I quote from my journal with slight editing.
Trip to Toledo today. I was a bit upset by how things were run, and it represents a trend of neglect by the Mester language school that is ticking a few people off. Usually we’ve had the culture teacher as our guide, so while at times a bit dry, she treated us well and we had enough time at each site to be able to learn quite a bit. Today, there was a different lady plus some unknown dude who acted as our guides…. First we went to El Museo de la Santa Cruz, which someone told me used to be a hospital. There was some Visigodo stuff and a neat courtyard; but, we walked through so fast and with so little context that I can tell you no more than that.
We saw a statue of Cervantes, blazed through a synagogue-turned-museum (too fast, once again), went to way too many stores, and saw the outside doors only of the cathedral. The only part I really enjoyed was when we had maybe two hours of free time and the weather turned just a tad rainy and I walked with some folks along the gorge cliff of the Río Tajo—pretty!
Overall, disappointed. How do you say that in Spanish?
The answer is estar desilusionado. Toledo is cool, we just had a sub-optimal experience there. Spain is super pretty! It reminds me a lot of eastern Washington, even down to the wind generator turbines up on the horizon. By the way, I picked up something for Mike there….
I’m giving you a picture of my roommate, Chris, as well [apparently flipping off the world]. He’s got a bit of “gangsta” blood in ’em, in case you can’t tell in the photo.
This Sunday we went to the Salamanca branch’s meetings. I was amazed by how few times I got lost paying attention to the talks and lessons.
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