Advertisement
Published: September 15th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Toledo
This is the beautiful city where I get to live! I have officially completed one school week. It has gone by so fast already, and I have a feeling that the rest of my study abroad experience will go by just as quickly. I started my 20th Century Spanish literature and Spanish Cinema classes today. So far they are the ones that have the most work. I will have a 1200 word paper due every Monday from now on (almost). But for what is asked of us, it shouldn't be a problem. I'm looking forward to the cinema class. I haven't analyzed movies before, so it should be interesting. I'm hoping that I can get art history credit for it too!
Tomorrow I make my trip to the museum with Miguel to meet the museum staff. I'm very excited for this! At the same time though, I'm worried about my lack of experience and vocabulary. I guess that is how you learn though. I start officially on Wednesday. After that I work every Tuesday from 9-12 and Wednesday from 9-2. While I was reading through my master painters book, I read the information on one of the El Greco paintings (La Inmaculada Concepcion), and they have it at that
Study Abroad Fall 08 021
Close-up of La Catedral. museum! I almost died. I get to along side this stuff and be responsible for cataloging it and helping put together shows! Ahhh!!!
We had an excursion of Toledo last Friday. It was nice to walk around the unfamiliar parts of the city and learn more about the history of it. I saw the church where El Greco received his first Spanish commission. When I feel a little homesick I just have to remember that is why I came here in the first place! To live among the art and culture and improve my Spanish. I have pictures from this, but I can't figure out how to upload them on travelblog. They are on facebook though. We also went up the escalators that are cut into the hillside, La Parroquia de Santa Leocadia, a convent, the administrative offices for La Universidad de Castilla La Mancha (dates back to the 18th century), El Circulo del arte (it used to be a church, now it's a bar/discoteca), el Correo and the cathedral. Before the sight seeing, we drove around the outside of the city and stopped on the other side of the river. The view was incredible! We could even see
Study Abroad Fall 08 022
Alcazar which is an arabic word meaning fortress. La Fundacion.
That night we checked out the mall in Poligono. I realized that I am running out of clothes. I should of brought more, but who's to know? My host mom just did laundry so I am well stocked again. Poor Vi...her host mom told her that she only does laundry twice a month. And then they lost 2 of her shirts. She brought less stuff than I did I think. We really take water for granted in the US! After the mall I met one of my host sister's back at the apartment to go see a movie. We went with a couple of her friends. I had a lot of fun. They talk really fast and sometimes the words seem to just run together, but I know I will get it eventually. We saw Wanted. I was really impressed with myself because I understood all of it, and obviously there were no subtitles. I enjoyed hanging out with them. I haven't been much of a talker this last week, but then again I haven't been at the apartment much. I will make more of an effort this week for sure.
I chose not to go
to Madrid for the night. There was just no way I could have pulled an all nighter, even if there was stuff to do. Instead I met up with friends in Poligono. We accidentally ran into more girls from school and joined up with them. I was out until 2:20 AM. It was a good time though. I got to know more people from our group.
This Friday we are going on an excursion to Madrid with the school. I am either going to stay in Madrid with friends for the weekend, or catch the train to Granada with some other people. I really want to see La Alhambra. Carolyn told me that I should definitely go just to see it. I'll see what everyone else is doing and make a decision later in the week. It would be nice to spend more time in Madrid, even though I have already been there. There's always things to do though and there are things that I missed last time that I would love to do now. We'll see.
No homesickness or culture shock yet. I walked out of the movie theater on Friday night thinking that I was back
in the US, until everyone started speaking Spanish again. It was weird. It might take some time to set in though, after all it has only been a week. I just hope that I am one of those people that it doesn't affects. So far, so good.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.084s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0454s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb