Toledo and more

Monday January 21, 2008
I had something, for the first time since I got here that I didn’t like. Today Padre made lunch for us, and it was basically canned vegetables with vinaigrette, oil, salt, and pepper. Green beans, peas, carrots, and the worst of all: brussel sprouts. I had never tried brussel sprouts, so I tried them and I thought I was going to be sick. It was like eating soggy lettuce, only worse kind of like seaweed. Anyway, that was the only thing worth writing about today, and it’s late, so more to come later….

Wednesday January 23, 2008
So not much of interest happened yesterday, and not really much today, but there are a few things that I have learned. First of all, I learned what to say if I’m in trouble in a Spanish-speaking country. “¡Socorro!” is the signal that you need help, so heaven forbid something should ever happen, I will know what to scream. Second, something I’ve noticed over the past week or so is the placement of wedding bands on people here. Some of them wear it on their left ring finger like we do, and some on their right. So yesterday Brooke and I asked our Padre about it, and it turns out that there is a method to this madness. In Spain, a “novio” or “novia” (depending if you are a boy or girl) means that you are fairly serious with that person, not just casually liking them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting married either. Anyway, if that novio gives you a ring, you wear it on your left ring finger to signify that you are taken. If you happen to get married, then the wedding band goes on your right finger to show that you are taken for good. In the U.S. if you get a ring, usually the girl just wears it on her left finger, so it’s interesting to me that there is such a significant purpose and message as to which finger you wear it on. Oh, the third thing I learned yesterday was that money is SO not the same here in Spain. The euro just doesn’t go as far as an American dollar. The exchange rate right now is about 1.5€ for one American dollar. Everything is a little bit more expensive here. However, when Brooke and I went to put minutes on our phone, from 10€ we got 300 minutes at $0.05/minute to call other Movistar phones like ours in the program. For Spain this really isn’t bad, and the 300 minutes will probably last us the whole trip. For a movie ticket it’s about 5 or 6€, which translates to almost $12 for a movie ticket. But to get a rather large chocolate covered churro like I did last week, it was only 1€, which is super cheap (about $1.50).
Anyway, I think that’s about all that’s been exciting other than going to school. Oh, except I finally saw our Madre’s store “Vanila”, and it’s actually bigger and nicer than I imagined it would be. We thought it was a gift shop for tourists or something, but it’s actually more like a home furnishings store, and they have quite a bit of stuff, nice stuff. And the other thing I did today was go into Madrid, and we saw the San Jerónimo Real cathedral/church which is right in between the Prado museum and an entrance to Buen Retiro Park. It was really big, elaborate, and beautiful. ..much bigger than the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake. There were a couple of kids in our group who thought it would be kind of fun to go into a confessional and confess their sins. So that was cool I guess, I didn’t do it, I wasn’t sure if it was respectful or not, I wouldn’t want someone to do something like that at a temple.

Thursday January 24, 2008
Today was mainly my day to kind of relax before the trip to Toledo tomorrow. This morning I had Spanish 106, and then afterwards, I updated my blog pictures, and then I went running with Kaitlyn. When I came home we ate lunch, which was okay I guess. We had a mixture of vegetables that I don’t really want to know what they were, and those cordon bleu things, and pork, and peaches for postre. After that, I was pretty sleepy, so I took a siesta, did homework, and packed for tomorrow. That’s about it, everything else was pretty insignificant. On the bright side, I ran about 1.3miles today, and I haven’t been running since October I think, so that was really impressive to me.
I keep forgetting to write about some of the differences in the culture here. One of the things that really bugs Brooke and I is the placement of the crosswalks; instead of being at the corner like they are in the U.S. they are about 15-20 feet from the corner due to the round-abouts which are pretty much everywhere.
Another thing that’s funny about the culture is operating hours of stores and businesses. Because of the normal routine of a Spaniard, not only do many stores not open until at least 8 a.m., but pretty much everything closes around 2p.m. because of the siesta, and then opens back up again around 5p.m. That’s something else: time. Everything is in military time here, and there were actually some people in my group who didn’t know how to tell military time until this Monday the 21st.
Now for some fun facts. I always thought that television was a huge fad in America, but it’s even more of a big deal here in Spain. Televisions are on ALL THE TIME, and people aren’t even necessarily watching it. Basically it’s there for background noise. But if someone goes into the kitchen, almost the first thing they do is turn on the t.v., and it will stay on until you leave the house, or whatever. On the subject of electricity, that is super different here too. As Americans, we are used to being able to keep all of our appliances plugged in all the time, or even using the power cords to enlarge the number of appliances we can use at once. But here, you can’t have too many things going at once because it will blow the circuit. For example, you can’t have the washer and stove on at the same time, or even two burners going at the same time. I don’t know how they do it, I am personally used to doing at least two or three things at once, but that’s pretty much impossible here.
Finally: mullets. In American culture, a big fad in schools and across the country right now is the Goth look. Here, it’s the mullet. Everywhere you go you can find at least a handful of mullet-sporting Spaniards. The other day as we were coming back from Madrid and about to get off the train, I looked out the window, and low and behold, was a group of teenage boys (about seven or eight of them) who all had mullets. There are some people in our Study Abroad group who have decided to dedicate a percentage of their pictures to mullets, and we intentionally try to find them whenever we go out. A few that we have seen we weren’t really sure if it was a boy or girl, but citizens as young as three to those in their 20s have gone to the mullet.
Well, I have to get up at six to leave for Toledo, which should be awesome by the way, so buenas noches!!!

Saturday January 26, 2008
So, pretty much Toledo was awesome. It’s was prettier than Madrid, and it looks like a postcard only in real life. We left yesterday morning at about 7a to get to the Shumway’s to help get them and their kids off. Then after the train to the Atocha station in Madrid, it was a half hour ride on the bullet train to Toledo. Once we got there, we hiked up to our hotel from the train station. That was kinda rough because the geography of Toledo is situated so that the middle of the city is in the middle of a large hill, and ¾ of the city is surrounded by a river (which I conveniently can’t remember the name of). Once we got to our hostel, we put all of our stuff into one of two rooms because we couldn’t check into our own until a couple hours later. Each room has anywhere from two to four beds, a bathroom, and closet, but the rooms are really small and cramped.
Right off the bat we went to the Cathedral while we were waiting to check into our rooms, and it was very massive. The Cathedral of Toledo is the third largest to the one in Seville and one in Milan. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so it’s hard to make you understand the enormity of it. But the walls of the chapels went up and up probably more than 50 feet, and every inch was covered in decorative gold plated “stuff”. I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s like sculptures and figurines of angels, the Apostles, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and anything else you could think of pretty much. A lot of marble is used as well, and because it’s such a large edifice the whole thing was absolutely freezing! There were people who had on not only sweaters, but winter coats, gloves, scarves, and anything else they could find to keep warm. In the center of the Cathedral is the Coro (Choir) where the main organ is, seats where people would gather to listen to the choir. There’s a large marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary and the angels in this section and it’s considered one of the most beautiful sculptures ever. Then on the east end of the Cathedral is this portion of the wall that has angels and gold spear-like things coming out of the wall. Above this sculpture is a skylight where a hole was cut into the building after it was built to allow the light to come in. So in the middle of the day it looks like the light from heaven itself is streaming in on the angels.
We also went to a Jewish synagogue (Sinagoga del Transito) after the Cathedral, and it was much different than the Cathedral. Everything about the Catholics churches is elaborate and of the finest quality, but the Jewish keep their architecture very simple and plain, but with both religions, it’s easy to see that the people have faith in what they believe, and that is a very admirable quality.
Other than that we basically would walk around the city getting lost in order to find things. Most of the streets look the same, and it’s kind of confusing compared to a community like Provo which is on the grid system. The streets are really narrow with the buildings extremely close and barely large enough for one car to go through. We constantly had to move over to the side to allow the cars to get by, but that’s normal because the streets are sidewalks as well, so the drivers are used to having to wait for pedestrians. While we were walking, we would stop in shops every once in a while to take a gander at what they had. Toledo is a prime tourist attraction, and there are dozens of shops to choose from, but you have to be careful, or you could get ripped off. One of the things that Toledo is famous for is their swords and steel. Basically if you go to Toledo, it’s almost guaranteed that you will buy some sort of sword/dagger/metal object. Also, a lot of the stores sell jewelry that’s made from this black material and then with gold designs on it. They are really pretty, but they use the black-gold style on things like decorative bowls/plates, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and other things too.
After a long first day in Toledo, some of us got up this morning to attend Mass at the Cathedral at 9am. I’ve been to Catholic weddings and funerals before, so I was already kind of familiar with how they do things, but I wanted to go to Mass once in Spain to hear it in Spanish and to try to get a little better understanding of their culture, because the Catholic church is monumental in Spanish culture due to the Spanish Inquisition with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel. It was interesting to see and hear especially since it was in Spanish, and like the Jewish, I can tell that for a lot of these people their religion is key to their life.
Once Mass got over with, we had to go back to the hotel to get our stuff out of our rooms so they could get them cleaned for tonight’s guests, but we left our stuff all together again like when we first got there. Then we all met up again to go on a walk around the perimeter of the city, which I would say is probably a good three to five miles. It’s really hard to describe this, because the grandeur of the city is so breathtaking everywhere you look, and words are so cheap and pictures don’t do it justice. The one thing I can say is that there’s something about Toledo that just makes you fall in love with it. I don’t know if it’s the people, the food, the buildings, or maybe all of it together, but everything about Toledo makes you feel like you’re walking around in a dream or something, only it’s a reality.
Finally: the food! Everything was old school except for one thing, I finally had a kebab. Now when I say kebab I don’t mean I ate food off a stick. They have the meat rotating on a metal turning oven thing, and then they slice off pieces to put in the kebab. It looks kind of like a burrito made with pita-like bread, and they stuff it with shredded lettuce, some sort of sauce, sometimes cheese, and your choice of meat. The meat can be chicken, pork, lamb…whatever, it just depends on the restaurant. I had a lamb one, and it was heavenly. The other thing that I tried new here was mazapán, or marzipan. This is really hard to describe as well, when someone tried telling me about it I thought ‘eww, gross’, but it’s actually SOOO good. The only word I can think of to give you a texture visual is that it’s like a paste, but basically it’s straight sugar with almond flavoring, and because it’s straight sugar, they can squeeze it and mold it into different shapes and it retains the shape very easily. We went and bought a little box for 6€, which had about 16 pieces inside, from a nunnery. But you aren’t allowed inside, you go up to this window that has bars on it, and you ring the buzzer, and then a nun will come to the window and you tell her what you want, she goes and gets it, and you pay her. But you aren’t allowed to take pictures of them, they want to be ‘away from the world’ I guess is how you would explain it. Anyway, it was really good, they’re soft and doughy and they don’t ever harden up unless they’re really, really old.
So we got home around 8pm, and we showered, ate dinner, and after that we have crashed because we were so worn out from the trip. But I knew that I had to write in my journal tonight or I wouldn’t have much motivation tomorrow. It’s only a little after 10pm right now, so technically it’s really early still, but we are very worn out. Now that I’ve talked about Toledo though, I can talk about other things.
I figured out a way to talk to my parents for free. There’s this online calling program called Skype and it’s getting to be pretty popular. You can download it for free and then you can call anyone, anywhere who has Skype for free. You can even call regular telephone numbers for like $0.017/minute, which is ridiculously cheap. I downloaded it last Sunday and I told my parents to do it too, so that way I don’t have to buy calling cards, and I went and bought a headphone set too, so now I’m really ready to go.

Sunday January 27, 2008
After such a tiring trip in Toledo, I came home last night and slept for about ten hours, which was amazing. We had church this morning like usual, and surprisingly, I understood more this week than I have any other week. I’m at home now, and we are going to eat soon, and then tonight there is a baptism of this guy from Nigeria, and then we are going to the Shumway’s for open house.
I remembered something else that I forgot to mention about the cities. In lots of big cities, you see quite a bit of graffiti, and it’s common enough that it’s kind of accepted as a part of the culture. Well, when we first got to Spain, the first thing that really caught my attention was how much graffiti there is not just in the big cities like Madrid and Toledo, but in the little towns like Alcalá as well. Everywhere you go, not just in the allies or the ‘bad’ parts of town, there is graffiti that covers the walls from top to bottom. There doesn’t seem to be any efforts to clean it off, but I’m sure even if they did it would take forever, and I don’t know how profitable it would be before the gangs and stuff would come right back and do more.
Other than that, nothing else is all that new, I’m thinking of getting my hair cut soon because it’s driving me nuts, and I need a change. Plus I haven’t cut it since November, so it’s about time for a haircut. My friend Susie got one last week, and it’s totally European, but it looks really good. Anyway, once again, I will add pictures to the blog later in the week so I can sort through which ones are going to be the most beneficial for my viewers. I have about 150 pics to choose from. Hmmm, this could take a while…