4 stars :) woot!

omgsh you guys. i ahd a fantastic day! and do you want to know why i had a fantastic day? yes you do, because you are reading this blog therefore you adore me (mas o menos :) hehehehehhe) rmack!
I had a fantastic day becuase i had the best breakfast here that I have had all freaking trip. we are staying a four star hotel and it is just peachy. also we didn't have to up until 9. woohoo!! dfliguhasfpildkhtdg.

and another reason this breakfast was particularly fantastic was because i had MILK for the first time since I have been here. it was so needed and so freaking good. and then i had a shot of expresso. yeah, just a shot, they have little keurig type machines that are for expresso shots instead and i did one, so if anyone knows emily on expresso its basically like normal emily but she talks faster, jumps higher, ect. and she is way cooler too :) laisdfubhlafkjhganselikgmn,bdfs,jdyujpdfljtg/lakxdfghaldso.uef,kn. adn does that a lot hehehheheheheh.

Today we went on a tour of caceres. more old buildings
more OBSOLETE old buildings. seriously spain, no wonder you can't get anything done here, all you building space is being used up buy worthless stuff. i mean granted its cool but learn from the country that is only 200 years old and manages to demolish stuff only like 30 years old like there's no tomorrow (i'm looking at you MSC)...
We did get to see a really beautiful garden in another palace though,. and i liked that :)

And then i saw ANOTHER church

This tour was actually infinitely cooler than yesterday's tour i was just looking at the pictures in the order they occurred and this tour definitely got better as it went along.

first cool thing: we got to go to this SWEET underground museum. it was a museum about prients and it was like mega cool (literally). and we got to see the cistern for this palace that was converted into a museum. since i love water i deemed this cistern totally wicked:

So yeah it was this cool priest museum and these are the priest costumes:
mrack.....creepy

and then we got to go to this really sweet palace that had been converted into an arms museum. i thought about my dad and my brother at this one, but it was cool because for once we actually got to GO INSIDE THE PALACE for once (usually they only let us into the gardens) and there were arms on the wall but also it was decorated so we got to kinda of see what one would look like..

so everyone, i mean everyone in spain smokes. it is not a big deal at all here, i'm pretty sure you could be like its going to kill you and they would be like well if it doesn't something else will. they could care less. the like social thing to do in between classes is to go outside and have a cig with yo friendsss. con sus amigos :) so yeah there are hookas pipes here and this palace is no different:

I imagine this is something like what my house will look like next year..eh?

oh by the way tabester: i taught everyone cara de chupe :) they love it. i am the cool funny spanish girl now. hehehehheeh not really, i'm still me ya dig? :)
also since we are side notes: macho man with a vertical challenge tried AGAIN today to tell me that i'm taller than i say i am; i politely just ignored him...then promptly turned up my nose and pranced away (so that second part wasn't real but i did just ignore his advances on my height....get a life).


Okay so one of the things that made this day so great was the story I am bout to tell you. So like i think i have said in previous posts, our tour guides speak english but its clearly not their first language so language gaps are bound to happen. So we finish up with one of the spots we are looking at and the guy i slike "okay now we are going to see the house of the monkey...." Everyone is like "did that guy just say monkey.....?" we ask him for clarification and he is like yes monkey.....? what? my thought on the matter is this dude probably meant monk's house or something and he is having trouble with the plural (maybe he should listen to brian regan)
Well we get to the house and this guy really did mean monkey :) turns out this house a legend and its the legend of the monkey.
So this old man marries a young woman and as her wedding present he gets her a monkey; well the monkey also comes with a black slave to hold to monkey and such. because really what noble can be bothered to hold a monkey? (take note kyndall, we can have monkeys, we just can't touch them).
SO the lady gets pregnant and gives birth....no one ever sees the baby. the legend says that the monkey raped the baby and then the black man ran off after them.....
raped? i know what you're thinking did i read that word right. we ask him to clarify again and he says yes raped...to be fair i was wrong about the monkey so i'm trusting the dude on this one. Then Maia (our cute little host girl) goes up to him and starts taking to him and she's like nooooo, its kidnapped! and we were all like ooooh yeah that makes a lot more sense. wow what a terrible time to have a language lapse haha.
so in case you didn't figure i out the baby came out black and so the nobleman had to slave and baby killed....and then i was thinking about it later and i suppose he had the monkey killed too, which just made me sad; what a bummer for that animal!


Then I had more migas for lunch! :)

Most of the city however was closed down for this like festival they were having which we watched a procession go down the street and I got a video of it but i have no idea how to upload videos to this thing so , your loss i suppose.
Once we were done with our tour we just walked around town some more and i got this little gem:

and this next gem is for my belle michelle! :) (i'm trilingual btw). but its a sunflower that is taller than me!

So anyone that tells you that spanish people don't like the get drunk is a lying fool. we were walking around town and we just saw this guy passed out in the middle of the sidewalk. yes ITS 2 IN THE AFTERNOON and you can see where a bottle has rolled away from being clenched in his hand.....yeah so about that....all of us in the group are like should we do something (i'm seeing a sign /symptom of alcohol poigoning here carpool....)?? the guy is breathing....and i mean we put him in the recovery position but to be honest, we don't speak spanish and we don't know any sort of emergency number, but this whole scene took up like 30 minutes of our time and it was pretty exciting :)
also they serve beer in mcdonalds....yeah the spanish don't like to drink? jokes on me.


we got back from caceres at like 5 or something and then we had two hours to chill so i skyped with my parents (that i miss so much) and sharny arny army :) :) i like her a lot. and i miss her sweet face so it was good to talk to her; and work out some fun spanish stuff :) hehehehehe quiero un brazo!! hehehhe

Then at 7 we got to go to this spanish fair, which was pretty much the equivalent of a spnish county fair or something. it totally rocked though!!! i rode this really sketchy ride and totally owned it :)
and i got CHURROS!!!!!!! ahhhhh aslifguyahsetgiufhdriogdfyhrlids they we so freaking delicious. i love churros. i actually went back and got more :) yum yum yum in the tum tum tum! :) hehehhehe



yeah but thats all i have to say for now...also if you know and appreciate what the word vale is (its kind of a slang word here...); just know that i used it successfully and it rocked. go team me! :)

i love you and i miss everyone,
Emily

Castles: they're big in Spain (pun intended hehehehe)

So last night was our last night in the dorms and this morning we are leaving Toldedo for good :( and we will first go to Trujillo and then to Caceres. I am kind of sad to be leaving Toledo because it was so good to me and small and cute and easy to get around. It was the perfect little town for me to get used to Spain in and to be fair there wasn't much to do for more than a week so if I stayed any longer I would probably be bored.

We had to be ready with our luggage outside for the people to load it at 8 am. rawr. And so i loaded up everything into my suitcase. So when you fly on a plane as most of you know your bag cannot weigh over 50 lbs. This usually isn't a problem but for spain i took this giant suitcase and for you non-engineers out there, let me break down a little physics for you. the more space you have the more stuff you can pack. When i first packed my suitcase it weighed 63 lbs. i got it down to like 47 by just adding a carry on bag and putting some stuff in there. Well now that i don't have a scale to weigh my suitcase AND i have bought stuff while here AND stuff from my carry on has been transferred over to the big suitcase it was insanely heavy. I am on the first floor which is like 2 floors below the street and since these are dorms of course they aren't such novelties as stairs! I worked extremely hard to get my suitcase up the first flight of stairs and was taking a break on the landing when one of our professors walked up. I tried to act all casual and like i wasn't dying of the extreme physical activity I had just completed but I wasn't fooling this guy. He was very gentlemanly and asked if he could carry it for me. I told him no thank you I would get it, but he INSISTED and he had to lug this super heavy thing up the stairs and I was just so embarrassed :( womp. mrack.

So today for our trip we were going to Trujillo to take a tour.

On our way I saw a solar farm, sweet eh?

Let me put it this way: Trujillo is like the college station of Spain. There isn't much to do here and we spent way too much time in this place. And there are so many old buildings in spain its beginning to all blend together like convention centers in volleyball. Its not like I don't appreciate the views and I'm always impressed but the only cool thing about this city is Fransisco Pizzarro was born here. He conquered Peru.
This is a statue of him in the middle of the square:

In Trujillo they loved this guy, everywhere we turned it was like pizzarro was born in this house, he blew his nose here, he went to church here.... yeah
This was a palace though that was there:

The balcony on the corner means your rich; don't ask my why it means your rich. Its probably the same reason wearing a hideous handbag or bright pink velour track suits with juicy written on the butt are things rich people do. I don't make the rules, i just observe these things and mock them :)

We got to go in some of the palaces which this region is famous for...the name of the region has castillos in it which means castles (the more ya know!). All the palacios have like courtyard type things in the middle of them and they are squares. the servants live on the first floor and the nobles live on the second. so what floors do they show us? the first. spaniards: cara de chupes (tabes hehe).

SO we just like checked out a lot of buildings where important spaniards did mundane things. Most of them we didn't even go into (lame sauce) but in the palace above that I showed you there was this nun collecting money for a cause and what did this cause happen to be something something something in spanish for ANGOLA! bahahahahhahahhahahha. hilarious. i think most people were like angola where the heck is that destitute place? boom, i know :)
Ultimately though after walking uphill both ways everywhere we went, we got to the top of the city and had a pretty gorgeous view :) mmmm:

in case you didn't notice, things aren't very green in spain. The rain in spain stays mainly on....or wait it only rains where we are :)

The view and top of the city was pretty close to this freaking sweet castle. So spain there are palaces and castles. castles are bigger....thats all you need to know. thats' all i cared to know so meh:

One of the super cool things i got to experience in Trujillo though was a public drinking fountain:

You just press a button and it comes out of the gold thing. and it even comes out relatively cold. very cool. very ancient. very fun. and very HARD. especially when a lot of people are watching you and making you nervous. not cool, especially when prone to spills hehe.

The way they made of for Trujillo being INCREDIBLY dull though was by feeding us an unbelievably delicious lunch. I got to have my frist spanish dish that i'm like in love with because it was so good. It is migas! it is like bread crumbs (similar to stuffing) with meat and other things in it. SO GOOD!! ahhh maybe my host family will make homemade migas and they will rock:

then the second course was chicken with fries. yum. this course was like right up our alley tabes! bread, meat and carbs. eat it up baby. eat it up :)

The real excitement of the day came though when we got to watch THE GAME. I had no idea about this game but tonight was the european futbol (soccer you plebeians) cup or something and barcelona was playing manchester united. i kept getting the teams wrong and for like the whole first half i was like yeah madrid is playing.....no no no. madrid was not playing, and you may be thinking the same thing i was, yeah okay its just some city in spain what difference does it make. well that would make you just another ignorant american like me then :) all the teams are from different cities so there is a madrid team and barcelona team and barcelona was playing last night. I watched the game in the hotel bar and it was super exciting and everyone was all hyped up. it was so cool and totally nuts!
dear phil negron,
thank you for making me watch 8 minutes of fifa celebrations that one time. it truly isn't a real goal unless you go freaking nuts about it. it was fun watching them in real life and i thought of you :)
the end!
While I was in the bar I just got a hamburger because it was all bar type food. OMGSH THE BUT FREAKING BACON ON EVERY FREAKING DISH IN THIS ENTIRE COUNTRY. I have eaten so much stinking pork in the bast week i am about to vomit. i never thought i would get tired of bacon. bacon makes the world a better place right? WRONG, spanish bacon is too thick, not crispy enough and super fatty. and THIS is what they do to make it:

Those are just the legs of pigs that have been cut off and hung from the ceiling. when ever you want some meat you just cut off some form this leg. people you can see the hooves!!! GROSS. and these are not refrigerated, they are just hanging like everywhere and depending on what quality you want you choose the ones that have been hanging longer. and some of these hang FOR YEARS! repulsive much?


Still loving spain and now i'm super tired. i want a castle: kyndall investment? wise? i don't think they have indoor plumbing but merrrrr....

Love,
Emily

Madrid! 5-27-11

So today we were up at 8AM for breakfast. ahhh that is the earliest I have been up for this trip. It was ridiculous. But we had a long day planned with lots of activities.

First we went to the offices of this engineering firm that was outside of Toledo and this guy showed us the plans for a road they were constructing. Then we drove to the site and checked out the construction and got to see all sorts of cool machines working and such. Honestly though, it looks like very other road construction project that I drive by and say "huh, they must be constructing a road here. thats nice..." I was really happy to see that Spanish construction sights are just like American ones wiht a lot of people standing around chillin. :)
And then some work getting done....maybe?

During this beautiful trip, we also did a lot of standing around and now i'm going to launch into a side story from today:
Someone tried to convince me i am 6'3" today. yeah. if you are reading this and you know me at all you would know this did not make me happy. so switch your eyes into annoyed emily voice mode.
Yeah so i am just chillin standing around the construction site and this guy is like "wow how tall are you" (rawr) and i'm like 6'.and he's like no dude i'm 6' (this dude is like 3 inches shorter than me...yeah okay) and i'm like "well okay...(mark this under who gives a)". And he was like "when was the last time you went to the doctor because i've been in the six months and i am definently 6'.."
DUDE NO YOU ARE NOT. I HAVE BEEN THIS HEIGHT FOR LIKE 4 YEARS. MY FAMILY IS FREAKING HUGE. STOP DELUDING YOURSELF AND ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE SHORT. ALL FIVE PEOPLE YOU ASKED AGREED WITH ME THAT YOU ARE NUTS FOR THINKING YOU ARE 6 FEET TALL. get.a.grip.

rant over :)

So we went to Madrid after the construction sight and it was a pretty cool city. There is just interesting architecture like everywhere in spain. Everywhere you look, things look cool and anchient and like from a different time and it's sort of like the city just grows around the buildings and they are the constant. I like it.

oh and yep. that's a CARPOOL shirt in MADRID :) hehehehehe.
But for the most part Madrid was just like a big city, people were comparing it to New York. BUt my beautiful mother has trained me to be excellent at walking around and just being content looking at things. Which I was, everything is just interesting to look at! I think Madrid is like the shopping capital of Spain or at least I have dubbed it so; naturally this made me want to go shopping. So I went into a couple  of cool stores and mostly what was freaking mind-blowing was the H&M. Now I know we have H&M's in the united states but not like this. This store was 4 stories. it was so beautiful I could have stayed there all 7 hours I was in Madrid. But I was with Brynnan and the guys so I was FORCED to stay for only like an hour which was a HUGE accomplishment for me. dear mom, stephen shops like doug; i had to say right of the bat "dude, you can't follow me around! it makes me really nervous and i can't handle it, find something to occupy yourself with for like 30 minutes please :) thanks and gig them". Brynnan shops like Kyndall. nuff said. So i was not in my shopping prime but it was still a lot of fun and I was really thankful to my group for being such troopers.
Then it started raining and so we had to chill in the store for a little longer hehehehe. but then we got tired of waiting so we just walked in the rain. therefore I had hot mess hair....yes it happens in spain too TAYLOR :) (ohhhh taylooooorrrr :) askuldbyahlijehtg sdf;gthsdlfb i love you)

and thats the top of the dress I got. Its so pretty and it goes all the way to my knees and yes i will wear a cardigan with it, but since i had limited time to admire myself in the store I had to try it on again when I got home to make sure it was as fabulous as i remembered. (hehehe every workd after the word "but" in the sentence before is dedicated to kyndall mandry)

So after I was dragged out of H&M we went and checked out where the Mayor worked:

So that was cool. Also I got to experience I real Madrid protest:

People are super grumpy here about something....they were protesting in Toledo too...something about banks...blah blah blah; yeah i don't even follow american politics so spain, less of a chance. But if this goes down in the history books, I will donate my photos and become incredibly famous. or when they write a biography about my life and how I came to rule the world as kyndall mandry's incredible lovable second hand woman they will mention that I was here during this very important time. So way to go me for documenting this. boom!

SMALL WORLD STORY ALERT! So it started raining in Madrid pretty hard today so when we only had like an hour left in the city we just ducked into a starbucks close to the bus stop and decided to learn about each other slash drink delicious spanish coffee and mooch some free internet. Well since the beginning of the trip we had been joined by this really nice girl named Kelsi (I can't think of any kelsey i don't like--i'm looking at you mangum :) hehe)...so here's the conversation we had:

me: sooooo where you from?

her: san antonio

me: OMGSH no way, me too :) where did you go to high school?

her: McArthur

me: NO FREAKING WAY! WHAT?!?!?! I WENT TO MCARTHUR HIGH SCHOOL. woah...

don't worry it gets more wild, the conversation took a different turn and then:

me: so do you have any siblings...

her: yeah I have one brother who was class of '10....

me: oh no way! what's his name?

her: michael
me: omgsh what is your last name.....
her: LITMAN!!!
sd;lfiguhsdfkhase,gjae,rjhujadkfu jasdjyghfa ahhhhhhhh
me: OMGSH!!!!! I WAS IN A MUSICAL WITH YOUR BROTHER WHEN I WAS A SENIOR!! I SEE THAT KID LIKE ALL THE TIME HE GOES TO A&M.

yeah guys, this was a really serious crazy small world aggie connection. totally wild. there is a girl, from my high school on this trip with me, and i was in a musical with her brother. insane.

update: i just ripped my phone out of my bag in excitement because i thought maybe i was getting a call or a text or something. just someone wanting to contact me because they missed me so much....no. it was code maroon. can you say anticlimactic?

Anyway, after Madrid I was super tired and I decided to pick up a loaf of bread from the paneria for a little snack before I went to bed. So i have had this bread before, one of my friends got some at lunch (aka the middle of the day) and it was delicious and soft and fresh, so i felt pretty confident that this dinner/nighttime snack was going to be a success...
no, nighttime snack at 10pm=bread has been chillin all day=i basically ate a giant cruton for dinner. not my best work. mrack.rawr. hehehehehe


thats all from the day. it was a complete blast and I can't wait to talk to you tomorrow!
I would write another post but my roomie wants to sleep so hasta luego!

Love,
Emily

Oye! :) hehe

okay so yesterday I though to myself, wow when I look back on Spain I want to see photos of me having a blast in Spain not just pictures of a ton of random stuff i happened to think was cool. So I think today I did a better job of taking pictures of ME in Spain.

This is me beneath the sign of the Restaurant where I eat breakfast every morning! it's called Palacios, and that's where i eat my delicious ham and egg sandwich y cafe con leche y judo de naranja (orange juice).

and yes I am double bagging it up. One is my school bag and one is my purse. You should know that this is totally the trend in Spain and everyone does it. It really cool to look like you're going on some sort of Indiana Jones adventure and you need all this supplies that can't be contained in one bag. you should also know that all of the above is false. I have an attachment to being prepared and carrying everything I own with me :).

So today was our last Spanish class :( WOMP!!! ahh and my teacher was wearing like the cutest scarf ever and i asked her if she got it in toledo and she did, but could she tell me where?! of course not. so i scoured the city for it for the rest of the day during free time and no dice. haha, darn that language barrier! But on our last day instead of learning more vocabulary we listened to music!! YAY this is like what I have wanted all along to listen to spanish music. It was pretty good, we listened to traditional music, pop music and then rap. yeah and this rap was like a million miles per hour because i'm pretty sure you can go even faster in spanish than you can in english. and the song had three verses: the first verse had only words with the vowel a in them, the second only had the vowel e, and the third only the vowel o. so its sounded like super freaking cool. it was like this intense song/tongue twister all in one. then when it was over, she goes: okay now you sing it. OUR SPANISH TEACHER COULDN'T EVEN SING IT AS FAST AS THIS DUDE AND NOW SHE WANTS US TO DO IT. yeahh, good one teach, we all had a good giggle about that :)

A fun tidbit that you should know is that before I came to spain I had a fun little phrase i liked to whip out once in a while: "es un misterio", which i would use for its a mystery. You may have heard this before; well i said it to the lovely michelle mumme and all she did was laugh. Yeah like this phrase wasn't real spanish or something, what a spanish elitist! yeah well you should know my dear that this [hrase was actually in one of the pop songs we listened to!! :) i underlined it and felt really happy for knowing a real spanish phrase! hehehehhehe

Okay so I think I am one of the people that trieds the hardest in learning Spanish because I genuinely think this language is interesting and I want to master as much of it as I can while I'm here. So I try super hard to incrperate it into my speech and to speak to the locals and vendors and such using spanish. Well today at lunch I had an epic fail that was just really sad. This is what I ate btw:

and it was delicious. Back to the story. So steven and eli got to the restaurant early and then brynnan adam and I joined them. So the three of us sit down and the waiter comes over to take our drink orders and its goes bryannan--agua...adam--agua....emily (i wanted water too) and what comes out of my mouth...."y tu". yeah that means and you. what an idiot, the guy just looks at me like what? who is this chick? I asked her what she wanted to drink and she says "y tu". immediatly I just go aaslfiguas,fjbgmdfh lafgdgh;fdihkg AGUA. and he smiles and i am like super red and the entire table is laughing at my horrible failure. audsfyghoaidluat mrack. not cool :( i was so discouraged because I tried so hard and there was no success. To make things even worse, when we were leaving he goes adios (as brynnan walks by)....adios (adam is walking by)...and then I walk by...."bye". bahahhahahhaha, yeah I have been deemed so remedial that I can't even understand bye in spanish haha.

It was all good, I had a good heart about it. Plus after that we did something cool and Spanish!

So like I said earlier there are convents around this place like there's dollar stores in our neighborhood, they are EVERYWHERE! so these precious little nuns make MAZAPAN! which i don't know what it is but it is this super dense bread-ish stuff that is incredibly sweet, so right up my alley!! So I went to this Convent by our dorm:

to get some mazapan (just wikipedia it, idk what this stuff is). And then what you do is there is amenu next to the window and you ring the "doorbell" next to the window and the nun unlocks the window, then you open it and she's like what do you want (all of which is occurring in spanish so consider it an extreme success that-with the help of brynnan fink-i acquired this marapan) and then you say ____ and she tells you the price and you put your payment on this wheel she spins the wheel, takes the payment and spins your mazapan right back out to you! ITS TOTALLY ROCKS aslkegyhaskjbg :) weeeee. muy divertida!

So finklestein did this during our lunch break. This next picture is my brynnan and adam ready for class, just thought you would like a tidbit on the actual learning hehehhe. go team aggies!

i would like to take this time for random thoughts of the day:

1. kyndall-pedicures when we get back, i could pass for a tour guide or something

2. i miss random things that i never even use but now that i don't have them i feel ike i need them aka lotion

3. the soap smells like bubble gum :) so i love washing my hands

Okay so this afternoon was our last afternoon in Toledo so we had free time to roam the city and do whatever we wanted. Well since everyone in my little group is like "ahh i don't care what we do", i got to semi-decide our course and of course i chose shopping! hehehhehe. however first we did check out this swords-maker because there are swords in every shop in this town like there is vera bradley in every boutique in Indiana. :)

This place was hard to find so that is brynnan expertly asking for directions!! GO FINK!

SUCCESS:

That guy is making a sword holder thing (seriously wikipedia this stuff if you actually care about my nomenclature) . He is not Inigo Montoya's father; we did not kill him; therefore we are still alive.

Then I got some Gelato!!!!!!!!!!! AHHH adlihbalfibhdflihgte it was so freaking delicious; i got a mixture of a flavor called cookies and chocolate; and this scooper guy OMGSH knew how to scoop (No el trabaja SBISA). i am aware that gelato is italian but i have already had helado (ice cream) and i was just going for the whole european experience here people. all the flavors were in italian if that legitimizes all this for you:

and don't worry, even though i'm in europe i am no more sophisticated (as this photo entails...) i dripped ice cream on this shirt. its white, and i'm me.

Look how fun we are! :)

As I have mentioned many a time, everyone in europe is fabulous so i went to check out their clothes stores :). SO I have this beautiful friend Tara in college station. SHE is fabulous and beautiful and I love her and she totally pulls of this fedora. Kyndall and I talked about it and we decided that in europe I can try anything that works on me cause i'm in europe what are people going to do. Well i wanted to be cool like tara (because she is like one of the coolest people EVER) and so i tried on a fedora. To be fair the first time i tried it on without a mirror and stephen and brynnan both frowned. spririts dampened but i am not despairing (my thoughts: okay these two don't even know anything ehhehhehehehehhe). Well guys, i am sorry to say i tried again by myself and with a mirror. only.sad.reports. :( fedoras look terrible on me, and i am so bummed. maybe i will have better luck with other cool trends :/

oh yeah, remember how i mentioned that i decided europeans are shorter:

sorry brother. i don't think you can fit in the houses. :)

I still love it here though and I'm having a super fun time!!

Tomorrow we don't have class, we are going to a construction site and then to MADRID!!!!!!!!!!

YAYAYYAYAYAY!

Love,

Emily

facebookar, skypear....wait these aren't real verbos?

I love my best friend. I just skyped with her for an like and hour and a half and she just deserves a shout out. I love her and I miss her and I think if she were here I might flip out/spontaneously combust from fun. I miss my friends and family! You guys should just come over here and hang out with me! I see things everyday that remind me of people back home.
Kyndall Mandry...Ella es fantstica!

I'm glad that even in spain though I can remain a creature of habit. I have eaten the same thing for breakfast (toasted ham and cheese sandwich) every single day I have been here. And the cafe con leche is still delcioso as well. I learned how to order different coffee's in Spain. Cafe con leche is what I get which is coffee with milk (and the coffee is stronger here which ROCKS--insert crazy emily eyes and shaking hands). But if you want coffee black its cafe solo and they will only give you a half class if you want a full glass of black coffee then you get cafe americano. One thing that is super weird is they serve coffee in glasses though, as in made of glass, as in burn you hand off when you pick them up.....I guess they didn't take Dr. Zollinger's materials class and they didn't get the memo that there are certain materials out there that INSULATE HEAT. Get with it guys. Mugs=genius...i think mugwalls has enough mugs to get spain started. :) hehehe.

So today went just like the previous two days where we had spanish in the morning and then engineering in the afternoon. We learned some gramatica in spanish today like the verbs "to be" are ser and estar and there is a difference between the two. We also learned about vosotros....let me tell you a little bit about vosotros. So spanish verbs come in infnitives and then they are conjugated. What this sort of means (for you remedial spanish speakers out there/the people that are google translating the spanish words i put in here) is the verb has one basic form and then it is changed to whatever is doing the verb. For example the verb of "to walk" is caminar. i walk=camino. you walk=caminas. OMGSH RANDOM FREAKING SIDE NOTE: SO I WAS JUST ON GOOGLE TRANSLATE TRYING TO CHECK MY SPANISH TO MAKE SURE I DON'T LOOK LIKE A FOOL TO PEOPLE LIKE SHANNON HOUSTON WHO SPEAKS REAL SPANISH OR MICHELLE WHO SPEAKS ROCKIN MCDONALD'S SPANISH AND IT DIDN'T CONJUGATE WHAT I WROTE!!! IS THIS FOR REAL GOOGLE TRANSLATE? YOU ALL YOURSELF A RELIABLE SERVICE?? ASFIHGASF;KLGHSFDLKGHG;FSH, RAWR.
end tangent :) thanks for bearing with that.
i continue:
she walks: camina; we walk: caminamos; they walk (formal): caminan
i hope you get the picture so I can continue...
So in spain there is this other conjugation for like "they" informal usage and its called the vosotros conjugation. Well let me tell you a little tidbit about the lovely texas education system. Mexicans don't use the vosotros conjugation. Since most of the people learning spanish in the public school system of texas would have an opportunity to use it with mexicans they don't bother teaching the vosotros conjugation because and i will paraphrase all three of my high school spanish teachers: "yeah you don't need to learn vosotros because the only place they use vosotros is in spain, and what are the odds of you going there..."
I'm pretty sure I was probably right along their thinking lines too, like yeah haha, when am I ever going to go to spain (chuckle to myself)...what a joke. So here I am. in spain. using my spanish for the first time ever. vosotros. mrack.

So since I was such a scrub yesterday at takin gpictures I tried to remember to take more today...here's much lunch :)

So if you really love monasteries and cathedrals i would just like to say...Spain is the place for you. We went on a tour of Toledo today and went into another monastery and a jewish museum. Toledo is a city of three cultures. It was first built by the Romans and Jews lived here, then the Iscariots came and they oppressed the jews...seriously where in history is this not the case...then the jews let the muslims in because anything was better than the iscariots then the christians (aka CATHOLICS) conquered the city and now its christian. So I am going to take you on what i apparently deemed important to take a picture of on this tour. Everything I relate to you about this city is as it was related to me by my precious (approximately 5' hehe) tour guide, so I am at her mercy. If you read this and its not la verdad well then womp, i have been bamboozled.

so we went to the south part of the city which is the part that was jewish. These are cute little homes in the jewish part with pretty flower beds. There used to be a wall between the christian part and the jewish part to keep the christians out but it has since been torn down...

on the corners there are jewish stars so you would know which part of the city you were in...

okay this picture was taken as a random side note: so something i find super weird is how people get into their houses. they just enter them from the tiny little narrow streets that i've been showing you that are basically like alleyways. and like there is no little porch (yeah mom, not cute little bench to paint a spanish flag on...) no nothing. you just have a door and that sign above your door saying which number you are. weird. i desperately want to convince someone that I'm not a creeper and somehow find out they aren't a creeper either and go inside someone's house. Unfortunantly there are a lot of factors against me: i speak hardly any spanish..i don't know the word creepy in spanish, spanish peoplea re overly friendly, i don't have a creeper scanner with me, and my imposing height tends to scare people...womp, this seems an unlikely event. but a girl can dream! :)

i had such a good view of he city i wanted to share it

another giant cathedral we were going to tour. super impressive; the christians built it where teh most prominent jewish market was to say "hey guys, we're in charge here and what better way to express our dominance and wealth with a giant cathedral"

Most of the streets of Toledo are lined with river rocks (pretty convenient that there's a river right outside this city eh?). That's because when the muslims had the city they thought that walking on the rocks was like a foot massage. (shannon: quiere un masaje?). I would just like to be the 386520937540328743342th person to say that this is whack. the terrain is so uneven an uncomfortable to walk on!! its like a constant minefield of ankle twisting, i don't think janet would last 2 minutes in this place without finding some nook to fall in. Bottomline: lining all of the streets with river rocks in a city where the main mode of transportation is walking was quite possibly the stupidest idea after unsliced bread...

So this is the cathedral...pretty impressive no? those things on the wall you ask? shackles. just another way for christians to show how well the war went and how much they dominated the muslims...don't ask me how all these shackles do this, or if there is some sort of system. that seems a little too modern to have a system so i think we can count that bet out.

All the cathedrals are gothic QED freaking AMAZING architecture. Its a little unfortunate that all the tour guides we have have a bunch of engineers on their trips because all we do is analyze the structures and pay attention to like boring supports and stuff but anyway this is the ceiling of the cathedral which i deemed super neat.

Kyndall: blog activity--translate, its in latin :P

In the middle of the cathedral there is a sweet garden quad that was beautiful! and it had an orange tree!! i really wanted one but apparently all the good oranges come from barcelona....so note, et orange in barcelona.

the hallway surrounding the courtyard was call and had a bunch of sculptures and what not...

so the sculptures outside had a bunch of fantasy animals and erotic images (yes they use the word erotic....mrack merrr) and these are representative of sin and they are surrounding all the statues of the saints/important people showing how we are all tempted and when we are away from God (aka outside the temple) we are sinners. i'm pointing to a dragon....i think that face says "sin...ulghhh i don't like that"

they let us take pictures in this cathedral...this is the alter

top of the alter

sweet geometric floor tiles....whatup engineers :) hehehehehe the whole floor was like this...i don't think it did much for the focus of the parishioners...

now we've moved on to the jewish museum aka converted synagogue

ceiling with hebrew. I really like the way hebrew looks, after i master spanish (and portuguese) i think hebrew would be fun. :) or i can just learn to write my name like a did in arabic and that did enough hehe.

and we finished the day with some more tapas. happy faces, empty glasses, full stomachs....steven scowling.....what the heck dude. not worries he got a firm slap and scene made for him :) hehe alfibhaklsuhrkafiluhajdf.

i hope today made of for my slackage o pictures yesterday.

I love you all and miss you very much,

still having a blast!

Love,

Emily