Totally Random Song

But I thought it had to be shared.

Que Dios os bendiga,
-Rebekah

Request

My dear friends and family,

I didn't bring my address book with me to Spain.

I'd love to be able to send you a postcard, but I need your address to do so.

So! Please email me your addresses or box numbers at school. My email address can be found on my blogger profile page.

I look forward to sending you mail!

Toledo en Fotos

Nota: Please, please don't rely on babelfish to understand this entry. Find someone who speaks/takes Spanish, or a good dictionary. Hopefully the pictures will speak a thousand words by themselves. However, if you understand the entry in the original, and want a good laugh, The garden is very tuna.

Hoy, fuimos a Toledo por el día. Saqué 90 fotos. Aquí están unas con descripciones...

Del autobus. Este es el puente, y nuestra primer vista de la ciudad.

La vista panorámica de la ciudad. De aquí se puede ver algunos monumentos.

Una calle estrecha típica de Toledo. La ciudad me recuerda mucho a Asis.

El Barrio de la Juderia. Hace cientos de años, la ciudad fuera dividida en tres partes, para los judios, los musulmanes, y los cristianos.

El claustro de San Juan de los Reyes.

El jardín a San Juan de los Reyes. Estaba lloviendo por la mañana, pero hacía sol desde mediodía, que hizo el jardín muy bonito.

Y arriba, hay un techo arabe muy guay.

Este es el ayuntamiento. El tablado era para una fiesta internacional de jazz la semana pasada.

La catedral. Si podéis ver, hay la última cena arriba de la puerta.

Hubo una boda en la catedral.

Un puente que conecta la catedral y la casa del cardenal.

Esta mezquita anciana pequeña está construido sobre cuatro pilares visigodos, está al lado de un cementerio cristiano, y es llamado "La Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz". Es como la ciudad de Toledo - una mezcla de culturas, arquitecturas, y religiones.

Este es la Plaza de Zocodover. El arco es un ejemplo del estilo arabe.

Los Toledos en españa y en Ohio son ciudades hermanas. ¡Hola a todos mis amigos en Ohio!

Se vende espadas de alta calidad en Toledo. La mayoridad de las espadas en las películas están hechas en Toledo, y se vende también cosas de peliculas como El Señor de los Anillos y Eragon.

¿Recuerdáis esos zapatos de los ceremonios al final de los juegos olimpicos? Pues, Papá, ¡se los vende!

Y cuando empecé a olvidar Asis, encontramos estas esculpturas.

También vimos otras cosas, incluso en cuadro de El Greco, pero no se permite fotos.

So, there's this new web browser out. It's called Google Chrome.

I was very surprised to see it today. I guess I didn't expect Google to do it.

But I downloaded it and am trying it out. So you can see that it at least allows one to blog. :)

It's actually a lot like Firefox. I haven't seen anything that I really don't like yet.

It's still in Beta. Try it out if you like.

-Rebekah

Quick Spanish Observations

...and I just mean about the country, not in the language.

Wow. I just had to consciously fight myself not to write "observaciones". We must be making progress.

I toyed for months with the idea of switching the blog to all-Spanish for the semester and just linking to babelfish. But I hate babelfish.

Yeah! I'm here in Madrid, Spain.

The flights went, all things considered, pretty smoothly. I caught the flu my brother had and got sick twice over the Atlantic. But all three flights were on schedule. That's never happened to me before.

Not feeling well gave me a great excuse to take my time getting used to Spanish food.

The Metro here is immaculate. There's barely even any gum on the floor. Especially compared to the one in Rome... wow. But it's also incredibly complicated, with a dozen lines criss-crossing all over the city.

It seems like all the floors in this city are slippery.

The language barrier is a little lower than I had first thought in the airports. Except for one thing - There's no way to practice using "vosotros" in San Diego.

We had a meeting yesterday evening with ISA about general stuff.

The students in ISA are all pretty nice. There's about 2o of us so far (the compultense students arrive later) but there's only about 3 of us who actively try to speak Spanish while in a group.

We had our examen de nivel this morning. It was nerve-wracking, especially the oral part, but I have hope that I did well.

My host family is really nice. And they force us to speak Spanish at home, which is good.

There was a lady on the bus this morning with a shirt that said "a heart 100% healthful". If you forget, here's the difference. Ha! It's funny because it's cannibalism!

Culture shock so far has been at a deal-with-it-able level. It's too soon to comment on home-sickness. The time difference is 9 hours ahead of Pacific time. Skype me!

I'll be blogging more soon, with some photos.

-Rebekah