Today in class there were a lot of new faces. In my class there is one new student called Jeremy. Jeremy is English and I think 15 years old, and lives in St. Albans. The other 4 students are American and come from New Jersey. They are a family and are staying in a hotel. The mother of the family seems to know a bit of Spanish but I think the others are just starting to learn.

I think I have gone from being the worst at speaking Spanish in the school to the best! It will be interesting to see how this week goes - I'm not going to meet up with any of them today because I want to give them a day to practice speaking Spanish. Hopefully tomorrow Jeremy will have had a little practice speaking with his host family and maybe we can do something after class. I don't want it to end up like with Ahmed where we just spoke in English when we were together.

I'd like to meet with the American family too, but I think it will be hard not to revert into English.

Cristian, Charo's son returned from his holidays yesterday, so there is someone new to talk to in the house. It's different talking to him because he is a bit younger, and speaks a lot faster, but I think it is good practice for me to hear a fast voice and to get used to hearing the different sounds coming from a male mouth.

When I returned from class today I had 'ensalada de verano', which was a salad of potato, egg, tomato, olives and a few other things and was actually very nice. After that I had roasted chicken with bread, and then crema catalana which is another type of custard desert.

Paula (the little girl) had a kinder egg, and it came with a little plastic toy with a little wheel that you can fire off. You have to put this little plastic strip into the base of the toy, and then connect the little wheel to it. When you pull the strip of plastic out (which has a zig zag edge) it makes the wheel rotate and roll across the floor. I tried to explain to her how to do it but it is a bit to complicated for a 3 year old and she couldn't get the plastic strip in properly. It was great fun though because she loved it when the wheel went rolling off.

I find it extremely difficult to understand Paula (and most little children for that matter) but I'd like to spend more time with her. It's always amusing to watch her playing with her parents and she is really funny. She's always stomping around in these tiny little shoes with heels, and pretending to interview people with a microphone.

Sometimes she will come right up close to me and stare at me, and then when I say 'hola' she gives me this shy look and runs away.

On my way back home today it was cloudy for the first time (it has been a little cloudy in the morning before but it normally blows over). Apparently there have been a lot of storms in Spain and we have one coming to Toledo. Charo told me that when the storms come here it really rains, and there is a lot of thunder and lightning. If there is a storm I hope it's over quickly!

This is the first weekend (fin de semana is Spanish for weekend) that I have spent in Toledo. Normally in the UK I look forward to the weekends because I don't have to work, but here I would prefer to have class everyday! Apart from my host family, I don't know anyone in Toledo so I have had to do a lot of stuff by myself.

The first thing I did yesterday morning, after a very light breakfast, was to visit a museum - 'Museo de Santa Cruz'. The museum was free, and was in an old building close to the main square of the city. I did the top floor first - it had a few bits of old pottery, but was mainly full of old religious paintings. I actually quite like looking at the old paintings because the contents are quite interesting. A lot of them are quite gory, for example pictures of saints with arrows sticking out of their bodies and lots of blood everywhere. It's also interesting to see what the people in the paintings are wearing, and to look at their facial expressions and the what they are doing to each other.

The lower floor contained an exhibition of modern art by a painter that was alive in the 20th century. Most of paintings here weren't interesting to me.

Museo de Santa Cruz

After the museum, I moved onto the cathedral. When you are outside the city you can clearly see the cathedral because it is huge, but inside Toledo it is difficult to see until you are quite close because the streets are very narrow and most of the buildings are quite tall (at least compared to England). The cathedral cost €7,00 to enter and was quite impressive on the inside. It's quite a big cathedral, I think slightly bigger than Ely cathedral which is close to where I live. There was no tower to climb up (or at least I could find it) but there were a few different rooms leading off of the main part of the cathedral with different exhibitions in them.

One room had the walls and ceiling painted - the walls showed the story of the birth and resurrection of Christ, and the ceiling had a depiction of heaven. One of the walls was really cool because it had a picture of Jesus and the Virgin Mary at the top in heaven, and below them it had hell, with lots of people being dragged off by demons and lots of blood. Unfortunately I was unable to take pictures inside the cathedral.

This is the view up one of the main streets leading up to the cathedral

The cathedral is huge and it was difficult to get the whole thing in the shot!

The previous day I had sent an email to Isabel, my Spanish teacher that I used have lessons with in England. When I returned at lunch time I was excited to find quite a long reply waiting for me in Spanish, and I understood every word if it, so I think my Spanish is definitely improving! Isabel said she read this blog too and we are going to meet up for a beer when I return to Cambridge.

For lunch I had a salad followed by marinated pork and then some watermelon. I don't know why but I like to document my meals!

In the afternoon I didn't really do a lot - I had a sleep and then watched TV with the family. In the evening the family went out for a birthday party so I did the other walk around the outside of Toledo, inside of the river. The views were not as impressive, but it was much greener and cooler (cool as in temperature) because of all of the trees.

There was a lot more shade on this route due to the vegetation

View across the river

This bit was like a jungle!

The route ended at the Puente de San Martin

After walking around I was thirsty and hungry so I sat outside a bar and had dinner. The waiters all seemed a bit miserable though so I moved on and had a few beers in a little square near the language school.

I returned to the house shortly after the family returned, and I sat with Charo and watched some Spanish reality TV with her. To me, Spanish TV seems more like American TV than English TV. There are a lot of chat shows and the reality show that I watched has a lot of interviews. It also seems that people are always either shouting or crying and everyone likes to talk at the same time!

This morning after breakfast, I left the house and took some books with me so that I could find somewhere nice to sit and do my homework, but in the end I didn't do it.

First of all I went the main square and had a coffee with ice, and watched a very strange man annoying passers by. Then I walked to the other side of the city and found somewhere to have lunch. I was looking for a little park that Veronica had described to me but I couldn't find it and eventually just stopped somewhere to eat.

On Sundays there is no lunch with the family so I had a menu del dia outside a restaurant which is an inexpensive 3 course meal. There was an Italian couple sitting on the table next to me, and when they left I asked the waiter if he could understand anything that they had said. He said although the languages have a few words in common he couldn't really understand them because they spoke no Spanish at all. He seemed pretty surprised that I could say something other than "1 beer please" like most English tourists!

View from outside the restaurant

From the restaurant I could see the Puerta Cambrón which is one of the many city gates in Toledo. There are quite a few city gates because they kept adding more layers of city walls as the city expanded.

After eating I returned home for a siesta...

A shaded path back home

Last night was Veronica's last night in Toledo, and she wanted to go for one final walk around the outside of the city. We met at 7:00pm and left the city - it was still very hot at this time of the day. We walked from the main square (Plaza de Zocodover) out of the city and over a bridge across the river. This was the first time I had actually left the city.

This is a bridge called the Punte de Alcántara and was originally built by the Romans

This is the view of the river from the bridge

There are a couple of different walks around the outside of the city: There is a route that takes you between the city and the river, and is very low and close to the river; and another that takes you around the outside high above the river. We took the outside walk as it offers some stunning views of the city. The photos don't really do it justice.

This is a (somewhat blurry) picture of me with the Alcazar in the background

You can see most of the city from the hills

Catedral de Santa María de Toledo

Puente de San Martín is a 14th century medieval bridge with a tower at each end

Part way around the walk we stopped at a bar for a 'clara' which is basically a shandy - it was still really hot and our bottles of water were warm and not nice to drink any more. We also received some free tortilla which was nice!

When we returned to the city we had dinner and a few drinks, and chatted for a while (in Spanish of course) outside a bar close to the house where Veronica is staying. By the time we parted it was midnight, and we swapped contact details. I also took some photos of Veronica's house for her which I will send to her later.

Veronica outside her house

Yesterday, after my siesta was the first time I realised that I was alone and far away from everybody (well technically I am closer to my Dad...) as nobody was really around in the house and I had a lot of time to kill. As I was leaving the school yesterday Maite told us that there was a concert in a bar called Broadway at 10:30pm, and I had agreed to meet with Ahmed. He told me he would email me beforehand and choose a time. Charo and Paula (the little girl) were out swimming, Charo's son Christian is still on holiday, and Miguel was working so the house felt very empty. In the end I decided to go for a walk while I waited for Ahmed to email me.

When I returned an hour or so later, I had an email from Ahmed asking to meet at 8:30 outside the school but I told him 9:00 would be better - partly because I had just got back in and wanted to rest for a while and partly because I wanted less time in the bar before the concert so Ahmed couldn't drink too much. I sat downstairs and watched a Spanish tv show called 'Pasapalabra' (palabra means word) for half an hour, and I actually understood a fair bit of what was going on.

When I went to meet Ahmed I saw Martina sitting on some steps nearby. I explained to her that I was going to a concert with Ahmed, and she said that she was waiting for Veronica. We decided to all go to the concert which was a relief because I find it difficult to go to bars with Ahmed. We ended up all going to a little tapas bar and eating some small bocadillos (like a sandwich but with French bread) before heading to Broadway for the concert. I had fun explaining that I had pet rats in Spanish, and that they liked to drink beer off of my fingers. Veronica found it very funny.

When we arrived at Broadway, it was a tiny little place and the singer was setting up and doing sound checks. We ordered our first drinks and Ahmed had something with vodka that was served in what looked like a gold fish bowl!

The music was actually very good and I had a good time, although we didn't get much practice at speaking in the bar. After the concert, Veronica came over with some drinks and announced that it was Martina's birthday, and we would toast her at midnight. For some reason Veronica got me a 'clara' which is half beer and half soda instead of a beer, and I was thankful because I didn't really need anything more to drink. Just before the toast someone came around selling CDs from the guy in the concert and me, Veronica and Ahmed bought one. When we toasted Martina's birthday Ahmed gave her the CD and said happy birthday which was actually quite sweet.

Ahmed had been drinking all kinds of drinks - vodka, whiskey and now he was drinking Martinis. He was quite pissed. I saw Ahmed talking to Veronica, and a few minutes later Veronica walked off and talked to some very pretty Spanish girls at the bar. The girls came back to our table and posed with Ahmed for a photo, and chatted to us for a while. They thought Veronica was Ahmed's mum!

After we left, we saw the girls again and Ahmed shouted "te quiero" which was a little embarrassing, but at the same time the whole thing was really funny and we had laughed a lot. Veronica walked with me most of the way back to my house, and we stopped near the city gates and chatted for a bit. She spoke in English and I spoke in Spanish. I could have stayed for ages but I was desperate for the toilet so I had to go home.

This morning I really didn't expect Ahmed to turn up in class, and was surprised when he did, although he did leave the class room a few times to be sick.

At break time we didn't go to a bar, and instead they had cake and Sangria for Martina's birthday. Ahmed obviously didn't want to drink so he jokingly said "I can't because I'm a muslim". He then went on to explain how he got sick 3 times in the night, and one time he was asleep, and just laid on his back and puked all over the place. "I was like a volcano" he said. It was funny but pretty horrific really.

Ahmed had to leave early to catch a flight to Paris. On my way out Maite explained to me that everyone was leaving apart from me and most of them were flying out that afternoon. Veronica is going to be here tonight so I have arranged to meet her at 7 and we are going to go for a walk around the outside of the city and then have dinner.

I realised yesterday that Ahmed is actually quite a nice guy, and I quite like him, but I hate drinking with him because he just wants to get drunk. Sometimes it's easy to forget that he is only 16.

Last night I met outside the roman baths in Toledo for a tour. Lots of people from the school were there - Ahmed was there, and some others from the other class. The tour took us to some old Arabic baths and a church which used to be mosque. The last baths that we visited were in ruins on the edge of the city, and there was a lovely view across the river and of the mountains. I couldn't really understand much of what was said on the tour because there was too much information and it was spoken too quickly.

Ahmed left the tour half way through as he was bored, and afterwards Veronica and Martina asked me if I wanted to join them for dinner at Al Trebol. Veronica is German, and Martina is French, but has lived in Italy for 30 years - both of them have children the same age as me. In the restaurant I had a 'bomba' which is a tapa that was recommended to me by Maite. It was a stuffed potato, with minced beef and garlic and tomato sauce and was very nice! After eating we moved on to another bar for a few more drinks. We sat outside the bar, and there was a machine that sprayed us with a fine mist of water every few minutes which was amazing as it was still hot even at 11pm.

We spoke in Spanish the whole time (at least our version of Spanish!) and at one point an American couple asked me to take a picture of them. They didn't realise I was English and asked me in Spanish and seemed surprised that I was English. I may be able to fool an American tourist but I think I am a long way off fooling the natives!

The American couple told me they were on their honeymoon and I took a few pictures of them. Soon afterwards I returned to the house as it was past midnight.

Miguel was back in the house (the father of the house) after a business trip to the Basque country. I spoke a few words with him but he seemed to be working on something on his laptop and I didn't really want to disturb him.

Today when I got to class me and Cristina were predicting that Ahmed wouldn't turn up again. In the end he turned up half an hour late. We ended up going over some of the stuff from the previous lesson again but it was ok because it's good to revise stuff a little bit. We also talked about stereo types for people in different countries, and I spent a while trying to explain to Cristina what a chav is!

When I got back to the house I had spinach in Bechamel sauce, followed by grilled chicken and bread, then watermelon. Now it's time for a siesta!