Comida Basura

I know that it has been 3 days since I last blogged and I have kind of been slacking on keeping in contact with people-my apologies. I am going to blame the heat for frying my brain :) Fortunately, the temperature has dropped about 15 degrees so it is gorgeous (and windy!) outside right now!

On Tuesday, we took a walking tour of the central part of Spain. It was a good tour, despite the raging sun during the hottest part of the day and the 93 degrees outside. There were some other students there as well which was a lot of fun! We saw the part of the town where the Royals lived when the Austrians were in power (For funsies someday you should look up the history of the Spanish Monarchy. It's quite fascinating!). After having such a long walk, I didn't really feel like doing much of anything else. I am not sure if I did or not :)

Yesterday, we didn't have any excursions planned. After a large lunch of potato soup and for the second course, fish, we took a well-deserved siesta. I never mean to fall asleep, but it always seems to happen. A big group of us went down to the Puerta del Sol and walked around (Fun fact: This place got its name because in the day, the city used to be a lot smaller. This was the edge of the city where the fortress was. On the door was painted a sun!) We got some ice-cream which was delicious! Some days, you just need some ice-cream! We went to the Cortes Ingles (a huge department store in Spain. There are books, electronics, home goods, clothes, and a grocery!) and then watched a street magician. For dinner, Maria made us pizza-Spanish style. One was carbonara and the other was barbeque. Yummy! Although, today she informed us that pizza is comida basura (trash food-translation: junk food).

Today was our first visit to the Museo del Prado. Instead of having our normal art class, we went to the museum to see the paintings we had been talking about in class. The museum is gigantic! We had a little bit of difficulty trying to find it, but we eventually did. The whole area was beautiful and I wish I would have had my camera with me. Tomorrow I will! We went to go look at the paintings of El Greco. Almost all of his artwork is religious paintings from the 16th century. In person they are so impressive! It is hard to imagine how someone could be that talented and paint something so huge! Tomorrow we are going back with the entire group to take a general visit of the museum. After walking around the museum, we were very hungry! For lunch today we had meat that was made with Coca-Cola sauce...it was really good, but different. There was also tomatoes and onions with it. In addition, we ate some potatoes (I am not sure how this qualifies as "healthy" food but it didn't receive a comida basura label).

Tomorrow, a lady from another exchange program is coming to check out the house to see if they would be interested in using Maria and Luis in the future. I should probably pick up my room a little bit before then :)

Hasta luego!