Finally reached Ciudad Real!

Sorry I didn't post anything last night; I wanted to spend time with my family and get some rest and I think I accomplished both! (yay!)  Yesterday morning, we woke up early, took our luggage to the bus, and ate our last breakfast at the hotel in Caceres.  We were finally headed to Ciudad Real even though we had many stops in between.  We first saw a presentation on different projects that were related to water resources that were in the area.  After being well informed (well, kind of well informed, there were definitely heads nodding in the warm room), we left with hardhats and neon vests in hand to go look at a dam as it was being built.  I know most of you don't find that as interesting as me, but I really enjoyed it.  They make all the concrete on sight as well which was very interesting to me.  Water resources is definitely a route of civil engineering that I would like to go into.  It remains to be seen if I qualify ;)  After we left the dam, we went to a canal that took water from a reservoir to one of the near-by "ciudads".  Again, this was very interesting, but sad too because there were animals (i.e. ducks and a frog) that were trapped by the gates the canal was using to control the water.  It really is too bad that there are always harms to nature when humans are progressive.  Oh well, that's an entirely different subject that I won't start into on my light-hearted traveling blog!  We next went to a water treatment plant, but unfortunately, I ended up at the back of the group and could hardly hear all that was going on.  The only thing I am fairly certain of is that it wasn't a WASTE-water treatment plant.  There were no smells that I picked up on.  There was one company that was taking us on all these amazing tours and to top it off they took us to an amazing lunch!  We had an extensive meal that could not have been cheap in any way.  Some of the food was little questionable, but I ate most of it anyway because I knew that it was a very nice gesture by this company.  We also got to see the offices these people worked in, but we didn't stay long there.  After that, we loaded up and headed to Ciudad Real!  It was a three-ish hour drive, so of course most people on the bus napped.  When I woke up, I was so nervous because I knew that I was about to meet my host family and I had no idea how that would go.  I got off the bus and one of the wonderful girls that has organized this trip introduced me to a very lovely lady.  Come to find out, she was not my real host mom lol.  My real host family heard my name and fixed the mix-up very quickly!  They are so amazing!  I have had more to eat in the past two days then I have had the rest of the trip.  I even have my own room so everything is just perfect.  I am so thankful I got the opportunity to live with a host family especially one as great as mine!  The ONLY downside to being in Ciudad Real is that real classes inevitably have to start.  Thankfully, I already like my professor and I feel like I am understanding the material so far.  I also like having more a schedule to work with.  For the past week and a half, I have felt like I am running around blindly from day to day.  Now that we are here and are having regular classes, I feel like I have a better grip on what I have to do each day and where I need to be.  Well I am going to try and go to sleep now so that MAYBE I will gain some of the sleep I have lost.  Goodnight to all!

p.s. sorry for the lack of pictures, I haven't taken any in the past two days.

Meeting my host family tomorrow....

Today has been a great day!  That is saying something considering it started at 7am for me and I am definitely not a morning person haha.  I've loved having breakfast at this four star hotel because I actually get a well rounded meal.  Maybe the only one I get all day.  I had to cut breakfast a little short though because I needed to change into jeans because it was supposed to rain and be cool all day.  I should have known that the weather wouldn't be exactly accurate but it still worked out having jeans when it finally did get colder.  The rain today was ridiculous!  I hope everyone back in Texas gets to see rain clouds like I did today sometime soon.  We went to Merida today which has much more Roman influence than any other Spanish city I've seen so far.  It was amazing!  I'm always interested in Roman ruins because it's amazing to me that some structures have literally lasted thousands of years.  The ones we saw today were just beautiful and breath-taking.  We got to see an amphitheater where gladiators fought and a beautiful theater with tons of beautiful marble.  We also saw a Roman dam that is still in use today.  Can you imagine structures that are built today lasting two thousand years?!?  We also got to see a modern dam and kind of compare the two.  It was very interesting from an engineering standpoint.  Other than seeing all those amazing structures, there wasn't much else we did today.  Pray for me tomorrow because I am very nervous about meeting my host family.  I really want them to know at least SOME English, but if they don't, I will survive!

Love and miss y'all =)

 notice the structure inside the Roman ruins.  I believe a noble built her house there.

 Roman ruins

 Amphitheater 

 Pretty statue

 marble in the theater

 beautiful theater

 another marble statue

 these are toilets if I am correct (I'm 95% sure) and you can see underneath a crevice that water ran through to take away the nasty stuff

 Roman Aqueducts 

 The second dam we saw (notice the rain in the background)

another view of the dam / mountain

First day in Caceres

So today we actually got to see Caceres.  We started off the nice cool morning with a tour of some of the older places in the city, starting in Plaza Mayor.  It is a beautiful city and much more modern around the plaza than Toledo was.  But once we got to the old buildings, it shared similarities with the other cities I've visited.  We saw castles and churches as usual and our tour guide kept talking about a lower level of the palace that he called (as I heard it) "sisters".  I just could not tell what he was talking about until we visited an area beneath a cathedral that had a "cistern" that collected rain water that was used in the household.  It was nice to have that little light come on lol.  As we were walking in the lower level of the cathedral, they had mannequins lined up that were all dressed up as saints if I heard correctly.  In Catholicism, there were ceremonies where people dressed up and paraded through the streets in cloaks and pointed hoods.  To see figures wearing these outfits took everyone in the group by surprise.  Thanks to a bunch of crazy Americans, all we were seeing was the outfits used by racist, hateful individuals.  It was frightening and at the same time disheartening to think how skewed that image had become due to hatred.  It was almost a relief to get out of the room with all those mannequins.  We continued our tour, but our tour guide today was a little hard to understand so I didn't gain as much knowledge as I would have liked to.  For example, he told us a story about a monkey, a woman, and a baby and when he did he was trying to tell us the monkey kidnapped the baby but instead he said the monkey raped the baby which is obviously much more graphic and just not nice in general.  Thankfully, we had someone there to decipher the real meaning lol.  Once the tour ended, we made our way to a park area that had a market there for the day.  We encountered a bike race and a parade in the process haha.  It was an interesting combination.  Afterwards, Holly and I tagged along with our professors and the two amazing girls that have organized our trip to have lunch in Plaza Mayor.  It was fun to get a different perspective on this trip from them.  Another group of our students found a very drunk guy passed out in the Plaza and someone called the cops to come get him.  That was interesting lol.  They definitely did the right thing by calling the cops but I was tempted to say leave him because if you get yourself in that bad of a position, its up to you to recover from it.  After resting at the hotel for a few hours, some of us went to a festival that is going on outside of town.  That was definitely an experience lol.  It was essentially the equivalent of a county fair or whatnot in Texas but MUCH louder and a little sketchier.  Everyone was yelling and playing loud music and selling knock-offs of every sort.  I'm very glad I got to see that, but I'm not sure if I need to every experience it again lol.  Caceres has turned out to be a beautiful city and I'm a little disappointed that we won't be staying here longer. 

Love y'all muchos!

 Plaza Mayor

 Wall around the old town

 princess posing in front of a tower

 notice the feet are worn from people touch this statue

 cathedral (with storks on top)

 Catholic saints' attire

 beautiful tower

 fedoras look european... just saying lol

 statue of the saints

 there are SO many dogs here... I think this one was supposed to be guarding the shop but wasn't very intimidating

thats not creepy at all... yay for parades lol

A day of travels, sleeping and a soccer game

Toledo is officially behind me.. I'm so thankful I got to visit such a beautiful city and spend a good amount of time there.  I definitely would like to go back sometime in the future.  I surprisingly got everything into my suitcase and bag this morning (including a sword) so I guess thats something to be thankful for haha.  I'm so glad that we had a bus take our large suitcases down because it would have been next to impossible to get those down on our own.  Just to give you an idea, the way we leave the old city of Toledo, the part thats on the hill, we took five or six escalators to get back down to street level.  It was a very unique set up. After we finally got loaded on the bus, I'm pretty sure I passed out pretty quickly.  I'm at the point where I'm taking any opportunity to sleep.  We arrived in Trojillo around 11:30 and walked directly the main plaza to begin our tour (of course in the hot Spanish sun lol).  Just a brief description of Trojillo from my understanding is it is where Pizarro is from.  Of course it is old and has history with Romans, Visigoths and Moors but the most famous aspect is Pizarro.  For those of you that don't know, Pizarro was a bastard child (if I understood correctly) who went from being a nobody to a conquistador.  He, with his brother at his side, conquered the Incan empire and founded Lima which is the current capital of Peru.  Both he and his brother married Incan women to help bring peace.  He died in Peru I believe, but he is most certainly still celebrated in Trujillo.  One of the oddities I have to note about Trujillo is the storks.  From the main square alone, I could spot at least five stork nest and see storks flying around everywhere.  Kinda weird, but it made it unique!  The town was beautiful (of course) and we walked ALL over it.  We saw ancient structures and went to the highest point in the city which had an amazing view.  Once the tour was over, we ate lunch at Hotel Peru (which my Peruvian professor Paco loved haha) and headed to Caceres.  Our hotel here isn't in the center of town, so we mostly hung around here the majority of the evening since a nice storm came through.  Hopefully the rain will help bring the temperature down some before tomorrow when we tour the city.  I've very excited to see Caceres because I've heard it's a beautiful city.  Pictures will definitely be posted soon so everyone else can enjoy.  For now, I hope you enjoy my few pictures from Trojillo =)

Love y'all very much! 

 view from the plaza

 statue of pizarro

 look closely and you can see a stork

 cactus everywhere!

 nuns =)

 cute puppy!  everyone has a dog in Spain and unfortunately for me, my puppy is at home...

 beautiful view of the city behind me

another view of the statue

Leaving Toledo tomorrow...

So tonight will be the last night I stay in Toledo... I'm so excited to go on to our weekend trip cities and Ciudad Real (where i'll meet my host family!) but Toledo is such a beautiful city and I will miss it here.  But it's time to move on to bigger or better things!  We are hitting three cities in the next three days so it's going to be a crazy weekend.  Trojillo and Caceres are the first two cities and I can't remember the third one.  I've very excited, but I am fully aware that it is probably going to be extremely hot!  I was worried about not spending summer in Texas so I'd miss the change in seasons but I'm getting similar weather here haha.  Yesterday was pretty low-key.  As soon as classes were over, we were free for the night so I took some time to nap and then went out shopping with some friends.  I have to say, I'm kind of an amazing daughter because I bought my dad a legit Toledo sword and I have yet to figure out how to carry it / get it home (and they aren't that cheap either lol).  After I bought that (and an adorable fedora for myself), Holly and I stopped and got some churros con chocolate. OMG delicious!  I know David will be iffy on Spanish churros because they aren't completely covered in sugar and cinnamon but I really enjoyed them.  When the two of us finally figured out how to pay at the restaurant we were at, we came back and rested before heading out again.  I have no idea how I continued to keep going last night, but I am glad I did because it was a lot of fun!  The not so fun part was waking up at 6:45 this morning so I wouldn't miss the bus to Madrid.  We stopped at a construction site on our way to Madrid this morning which was interesting.  The downside is that it was super muddy so everyones shoes were not so pretty looking by the time we left.  I was worried some of it was never going to come off but I think the downpour that hit us in Madrid took care of that for me.  Once we got to Madrid, a large group of us headed to the Royal Palace.  I was in awe of this place although truth be told, a lot of it was just plain gaudy lol.  But it was very interesting to see everything and hear some of the history of the Spanish family.  I'm so used to hearing the history of England because of America's relationship with that royal family that I forget other countries have their own history of royals.  Madrid was a typical big city in some ways, but it definitely still had that Spanish feel to it.  I really would have liked to stay longer than 6 hours so I could really experience it.  Guess that means I'll have to come back someday ;)  Spain just looks so different than Texas.  As we were driving, we encountered very few communities instead it didn't seem populated in between the cities.  Maybe they don't have hicktowns like Winnsboro haha.  After getting back tonight, I was very unsocial and came to my room to basically be lazy.  Not a bad idea if I do say so myself lol.  Well I'm going to finish packing the ridiculous amount of stuff I have so goodnight from Espana!

Muchos love to all =)

 churros con chocolate

they are hard to make out, but there is a windmill farm in the background... i also so an area with a ton of solar panels but missed my picture opportunity

 pretty view from bus

 royal palace in madrid

 from the courtyard

 cathedral behind the palace

 aww aren't i cute? lol jk

 apparently spain has magnolias as well... at least thats what this looks like to me =)

pretty view of the palace from the garden

Can you become regulars after two days at a place?

Today has been another amazing day here in Toledo!  I am so thankful and blessed to be here and I am reminded of that constantly.  It is hard to wake up for classes at 9 every morning especially because we have 2 hours straight of Spanish, a 30 minute break and then another 2 hours of Spanish.  After Spanish classes, lunch and engineering lecture, we got to go on another tour today.  We went around the city more but focused on the Jewish quarter even though there are only 3 Jewish families left in Toledo.  It was really interesting and we got to see a monastery / cathedral.  Not sure what the correct title for it was.  It was beautiful, but it still couldn't hold water to the cathedral from yesterday.  It was a very good tour with an amazing tour guide, but after two hours it got a little tedious.  Spain (at least Toledo) actually can keep up with Texas as far as hot weather goes.  Thankfully, I have grown up in an extremely hot state so I am somewhat prepared for this hot weather.  It just gets confusing because it starts out in the 60 degrees or so in the morning but the temperature rises a lot and the sun doesn't go down until around 10.  Verrrrryyy disorienting at first...  Tomorrow, we get a free afternoon so I might take in a little shopping, hopefully acquiring some souvenirs for people at home.  I am DEFINITELY getting some churros con chocolate!  I had mazapan today; I had tried it earlier but Holly and I actually bought some today and it is amazing!  Very unique...  We also went back to the same tapas bar today so we have now been there three times in two days.  Its just a great place to sit and chill and drink and talk and eat!  It's just perfect!  I'm going to miss it when we leave Toledo.  Anywho, I have got to get some sleep tonight so I will continue to keep y'all updated.

Love y'all muchos!

 jewish quarter

 monastery from a distance

 queen isabel (spelling may be off)

all the pictures that follow are from the monastery / cathedral not sure what the correct title is