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Wednesday
Since my teacher went to Granada, I didn't have to go to class untl 11:30am, which I was extremely happy about because for some reason I can't get with waking up early here. After I went to that class, I went back to my house and relaxed for a few hours till it was time for the flamenco dancing class. This was the one thing I was most excited about the program. When I got here, I found out it wasn't going to be just a one day thing; the class was going to take place once a week for four weeks!! We learned the flamenco style of dance called Sevillana. Seville is another city in Spain and this dance is very popular there. There's four parts to the dance so that's why it's four weeks. The dance was hard to get at first, but by the end of the class, me and my partner were able to get it down. The trickiest part of the dance is constantly moving your arms and wrist. I never noticed how much they moved their arms until I did it myself and that was the hardest thing for me because I couldn't coordinate my hands and my feet together. On the walk home, I stopped at a nearby store because I was craving an ice cold pop, so I bought two and went home and hopped in the shower because I worked up quite a sweat while dancing.
Thursday
Thursday was very eventful. Once again, I only had one class at 11:30-1:30pm. (This class is called Spanish composition and it's showing that people in Spain use very different words then what we are taught back at home. A prime example of this is that I have always been taught that when someone sneeze's you say "Salud" but one of the teachers told us that in Spain they say "Jesus". Another is that instead of "Ay dios mios" they say "Madre mia"). We didn't have anything planned, but a few of us wanted to go to the supermarket, so we met up in the cafeteria and eventually left to go find the supermarket. The GPS always sucks, so it took us a long time to figure out where to go because it wouldn't pick up where we were and because of that, we would walk up a few minutes in one direction, then have to turn around (it doesn't seem that bad but when you have to hike up a hill then turn around it kind of sucks). We finally made it to the supermarket just to find out they were taking a siesta! I mentioned before that it's not common out here, but somehow I'm noticing more and more stores that take siestas. It was 2:30pm and they weren't going to open back up till 5pm, so we decided to go to this store because one of the girls wanted a swimsuit, so we walked to a store to look around and see if there was anything nice in there. Afterwards, we went to McDonalds (because I was craving it yet again) and we sat for about an hour (it tastes just like in America, the only difference is the desserts: they have donuts, muffins, and croissants). After we finished eating and relaxing, I asked my colleagues if they wanted to do some of the excursions that our professor told us we had to do since he's gone and they agreed, so we began a new adventure to find the places he mentioned! The first stop was "Pozo Amargo", this is a water well, that according to a legend, the water got tainted because some girl's lover was killed and she cried into the well turning all the water bitter. We were all a little underwhelmed by the view because it was literally boarded up. We were expecting at least to see an actual well but all we got was some boarded up site in between very narrow streets. After we took a breather and took pictures showing that we were there, I put the other excursion site in my phone and it said it was only 2 mins away so everyone agreed to go.
The next excursion site we went to was called "Escuela de Traductores". This school was created when Toledo was created and encompassed all three cultures living here. The purpose of this school was to translate documents from one language to another. When we arrived, the doors were closed and we checked around the building to see if there was another entrance but there wasn't (I think they were on a siesta). After we walked around the building, we checked the time and saw that it was almost 5pm so we decided to head back to the supermarket and get the things we wanted. I got some sour cream and onion Pringles. After the supermarket, we decided to visit one of the girls in our group who was moved to one of the dorms because of a bad host family situation. It seemed like such a far walk because we started at the supermarket, which is kind far from the school. When we finally got to the dorm we were caressed with nice cold air conditioning breeze. We took a tour of the dorms and chilled in her room for a bit. We were all tired because we had been walking since 2pm and it was 7pm already.
I went home expecting to eat a nice hamburger and fries because my host mom said that's what she was going to make but instead, it was the Spanish version of a hamburger and fries. I was already expecting the fries to be different because they really don't sell fries like the ones we have in America. In Spain, people call pretty much any fried potato "patatas fritas", which is kinda confusing because I'm used to "papas fritas" for french fries and "patatas fritas" for chips, but here I guess you use that word for both. Anyways, when I sat down, I looked to my left and saw a plate that just had a hamburger patty and the "patatas fritas". I was very shocked and told her that in America we eat hamburgers with bread, ketchup, pickles, lettuce, etc., so when I asked where the bread was, she pointed to the piece a bread that you get for every meal. I explained to her that the bread that's used for hamburgers is thinner and softer. She understood, but told me that she had never made a hamburger before and didn't know how it should made. I understood and just laughed in my head because I couldn't help but find it funny because hamburgers are so common in the U.S. that I didn't even think that she might need help with how to make it. One thing I noticed about the hamburger patty was that she didn't cook it all the way. At first I thought maybe it was some different type of meat here in Spain that stayed red, so I tried it and it was very salty, which I was surprised by because they don't really season their food out here so that was a step closer in the right direction. But after a few bites, I just came to the realization that the burger wasn't cooked all the way (because my host mom didn't know how long the the burger should be cooked) and stopped eating it because I didn't want to get food poisoning. I wish I could say that was my last time seeing uncooked meat here but it wasn't. Earlier in the week when I was talking to my professor about my dislike for the food in Segovia, I told him how my colleagues and I were skeptical of the meat there. He explained to me that they don't cook their pork all the way because they're not worried about salmonella (or whatever the poisoning is from uncooked meat) and those words replayed in my head as I looked at the patty. Another example of this is that a few days later, she cooked steak with patatas fritas. When I tell you she threw the steak on the pan for a minute, flipped it and then served it to the granddaughter, I mean it. The granddaughter cut the steak open and it was still red; I was getting sick just looking at it. Luckily, I understood when my host mom asked me if I liked mine well-done, otherwise, I would have ended up with the same cooked.
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| Pozo de Armargo |
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| Escuela de Traductores |
Friday
Friday was pretty uneventful. Once again, I only had one class, but for some reason I was super tired in the class, so when it was over, I went straight home to go lay down. I spent the rest of the day in the house finishing a presentation for one of my classes and looking up places I should visit while I'm here. It's looking like I'm not going to be able to make it to Italy or Morocco, so I think I'll settle for another city in Spain.
Saturday
Saturday was the day we went to Candeleda. We went to see the Cuevas de Aguila (which translate to Caves of the Eagles) and the piscinas naturales. The caves were pretty cool, I'm not sure what the names are for things that were hanging from the ceiling, but they came in different colors: red, orange and white. It was pretty chilly down there because it was below the ground but it wasn't unbearable. I went in there with a dress and sandals and although I was a little cold, I wasn't shivering. I would like to take a moment to discuss the clothing a little more. I bought three pairs of gym shoes/closed toed shoes (I now realize that was too many) and have yet to wear a pair yet. I have been wearing my thick soled sandals everyday since I got here and I have been fine, especially since we walk everywhere. I bought three pairs of jeans, two of which are ripped, and I have only needed to wear two of them. It's kind of chilly in the morning, so if I only have one class, I will put on my jeans and come back later to change into shorts because in the afternoon/evening it gets unbearably hot. As far as shirts, I thought I brought more than I did, but I didn't, so now I've been trying to find stores with cute shirts that I can buy. From home I brought an off-the-shoulder top, some v-neck/scoop neck tees, and some tank tops (that I haven't worn yet). I also brought 4 dresses and have worn three out of the four, so I say definitely take some dresses. The only reason I haven't worn the fourth one is because it's a going out dress that I bought just in case we go somewhere nice. After the caves, we went to the piscinas naturales. I don't know too much about them because the tour guides really didn't speak to us, unless they were telling us where to go, so I will just insert some pictures we took there. We had about an hour to get in and swim a little before it was time to go eat. We went to a nearby restaurant and ate paella and some meat that tasted like Italian beef meat to me. This was the first time that I enjoyed the food!! The paella was so good that I almost finished all of it. I stopped because we were thinking there might be a second plate and there was. I was pretty full off the paella, when they started to bring out the second dish. I wish I hadn't filled up on the paella because that second dish was delicious. It was chunks of beef with French fries underneath (yummy!). We were supposed to have about two free hours after lunch to enjoy the piscina naturales, but we weren't paying attention and sat at the table for an extra hour which left us an hour to spend in the piscina. I didn't get back in because the water was cold and there was no sun out, so I just laid out my beach blanket and relaxed for the hour. After our free time, we boarded the buses to go home. We had all decided that we wanted to go out that night so we planned to sleep on the bus, then go home and get ready, but it didn't really work out like that. When we got back to Toledo, one of my colleagues wanted to stop at a churro place, so we stopped there and I got churros con chocolate. We then headed to our houses because it was 7 going on 8pm and we still needed to hop in the shower and get dressed. We had planned to meet up at 9:45pm so we can be at Plaza de Zocodver at 10pm. Once we got to Plaza de Zocodever, we got some McDonalds and hopped on the bus. We met up with the last girl of our group and walked 30 mins to a discoteca. The reason we had all decided to go out was because one of the girls in the group was turning 21, so we wanted to celebrate her birthday. After the discoteca, we all went home because we were planning to go to the Museo de Ejercito in the morning, then to Madrid.
Sunday
We all slept in a bit on Sunday and around 1pm we went to the Museo de Ejercito. The museum was seven floors, equipped with all types of different armor that was used many years ago and explained which ethnic groups used what as weapons and armor. Since it was around lunch time, we all went to grab a quick bite from McDonalds. I was the only one that still wanted to go to Madrid, so after I ate, I went home to ask my host family how to take the bus to go to Madrid because it was the cheapest option. P.s. I really appreciate the host family I have because they're so nice and always willing to help me. So I got the directions from them and made my way to the bus station. I wasn't so bad doing it myself. My host family's daughter gave me detailed directions and when I started to doubt myself, I would just text her and she would respond right away to help me. I got on the bus and to my amusement, it was super big! I was expecting a smaller bus; something similar to what I see back home, but this bus looked like you were going on a long-distance journey. It took about 47 mins to get from Toledo to Madrid. I forgot to mention, the reason why I was so set on going to Madrid on Sunday was because my friend's family was there and this was really the only day I would get to spend with them. When I got to Madrid, I realized I didn't have the number for a taxi and I didn't see any driving by, so I started looking them up on my phone and to my surprise, it said that the time I wanted to be picked up was too early. I remembered that they have Ubers in Madrid, so I requested an Uber to take me to their house. Along the way, I got to see a little bit of Madrid and was kind of shocked, I thought it would have looked nicer, but it just looked regular. I'm not really into graffiti and a lot of the buildings had graffiti on them. When we got closer to their Airbnb, it started looking like downtown Chicago, with a lot of people and stores on both sides. I didn't get to do much site seeing while I was there, which I'm okay with because my group is coming back to Madrid next Friday to catch our bus from there to Portugal. I got there around 6pm and left at 12am. We went to dinner and walked around for a while, but I had to leave early because I had class the next morning.
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