Friday afternoon we spent at another location of International House where Spanish students study English. We had an "intercambio" or language exchange where our kids got to meet and chat with Spanish students of the same age. When we were finished, they had a few minutes of free conversation (as opposed to the initial ´guided´conversation) and immediately became facebook friends! Ya gotta laugh. Most of Friday evening I spent in the Emergency Room - don´t worry, if you haven´t already heard about it, it wasn´t your son! This group plays futbol as if every game were the World Cup final. I´m thinking I may have to ban the futbol games.... I´m getting nervous about the cuts, scrapes, sprains, twists... not to mention the fact that they seem enamoured of playing in 100 degree heat! Who knew that 9 kids and a soccer ball could wreak so much havoc?????
On Saturday, we had our big excursion to Toledo. Due to the fact that it was naturally protected on three sides by the Tajo river and therefore easy to defend, it was the natural capital of Spain in the middle ages. 
One of the things of which Spain is most proud is it´s history of the relatively peaceful (or at least mostly tolerant) co-existence of the three important cultures, Muslim, Christian and Jewish. The significant influences of each are clearly evident in Toledo with it´s preponderance of Mudejar styles, 2nd largest Gothic Cathedral in the world and important synagogue and collection of midieval jewish artifacts. Oh yeah, and swords. While we toured the magnificent Cathedral with its unique transparente, and meandered the narrow streets designed to keep out the heat, but also because within the murallas of the city there was only limited space and so it was used for buildings not for wide streets, 
visited the exceptionally beautiful Jesuit Church of San Ildefonso and explored the shops, the jewish museum and viewed the magnificent masterpiece of El Greco, all the boys could think about was buying swords. So finally I took them to a shop and turned them loose - and all their long, tired faces turned into excited grins as they feigned sword fights and made their selections according to their favourite historical or film characters. While even today, moviemakers come to Toledo to have the swords made for their movie sets (since we don´t have too much need for actual battle swords anymore, thank goodness) there actually IS more to see there than the inside of the sword shops. But I don´t think the boys noticed....On Sunday - after all the walking on Saturday- we had a light day.
After the Rastro (flea market) in the morning, I took them to a beautiful 18th Century park designed by the Duchess of Osuna. I wanted them to see all the lovely 18C buildings, trees and spectacularly designed gardens, but they elected to sit under a tree rather than walk around with me.... I was disappointed. It was a spectacularly beautiful park and all designed and built before America was even a country!
The Feast of Corpus Christi is a huge one in Spain and on Sunday evening, there was a Mass at the Cathedral of the Alumdena followed by a procession through the streets culminating with the massive monstrance holding the Host.
We had a front row view, just at the beginning of the procession and got spectacular photos of all the groups who are members of the Cathedral association in their traditional attire. It is something that the boys are unlikely to see anywhere in the States, so I thought it was important for them to see it. 
We started off our third week with a free day - they went swimming to beat the oppressive heat, but the rest of our week is very busy - filled with activities. Hard to believe we are only two weeks from home.
No comments:
Post a Comment