Random pictures from our last week

Another birthday celebration...

Rehearsals for our farewell party theater play well in their way

I just wanted to take a picture of this... car? Vehicle, but students HAD to be in the picture.

Lagunas de Ruidera,.

Lagunas de Ruidera is a natural park, a network of lakes and streams of pristine fresh water. We went there swam and practice paddle board and kayaking, a really fun outing, and relief from the extreme heat we had the past few days.

Visit with mayor Pilar Zamora.

Ciudad Real recently had local elections and its citizens elected a new mayor, Pilar Zamora and new chancellors (elected local officials) from different political parties forming a diverse group of public servants with different ideas and political inclinations that debate but work together as they explained and demonstrated.

 The mayor hear our students' questions and responded passionately and eloquently.

Chancellors debated, slightly disagreeing but remained friendly.

We saw Spanish democracy in action.

 And of course, we had to have a group photo with our new friends in high places.

 We got to sit on the chancellors chairs, where they meet to make important decisions.   

Some wonder off into the balcony as the event was winding down into less formal direct conversations with officials.

 

The crossroad of Spain, the capital of charm and alegría (there isn't a good translation for alegría).

Madrid, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the European Capital with the largest amount of threes per square meter received us with open arms, open museums, open cafés and open shops!!

We feasted our eyes, souls and bodies with the scenery, the art and the food, o the food!!

 Leaving Ciudad Real was a breeze in AVE, Alta Velocidad Española, Spanish High Speed, but its acronym, AVE means BIRD.

First things first, our priority in the morning was to see the art at the Reina Sofia Museum, but that didn't stop people from crowding an all american coffee shop.

The museum has an inside garden where visitors sit and relax, we kept moving.

 Dalí!!

We saw great original art by Miró, Dalí and Picasso, I hope people were excited about the art, or was it the coffee?

We took a guided tour of Barrio de las letras, or Belle Letters neighborhood, where the great poets, playwrights, and novelists of the Golden Age lived, wrote, staged their work, drank and quarreled with each other. Our great guide, Felix, an expert literature professor, pointed us where Lope the Vega, Cervantes, Góngora and Quevedo once lived, explained what every inscription, plaque and picture meant and also told us how Quevedo bought the house that Góngora lived in so he could evict his poetry archival, since they had been publishing satiric poems about each other and fighting for fame, fortune and a greater literary legacy.

No only great Spanish writers lived here, also Earnest Hemingway and Oscar Wilde spent time in Barrio de la letras. 

The San Sebastian chapel, where Lope de Vega was burried.

Next to García Lorca statue. We is still one of the most popular poets and playwrights of the 20th Century. He dedicated a book to New York after his visit to the USA. 

After our last museum, Museo del Prado students were dead tired.

 But we chilled at Retiro Park, Madrid´s Central Park...