well friends, i've survived 7 days in spain and it's been quite the roller coaster. i've been keeping notes/thoughts on paper and also doing some journaling in a word doc so i have a lot to share. here's a basic intro ...
after 2 longs days of delayed flights, missed flights, and not whole lot of sleep we finally made it to madrid where we took the bus to toledo. as soon as we got here our host families basically kidnapped us almost immediately. as many times as i had gone over things in my head to say to my, i found it pretty much impossible to talk. definitely felt reaaal stupid. my host family is actually just a young woman, her name is bea (pronounced bay-uh) and her boyfriend angel (on-hell). they are incredibly nice and laidback.
toledo is a beautiful small city built into the mountains about an hour south of madrid. what it lacks in size, it makes up for in history and aesthetics. it is known for being a center of religious coexisence in the middle ages - christianity, judaism, islam - and therefore is full of neeeat old stuff.. the medieval part of the city is called "el casco" and is proctected by a stone wall all the way around.
the first few days were extremely difficult. not only is it 6 hours later here, but spanish people run on a completely different time frame than americans (i'll explain later). it was so hard to be hungry at the right times, because i also did not want to offend them by not eating. they take pride in what they cook! and they eat SO much! those who know me well know that i can definitely eat, and usually pretty quickly, but i honestly blinked twice and these people cleaned their plates. ridiculous. beyond the time change, we've been thrown into a foreign country and expected to find our way around. even after bea showed me how to take the bus into the city i still had to take it around twice when i came home by myself because i couldn't remember where i lived!! very traumatic. by the time last monday was over all i could do was lay in bed and CRY. was definitely ready to jump a plane back home. even several days later i still felt like i was constantly on the verge of tears. but nowww i'm finally comfortable and enjoying toledo.
ok, prolly gonna be a triple post today because i have so much to talk about. sooo, gonna knock out some homework and be back in a few hours.....
hasta luego amigos
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment