Swords and Stoners

HOLA, this Saturday we went on  a day trip to Toledo with everyone else from our program. Toledo is gorgeous:

(view of the whole city)

And, believe it or not, it has a cathedral that we toured. This cathedral was actually the first to be built in Spain and is absolutely beautiful, but we are all slightly desensitized to cathedrals after seeing so many of them.

Toledo is famous for its swords and metalworks, and also for marzipan, which we bought from a cloistered nun in a tiny window (with the help of our monitor Ines since we were too shocked by the little window and confused by the situation to speak coherent Spanish...but what else is new). I've only ever had the almond paste version of marzipan that comes on cakes, but this was solid marzipan in little doughy candies. It was SO sweet that it made me a little nautious. The most enjoyable part of Toledo was probably its escalators, which were unheard of in Santiago.

Hilary enjoying the escalators, with Lope forever lurking in the background

Toledo is also cool because all of the streets are cobblestone and VERY narrow. Whenever a car was coming, someone would yell "COCHE" and we all had to stop walking and press ourselves against the buildings to let it pass. There was one close call with a truck.

We also visited a mosque and some synagogues/a Jewish museum, since Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived harmoniously in Toledo hundreds of years ago (pre-Inquisition...when the mosque and synagogues were converted into churches). The painter El Greco lived in Toledo, so we saw some of his most famous paintings as well. Photography was unfortunately not permitted.

After returning to Madrid and taking a short nap, we went out to La Noche en Blanco, which is a huge all-night party in the streets of Madrid. The museums have certain exhibits open for free, but it was so crowded that we didn't even attempt to go near them. All of the major streets looked like this:

We spent most of the night being overwhelmed and unsure of where we should go, but we had a fun time and it was really cool to see, even though we missed out on many of the Noche en Blanco exhibits/activities. We did, however, stop by the giant Twister board.

After having a pretty quiet Sunday that included delicious ice cream, we went back to classes today. I am taking the following five classes:

-Spanish language class with other Americans where we learn how to sound less like awkward foreigners and how to politely decline or accept invitations to get coffee

-History of Spain, also with fellow Americans as part of the international students program

-Education of the Citizen and Human Rights, a mini-course that ends in late October.

-The Theory of the Image, a media studies first-year class (with Spanish students) that sounded fun to try. Most of our grade is based on a creative project entitled "My World in Images" that has a written, research-based component too. This should be interesting.

-Prehistory and Ancient History. I have not actually gone to this class at all yet because last week I was planning on taking a different class, but there were only 7 students, I was the only American, and the professor thought my name was Miguel because I can't pronounce Raquel properly, so that was too intimidating and I switched to this new one. I'm hoping it is a better fit because we are now registered for classes and I'm not allowed to change my schedule anymore...haha.

In more exciting news, Hilary and I have been planning the trips we want to go on while we are here! The plane tickets to other nearby countries are incredibly cheap- it's awesome. Current schedule:

-PARIS, October 7-11 to visit Greg!
-MOROCCO, October 22-24 (my birthday!)- hopefully we can see our friend Lauren while we're there!
-LONDON, November 18-21- the weekend the next Harry Potter movie comes out!!!!

My host family continues to baffle me, but I really like them and they are so nice to me. Today after dinner (which was a weird tomato soup that they told me to eat with a fork and a whole plate of fish and mussels) I helped my host mom research marijuana plants after we watched a news story about some kids getting arrested for possession. On the news the kids had stuffed an entire van full of marijuana leaves. I am not exaggerating. The leaves were up past the windows of the car. My host mom wanted to know what marijuana plants look like because, as she explained, someone might give her one as a present and she would think it's just a pretty plant without knowing that it was an illegal drug. So just in case this happened, she wanted to be familiar with what it looks like. I helped her find pictures on google. She thought it was a really pretty plant, especially when it has flowers. Meanwhile, the grandmother kept asking (in Spanish of course), "What is so special about this plant?" and my host mom would answer, "It's a drug!" Then 30 seconds later the grandmother would ask again, "So what is so special about this plant?" My host mom was getting very annoyed with her. Que loco.

Hasta la vista,

Raquel