Third Week Already!

Once again I've been remiss in keeping up with my posts. I'll try my best to make this week as painless as possible.

Monday began our third week of classes. This week there were no new people, and no one new left. So it was nice to have an established group with an established routine. Also, this week was pretty low key in terms of activities. My foot has been hurting me so I wasn't really up to walking around a lot. After class on Monday I went to Retiro Park with Antonia. We grabbed ourselves a spot in the sun and did our homework together (we had to move into the shade it was so hot at one point though!) I really like Retiro park. It doesn't seem like it's in the center of Madrid at all. It's so calm and quiet with lots of shade from the trees. I wish we had a huge park like that near us in Worcester.  I'd love to do my homework there.

Tuesday I went straight home after school to do my homework and eat lunch. At 4:30 I went back to school to meet up with a bunch of people to do a scavenger hunt in Retiro.  It was being held through the Madrid Tourist Bureau so there were kids from other colleges in Madrid there as well. Antonia, Julian, and I were on the same team, along with two girls from Duke University.  They were not very friendly, or very enthusiastic about the scavenger hunt, which bummed out my feelings a bit. Still, we walked around the park and found the answers to a bunch of different questions. We ended at the Crystal Palace, where we didn't win anything because of our unenthusiastic group.

Wednesday after class I went to a presentation by Susana on the Camino de Santiago which is a pilgrimage trail that goes from France to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the northwest part of Spain. Saint James is buried in the cathedral there.  If I can, I'd like to visit Santiago while I'm here. But if I can't, I want to come back and hike the coastal version of the camino.  We tried to go to Cien Montaditos that night to meet Katie's cousins, but that didn't really work out so well.

Thursday I legitimately did nothing worth writing about. :)

Friday I had my first test! I was kind of nervous, but I studied soooo much. And it actually went really well. I needed about 5 more minutes in the end to finish off my paragraph but I wasn't quite sure how to say that to Mabel (the director of the school) as she was standing there staring at me.  I was so happy when I finished that I bought myself this delicious chocolate filled thing. Nomm!

Saturday I went with Mikaela to Toledo.  Before I got to Toledo I had a mini crisis however: I missed the bus. The metro was so freaking slow that I got to the bus station at 10:05, and the bus was at ten. But instead of panicking (okay I panicked for a minute) I bought myself a ticket to get on the next bus. When it showed up everyone started getting on. There were 3 people ahead of me when the bus driver stopped us and said he had to go check and see how many seats were left. I prayed to the bus gods that there were enough seats for me to get on this bus (or else I wasn't going), and when the bus driver came out he said there were only 4 more seats. I praised the bus gods, and finally got on the bus to Toledo. We went to this old church that has paintings in it from the 1400's.  Our guide said it was one of the only places in the world that had preserved paintings from that period (because when the Renaissance came around they looked at Medieval paintings and thought they were awful so they painted over them). We went to an old synagog and got to see how exactly the religions (Catholicism,  Judaism, and Islam) collided in Toledo.  The paintings all around some of the windows in the synagog was in arabic, and the building had an Islamic design on the outside. We also saw the cathedral (again), though it never ceases to amaze me.  I bought some more marzipan and some damask jewelry for presents.  Since I have the sniffles, I wasn't feeling too great when I got home, so I decided to stay in for the night and just relax.

Today, Sunday, I went to the Rastro in the morning. First I got semi-lost on the way, but once I found it I let myself be carried along by the swarm of people. And when I couldn't stand it anymore and I got what I came for, I left. I ate a nice lunch with my family, then did all my homework before going to mass with my señora. Afterwards we met up with her husband and walked around for a bit before going home for dinner.

Now on to week 4 of school, week 6 of my stay in Spain!