Viejos Verdes

After my long absence from blogging, I'm back! I'm sure you're all thrilled! Well where to start....

I spent my second weekend in Toledo, just enjoying this nice, quaint city, which I am quickly falling in love with! The beginning of our second week here I was in the "honeymoon" phase, which, I've been told is normal (don't worry mom and dad, that has since worn off and the homesickness phase has set in a bit, but not too much, promise!)

 The beginning of that week I did what I do best, which was to get myself lost basically every day until I learned every winding, narrow, street within the city walls. Half way through the week our group took an excursion to the Gothic Cathedral in Toledo, the city's jewel. I cannot even begin to put into words how spectacular and breathtakingly beautiful the inside of this cathedral is. You aren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I borrowed some from http://www.sacred-destinations.com/spain/toledo-cathedral just so I could share with everyone a fraction of the beauty this cathedral has to offer

It poured the rest of the week, which was actually when the homesickness set in. Being stuck inside the house all day with nothing but your thoughts can be a tough inner battle, but it's definitely something we all have to learn to deal with eventually. I've found that trying to sit with my family and communicate has been the best distraction/practice yet. Even though it can be extremely frustrating at times, it's definitely worth making the effort.

Thursday after class, me and 3 friends took the speed train to Madrid and headed to the bus station there to begin our long trek to Sevilla. We hopped on a bus at 5pm and arrived in Sevilla at 11pm - even though it was a very longride full of lots of motion sickness, smelly old men and snoring old ladies, the scenery was pretty.

It was definitely really neat to see the country side, I probably am going to be taking the speed train on the rest of my trips - throwing up on a bus with 25 strangers was NOT the most fun experience of my life.

Our first night in Sevilla was not too eventful - I had my first hostel experience, which ended up being cramped, full of snoring high school girls and smelly: somewhat like a boys locker room during football season. I couldn't complain too much though- the price was right!

On Friday we took a bus tour of the city, which ended up being a great idea because none of us knew the history or anything about it honestly, and I was able to get some great pics from the top of the doubledecker bus.

  

The nightlife in Sevilla was the same as it is in any other city: crowded, expensive, and full of old Spanish men who use what little English they know (which is usually "what's your name?" and "i love you") to attempt to pick you up.

Saturday we woke up and wandered through the city to find ourselves some lunch. We ended up eating at a street café where I had my first experience with paella.

      

It's a traditional Spanish dish that our professors have been raving about since we arrived, so I decided to give it a try. When it first came out, I thought to myself "well this just looks like a big ol'bowl of etouffe!" And I dug in. I honestly loved it! After a few bites tho, my friend Kelsey goes, "Hey Katie, do you realize what you're eating?" and I was like "Of course! it has shrimp and oysters in it." And she was like "Uhhh I don't think so..." And upon further inspection, I found out I was eating shrimp, squid and baby octopus. Needless to say I had a little be if trouble finishing, but got through as long as I didn't look at my bites or think about the little baby tentacles. 

We then decided to walk off our lunch and for some reason they decided to put me in charge of where we were going, which of course turned into us ending up in cute part of the city that no one had seen before. Thankfully, when I get lost I usually get lucky and find cool stuff, and I didn't let us down this time either. We ended up at Pilate's Palace, an extremely old mansion with beautiful gardens. We went inside, toured the house, and had a fun little photoshoot in the gardens.

                                                                                                 

On Sunday we made the long trek back to Madrid, which ended up taking an hour longer than expected because of horrible traffic, which meant we missed our train back to Toledo and had to wait an hour and a half for the next one. But all in all, the weekend was successful.

Not much has happened so far this week. Classes have progressively gotten harder, sleep has not been coming as easily, and I'm pretty sure my Spanish is getting worse, but I still love it here nevertheless! I think my problem is I've just hit the "3 week wall" where the honeymoon stage is ending and the reality that I still have 7+ weeks is setting in, which isn't a bad thing! Just a bit of a reality check. Occasionally those are good though, keeps me on my toes.

I want to end with a quote from the book I've been reading, "The Shack" by William P. Young.

"Two roads diverged in the middle of my life,

I heard a wise man say

I took the road less traveled by

And that's made the difference every night and every day."

- Larry Norman (with apologies to Robert Frost)

Being away from the people I love has definitely been like "taking the road less traveled," it's not a cake walk, but I know once this is over I will be a stronger, smarter, and hopefully fluent-in-spanish person.

-KD