Feb 1st – Day of Seeing Castles (and it’s into my 2nd school month here!)

Today is Friday and although we don’t have class, my civ class is taking a day trip to see two castles in Segovia and Valladolid. I’m pretty excited because the castle in Segovia is known as the Cinderella castle since Walt Disney based his design of it from this castle. And I haven’t seen it since I was 16, so I mean, I’m sure it’s the same but I wonder if I will look at it differently 5 years later. I also never been to Valladolid so I’m wondering what it will look like and what the castles there will be like. We meet at go, by bus, at 9am to leave and away we go. The first castle we go to is just outside of Madrid in a small town and it is, on the outside, the kind of castle you would see in movies where battles would take place. And Carlos even pointed out where they had made windows in the wall to place the guns in to shoot people who weren’t supposed to come in. Sadly the inside of the castle was modernized and didn’t have any of the charisma the outside had. Disappointing but I guess the decided to make it more of a museum and take away it’s natural character. But we went up this awesome, beautifully hand-carved spiral staircase to go to the top of the castle where we could walk around. Even though it was a cold, windy, snowy (since it was in the mtns) day, the view was stunning. There was a lake nearby and it made for the beautiful background of this castle on one side and the creviced mountains on the other side. Cool. Then we were back on the bus to head to the next castle, which to our dismay was not a castle but an old prison just outside of Segovia. This was further into the mountains where now the caps were sprinkled with white snow. The prison had no aesthetic qualities to it, but our tour guide did add a little color to the story; not quite enough to make a trip to an old prison though. Afterwards we were free to have lunch for a hour in this tiny ghost-like town where we only saw a maximum of three people, tucked away in a small restaurant. Since it was siesta, all the other restaurants were closed and it was brutally windy and cold. So, many of us posted up in a corner of the plaza on benches that blocked the wind. After we, quickly, finished our lunches we all posted up in the only restaurant that was open where we packed the entire restaurant. An hour later, we all went back to the plaza to meet our professors to see the last castle and finally go home. But here we were and our professors were no where to be found. One of the students just answered their phone and said that the professors aren’t done yet because they’ve just gotten their food…what?! Okay, fine 30 mins isn’t too bad. 30 mins later, they ordered a bottle of wine and weren’t leaving anytime soon. An hour and a half later, they met us in the plaza…Carlos was buzzed and the other professor, we let’s just say that she was definitely drunk. Everyone was pissed, cold and tired and our professors were sitting there taking their sweet time. Carlos then said ‘We broke for lunch for an hour’ like it was a joke…no one laughed. Then they said, ‘hey, this is civilization and culture of spain…waiting is culture’ and no one was having it. I’m sorry but being an hour and a half late is not only tacky, thoughtless and rude but it is completely unprofessional coming from a teacher. And then for them to be late because they were getting drunk? I mean there are strict rules against us drinking even one drink at school functions so I don’t see how it’s not the same for the teachers. Oh well, one more castle and then we can go to our host homes and warm up. Then we stood in the plaza while Carlos talked about nothing, literally, for 20 mins and then made the walk to the last castle. It was on top of a mountain, which was at the top of the village, and the view was gorgeous. The clouds cleared out temporarily for us to see the sunset and it almost made our teachers being dumb worth it. But the wind up there was blistering and it got even colder than before. The castle was nice, the view lovely, but it was way cold. It actually felt like winter for once, but since we didn’t know it would be like this, none of us layered appropriately. We just dressed for Spain winter, which is like fall. Carlos kept talking and talking and then we find out we aren’t touring the castle, we just came to see it. ugh! Finally, he was finished and said we can take pictures or if we already have we can go to the bus. You don’t have to tell us twice! Almost everyone headed to the bus and we were starting to warm up…then a girl on the bus got a call from Carlos. Apparently we mistranslated what he said and we were supposed to meet at a café bar so they could buy us all a drink and take a group photo. Umm, are you kidding?! We are ready to go home, we are finally warm…ugh!! Fine, we went back through the town again to the bar took the pictures (which the female professor was drinking again!) and then we all went back to the bus. And we were off…thank goodness. Driving back through the mountains to Alcala, the sunset against the mountains was gorgeous. At one point I looked at the sunset and it was this beautiful red, orange that (through the mtns) looked like a red sea through the mountains with the clouds bordering it in. Even if I was prepared to take a picture, it would have never come across. Everyone was warm again and we all fell asleep. Only to wake later to hearing the female professor singing (parts of ‘lady marmalade’…voule, voule, vou….which means I want, I want, I want) loudly. Then we hear the translation yelled by her in English, “I want to *#$@ you”, omg. She started stumbling around on the bus tickling students being completely inappropriate and bringing up other students’ personal information that shouldn’t have been said the way she did. We had to do evaluations of the trip and she would make people change their responses or corner them about why they said what they said (I was one of them). She was loud, obnoxious and we wanted her to just PASS OUT!! Poor Carlos at this point realized his error and had completely sobered to the situation. The bus arrived at the plaza and we all immediately got off, feeling as sour as if we had stuffed our mouths with lemons and limes. We all cleared out and went home. Ana asked how it went and I told her not so well. We didn’t go to where we were told we would, and she said she almost expected that. Pretty much, to make sure you are going where you want, you should go yourself. Lesson learned. I went to my room after dinner, watched a movie and fell asleep.