Toledo y el Finde

Hola! Hope everything is going well back in the States! As for the title of this post, I incorporated a new colloquialism I learned today: finde. Which is short for "el fin de semana", or weekend!

So Saturday was my trip to Toledo, which was beautiful. It is a city with a rich history, and it is known as "the city of three cultures" due to its mix of Christians, Jews, and Muslims before the Spanish Inquisition. at the height of this cultural mix there were 11 synagogues in this small city, but now only one remains and it has been restored, as it was used as a church after the Inquisition. The city is walled because it was a fortress at one time, and it sits on the side of a mountain. Most of the entrances to the city are by bridge, and the bridges have as many as three separate doors to keep out invaders! I don't want to drone on and on, so here are some pictures!

View overlooking the city. While coming into town, the bus stopped at the scenic viewpoint, where you can see the entire city and the wall that surrounds it. We were quite lucky, it can be very foggy in January, making pictures as great as this one rare for this time of year!

Shot of the cathedral from the same view as above. It is the second largest cathedral in Spain.

We started off the tour with a church called San Juan de los Reyes, or St. John of the Kings. The church had incredible architectural detail, of which I took a million pictures, but only included a few.

This seal is repeated over and over again on both walls of the main chapel. The eagle with the halo represents San Juan, whose symbol was an eagle, and the crown is over top of the seal of Queen Izabel and King Ferdinand. Izabel was Queen of Sevilla, central Spain, and Ferdinand was king of a large territory which included Naples. The two getting married was a consolidation of two large powers! Izabel commissioned the building of this church.

I always find flying buttresses so beautiful! This was the hallway around the cloister of the church.

Apparently the architects and workers who spend decades building churches like San Juan get bored. There are little jokes in all of the important sites in Spain! This particular one is a monkey sitting on a toilet reading a book. It is from the original construction, and not noticeable from a glance.

 Moving right along in our tour of Toledo, this is the synagogue and Museum of the Sephardi Jews: 

This is a part of the original floor from the 13th century synagogue.

The beautiful wall (restored) above where the Torah is kept.

This is the incredible cathedral!

Amazing detail above the door of the cathedral, it's "la Última Cena", or The Last Supper!

We had two hours of free time at the end of the trip, so of course we saw some more sights, shopped, and goofed around! Here are Sinead and I with one of my favorite characters from literature, English or Spanish, Don Quixote!

And finally, the one all of you Ohio people will enjoy. If you click on the picture to enlarge it and look closely at the sign above my head (and above the yogurt sign) you will see... Calle Toledo de Ohio!

On the whole, the trip was awesome. The city was beautiful and the weather was fantastic! Sunday was a leisurely day, which started out with a new experience! I went to church with Angelina for the first time. First of all, I hadn't realized how short Angelina was, because we are rarely both standing side by side; one of us is usually sitting. But when we walked to church she linked her arm through mine while we went and I realized she must be under 5 feet tall! Church on the whole was a very interesting experience, because I could recognize all of the prayers in Spanish, but of course I do not know them, so I was silent during most of the mass. Her church is very very small, and has a very old clientele, so I think I will go with her sometimes, but I want to try out a big cathedral as well!

This weekend also brought me two new roommates, and a handful of new difficulties. They are two Chinese girls, whose names I do not really know. They arrived right as I was walking out the door on Saturday morning to meet up with my group for the Toledo trip, and it was evident right away that there may be problems. They speak almost no Spanish and their English is rather poor. As I was leaving, Angelina called me into their room to try and impress upon them the importance of keeping their keys safe, what with all of the pick-pockets around the city, but they just stared at the two of us as if they were terrified. 

When I got back from Toledo that evening, Angelina was very happy to see me, as she had been having trouble communicating with them all day. I helped them connect to the wireless internet, and tried to ascertain their names, which proved challenging. I wanted to give their Chinese names a shot, even though they would be hard to pronounce, but they would only tell me them once, and just stared at me when I asked them to repeat them. They said they prefer English to Spanish, but I cannot tell if they understand a word I am saying, as they just talk to each other in Chinese. Angelina is quite frustrated with them, because they have been leaving the house and not coming back for meal times, but not informing her that would be the case, and when they do come for meals, they are very reluctant to say what they do or don't like, and they don't talk to us! I'm trying to stay positive, but they left the bathroom we share quite dirty this morning, which seems a bit disrespectful in my book. I'm hoping the communication will get better, and they are only going to be here a month, so Angelina and I are working together to make the best of it! For me, the best part so far has been the conversations with Angelina about them, because I can tell my speaking is already faster than when I got here!

Ok, I think that's pretty much all for now! I'm going to try to post tomorrow evening, as I will be leaving Wednesday night for Paris and won't be able to post for a while! In tomorrow's entry you can expect my TV evaluation, in part because I'm going to a filming of a TV show tomorrow at 6! I also anticipate talking about dogs in Spain, as well as PDA, which is a topic I cannot believe I haven't mentioned up to this point. It really is shocking, but I will leave that for tomorrow! In academic news, I got 100% on my midterms and I schedule classes for the main semester on Wednesday morning, which is quite exciting!

Love and miss you all, hasta luego!