Feb 22nd – Day of Trip to Toledo

Ugh, I don’t like getting up in the morning for anything and it’s hard to get motivated but I have to go on these trips since it’s a part of our grade. Dang. I slept for a bit on the trip to Toledo to catch some extra sleep. Toledo I have learned is a city of rollercoasters. Which I don’t mean this literally, there’s no such thing, or not that I have found yet. But the city is a series of huge inclines and descents so it feels like you are walking a rollercoaster. The city itself though is beautiful and very picturesque. Toledo is built on a mountain so it has great overlooks and interesting architecture. The first place we walked to was a cathedral with a very famous painting in Spain (and sadly I can’t remember the name) but the painter of this is buried beneath it, literally! You can see his tomb and everything! How crazy huh?! From there, we started to walk toward a monastery to look at the arches, the rector and the décor. It was very simple but I knew the features that were of interest since Carlos (who was our guide) is my professor for history of art. Then we walked over to another cathedral to look at the aspects from the conquerors who had influenced its architecture. While Carlos was talking about this, I could see on the opposite side of the group my friend Leah, who happens to make the most awkward faces. And Olivia and I were cracking up laughing the whole time because every time she would look over at us to see what was so funny, she would make another awkward face and it would start us all up again. That day we were all giddy from laughing so much and it helped that the weather was so great. After this, our group waited while others were taking pictures, and we were talking to our civ professor Olvido. We were telling her about Leah making us laugh and Leah was telling us what she was talking about that made her make the gestures. Olvido was laughing the entire time and then stopped me to say that she loved my laugh. It was a very contagious laugh and really came from the heart, she liked it a lot…I didn’t know what to say since I was put on the spot so I opted to laugh awkwardly. Which then Olivia said, yea unlike mine which sounds weird and laughed funny…Olvido looked at her and said your laugh isn’t contagious, haha. Then we walked back to the main plaza where we started and had our break for an hour and a half for lunch. By then it was much warmer and we decided to post up in the plaza to people watch and eat our lunches. After we all got ice cream and went for a little shopping in the streets. We walked by the store that had cool jewelry so we all stopped in to take a look. I picked up two cool sets of earrings while the other girls in my group were getting either necklaces or sunglasses. Beth wanted to find a cute outfit for when we went out tonight and wanted to look for something to match. After we walked towards the grand cathedral to our meeting point for the rest of our class and the professors to people watch. And no, my professors weren’t late from our lunch break and they didn’t get drunk! Thank goodness! Once we all met up, Carlos went over the architecture of the cathedral and then said that unfortunately we didn’t have a reservation to enter but if we wanted to, we could pay for entrance or have more free time before we head back to Alcala. My friends and I decided to hang out in front of the cathedral and take in the atmosphere of Toledo and take advantage of the nice weather. Once our entire group met up again, we started to walk through the rollercoaster streets to our bus to go back. At this point we were close to meeting up with our bus and we saw something that put a huge smile on my face. Two, full grown, and very fierce-looking chow chows. One was an tan-blonde color, almost like the mane of a lion and the second was all black…their fur was fully fluffed out and they looked like lions from far away. They were so cute and knew it. But had no owners so they were sunbathing and paying no attention to the massive group of students walking by. Once we got on the bus, my friend Elise decided to start the ‘slow clap’ (prank in younger American culture, featured in movies and does actually work, hence why it’s a joke) thinking that no one would catch on. But it worked perfectly!! She started clapping slowly increasing the pace and eventually everyone caught on and they were even cheering!! Haha, we couldn’t believe it worked! Carlos was obviously confused because he came back shortly after and asked why we applauded. I said, because of you! But he knew better, because he then said, no really, why? Explaining the slow clap in our culture wouldn’t make much sense in translation so we just laughed it off. Funny. After, we all napped on the bus going back to Alcala. Once we got back, we all headed to our host homes to have dinner and then get ready to go out tonight. Beth was having a party at her apartment and we were all going over and then going out to the discothèque. When I arrived back at my host home, I found Adrian had a new playmate over and it was only the two of them and Pepe…where was Ana and Danit? Pepe made my dinner for me and I had a feeling something was up. He asked if I was going out tonight which I said yea, and he replied, oh yea Ana did too! Haha, that’s where she is! Later we all met up at Beth’s place and all hung out with the Spaniards and other friends we knew there. Then after quite a few drinks, we walked to a discothèque nearby. It was loads of fun and we danced a lot and after we walked to Cabana, a bar that we have a lot of bartender friends at. Cabana was packed and after a few drinks, something was wrong with Rachel. Her boyfriend, long story short, broke it off and cheated. Ugh. What a classy guy. She was hammered and now completely inconsolable. So Elise, Sarah and I walked her home and tried to calm her down and console her. Once we finally got to her apartment, it took some time but we got her calmed down and she wanted to go sleep. We told her to call us tomorrow and that we’d be there if she needed anything. Now that she went inside and to her apartment, we started walking away. Crap, the buses stopped running awhile ago and I was way to close to catch a cab, so Sarah and Elise offered to walk me. My host home is a long walk (45 min to be exact) so I usually take the bus, and at this moment we were about half way there. It was a pretty safe walk, obviously not safe enough to walk alone but with two other girls, plenty safe. Once we got to my host home, I let the girls in to warm up for a min while I got flip flops for Elise since she had worn heels and her feet were hurting. After they left, I went to sleep.