La Segunda Semana del Intensivo y Toledo

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this, it’s been difficult to find time! The second week of intensivo went pretty well. We worked on our radio programs, which actually turned out to be really fun. Vero, Maureen and I recorded a commercial for a special type of cookies we always have in our house, and we put that together with reports on two news events, an “interview” with Don Omar (who I’m seeing in concert next week!), and the results of a poll to make our very own Despierta Salamanca news show. The poll was cool too, we compared Salamanca and American drinking habits and to do that we had to ask random people in the street how many drinks they had on average on a night out. Vero speaks Spanish, but she made Maureen and I ask a few of them and it was hilarious. Maureen almost had people running away from her with her aggressive “HOLA”s and whenever I asked I almost always forgot a word/blacked out from sheer terror. You’d think we didn’t speak Spanish every day. But yeah, it was fun and we put it on in front of class, and then the next day we had our exam, which wasn’t too hard at all. And voila, we’re done with a three credit class!

I decided to add a Latin American Civilization class to make it an 18 credit semester, so we’ll see how this goes. We got our schedules very last minute and mine looks good so far, but I still haven’t gotten it for the internship, where we go to the schools and essentially teach English. Jesus, the program director sent out an email with almost everyone’s schedule, and with it was a syllabus which revealed to me the fun fact that it’s six hours a week! Which is a lot more than I was expecting. I can’t even imagine going to class and having a lot of homework because I’m already so busy without all that stuff! We’ll see how it goes, though. I’m excited.

On Saturday we took a day trip to Toledo, which was amazing. It’s an ancient city about a three hour bus ride from Salamanca that’s known for having Muslims, Jews and Christians all live together in what I think was pretty much peace. Which never happened. It’s extremely beautiful, and you can tell by looking at it that it has so much history. We visited a cathedral first, which was absolutely amazing. I probably use the word amazing too much, but that’s because there’s really no other way to describe it. The cathedral was hugeee, and had tons of ornate altars and crazy sculptures. It was built in the 1200s, and it’s just amazing to think about all the thought that was put into things and what work it must have taken to build something like that. Next we went to a synagogue, which I think Jesus said had been taken at some point to be turned into a church. And last we went to a mosque that was built in the year 999. What? It’s just crazy to me that something that old is still around. It was beautiful, to say the least, and had the remnants of an original ancient Roman road nearby. Before we left, we went to the outskirts to see what was the absolute best view I’ve ever seen. You could overlook the whole city, including a gorgeous river. Amazing.

We came back that same night and Jesus told us to enjoy tonight, rest tomorrow, and be ready to study on Monday. So we enjoyed.

View of Toledo ^^