End of week 2

Wednesday afternoon after classes proved, as always, to be one of the highlights of the trip for the boys. We visited Santiago Bernabeu, the 85,000 seat stadium and home of the Real Madrid football team. We started out in the "vomitorio", aptly named in the top of the stadium and worked our day down and around ending up in the team store. On the way down, we stopped at various levels, eventually arriving out on the field level (they can´t go out on the turf) and getting a chance to relax in the seats of the teams - soft, blue leather - really comfy! A short trip through the dressing room, shower, jaccuzzi and massage area and out to the store which contains every imaginable item containing the team logo! This year new additions were computer accessories - mouse pads, cases, wrist pads... you name it! I would never even think of all the items they have in which they put the team logo! It is crazy.
Additionally, we get to pass through the press room - always a favourite, where the group can comment on the day´s activities. It always makes for a great photo op!

Thursday was the feast of Corpus Christi - no school, so we went out to Alcalá de Henares, a town about 30 minutes outside Madrid by train that has the original University founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499. It is in restoration and so we got a great tour, albeit in Castellano, by a student who imparted SO much interesting information. Some of it was lost on the boys, but I went back and explained afterwards. So much of what they see ties together, it is important to make the connections. When we go to Toledo on Saturday, we will see the sepulcro of Cardenal Cisneros, who was the Archbishop of Toledo (which was the Capital of Spain), personal confessor to Isabella la Catolica and initiator of the Spanish Inquisition. The university at Alcala was eventually moved to Madrid where it became the Univerisidad Complutense - the university I attended when I studied in Madrid. Alcala is again a University today with about 1500 faculty and 25,000 students in total. Some of its more famous students were Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes and Ignatius Loyola.
From the University, we walked through midieval streets to the Puerta de Madrid - the gate from the city on the road to Madrid (in Madrid we have seen the Puerta de Alcalá, also built by Carles III) and examined the midieval walls (murrallas) of the ancient city. we visited the house where Miguel de Cervantes (author of El Ingenioso Hildago Don Quijote de la Mancha) was born and saw a number of original manuscripts and first editions from the 16th century. Very cool. We had lunch, and then shortly returned to the train for the journey back to Madrid where they all immediately fell asleep. They tell me I´m mean and unfeeling because I won´t let them sit and rest or go home and sleep. I´m trying to get them to sleep at night(doesn´t seem to be working) - there are too many things to do and see to sleep during the day! They have actually realized how quickly the time passes - they ca´´t believe that there only are two weeks left in Madrid.


For the Feast of San Juan (today) there are crazy celebrations of jumping over fires - I took them out looking for the fiesta last night - but later heard that they had been curtailed due to injuries. Needless to say, I wasn´t going to allow the boys to jump over the fires, just watch! But instead, they decided they wanted to try some authentic Spanish food - so when we saw a pizza place they immediately wanted to stop. hmmmmmmmmm
Mañana, another long day - we travel south into La Mancha to visit the ancient capital of the country, Toledo (not to be confused with Toledo, Ohio), where we will spend the day exploring an authentic, midieval fortressed city - home of the factories of the best swords ever made. Uh oh.