La Penúltima

So, back in good ol' Segovia. In some ways, this week was eventful and in others not. For the purpose of my storytelling and to help me keep things better organized, I'm going to narrate differently. Instead of going through day by day, I'm going to go class by class and describe anything interesting from M-Th, then come back for Friday, which is just our excursion to La Granja. Ready?

Grammar class this week was fairly challenging. A lot of homework, and none of it was easy. The topics weren't conventionally difficult (Imperative, Pronouns, Past), but I realized this week that pretty much all of my Spanish classes up til now have just been the warm up, have just scratched the surface of Spanish grammar. Which makes sense, since it takes us a good 12 years to get a solid hold on English, and even then we still have problems from time to time. Also, I think I'm disappointed in Spanish education in the states, though it may be similar to my disappointment with elementary education. The vosotros form is *so* undertaught, and they don't even use nosotros commands in Spain. I guess you could sum it up with a strong preference for Latin American Spanish, which I think is a shame, especially for college level Spanish when the academics of the language should be at its highest. As the original Spanish-speaking country, the grammar and usage in Spain is important, even if it's less used than the Latin American version. Also, we never really thought of the present perfect as a past tense, which is actually the pretérito perfecto, not presente perfecto. Almost makes me want to be a Spanish teacher again :)

UE class was pretty cool. Tuesday and Wednesday were devoted to country presentations. Each of us was assigned 2-3 countries, and had to give a presentation over the basic facts of each, and then something interesting about them. I had Greece, Cyprus, and Malta and I discovered that Cyprus has hardly any recognizably famous people and Malta has none. Learned some interesting things though, like that Big Ben is technically the bell inside the clock tower. On Thursday, our class was once again substituted for a mini-excursion. We finally visited the cathedral in Segovia!! Oh my goodness, it's as beautiful as the one in Salamanca. I've decided that gothic cathedrals are my favorite. They're so majestic and awe-inspiring. We visited a few of Marian's favorite capillas, and then walked out around the patio and in a couple of other rooms attached to the church. There was one capilla that was much larger than all the others, and very Barroque--the alter area was all golden! It was all so pretty. Then we went back to another little capilla that had a legend associated with it. Apparently way back when there was a couple to be married. But, the day before the wedding, the groom disappeared! The bride came to this capilla, placed her right foot on the stone that is said to have been placed last and without which the whole cathedral would fall (it's in the floor, and sunk in a little), and asked for her fiancee to return, then spun around in a circle, prayed, spun again and left. A week later her fiancee returned and they were married. Legend has it, that anyone who places their right foot on the stone, thinks of the person they wish to marry, spins in a circle, prays, then spins again will one day get married. Guess who was one of the people from our group to do just that? Can't tell you who I was thinking of though, or it violates the whole ceremony ;)

Art class was.....interesting. We spent two days on Picasso and two days on Dalí. I have only this to say for Picasso: his paintings totally made me appreciate Goya more, who I was less than impressed with after seeing all of Velazquez's awesomeness. Dalí was pretty cool too, if a lot of his stuff is super weird. And, learned waaaaaaaaay too much about his sex life/sexual preferences. The painting we have to study for him is called Gran Masturbador. Not even kidding. But other than that, he sounds like a very crazy interesting individual. I kinda wanna see what his autobiography is like. I can see why Dad liked him so much. The poor kid was pretty much doomed to have something wrong with him though, from the day his parents named him after their son who had died 9 months before, the original Salvador Dalí. Talk about messed up.

Friday was our excursion to La Granja, which is pretty close to Segovia (like 20 minutes away, probably less). We visited the royal palace, constructed by Felipe V and which served as their summer palace. It was pretty neat. There was a whole section of tapestries, and in some of them you could still see the gold gleaming! Apparently a lot of the gold strands are mixed with silver, and they don't survive age as well so they don't sparkle anymore. Some of them were super huge, as big as some apartments according to Elena (our art teacher and tour guide). The really cool thing about this palace is that all the rooms are all lined up in a row, so if you look at one end all the way down to the other, it looks absolutely huge. Elena said this was an optical illusion to make it look larger than it really is, but walking through it, it seemed pretty big to me! Besides the royal quarters, we also visited the lower level, which was right next to the royal gardens. It was full of windows and sculptures and was said to be an extension of the garden. It allowed people to take walks without having to be in the direct heat of the summer.

After the palace, we walked over to the attached church. Interstingly, both Elena and Edu (another prof with the school) had been married in the church. It was really pretty. We also saw where the "theoretical" resting place of Felipe V and his wife. It's theoretical because back in the 20's there was a giant fire that ruined a lot of the palace. When they were renovating it, they discovered the actual bodies of the King and Queen located elsewhere, hidden away. I guess during wars and uprisings and stuff, it's not uncommon to deface graves, so they wanted to protect their bodies.

After lunch we went and explored the royal gardens. What's really special about these gardens is that they're only half garden. The other half is pretty much a big ol' forest, with a transitional space in between. They were all really pretty, and it was full of fountains. Apparently the fountains are so super old that they don't work on automatic pumping or anything, and must rely on the height difference between the reservoir that is the water source for the fountains and where the fountains are located. We hiked up to the reservoir as well, and it's a very pretty little lake. There's also a little hedge maze called the labyrinth, but it's kinda lame because there's only one entrance. We all made it out! While we were waiting for everyone to get out (because some people decided to make it more interesting and go explore), Marian taught us the Spanish equivalent of tag, called pilla pilla. You tough someone, say te la queda! and run away because I have no idea how to say no tag backs in Spanish and otherwise they'll just te la queda you right back. It was pretty fun, cuz it was a small space without obstacles and the accompanying professors joined in.

Friday night, I went out to watch a show being put on near the school and to hang out with Javi and Rúben, a couple of the Spanish guys I'd met previously. The show was really cool. I'm not exactly sure what it was, other than a random exposition of music and dance. There was a lot of percussion, and it reminded me a bit off the Spanish version of Blast! At one point, they played musical clay pots, like the kind you plant flowers in. That was awesome. Then there was a guy playing flute who did things with it that I've never heard anyone do before. It was sooooo cool. We also saw a man dance a bit of flamenco, though I think it would've been way cooler to see a woman. At that point, the girls I was with got sick of all the smoke and they left, so I went to hang out with Javi & Rúben. We went to San Miguel, a bar on the "street of the bars" where pretty much everyone ends up at some point in the night if they're out in Segovia. Unfortunately, this bar sucks because they didn't have Eristoff Black! Just Absolut, and I'm not sure if I like that stuff. So, no drinking for me, just a lot of fun conversing with Spaniards who are learning English. I did learn that apparently publicity majors (Oh yeah, need to ask Javi wtf that means) are the bottom of the ladder for university students because you only need a score of 5 in high school to get into the program (it's the lowest score for any program, and some range as high as 16...dunno what a perfect would be though). You can apparently tell who they are just by looking, which Javi pointed out to me. It was pretty amusing.

Today I've had a pretty lazy day. But, I'm finally all caught up on my blogging, woohoo!! Pictures are next on the list, though a lot of the places I visited did not permit pictures and thus I don't have any. If I mention a place and you don't see any pictures for it, that's why!