Confessions of A Working Girl

I don’ remember where I left off,and don’t feel like looking it up,so I will start after we got to the hotel after the airport. I had a room on the sixth floor and was told that my roommate would arrive with the second group of people. There was only one bed. >.< Anyway,I could not figure out how to turn on the lights. No matter how many times I pressed the light switches, they would not go on.. So I read by the windiw for a little while,then sat down on the bed for “just a minute”. Next thing I knew, it was an hour and a quarter later, and the door was being opened by y my roommate for the hotels. She knew how to turn on the lights… apparently there was a little slot by the door in which you put the keycard,and that made it so that you could turn on the lights. By the time we had to go downstairs fo our first ISA meeting, I was wide awake again and feeling normal. Haha!! I beat jet lag or whatever really easily!! We had a panoramic tour of Madrid and then were given free time for dinner. For dinner we ate at mcdonalds (shocking, I know)which was just next door to the hotel.  Then was bed around ten thirty. Next morning up at eight. We met in the lobby at nine and went to tour the palacio real. It was awesome! It is one of the palaces beloonging to the royal family of Spain. They don’t live there but they occasionally use the palace for occasions an such. We only got to tour 22 of the2000 or so rooms. It was kinda funny…you cold still smell smoke in the smoking room! What I liked best came after the tour…we got to look at the armoury. ¡Que suerte! It so reminded me of the armor in the museaum at the beginning of bedknobs and bromstics. There were swords and armors and horse armors…there was even one samurai outfit that had been given as a gift to …uh… King Charles V or something like that. After that was free time for lunch. We met back at the hotel at three so that we could go tour the Prada museum. So many paintings! I ha only seen one of them before…or at least I only remembered having seen this one… a pink and red painting of child princess something-or-other…Isabel maybe. She had white blonde hair… anyway after the tour of the museo it was free time for dinner. zthhen this morning we had to meet in the lobby at nine with all of our stuff..the bus ride to Toledo took about an hour and a half or so. We got a panoramic tour of Toledo then right after,a walking tour. We went inside a church that was really old and had a lot of neat statues. Then we got to see a Jewish temple with a funny name and history. He name of the temple is The Synagogue of Saint Maria. Apparently Toledo used to be known as the city of three religions…christianity,Judiasm, and muslamic. Muslim people built the temple for the jews. Then in the indepenndance war (This keeps confusing me too, but no, not the American Independance war. The Spanish Independance war against Napoleon.) the christian peoples overran the temple and it was given the sai t maria name and then it was used for weapon storage or something.  Now it is just a national monument.   Then we saw a smaller church whose claim to fame is that they own a paintng by this supposadly famous artist el grecko. His real name is greek and hard to remember so the Italians gave him the nickname of el grecko.Anyway,after that tour we had free time for lunch. And a little bit of shopping. I found a cute pair of slip on shoes for only two euro. The green will clash nicely with my blue skirt. And I couldn’ help but walk into a sword shop…swords are one of the things that Toledo is known for! Shopkeepers here are really pushy…which I wouldn’t mind–I can stand up to them–but in an odd way that gives me an excuse to buy things I might not have otherwise. But sinceI realized that I will be extra careful. In any case while I spent a teeny bit more than I had planned all were gifts that I woukd have gotten by December anyway. And just so you know I am keeping careful track of everything that I spend… and that twenty someodd euro looks incredibly nad next to the four and five, six, and seven euro that I have been spending per meal. In  any case we went to the hotel after thaat.. same roommates as in madrid. So I am now sitting ere waiting for the six thirty ISA meeting.Oh and let me mention…both hotels that ISA pcked out look expensive. Tonight there are even two beds in the room and an actual shower curtain on the shower!