Day 19

On Saturday, Tandem took a group of us to Segovia. It is a very old city, I think 2nd century BC. The US is only 200-something years old and I went to a place 10x that age. It's a cute little town about an hour north of Madrid in Castilla y Leon. I saw the castle that inspired Walt Disney. I felt like Cinderella. It was so beautiful, well the outside was. The inside was typical of any castle, nothing too exciting. I did see armory. I also saw the acuaducts of Segovia. They were so tall and so advanced for that time period. We also went into a church. Amazing. I also saw the church where Queen Isabel the Catholic was coronated (first queen of Spain...interesting to me). There was a military band festival when we went, so we got to listen to music from the Italian, Spanish, and German (?) military. I laughed when they started playing the James Bond theme song. Then on Sunday, I did absolutely nothing and it was wonderful. I woke up late, took a nap, watched tv, did homework, and absolutely nothing. Then today, I watched a Spanish movie at Tandem. I have seen several Spanish movies since I have been here, mostly by Almodovar (most famous in Spain). But the movie I watched today had a very young director and young actors, and it was strange. I don't even know how to start explaining it. I now have another person living here with me. She is German and I don't know how to spell her name, but it is pronounced M-L, I think. She is a secondary teacher of French and English in Germany. She speaks five languages. I am quite amazed. I wish I knew that many. But two is enough for me. Alvice (Italian roommate) is sick and I hope I don't get sick too. I am trying to stay away as politely as I can. Tomorrow, I am going to go with Tandem to take cooking lessons. We are going to learn how to cook tortillas. In Spain, a tortilla is basically a potato omlette. That is the best way I can think of how to explain it. It is about 1 inch think filled with tiny slices of potatos. This should be an interesting experience. Alvice also gave me a bunch of his songs yesterday, so I now have a wider variety of American songs, Spanish songs, and Italian songs. I don't understand of word of Italian, but he translated some of the songs for me and they sound really cool. I realize there is no flow to my blogs and I go from one subject to another then back again, and I apologize. I write like I think...no organization.