Professor Sharon

We arrived on Saturday to Salamanca via a really nice bus ride from Madrid. The trip took about 2 1/2 hours and was lovely. We say some amazing ridges of wind turbines.

We are settled in our homestay and have had two days of Spanish classes. We are meeting some nice folks and like this school very much so far. Our homestay is less than a 5 minute walk from the school, and a little more to the famous Plaza Major. The family is lovely, speak little English which is fine as we are forced to converse in Spanish. Today we even managed a hugely dictionary assisted conversation about American presidential politics: we’ve had several by the way; and those Spaniards we have met are quite amazed that Americans would have any issues with a woman or man of color.

I wanted to post a few nice pictures of Madrid from last week. We did get out to a few things, in between resting from our trip to Morocco and getting over our cold (which fortunately has just about disappeared for both of us).

Tomorrow I’ll put up some pictures of our first days in Salamanca (where it is raining like mad now for two days and the rest of the week – we have been very spoiled with beautiful warm weather).

This is the garden of the Royal palace in Madrid where Rich and I spent a few hours just relaxing, taking in the sun and people watching.

Okay so you can’t do too well being a vegetarian in Spain, and eating ham is done several times a day! this is the Museo del Jamon (Ham Museum). Not really a museum at all; but a chain of stores where all kinds of ham and other goodies can be had. We especially enjoyed their ham on croissant sandwiches (very inexpensive as well!) The funny thing is that because they are called a Museum, they get put in the tour books! (clever marketing)

Okay, this last picture isn’t Madrid at all. We took a tour bus excursion to Toledo from Madrid. Of course, as all tours go, there wasn’t enough time to see everything or anything well, and they didn’t go to the synagogue that we had hoped they would; but it was a lovely day. This is a picture of us with the entire city behind us.