Algunas fótos

So finally here are some of my pictures...I keep forgetting to charge my camera batteries so I've missed several good photo ops so far. This should give you an idea but I'll probably be posting more complete photo albums on Snapfish or Webshots or Facebook...I haven't decided yet.



Here is the view from the roof of our hotel in Madrid:

This is the royal palace of Madrid that now serves as a museum and they occasionally host state dinners. Really pretty and ornate inside but I wasn't sure if we were allowed to take pictures.

Here is the other Lily!

This is La Catedral in Sevilla. We're taking a tour of it next Thursday.

These are from El Real Alcazar. It's a group of palaces and gardens originally built by a Catholic king about 500 years ago but the architecture is very Islamic-influenced and there are Arabic words inscribed over the entrance. Kings have added to it over the years and it's still where the current royal family stays when they are in Sevilla.




El Alcazar is my favorite place we've toured so far but I'm eager to see the inside of the Cathedral.

This weekend has been fun so far. I'm glad we're in classes because I need to be forced to speak and improve my Spanish but I'm grateful for the free time. Yesterday we went to a big mall that could have been any mall in the United States except it had a big outdoor plaza in the middle with giant trampolines. We have to see a Spanish movie for class so we saw a "dark comedy" called Club de los Suicidas, a take off on the Robert Louis Stevenson book, The Suicide Club. I was glad I could actually follow the movie, but it was mostly dark and strange and not so much a comedy. Maybe some of the jokes were lost on us, though I really don't think so.

Today we went to Italica, where there are ruins of the first Roman city built in Spain. I'll take someone else's pictures when they put them up--the ampitheatre was definitely worth seeing. Apparently they used some shots of it for the movie Gladiator! I'll probably spend the rest of today figuring out what classes I want to take when our orientation classes are over and maybe even investigating some possible weekend trips. Tomorrow we're going to the beach during the day. It's been so hot here all I really feel like doing during the days is lying around so it'll be nice to get some color too--I might be the palest person in southern Spain.

Adios for now!