March 22

3-22
Hello everybody! I’ve had a busy weekend, and I’ve been too tired/lazy to write about each day when I got home that night, so I’ll combine it all into one blog. I’ll try to keep it brief-ish.
This Thursday was the Fiesta de San José, so we had off school! That in itself was exciting enough. A lot of people went various places far away (some girls in AYA went to Dusseldorf, Germany), but Katie and I decided it would be cheaper to do various day trips from Madrid, and that way we wouldn’t have to pay for planes or hostels or anything. Actually, we only decided this after we realized we had left planning for this weekend too late and the plane tickets to Portugal were way too expensive. But whatever, it’s fine.
Thursday we went to Salamanca. It’s almost 3 hours away by train. I got to use my Eurail pass for the first time! I’m still a little fuzzy on what the best way to use it is, but what I did worked, so I guess I’ll just do that again. It was good, because my ticket for there and back was only 8 euros instead of almost 30! My friend Yvonne from church was going to come with us, but the metro was having problems or taking a long time or something, so she didn’t get there in time and the train left without her. I felt really bad about that. So then it was just Katie and me. For those of you who don’t know, Salamanca is the home of one of the oldest universities in Spain. Or at least, one of the oldest Christian universities. I think the Muslims had some older ones before they were driven out. Anyway, we saw some of the buildings, which are all huge and amazing, with sculptures and statues and pillars and royal crests carved on the outsides. We were able to go inside the library (which is called the House of Shells because it’s got tons of conch shells carved into the outside) and the Universidad Pontifica, which was a church. Then we saw the Plaza Mayor, which is the most famous in Spain, apart from Madrid’s. The Plaza Mayors of Salamanca and Madrid are in competition for which is most beautiful. Personally, I think Salamanca’s is better. But that’s just me. After that, we went to the Cathedral of Salamanca, which has got a newer and an older section. We thought we were buying tickets to go inside, but it ended up being a ticket to climb the towers of the older, medieval part of the cathedral. It was really cool. There were little museum rooms where they displayed artifacts and diagrams and stuff. There was a display of medieval and renaissance instruments and music books. That was very exciting for me! Then we climbed up the scary spiral staircases to the towers. We got to walk outside along the roofline, where there was not only an amazing view of the city, but an amazing up close view of all the stonework on the cathedral itself. Then, back inside the cathedral, we got to walk along the perimeter, way above the ground, and get a bird’s eye view of the interior. It was so cool. A very different cathedral experience from any I’d had so far! We never actually got to go inside on the ground level (it was closed whenever we passed by), but this made up for it! After that we went across the Puente Romano, which is an ancient Roman bridge that’s still standing and functional. We wandered around the city for a while, and then took the train back home.
Friday we went to the monastery at El Escorial, which was built by King Felipe II in the 1500s. It’s sort of a mixture between a church and a palace, and it’s huge! There were royal apartments (Felipe’s chambers had a little portable organ that only had about 3 octaves of keys and was so cute!), state rooms, and other various things that were clearly the royalty part of the palace. But there were also churchy things, like the rooms where the bishop lived and worked, and several rooms of tombs where the various rulers of Spain are buried. We couldn’t go inside the Basilica because it was under construction or restoration or something. There’s also a famous library there, that’s got an amazingly painted ceiling and books from the Renaissance!! They were all behind cages, of course, but they had some of them open so we could see what they looked like on the inside. They were beautiful! They had brightly painted pictures and beautiful script that I couldn’t read for anything (I think it was Latin). They also had some instruments that scholars used, like one model (I can’t remember what it was called) that was supposed to show the solar system with the Earth in the middle and the planets as rings around it. They also had globes (one that didn’t have countries on it, but all kinds of wild animals and monsters; I’m not really sure what that was supposed to show!), and old desks, and all sorts of cool things! There were also several little museums: paintings, tapestries, and architecture, which included plans of the monastery and the tools they used to build it. They had this machine that had pulleys and a clamp thing that they used to lift the huge building blocks to make the walls. It was really cool! After the tour of the outside, we went out to the gardens that surround the monastery. There weren’t many flowers, but there were lots of cool patterns of hedges and little fountains. We walked back to the train station by way of the Park of the Princes, which is home to the Casita del Príncipe, which is a little palace were the royal family would spend the summers. We couldn’t go inside, but we saw the outside. Rosaura had told me about it, so I was expecting something pretty cool, but it just looked like a big house with white shutters. It was cute, but nothing spectacular.
That night I had choir, so I had to stop home and grab my music and rush to Leganés (that’s the city where the campus is). I arrived about a half hour late, but there was nothing I could do about that. Our concert is next Sunday, so the directors are getting anxious and a little short tempered. It doesn’t help that the students (just like in the States) insist on talking incessantly every time we stop. I guess some things are universal. I had a rather happy moment, though. There are two directors for the choir: one that does the warm-ups every other week, and one that directs the actual songs. The warm-up lady sits and watches the rehearsal when she’s there, and makes comments and suggestions to people or sections. It’s almost always something to improve on. So when she came up to me I got a little nervous. But she just said that my face was “fenomenal” and went on to another person. I was quite happy about that! Facial expression is one thing that I’ve always had problems with, and I’ve been working hard to improve. It was very nice to hear that it was working!
To get home from choir I have to take the train to the metro to get home. I can either take it all the way into Madrid and then take a short metro home, or I can take it to the bottom of my metro line and take the metro all the way to my stop. Usually I’ve been doing it the first way, but I think the second way is a little shorter. Anyway, I was glad I had discovered the second way, because when I got on the train there were tons of people on it, all probably high school or college age. They were all being really loud and obnoxious, and one girl was smoking, which is prohibited on public transportation. There was vomit on one of the seats, and there were so many people in the aisles that you could barely get through. Then a couple of the guys started breaking the glass that covers those hammers that you’re supposed to use to break the windows in case of an emergency, so there was broken glass all over the floor. I was expecting security to come any moment, but they didn’t while I was on the train. It was scary. There have been very few times I’ve actually been scared on public transportation, but this was definitely one of them. I was so glad that I had discovered the way home on the metro, because it’s only 2 stops on the train that way, and I was anxious to get off! That was crazy.
Saturday we went back to Toledo. This time Yvonne did go with us, and she brought one of her friends. It was so good to see her! We’ve been living in the same city for two months and we still hadn’t gotten together yet! We were going to take the train into Toledo, but there was such a long line for tickets that it had left before we were able to buy ours, so we decided to take the bus instead. We spent a lot of time wandering around the city trying to find where we were when we were there before. We went into a synagogue, and went back to the cathedral. Actually, we didn’t get to go all the way in. There was an entrance where you could go for free just inside a small part of it. I think it was so you could pray at a chapel or something. But it was like 7 euros to get in the whole cathedral, and we were feeling cheap. At least this way we could see it, even if we couldn’t walk through it. I wasn't so important for Katie and I since we had been there before, but it was the first time in Toledo for Yvonne and Laura, so they wanted to see it. But not enough to pay 7 euros. We had a lot of fun on the busses that day, too. We were trying to take a bus to a plaza where there’s a little tourist train that’ll take you across the river, because Laura wanted to see a famous view from one of El Greco’s paintings, but we got on the wrong bus and ended up driving through residential Toledo with absolutely no idea where we were. So we just stayed on until it got back to where we had gotten on, and then waited for the right bus. We spent so much time waiting for busses yesterday! It got a little ridiculous. But whatever. We just got to see more of Toledo that way, I guess. . . . Then when we got to the bus station the bus was there and ready to go, so we got in line, but right before we could get on, it was full. We had to wait another half hour before another bus came for Madrid. We didn’t get home until 8:30 last night, which was really long, considering I had left the house at 9:45 that morning. The day was longer than any of us expected, but it was still fun. I was absolutely exhausted last night.
This morning, I slept until 10:30, which felt amazing. I finished my homework and then sat down to write this blog. I was thinking of maybe going to the park to read today, but right now I’m feeling very lazy. Maybe I’ll just watch a movie here instead.
Bethany