfits, drinking all day and all night. In the span of a block you would hear about four different languages at once. I went to a bull fight the first day I got there which I can’t say I enjoyed, but was definitely an experience. It actually felt a lot like the atmosphere at a Notre Dame football game (the few games we have actually won), but way wilder. There was wine beeing poured, impromptu bands in every sections, and people literally brought their own personal coolers of food and drinks and then desperately wanted to share with the two American girls that didn’t know bull fights lasted over three hours. The encierro, or the running of the bulls, was at 8 in the morning the next morning and sleeping is not an option so by the time that finally started I was exhausted but it was really cool. I wish I had run although it probably would have been a bad idea since two people died the weekend I was there. It was still an experience though. Anyways I am getting ready to go to Barcelona this weekend and then my last weekend I am going to Sevilla and Cadiz and then spending my last night in Spain in Madrid.