"Toledo can't handle us"

Days 5 and 6 were mostly just class and homeworking so I'm going to skip ahead to our first trip...Toledo!

Day 7
Today, Tuesday, we took our first trip out of Madrid! We arrived in Toledo, about an hour south of Madrid, in the morning and went through the Cathedral (La Catedral). The architecture, art and environment were simply incredible. You seem to lose your sense of time and start to feel like you're actually living in the days when elaborate buildings like this are commonplace. La Catedral reminded me a lot of the amazing churches I saw when I went to Italy a few years ago; every time I visit such a magnificent building, it takes my breath away. I can't wait to see more! After La Catedral, we went into a shop and saw the first of the two major products of Toledo: amazing jewelry (the other is swords/knives). After a quick lunch in the park of bocadillos (sandwiches) prepared by our señoras, a small group of us wandered around Toledo. Toledo is fairly small, probably 1-2 square miles, and is characterized by VERY narrow roads. The best part? They still allow cars to drive in the city! So while we were exploring, we constantly had to jump into doorways to avoid being run over by cars with around 3-4 inches between their rear view mirrors and the walls of the buildings. While in Toledo, we visited the Visigoth Museum (the major Germanic tribe that conquered Spain after the Roman Empire fell) and la Iglesia de Santo Tomé to see the painting "El Entierro del Señor de Orgaz" by El Greco. Combined with spectacular weather, not a single cloud in the sky and 0% humidity (apparently it exists somewhere),  our trip to Toledo was perfect. We left around 4:00 to make a quick stop in Aranjuez.

In Aranjuez, we saw the summer palace built by the Bourbon kings in the 18th century. The palace was basically built on a budget due to the economic climate of Spain at the time: wood inlays on the ceiling, wood floors instead of expensive carpet, painted ceilings made to look as if they were actually three-dimensional. It was very different than other palaces I have seen, mainly Windsor Palace in England and Versailles in Paris. But it was still beautiful, full of great art, elaborate furniture and an intense attention to details. After Aranjuez, we moseyed on back to Madrid around 7:00, in time to shower and have dinner. Tonight we had paella and it was delicious! I was very excited because paella is the only Spanish dish I really knew about beforehand. It was a great dinner to complete a great day.

One observation I had today - along with a lot of my fellow compañeros - is that we find ourselves struggling to speak in English! We spend so much of our day talking/thinking/writing/dreaming/living in Spanish that our English skills seem to have been a little neglected. We stutter when we talk and can't think of common words we know that we know. We were joking that we can only be so good at languages: as our Spanish improves, our English has to get worse to maintain the balance. I really hope that's not true...!


Carrie