Toledo

This past Saturday (2/7) our study abroad group visited Toledo, Spain, which as an entire city was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city is on a sort of mountain and is surrounded on three sides by the River Tajo, giving it a very moat-like feel. Up until 1492, the city had large Jewish and Muslim populations (and obviously Christian), until they were both expelled from Spain (well the Jews in 1492 and the Muslims in 1502). This unique mix was very apparent in the Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca, which is decorated without icons and such (like a mosque), but was used a Catholic church, but built as a synagogue. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the inside as the monks were walking around like hawks to prevent it from happening :(

Also, Toledo, Ohio, is the sister city of Toledo, Spain, which is why one of the streets is named "Calle de Toledo de Ohio" in the first picture above. Apparently there are a lot of cities called Toledo in the U.S., but according to our tour guide, the one in Ohio is the most important because they are sister cities.

La catedral is a beautiful and HUGE church in Toledo and the second largest in all of Spain. It took nearly 300 years to complete, beginning in the 13th century. It is the last of the pictures I have posted above, and for some reason I am incapable of turning a longways picture up in this blog. I try to take sideways pics, but of such tall things it is nearly impossible. So please, to get a true sense of the glory of this building, tilt your head to the right and take it in :)

El Greco is a famous painter from Greece (obviously) who studied in Italy before living in Toledo for 30-some years. There is a church in Toledo that contains his masterpiece - The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. The painting is absolutely gorgeous, but of course no pictures because these church caretakers are like hawks about it.

In the fifth picture down, the big square building is the Alcázar, which served as a military academy in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was the site of a famous siege during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when Republican forces attacked the defending nationalists. It took Franco's superior forces to end the siege and save those remaining inside.

For you food-lovers - Toledo is famous for it's mazapán, which is a dessert made of egg whites, almonds, and sugar. Though it is made differently depending upon the region of the world, in Toledo I had it in a layered cake form and it was absolutely delicious.
Toledo is also known for its swords due to the city's historic production of iron and other metals. I might have bought one (or two), but as I obviously would never buy such things for myself, I will not specify the extent to which this may be possible :)


In other news:
I've had 3 weeks of classes at the university and so far so good. My history of Spain professor is dying or something (actually he has just been hospitalized for like 2 weeks now for undisclosed reasons) so eventually I have to make up those classes. In the meantime I have been going to my other five classes. My art history class is really interesting and I've never taken any such class before, so I feel like everything I'm learning is entirely new (whereas in literature for instance, I've had better professors, so it is exceedingly difficult for me to pay attention to this one). But the thing I'm worried about with art history is identifying the painters/sculptors when it comes exam time. There isn't a book and some of the paintings she shows are so obscure that Wikipedia doesn't list them under an artist's page, so yeah... Not sure what to do about this situation.

My geography class is also interesting. I thought the class would be like watching paint dry, but the professor is really good about invoking bits of history into the study of each area of Spain so that we are really learning a lot under the guise of Geography.

My philosophy professor is a bit out there... So I bought the book he semi teaches from in an attempt to be able to write coherent essays when exams roll around.

Literature I've already said is painful. She teaches more about the different periods of Spanish history - Middle Ages, Renacimiento, Barroco, Ilustración - than assigning actual things to read and discuss. So far she's passed out one little packet of Moroccan letters. I bought two larger novels that we eventually are supposed to read, but even that seems a tiny amount for an entire semester.

History was extremely interesting but then the professor fell ill and we are awaiting his return... And then my final class is a Seminar where we have three different professors teaching a topic of their choosing for 12 class sessions. After those 36 classes, we choose one professor we want to collaborate with on a research paper and attempt to track them down, work on the paper, and then get credit for the class.


As far as other tidbits of daily life, I've been doing a lot of reading. I divide my time between reading (slowly) and understanding my few books for class - literature and philosophy - and then my own reading. My Aunt Lydia sent me a care-packaged FILLED with fiction books, which I am super excited about. There are a TON of old bookstores around here and during El Rostro (the large outdoor market every Sunday in my neighborhood), there are SO many beautiful hardback books, but all in Spanish of course. I guess if I wanted to buy a lot of books for my collection I would need to study in/visit England again, but the trade-off of eating crappy meat pies and bland meat and potatoes makes that not-so-appealing. :)

Well that sums up things for this past week. I hope life at home is going well!