Confessions of A Working Girl

So today we visited el escorial. It’s a place where monks lived, or something, and was a summer home to some king. But what was reallly awesome was their library! I wish we had been able to spend more time there. They had thousands of books, and they were really old. Most of them were hand written. The oldest book they had in the library was 1500 years old!!!! It was awesome!!!!! All of the books had gold dust on the edge of the pages, and all of the books were turned ’round so that they didn’t get moldy or something and so that the moths wouldn’t eat them. There were some nice paintings on the ceiling of the room as well, but I didn’t really look. Apparently, in order to take a book out of that library, you had to have express permission from the monks (fransiscan monks, I think) or you would be excommunicated. I should have asked what they do to you if you hadn’t been communicated in the first place. Then what would they do? Oh, and there was a round thingy in the library that Ptolemy or someone thought up. It was supposed to tell the planets relations to earth. Although one kid in my group thought of a good question…if, at that time, they thought the world was flat, why was the model round?

After we left the library, we went to the part of the monestary that had been the king’s chambers when he lived there. Apparently he died of gout right in one of the beds that we saw. And, this king was only as tall as Napoleon, and it was easy to tell since the doorways were all pretty low.

When we left the king’s rooms, we went down a whole bunch of stairs. People in front of us kept saying “SHHH!” We found out why when we got there. It was a tomb. A tomb for all the kings (and queens, but only if they were the mother of a king). There were…31 tombs there, I think. Plus three empty ones…for the current king’s grandmother, and parents. Those three, we were told, were in the rotting room. The rotting room is where they would put the deceased monarch for 20 or 25 years, until there was nothing left but ash. Then they would put that ash into a box, and a box into the tomb. By the way, to get to the tomb, we had to walk past the wooden doors that led to the rotting room where the bodies were. That was a creepy thought.

We went up some stairs, then down some more…and into the place where the rest of the tombs were. All the other members of royalty that for whatever reason weren’t allowed into the first tomb. (e.g brothers, sisters, died young, etc) There were…four? five? rooms of tombs…and some of the tombs had 20 people each! There was even one tomb that was huge and fancy and looked, as the guide put it, like a birthday cake. In the ‘cake’ were all of the royal people that had died before their first communion. The ones the guide specifically pointed out were a three year old and a one year old. Before communion, the guide said, they were put into the ‘cake’. If they died after communion, they were given a tomb of their own.

In some ways, its a little sad that people’s deaths can be such a big attraction.

After visiting escorial, we had free time for lunch. Then, we were back on the bus for the two hour drive to Salamanca. We got to Salamanca about 5 in the afternoon, and the host families met us at the place where the bus stopped. We were given instructions to meet in the morning at 8:45, then we went home with our host families.

My host family is really nice. My only problem is that I don’t remember as much spanish as I thought I did. Luckily, my roommate Penny does, and she can help me when I’m not sure what a word is.

We’re taking a language proficiency test tomorrow…