Second Week

I´m having trouble posting photos - IH has installed IE7 on all it´s computers and for some reason the photos are taking forever to load. I´ll try to get some more up soon, but for now..... the World Cup continues to capture everyone´s attention. USA matches take a back seat to the excitement generated by a Spain win. Students have congregated in a variety of places to watch the matches.

Monday after classes was the long awaited visit to the Estadio Santiagio Bernabeu - the home of Real Madrid. The tour is extensive - it begins with a trip to the "vomitorio" seats high atop the stadium where the guys get a great view and realize that in this stadium that seats 80,000 fans, there are no bad seats. We then move on the the history of the club - it is not only a futbol team, but an entire sports conglomerate including a table tennis, basketball and chess team, with a long and illustrious history. The trophy room is truly spectacular showing videos of some of their greatest highlights. Unlike so many of the Spanish museums, photos are allowed everywhere and the boys took a ton! Then we walk down around the stadium and they had a chance to sit in the seats of the teams - similar to the dugout in baseball. They are the most comfortable seats ever! We got a great group pic there. The tour ends in the Real Madrid store - the largest in Madrid. They sell everything you could ever imagine with the logo of Real Madrid on it. Animal crates, toilet seats, ridiculous things! But the boys had great fun doing all their shopping there!

On Tuesday we were very fortunate to have our guide Pablo with us again at the Museo del Prado. The boys got an extensive tour of the museum which contains Spanish art from romanic times up until the 19th Century. They saw the work of the great masters, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya along with many other familiar names such as Ribera, Rafael, Bosch and Murillo.

Wednesday was a very long day that began with the Cathedral of the Almudena, the modern Cathedral in Madrid where we had a tour of the cupula and were able to get a bird´s eye view of the city of Madrid from the top of the dome. I had never been there before and it was spectacular! From there the boys got to walk around the Cathedral which is totally different from any other Cathedral they will see in Spain or in fact, in any other parat of Europe. It is unique in its modernity. Then we visited the Church of San Francisco el Grande one of the most visible landmarks in the Madrid skyline because of its massive dome, but another place where I had never been. It has been closed for some years for rennovations. We got a tour of the entire chruch with its many chapels, one containing a magnificent Goya painting. We returned to the school for lunch and then headed off to the zoo. The Madrid zoo is huge and in addition to having a wide variety of animals from all over the world ( I always laugh at seeing the "American Wood Duck" - the ones that swim in the puddles in our driveways - in the zoo) there are great shows such as the sea lion show, the raptors and the dolphin show. I was a little disappointed to note that by the time the dolphin show started, all the students but two who were with me had left the zoo. We walked around for about three and a half hours and only saw about 2/3 of the exhibits. But I got some terriffic photos!

On Thursday we went to the Museum of Romanticismo - a wonderful 19th Century residence that has been converted into a musuem with a seemingly endless collection of items that graced the homes of Spanish citizens from about 1830 - 1920. What we would call the Victorian period. The furnishings were lavish, the artwork graceful and elegant; the tablesettings were simply beautiful. Unfortunately I think the elegance was somewhat lost on the students - they were more anxious to get to the park to play futbol than to oohh and aahh over needlework and furnishings. Go figure!

Today is Friday and Spain plays Chile tonight! In the interim we will watch a film in Spanish, but will be finished in plenty of time for everyone to get to his "game watching site". Spain and Chile haven´t met in a World Cup match since the 1950´s so this promises to be very exciting.

Tomorrow we head off to Toledo for a full day of exploring. Sunday? Who knows - I´m working on that!