Toledo

Wednesday was the first real day of my program in Spain! Allie and I walked to the school today with our bags to go to Toledo. We live only about two blocks from the school so it is so convienent! Some kids live a 30 minute bus ride away so we definitely lucked out! Our host mom is so sweet and nice and we both love her so much! Yesterday during the afternoon we sat on her in-door porch and drank Tinto de Verano, the spanish wine drink with juice in it. It is so good and definitely my new favorite drink! I am loving the laziness of Spanish life so far. Yesterday Allie and I napped and read and just laid around for about 4 hours haha we were feeling pretty lazy but that's exactly what our madre did too!

We all met at the school at 9 this morning and had a brief introduction of rules and ways to stay safe. The school seems really chill and hopefully the classes will be pretty easy. I am taking three spanish classes and a required culture class that is in English. I am looking forward to seeing how classes go on Monday. The bus ride to Toledo was only about 45 minutes and we are staying at the sister school from our school in their dorms. We had lunch when we arrived and then we had about 3 hours of free time before our first lecture. Allie, William, and I set off to explore the city and ended up walking around for about two and a half hours just wandering the streets. It is so hot here and it was definitely a work out with the cobblestone streets and massive hills. I can't imagine living here and basically walking straight up hill or down hill every day. Allie and I bought some cheap bracelets and I bought a postcard and a shot glass to add to my collection.

We came back and rested for awhile until our "class" started at 4:30. Since it was just orientation, the classes were about things to help us adjust to Spanish life such as Spanish culture and living with our host families. They were kinda boring but helpful I guess. We just hung out the rest of the afternoon after that and got ready to go out. Since it was basically a torrential downpour outside, we weren't sure what there was going to be to do but we braved the rain and went out anyways. We found a cool bar that had tombs underneath it that you could see through the floorboards. It closed at 12 though since Toledo isn't a party city so that kinda put a damper on our first night out but it was really great to see and meet everyone in our group!

The next day was fun because we got to go on tours of the historical part of Toledo. We first went to the Mosque which was so gorgeous and then the Synagog. Toledo is very interesting because it is the only place in the world where the Moors, Jews, and Christians lived peacefully. We also got to see the church where El Greco's painting, The Burial of Santo Orgez, is hung in Santo Tome. I loved this part of the tour because I studied the painting in Art History last year so it was really surreal to see it in real life. Later in the afternoon after lunch, we saw the Cathedral. It was incredible. It took over 5 centuries to finish and it has been my favorite thing we saw so far. I think it is so cool that people in Spain or in Europe in general, have these churches as their churches they go every Sunday and people in America fly over the ocean to go see it. It would be so amazing to have a church like that in the United States.

That night we had our welcome dinner and the school gave us sangria which was a nice treat. The dinner was amazing and I think I had three plates haha. We all decided to go to a discoteca that night called El Circulo del Arte which was an old church that they converted into a club. It was so much fun. We stayed out until 4 in the morning dancing. We had to get up at 8 which was definitely rough though and drive back to Madrid.

Allie and spent the rest of the day walking around Madrid exploring for two hours and we are definitely going to have a little siesta now!