This morning was a somewhat sad morning. We were moving away from Barcelona. I didn't want to move away from Barcelona. I'd spent so much time getting work done that I'd missed out on a city that I knew I really really really really liked, if not downright loved, but we did want to go to Toledo and to other places before we went to our reserved hotel (on 22nd), so I was able to pack my things up fairly quickly and get ready fast enough. Before we left we went in search of a post office, a newspaper, for some black thread for Ahmee, and for a bit of lunch. We found the newspaper and got lunch, but nothing past that. Then we got on the road and headed towards Toledo.
I knew that getting out of Barcelona was going to be difficult, I'd seen the spaghetti from the double-decker. Maybe it's just that I really really really didn't want to leave and felt like I had to tear myself away. Maybe I was looking for an excuse to stay. Any way you look at it, I made sure to spend my last moments in Barcelona, looking around at Barcelona. Even when we got out of the city and were on the highway I looked at the monster factories (pipes everywhere!), at the mountains, and at the smudged sky over Barcelona (smog dot). As I sat there looking out the window I thought about all the things I'd seen and how I really didn't even feel like writing anything. I only felt like doing two things: reading AP US History, and looking out the window. I did the later for most of the day while I spent maybe two hours on the former. I knew there were two chapters that I needed to complete the study guide and the tests over for AP US History (these needed to be turned in by Wed.) so I did what I could and read the chapters.
When I looked out the window I watched as the view turned from one of mountains with a few trees, to hills with no trees and a few bushes, to hills with olive trees, to land covered by farm acreage that'd been plowed, and finally to plains of a few olive tree farms but mostly dry, tilled dirt. The color of the soil changed too. It went from rocky and gray-white (mountains) to being bright orange (plowed fields). When I saw these fields of dirt I again wondered if the farmers knew what happened when the wind blew, if they knew what happened to create the dust bowl in the Western United States, or if they knew anything about the dust bowl at all. These fields made me nervous because they were filled with finely plowed dirt that could've easily been lifted off by the wind, if one had decided to start blowing through. Until the wind comes in though I don't think the farmers have anything to worry about (other than the sun baking their soil). Once the sun started to hit it's slide down the sky mode we started to search for a hotel.
It was nerve wracking to pull off the highway twice, following signs of hotels, to come up empty handed and to have the locals tell you there is no hotel in the area. By the time we reached our third exit we were more than a bit nervous about where we were going to sleep. We were more than happy when we saw that these signs were true to their word. There was indeed a hotel, and there was an AutoGrill, beyond that there was nothing else. 
We were happy to find a place to sleep, but I was still nervous about finding WiFi because I was almost certain that this hotel wouldn't have it. I turned out to be right. The hotel didn't have it (it didn't work for my computer even though the guy behind the desk tried several things to get it to work), and the AutoGrill didn't have it. I got to sweat about how the next day I was going to have to complete two study guides and two tests within one afternoon in order to get things turned in to Mr. Owens before Wed. morning (so he can get the grade in and turn in my grades). We did enjoy the truck stop hotel though. We got to eat dinner in the restaurant, I got to work on blogging, and during dinner and afterwards Ahmee and I had a good time watching Spanish tv where all we could understand was one word for every 5-10-15 words. I found it more fun really to watch the truckers watch tv when we were busy eating dinner. All of the men had grabbed their own table, all of them had gotten the seat facing the tv, and all of them were incredibly amusing to watch. There were some who were able to actually eat and watch at the same time. These were the ones who were forking in their plate fairly fast. Then there were others who could not.
They'd cut up their meat during the commercial and when the show came back on the fork was posed halfway to the mouth with the mouth ajar as if it was waiting for it. I laughed while understanding that I do about the same thing (and not just with tv's). I get to talking and my food doesn't get eaten until it's warm/cold. I've been fussed at a few times for this and this time I got told to eat (had to say it louder because the tv was on and I was absorbed into a show where I didn't even know what they were saying).When we went upstairs we tried to find BBC World News or CNN (these are our two favorite channels). They didn't have either one of these. So we watched a Spanish soap opera until we all were about to fall asleep, then the tv got clicked off and we all crawled under our covers. I slept soundly in this bed, where the mattress was as hard as a rock and my pillow was perfect (in Barcelona my bed was squishy).
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