I had kind of an exhausting day today, and although it started out rough, it ended on a note of eager anticipation for tomorrow’s trip to the beach. We had a late start heading out the door to meet everyone for our daytrip to Cordoba, and I needed to remind myself that flexibility and grace are essentials when living in another culture, and with other people in general. Despite my worries, we got to the school right on time, and we soon boarded the bus for the trip to Cordoba, about an hour and a half away. I totally fell asleep for most of the ride there, and it felt good to get a little extra sleep in.
We started our day at the mosque in Cordoba. It was an amazing visit because it was such a huge, beautiful mosque and we learned a lot about how it was constructed. The mosque is full of red and white arches held up by pillars, and by looking at the pillars you can tell whether that particular section of the mosque was built during a time of prosperity or poverty for the Spanish Muslims. During times of poverty, they used pillars taken from any number of different buildings they had conquered, and during times of prosperity the pillars were elegantly build in patterns. Another interesting aspect of the mosque is that there is a Catholic cathedral build right in the center of it. When the Catholics conquered Cordoba, they decided to take advantage of the mosque rather than destroy it entirely, so they just build their cathedral in its center and put in chapels along the previously stark walls. The cathedral and mosque are both beautiful, and the stark contrasts between them are incredible.
After that tour, led by our professors, we headed to an old Jewish house that has been converted into a museum displaying all kinds of aspects of the Jewish lifestyle. We had a tour there and then got to listen to a mini-concert of traditional Jewish music before being dismissed for lunch. We were all starving, so we made our way to the closest plaza, where we camped out for the rest of the afternoon, eating, talking and relaxing for a little while. Soon, we made our way back to the mosque where we met our professors and the rest of the students and headed back towards the bus. We took a scenic route out of the city, which provided some amazing views of the old city.
I crashed again on the ride back to Sevilla, and then a huge group of us walked to the bus station to buy tickets to the beach tomorrow. I thought there would just be a small group of us, but it turned out that almost everyone wanted to go, so that should be fun. We eventually made it home, tired and dirty from the beach, and the evening passed quickly with dinner, preparations for tomorrow, and a little bit of homework.
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