Arriving in Toledo-The game of Charades

I am a few days behind in keeping people updated, I have been in Spain for almost 2 weeks now I think. It has been a challenging and amazing experience already. There is so much that has happened in the last week. Besides getting back on the school bus and assimulating into college life again, I am getting immersed in the Spanish culture here in Toledo. Toledo is a historic town that has many tourists, it is in the middle of the country and has many farms around the perimeter of the countryside. It has a large wall that surrounds the center of the town and there is a large river that runs along side it.
It is very hilly here, walking is challenging because of the cobble stone streets and the steep streets, the streets are very little they fit a small car with a bit of walking room on each side, but you have to be quick to jump in a doorway when cars come by as they drive fast and don't seems to wait for you to move out of the way. There are many dents on the sides of these cars. I am living in the hostel right now, I have my own room and bath, it is a really nice like a little hotel that is 3 stories and has AC. The fundacion is up a steep stairway about a 3 minute walk. We eat our meals at the cafeteria where they cook traditional Spanish foods. The food is not bad.
The first week we arrived our classes and everything are in Spanish. Directions, answers to questions, homework assignments, even the internet pages are blocked to only read Spanish. So it is hard to buy tickets and understand the bus system because you have to figure it out in Spanish on top of not knowing where you are going or how things work. Right now I feel as though I am learning cherades not Spanish, there really is not English except when the students are together or we are out on the weekend. Which unfortunatley is pretty often I guess.

There is a pool in town that I have not been to but I am dying to go because it is 36c-41c here on a regular basis, the people here say this is not bad and to expect it to get a lot hotter. I am very sad that I am moving out of the AC in the Hostel. It is soo hot in our classes and in the library.

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Arriving in Toledo

I was accepted to the program through the U of MN at La Funacion Ortega y Gasset and decided to go to Toledo Spain after all.  There was a lot of pressure with my job as they were not going to approve a leave of absence for me.  I spent a lot of my downtime preparing for Spain Spanish a totally foreign concept for me. Here is a picture of the walls outside of Toledo. Before I left I emailed some of my future classmates as I had plans to be in the city for a few days prior to going to Toledo. We made plans to stay in the same Youth Hostel this worked great for them but for me my age as I was 30 was not such a good thing all the time. Can you believe I had to get a fake Student ID in Spain saying I was younger than I was.  It was a Joven card had to be 26 or less in school!  Oh the irony!  Anyway, I had little contact with Jared or my family in the beginning which was a little concerning on both ends I am sure, however, in my few weeks there I learned how to unlock my phone to allow other sim cards and was able to use my cell to call Jared's Skype number which was great.  The Fundacion had internet but I was staying at a Hotel down the street as they had too many students at the Fund between the last class and our class so we were in this hotel for the first month with no internet or phoneline.  We had AC which was great because it was really hot.  I lived next to Lydia and Jackie two girls that became good friends while we were in Spain and we traveled together on the weekends from time to time if our classes allowed.  Most of us had fri, sat sun off to go explore.  http://www.fogtoledo.com/index_intro_flash.php