Madrid y Toledo

Hola a todos!

Life in Guardo has gotten much busier since the last time I wrote and with my travels a lot has happened in the past month! This update is long overdue...

So... from Sept. 30th -Oct. 5th I was in Madrid for my teaching assistant program's orientation. The orientation events were only scheduled for Thursday, October 1st, but Spain´s Ministerio de Educación paid for our 2 night stay in the hotel where the orientation was held. They also paid for our dinner on Wednesday night, Sept. 30th, all our meals on Thursday during the orientation, and for breakfast on Friday which was really nice. I headed to Madrid with my roommates from Guardo on Wednesday afternoon and we arrived around 8:30pm. At dinner that night I met a guy named Dan from Brisbane, Australia who is teaching in a pueblo in Segovia. Afterward I went out with him and my roommate Dan to a few bars where we could watch a soccer game that was on (Real Madrid was playing Marseilles if I remember correctly). During the orientation on Thursday we attended several talks that explained Spain's education system, our responsibilities as teaching assistants and gave us ideas about games and activities that we can implement in the classroom. We also heard from a panel of representatives from all the embassies where teaching assistants in our program come from (USA, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, China, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium). Each representative spoke some in Spanish and some in their native language to address the auxiliares from their country and I thought it was really interesting to listen to the various versions of accented Spanish when they all spoke. The man from the British embassy actually couldn´t even speak Spanish and read a line or two written on a piece of paper before switching to English. It was pretty funny.

At the end of the day we went to a session only for assistants assigned to the region of Castilla y Leon which was a good opportunity for us to meet the other assistants in our province (Palencia). There are about 15 or 16 assistants in Palencia and many of them living in Palencia capital (the city) are from the UK. We exchanged emails and phone numbers and will hopefully meet up with them at some point soon.

On Friday morning after breakfast I checked out of the hotel and checked into a hostel in Madrid where I would be staying for Friday and Saturday nights. I had been to Madrid once before for a weekend last year when I was studying abroad and had seen a lot of the major sites but I wanted to stay in Madrid for another weekend to see more. Sofia and Mariana, (my Guardo roommates) both had plans to travel elsewhere that weekend but my other roommate Dan was staying in Madrid with his aunts that were visiting so we hung out a lot that weekend with the other Dan (from Australia) that we met at the orientation. It just so happened that that Friday (Oct. 2nd) was the day they announced what city would be hosting the 2016 Olympics. Because Madrid was one of the candidates, there was a big televised pre-announcement fiesta going on in the Parque Oriente (right by the Palacio Real) all afternoon. I went with the "Dans" and we got free t-shirts with Madrid's Olympic slogan on them. They were also giving out large foam hands for people to wave and we were able to get one of those two as well as capes! Chicago was the first city to be removed from the running, followed by Tokyo. It was between Madrid and Rio de Janeiro when the announcement was made at 7:30 pm and unfortunately the party ended promptly because Rio will be the 2016 Olympic Games host. A shame because that night in Madrid would have been unforgettable if they had been declared the winning city!

On Saturday I went with Dan (from Australia) to Toledo for a day trip. We arrived in Toledo around 11:30, relaxed at a cafe for a bit and then headed to the cathedral. We paid for the audioguides and wandered around the cathedral for about an hour. It is one of the most famous Gothic structures in Europe and of course is very beautiful. (I was unable to take a picture of my favorite part, the "transparente", which is part of the main altarpiece. It has an oval window that allows light to shine in from above to illuminate the marble figures. I had never seen anything quite like it in a cathedral before.) After leaving the cathedral, Dan and I met up with a friend of mine named Alyssa who I studied abroad with in Valencia last spring. She is an auxiliar in my program living in Madrid and she was visiting Toledo with a friend named Lulio, also living in Madrid. We wandered around the medieval streets of Toledo for awhile trying to find a suitable place to eat lunch and the place we settled for didn't end up being very good (very salty and greasy food) but oh well... Afterward we walked around some more but our time was running out in the city because we had a 6:30pm train to catch back to Madrid. I ended up getting an attack of vertigo about an hour before our train left so I was unable to do much else but sit on a sidewalk and wait for a taxi to pick me up and take me back to the train station. I had felt a little ill earlier in the morning that day too and I think my bouts of dizziness were related to a virus I had because for the rest of the week I felt lightheaded from time to time. Despite feeling sick during part of my visit to Toledo, I really enjoyed the city and hope to return to see more at some point while I'm in Spain. There are many more museums, medieval streets and walls, and churches to be seen!

On Saturday night, back in Madrid, I went out to dinner with my friend Alyssa and the other auxiliar that works at her school, Alejandra. We had paella in the Plaza Mayor and later ordered gelato and went out to some bars where we met up with Dan (my roommate). It was a good night but I didn't stay out too late because I wanted to make sure my sickness didn't return.

On Sunday morning I checked out of my hostel and went to the famous El Rastro market in Madrid (which goes on every Sunday morning and I think is the largest flea market in Europe). I went with some auxiliares in my program who are living in various parts of Castilla y Leon that had happened to be staying at my hostel where I met them which was fun. I couldn't help myself and ended up buying a few pairs of earrings and 2 scarfs at the market.

I ate lunch at a Thai restuarant (I was so craving ethnic food as Guardo has none to offer really!) and then went to the Thiessen Museum which is really near the Prado and is another famous art museum in Madrid. After leaving the museum and I went to pick up my stuff at the hostel where it was stored and then went to my friend Alyssa's apartment where I would be spending the night before returning to Palencia on an early Monday morning train. Alyssa lives in the northwestern part of the city somewhat near Plaza España and I hadn´t seen that area at all so we took a nice walk in the late afternoon. My favorite part of the walk was the Parque del Templo de Debod which has great views of the Palacio Real and of western Madrid and is a popular place to watch the sunset. A Spanish TV show that I really like actually has a few scenes that are filmed in the park so when we were walking through it and I realized where I was it was a wonderful surprise!

That night I had tapas with Alyssa for dinner and we met up with one of her friends later and went to a bar. Overall I had a fantastic time in Madrid and Toledo! It was nice to see areas in Madrid that I was familiar with and to get to know the city even better and Toledo was breathtaking. Another update is coming really soon as I need to catch myself up!

Besos,
Dana

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