Notes

Bienvenido a mi casa!  Me llamo Carmen, and I live in Seville, in the sunny land of Spain. Spain, of course, is where the Spanish language was born.  It was our people-- conquistadores, missionaries, and settlers-- who spread this tongue all over the Americas. Spain is one of the largest countries in Europe.  It goes all the way from the Pyrenees Mountains on the French border down to the rock of Gibraltar on the Mediterranean coast. It was here, almost 1300 years ago, that the Moors arrived to conquer this land for Islam. While Medieval Christian Europe built battlements and knocked them down, Muslim Spain built a unique civilization of universities and palaces, scientists and philosophers. It's said that the first Muslim settlers asked Allah for five blessings: clear blue skies, seas full of fish, trees laden with every kind of fruit, beautiful women and a fair system of government.  Allah granted all but the last blessing.  If he'd granted that, Spain would have been too much like Paradise on Earth.