2/22/13

I had another great week. Just like every single week here. It truly has been so amazing here! I can’t believe I’m already about halfway done:[ We had some of our midterms this week so that was just great. Sociology took 3 hours! But I was able to write my essays on my computer so that was definitely way nice. At the beginning of the week we went and played at the park with a zip line so that was a lot of fun! Playgrounds are so fun; I don’t think they will ever get old for me. Taylor and I had our fill of the Bachelor this week as well. A few nights we watched with Jil and Cassie Knapp at their house, which was way fun. One night when we were running over there to watch, we ran into one of our Spanish teachers so we talked to her, and she was wondering what we were doing haha and then we ran into Blanca! So just on the way over to the Knapp’s house we had two different Spanish conversations! You would think we wouldn’t be as proud as we were considering we are living in Spain, but we were proud of ourselves nonetheless haha. I also was able to talk to Jared for just a little bit so that was nice! I miss being so close to all of them. The time difference and not having wifi has definitely made it difficult communicating with family and stuff. I hope my family knows I love them so much and am so grateful for them and their love and support, even if I can’t talk to them that much:]

Today we went to El Escorial, which is the palace-monastery of San Lorenzo, founded by Felipe II to provide a suitable resting place for his father, Emperor Carlos V, and future Spanish monarchs. It was huge. There were a lot of interesting rooms; I thought it was cool that the floors were the originals from the 16^th century! The cathedral portion was so beautiful, like they always are. The interesting part though was where they kept the tombs of the Spanish monarchs in the Panteón Real. It reminded me of the crypt we saw in Italy I think it was, but everything down there was made out of marble and the tombs were very beautiful and it looked really cool in their honestly.  After that we went to the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen). This was a memorial and also a basilica, in honor of those that fell during the Civil War. Franco was also buried there. It was really pretty up in the mountains there, and the cross was huge, you could see it from miles away. I thought it was interesting how the basilica was built into the mountains.

After all of our adventures today we returned back to the Knapp’s house and Jil made us this way yummy pasta dish. And she made different olive oil dips for the fresh bread we got too. It was delicious. Eating all of her delicious food she makes us, and all the yummy Spanish food Blanca makes us, it has made me really want to get better at cooking. I think I want to have Mom help me this summer because she is an amazing cook, and reflecting back on my cooking this past semester, I could definitely use some help:]