Saturday, March 11th with Helena in Toledo, Spain

Helena and I met at the train station to catch our ride in Toledo. The next schedule departure was sold out so we decided to take the bus. In order to do that we would had to take a metro (local train) to get to the bus station.

In our excitement in seeing each other we became so engaged that we missed our stop on the train and we eventually had to back track to right our course. Once on the bus, we were finally on our way to an incredible and an unforgetable day of my trip.

Helena is a bright and beautiful woman. She is the mother of a fourteen year old son and self made powerful Latina woman. She is articulate and very passionate about her cultural and historical roots.

For that day she charted the course for me thus stopping at churches, monuments and archectural bench marks to eduacte me about the history of Toldeo. We took a train tour which took us on on a ride back through history looking at castles, churches, rivers and ancient streets-buildings.

The most significant site was seeing the preservation of the architecural sites that refelcts a community that includes Muslim, Jewsih and Catholic tradition and influence.We ate lunch and dinner and acted llike two sillly school kids.

One photo is a must see photo and it should be up on my blog soon...shows hers displaying her tremendous enthusiasm for the former dictator...Franco. A nasty sign (you go girl). A city of great prominence since the 1500's and the generations to come I am sure.

We caught the bus back to Madrid and arrived at 11:p.m. Helena still had to catch another train to get home just minutes northeast of downtown Madrid. As we said our good bye at the train station we were both sas.

Although we made promises to call each other and write;we both know that their is a possibility that we will never see each other again.

This trip for me was very important in meeting some people that is leaving an impact on me. I hope she will come to Los Angeles to visit like she is planning.

Thank you Helena for worrying about me while I was in Spain and for sharing so much of your time with me. You are truely a marvelous woman.