Hola de Toledo!

 Okay, today began with a long bus ride through the countryside south of Madrid. Mostly it looks like the dry sections of Colorado. That is to say, all of Colorado. When we arrived in Toledo, our tour guide came aboard and we drove up to the top of a scenic overlook, so we could all disembark and take a million photos of the city! After this, we drove back down and walked across el Puente de San Martín (St. Martin's Bridge) into the old city of Toledo. 

 

We then proceeded to visit San Juan de los Reyes, a large gothic-style church which is now owned by the Franciscan monks. It was very  large, very well decorated, and had a beautiful garden inside the church. It's very pretty, and was built by reina Isabel as a biblical thank you after her soldiers captured her brother's daughter in a civil war battle, leaving Isabel the throne. It's just a lovely family story, I must say. In any case, it's definitely a gorgeous church. Also, that picture in the top right corner is one of the gargoyles overlooking the garden, which is a very large frog jumping off a much smaller fish. Less scary then the Notre Dame. And inside the wooden tiles, if you look closely, there's a castle (castille) and a lion (leon) inside the colored parts, to represent the kingdom of Spain, Castille y Leon, where Isabel was queen.

 

After the church, we moved on to the Synagogue of Santa Maria de la Blanca. Yes, Synagogue of Saint Mary. Obviously there was some contention in history about what kind of chapel this should actually be… Oh España. Next we went to the Catedral de San Tomé, where the famous masterpiece of El Greco is located. El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz is very large, and apparently painted in a style two centuries later than it should be. It's pretty amazing though, all of his paintings are. And El Greco painted both himself and his son into the painting, they're the only people in it looking at you, with very creepy eyes. After all of this, we wandered on down to the main plazas of Toledo, one of which had the main cathedral of the city. Unfortunately, it only opens for important people like popes and presidents and whatnot, but we did get to see the carving of The Last Supper over the main doorway.

After this, we trooped back onto the bus and went off to the hotel, the hotel at which they'd been promising us a surprise. The surprise was a lovely outdoor pool which we're really not going to get to use… but it is pretty! I ran down there right after we put our suitcases in the room, so I could read and swim in the sun, which was very relaxing. The sad thing is we leave tomorrow so unless you took advantage of it right when we got in, there's no way to really enjoy it. Still, this is a very nice hotel, with real people sized elevators and non-miniature rooms. 

Then we had to have a long meeting about what to expect in classes and home stays, etc. Nothing truly revolutionary there, so I'll spare you all the details. The biggest news is I have to take a placement test on Monday… which is supposedly very easy, so that helps. Finally, when we were done, myself and a few others decided to take a taxi back to the Plaza to get some dinner (at 9:00. I was SO hungry, this dinner schedule is killing me right now). We found this little place on a corner in old town and decided to eat there. It was definitely the most successful food ordering process I've experienced yet. For some reason, the waiters are the most intimidating part about my trip so far. Our first night, the waitress kept getting all skeptical about the food we were ordering because it was more portions to share, not to eat yourself, but she didn't really help us fix it. The second night, the waitress spoke super fast and we were a disaster at ordering. Today was a lot better, at lunch our waiter just laughed at us for our extreme American-ness (the conversation literally went, Him: "Where are you guys from, the USA?" Us: "Yeah, is it obvious?" Him: *laughs and nods*), but we struggled through it and got done just fine. Tonight things went quite smoothly though, which made me very happy.

Anyway, if I have been supposed to Skype you and haven't yet, or if you're worried because my blog is late, the internet here supposedly exists but Megan & I have yet to find it! Maybe tomorrow. We'll be going to a monastery called El Escorial, then then to Salamanca finally to meet our host mom! Yay!