interesting things

1. Driving/parking- Apparently it is completely normal to double and triple park/block people in here in the small streets, and then if they are blocked in they just honk until someone comes out and moves their car. Also, people often leave their cars in neutral while parked in case another car needs to parallel park and needs more room, they can just bump the car out of the way. What?? And when cars turn, there's not really lanes, they just all try to go at once. Although I have great driving skills, I'm glad I don't have to drive here!

2. My walk to class- I miss the OSU bus that I used to take everyday right outside my house up to campus, but I see some pretty cool things on my 30 minute walk to school!

first-my walk at 8:30 at puente san telmo

passing the cathedral

and finally down the little street that leads to school

3. Evening runs. Everyday they are perfect! In the morning it has been pretty cold, but it doesn't get super cold at night so it is the perfect temperature to run around the river a few times.  Yesterday we saw a movie being filmed under puente triana!! And today that bridge was lined with flowers everywhere, but I haven't figured out why yet.  The worst part - running on the cobblestone is kinda difficult!

Pictures from tonight:

4. Today was my last day to eat chocolate and icecream since I'm giving up desserts for lent :(((( 

5. A "tortilla" here is really an omelet

6. Guys love to stare everyone down...creepy

7. There is a guy that plays music on the street across from the cathedral and his props are little spongebob cutouts that dance

8. We no longer need to use the space heater at night!!

9. On the bus to Cadiz, we met people from London we will get to meet up with when we visit!

10. I'm going to Africa on Friday?!!!

Well there's a ton more but I can't think of them now, more later!

the weekend

Our program puts together some activities for us to do during the week, and on Thursday we had "salir con espanoles" where we all meet up in Plaza Nueva and Spaniards come meet us, and they take us out and show us around Sevilla. At the place we went to, I got carded for my first time!..which in Spain means that I don't even look 18. But other than that it was fun!

On Friday, we had an excursion to Ronda that started at 9am.  We all met by the bridge and took a bus over.  When we got there, we got to visit the most famous bullring and take a tour inside the building.  Then we were going to take a hike around the city, but it started raining so we just wandered through the little town finding little shops and cafes.  Went down under the bridge of Ronda, which has a great view!

We got back to Sevilla at 7ish that night, and went shopping.  A lot of the stores here have sales until the end of February, so they had a lot of clothes for just 2 euro each :)

Saturday morning, Emily and I met up with my friend and we went on a bike tour around Sevilla for a few hours in the morning.  We got to finally see Plaza Espana! We stopped there and had french fries and a tinto de verano before we finished the tour.  When we got back, Emily and I wanted to bake a cake that we got at Corte Ingles for our host brother Marcos's birthday.  Buttttt the directions were only in Spanish and Portuguese so he actually helped us make the cake and we told him to act surprised when he saw it later. We took a siesta after that and then finished our tutus for carnaval that night. We left our house at 7:50 to make our 8:00 bus, and arrived in Cadiz at around 10, and stayed until 6 the next morning and the bus took us back home.  It was crazy!!!! There were so many people there, all dressed up costumes. Pretty much the whole city of Cadiz was out for carnaval, there the whole place was packed! 

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's day! Laura and I already celebrated by indulging in churros and chocolate this morning after our first 2 classes together...so delicious! I had never had them before but they reminded me of french toast sticks with chocolate!

 Yesterday my assignment for my culture and civilization class was to take a picture of our meals at home (i do this already, yay!) Pretty much all class has been about so far is what Spaniards do day to day, what they eat, etc. and we have been learning about meals and tapas. Its pretty difficult to go to this class and learn about all the food since its right before my "normal" lunch time back at home, but here I still have to wait about 3 more hours til lunch! So, this is what we had yesterday for lunch and dinner.

After dinner, we usually have fruit and/or yogurt, and the family decided that for my picture it was best to just put all the possibilities together since I would most likely eat it all anyways. We also pulled out the scale for the first time yesterday to see if nuestra dieta has been working. Scary times!

Sunday we went to church at the cathedral, which is the largest Gothic cathedral and the third largest church in the world. Its amazing that I can go there and that I get to walk by it everyday. I could also understand the priest at this church a lot more than the one last Sunday! The weird was when we went to get communion, everyone just went up at once instead of going pew by pew. 

After church, a few of us went to Real Alcazar Casa and it was amazing! It was probably better going with just a few of us than going with the whole group because we had more time to stay and look at everything. At first, it seemed like it was just an indoor museum, but there is a huge outdoor part also filled with my favorite orange trees!

When we left the Alcazar museum, the first thing I saw right out of the exit was another beautiful view of the city, with a carriage in the street, and the Cathedral right across the street. Its crazy that I can see all these things right where I live, its not far away at all, its actually right along my walk to school everyday! 

Yesterday Emily and I went to Corte Ingles, which is kind of like a Dillards/Ulta/Walmart/Bookstore/HobbyLobby all in one.  We have also been on a search for stamps for a few days without any luck. So mom, if you are reading this, I will write you back as soon as I find some :) 

A couple of days ago, Emily, Rita and I did exercises in the living room to Shakira. Pretty sure we have the best host mom ever! After dinner, she showed us pictures of her previous students and letters they had written her.  We definitely bonded!

Time to take a pre-siesta siesta. And then eat. And then siesta before class!

life

Since I've been here in Spain for almost 2 weeks now, I guess its about time to start a blog! We arrived in Madrid on January 30 at 9 am Spain time (2 am Oklahoma time).  Emily and I met a few people that were going to our school in Sevilla at the airport so it was nice to meet other ISA students before we even got to Spain!

Once we arrived, we went to meet the rest of the students in the Madrid airport.  At 11 we took buses to our hotel, NH Nacional. I definitely felt like a tourist carrying my 3 suitcases and backpack through the busy city trying to get to my hotel.  Once we got there, Emily and I got our room assignment and went up to our room, and we had our first crazy international problem!!! The lights. How do they work? We tried to flip the switches but nothing happened. Turns out you have to put your hotel key inside the switch. Que raro. After this struggle, we decided it was about time to experience our first siesta in Spain,  and with the Persian blinds and 7 hour time change, it was perfect!

The next morning the hotel served quite possibly the best breakfast I had ever seen. So many different types of meat, cheese, yogurt, cereal, fruit, juice, bread, pastries, granola, etc. We went to visit Palacio Real and Museo del Prado, which were both beautiful and we had guided tours of both of them. 

On February 1st we left for Toledo, which was a smaller, beautiful city.  We took a bus tour around the city and visited the cathedral there. 

We finally got to meet our host family on Thursday, the moment we had all been waiting for.  Our buses took us to a street in Sevilla and dropped us off on a street filled with about 30 host moms-the funniest sight ever! We met our mom, Rita, and took a cab back to our new house!  We have a great new family, Rita and Juan are our new parents, Juanjo and Marcos are our new brothers, and Juanito is our cute new nephew that we got to meet yesterday! 

Sometimes I feel like my day revolves around coming back home to eat.  I have a small breakfast at 8 am and  then I come back from class and we have the biggest.and.best.lunches.ever. at 2:30 ish every day. Another reason I enjoy mealtime: el calentador.  The rest of the house is generally freezing, but when we eat there is a little space heater under the table, and under the tablecloth is a heavy blanket that we get to keep warm with! Rita feeds us with a huge lunch everyday, always with muchooo pan-we have french baguettes at every meal. Then we have dinner again at 9:30 pm, and it is usually just as good at lunch but we told Rita we wanted to go on a diet so the meals have been getting a little smaller.  Rita showed us her favorite treat one day - crackers and nutella, so our indulgent eating of our dessert might not actually be good for our diet.  

On the other hand, we do walk everywhere we go.  School is a 30 minute walk from our house, and we make that walk at least 4 times a day.  Lately Emily and I have also started running across the river, and it might be the most beautiful place to run! We run from the bridge near our house to the other bridge and back, and the best time to run is at night when the sun is setting because all the lights from the city illuminate the river.

The past few days have been so much fun, yesterday we woke up to go to visit the Alcazar house, but we were five minutes late and didn't get to go. Instead, Emily and I went with some other people that were late to explore Sevilla. We went to visit the "seta" which is a huge wooden structure with graves surprisingly underneath it. Tomorrow we are going to mass at the cathedral that we pass on the way to class and then to see the Alcazar house since we missed it. 

I have loved everything about Sevilla so far, I've made lots of great friends, live in a beautiful city, have great classes, love my host family, and I'm learning new things everyday.  Even getting lost isn't bad because I wind up finding another great part of this historical city. Life is great! Might not come home.