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
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