MADRID!

I’m finally back after a long time of not posting!  Sorry about that- but with midterms, travelling and my parents coming this upcoming week, it has been a little crazy here!  Anyways, this weekend we went to Madrid and Toledo!  I really loved this trip, and what made it even better was when we got back our director sent us an e-mail saying this was the best trip to Madrid she has been on since working with our program!

Toledo is a small city outside of Madrid.  While in Toledo we visited the cathedral, which is the 4^th largest in the world.  We also visited a cool look out place, where you could see the whole city.  Although I would have liked to do a little more exploring of the city, we did get to see the major things about Toledo.  They have three major products in Toledo: swords, marzipan and boys!  I doubt any of the girls in our program (including our director) heard a word this tour guide was saying!  Everyone was so infatuated with him- some of the girls even yelled out a quick “te amo” (I love you) or digits to their phone number before he left!

After Toledo we headed up to Madrid.  During this trip we only had three scheduled things to do, and the rest was “tiempo libre” (free time).  These three things included going to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace), attending a play and going to the Prado museum. 

The Palacio Real was probably my least favorite part of the trip.  The tour guide looked like the costume maker from The Incredibles.  She spoke really quiet except when she was telling us to move in closer, which was whenever she wasn’t explaining about the artwork in the palace.  On top of this, in my opinion the real beauty was outside the palace with all of the gorgeous views and beautiful architecture.

We went to the Prado museum on the last morning, and by that time I was ready to get back to Granada.  Even though I really did enjoy the Prado, we were all exhausted and not ready to walk around a huge museum.  Jose, one of our teachers said that if we tried to walk around all of the Prado, we would be “borracha de pintura” (drunk off of paintings), meaning that it would essentially be way too much to handle in one trip.  It was also lame because in both the Prado and the Palacio Real, we were not allowed to take pictures.  I probably would have had a lot more pictures if we were able to!

The best scheduled thing that we did was going to the play.  The play was called “Una Buena Esposa,” or “The Good Wife.”  It was different scenes from daily life in the 70’s in Spain centering on what a woman should and shouldn’t do.  Although I didn’t get a lot of it, my director said she didn’t either so that makes me feel better!  She explained that there were a lot of colloquial words that she didn’t get, in addition to the context of the play.  The parts that I did get though were very comical!  It was a very well put on play and it only had three actresses who switched out roles!

This was a great trip overall, and now I am looking forward to my parents coming in a couple of days and driving around Spain with them!  Many of my friends think it’s crazy that we are renting a car and want updates on that, so I will try and be on the ball about updating my blog next week!!

Alla… adios!

Tesla