MALAGA!

---

Hola chicas y chicos! Estoy en Málaga ahora y la ciudad es fantástico. It is so good to finally be here! After much touring and traveling it's nice to be settling in somewhere and getting to work on that Spanish. So here's what has happened in the last few days. From Madrid we went to two places- Valle de los Caidos and El Escorial. Valle de los Caidos (valley of the fallen) is this huge monument that is nestled in between two hills north and west of Madrid. It was constructed the fallen soliders of the Spanish civil war, but really it was built specifically for Francisco Franco, the last dictator of Spain. He was kind of mad because they weren´t going to let him be buried at the Monastery across the mountain (El Escorial) among the kings and queens because he was a dictator, so he had this huge thing built (it is MAGNIFICENT) and a 300 m stone cross towers above it. There is this huge hall that goes into the mountain and they have a mass there every day- the inside is incredible! Description doesn´t really do all that much good, so when I can post pictures I will. El Escorial has a monastery there which is fantastic also. It is SO big, there are 11 miles of corridors and such if you walked the entire thing. It reminded me alot of the abbey in Sound of Music, to give you an idea. They still use a lot of it as a real monastery and part of it as a school. It was SO neat as well, and it had a beautiful view of hills from its garden. After those two places, it was to Toledo again. This was a neat experience to go back and take a guided tour. We got to see another monastery, a synagogue and a mosque. The mosque was cool because they were doing renovations, and they had excavated this mass grave and you could see bones poking out of the ground. Wild! The best part about the tour though was our guide. He was one of the most hilarious people ever, and he knew everyone in the city, seriously. He said hi to about 100 people while we were there. After a day in Toledo, it was a 6 hour bus ride (but a beautiful bus ride at that through the Andalucian hills and such) and finally an arrival in Málaga! It is incredible here. It is truly the Costa del Sol. It is hot, but not Texas or Oklahoma hot. And also, we're RIGHT on the beach. My room has a view of the Meditterranean! it is absolutely beautiful. My host family is so accomodating and so nice. The Señor is an amazing cook and their little boy is precious. They are so helpful with correcting Spanish and helping us learn as much as we can. I have plenty of room, and the walk to school is 30 min but it is through this incredible garden park with these gorgeous fountains and beautiful tropical flowers! I am still getting oriented, and it is still kind of shocking that I am here. With classes though, it is going to be awesome because that provides structure (I thrive on structure) and all the teachers are wonderful! I feel like I am going to learn a lot. That IS the reason why I came, so that would be good! Anyways, that is the report I have for now, hopefully I will post pictures soon if I can figure out how to get my wireless to work here in the office. Vale, Adios amigos!

---