The remainder of the day was spent exploring the fish market and soaking up some much needed sun on the beach. On our way to the beach, a bunch of the group decided to buy raw oysters from one of the many street vendors. I thought I had been adventurous enough for one day so I did not partake in this slimy venture. I have never been so glad in my life that I didn’t try something! Everyone that ate the oysters ended up with food poisoning for the rest of the weekend. Five people were even hospitalized! Needless to say, I think that will be our group’s one and only experience with street seafood…
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Oysters of Doom
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Playing Tourist
La Giralda – tower connected to la Catedral. There is an absolutely gorgeous view of all of Sevilla from the top
La Iglesia San Luis – Built between 1699 and 1731, it is the prime example of baroque architecture/art in Sevilla. It is really gaudy/ugly in my opinion but interesting to see.
The play Bodas de Sangre by Federico Garcia Lorca
And finally, a flamenco show at “La Casa de la Memoria” which I loved. I mean, lets be honest here – gorgeous Spanish men playing guitars, singing, and dancing. What’s not to love?! All joking aside, it was a great experience. Flamenco is truly a unique artistic entity with an intensity all its own.
The week was non-stop activity but I loved every minute of it! It was great to start to truly get to know Sevilla as a city.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Salsa, Baños Árabes, y Madrid
It was like a scene out of a movie. We were the only foreigners in the entire room. The aroma of cigarette smoke and sweat permeated the air, music was blaring, and people were crammed shoulder to shoulder around the dance floor watching as people danced salsa like I’ve never seen it danced before! With every song, people would randomly swap partners and somehow still be able to move together like they were life long dance partners doing a choreographed piece. Absolutely amazing and by far one of the coolest experiences I have had in Sevilla so far!!
On Thursday, we went as a group to one of the Baños Árabes (Arab bathhouses) in Sevilla. I was sort of hesitant to go at first because I was envisioning a bunch of naked European men wandering around in a sauna. I’m so glad I was completely wrong! It was an extremely relaxing and enjoyable experience. It had three pools with cold, medium, and hot water, a salt water pool, a jacuzzi, and a sauna as well as tea to drink as we soaked away the remaining lingering pains of long travel. The atmosphere and ambiance was great as all of the beautiful Arabic architecture was lit by candlelight, the air smelled like mint, and the only noise was from the water. I wish this could be a weekly tradition!
On Friday morning, we were off to Madrid. While in Madrid for the weekend, we managed to cram in visits to el Prado, el Palacio Real, el Plaza Mayor, el Parque de Buen Retiro, and Kapitol (largest discoteca in Spain… 7 floors each with a different theme!). Needless to say the weekend was extremely exciting but exhausting.
El Prado is Madrid’s largest museum and has some of the most important paintings in the world like Velázquez’s Las Meninas and Goya’s La familia de Carlos IV. I really enjoyed our trip to el Museo del Prado because we were given a special guided tour that focused on the paintings we had learned about earlier in the week. It was great to actually know the significance of what I was looking at for once!
I really enjoyed Madrid but I am definitely glad I chose to study in Sevilla instead of Madrid. I don’t think I could handle living in such a large/overwhelming city for six months!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Rebelde Sin Causa
I’m sharing a room with one of the girls from Cornell named Haley. Our room is pretty much a broom closet – smaller than my dorm room freshmen year – and totally decorated in ‘old lady’! Despite its size and decor, it is immaculately clean and has a ton of storage space so I think it will be fine. Luckily, I also love my new roommate. She is always full of energy and we seem to get along great.
Besides Haley and I, there is only our new madre (mother) Pepa. Pepa is apparently a nickname for Maria Josefa… don’t ask me why! At first, I was a little disappointed because I wanted to live with a family that had kids, but now I absolutely adore Pepa and wouldn’t wish to change my living situation at all! Pepa does absolutely everything for us from cooking all of the meals to doing our laundry… she even insists on making our toast every morning!! At every single meal, we both have been absolutely stuffed with food. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to say that I really couldn’t eat another bite. Apparently it is an inherent part of all Spanish mothers that they will never think you've had enough to eat!
Pepa fits the Spanish stereotype of always forcing food on us but she is definitely not the typical Spanish madre. Unlike the other Spanish madres, Pepa does not make cleaning into an obsession. She claims that she is a ‘rebelde sin causa’ (rebel without a cause) because she refuses to wash the dishes right after dinner!! I almost died laughing after hearing this grandmotherly like woman describe herself as a rebel!
The more I get to know Pepa the more I begin to see that she definitely is indeed a rebel without a cause. One of the first things Pepa ever told Haley and me about herself is that she was one of the first women to get a divorce after the Franco dictatorship ended and that it was the best decision she ever made in her life. I have never met someone so proud to be divorced and single! She then proceeded to tell us that men only lead to disaster and that all she needs is Eros, her pet cat, to make her happy. All I can say is that I hope I will be as spunky and full of life when I’m her age…
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Huevas Are Not Huevos!!
On Tuesday, we had our first day of class of the pro-cultural seminar. This is a month long seminar run by our program center that intensively teaches us about the culture of Sevilla and España in general. Each week (Monday through Thursday) we study a different topic. In addition, we have discussion and grammar classes each day. In the culture class we began learning about the Franco dictatorship which was interesting and I could understand Rafael very well. Then it was our first discussion class… God did I hate it.
Puri, the professor, seemed really nice and has a beautiful voice with a musical Andalusian accent. For most of the class we introduced ourselves. I hate talking in front of people I don’t know in English so I was even more freaked out to do it in Spanish. When it was my turn, I stumbled over saying the word ‘Cardiologo’ because I was so nervous. Puri said it correctly and then made me repeat it and repeat it. I was absolutely mortified! It didn’t help that Nate and Phil, two of the strongest speakers are also in my discussion class. Luckily class ended soon after that. Our first grammar class was by far my favorite of the day. Juan is really approachable and friendly and even though it is a ‘grammar’ class, he spent most of class teaching us useful phrases, slang, and cultural quirks.
The program center itself is beautiful. It's located on the 2nd floor (it's actually the third, but in Spain, the first floor is considered as 'planta baja' or ground floor) of an old building, constructed in the 1920s. It has an ancient elevator whose doors you have to manually close for it to operate. I'm not brave enough to try it as it definitely looks like it is over 80 years old! Anyways, the view from the center looks out onto a gorgeous fountain and the Torre del Oro is just around the corner so I couldn’t think of a better place to have to walk to everyday.
Wednesday also turned out to be quite an adventure. Before class, me and the girls I traveled with decided to go out for Tapas again. Wandering down one of the side streets near the hotel, we found a cute little Tapas restaurant with outdoor seating. Besides ordering our stand by dishes of paella, jamón, and patatas ali-oli, we decided to branch out and order two different dishes of huevas. Now, we knew that 'huevos' meant eggs, and we thought that 'hueva' meant a certain type of fish. Basically, we guessed that we would have one plate of eggs and one plate of fish. We figured it would be a pretty safe bet because all of us liked eggs.
We were wrong.
The food arrived and it was definitely NOT eggs. But upon tasting it, it wasn't like fish either. The texture was incredibly crumbly and dry, and broke into a lot of tiny pieces my mouth. Even after pulling out a dictionary, we didn't have a clue what this food was. So, we consulted our waiter who then amusedly told us (In Spanish) "They're fish ovaries."
Oh dear God. Yesterday I apparently ate a million little fish eggs and now they're all swimming around in my stomach about to grow into giant fish and kill me. Despite lunch being quite the adventure, the rest of the day turned out to be pretty uneventful. Tomorrow should be interesting as we move in with our families!!!! I’m so beyond excited yet terrified!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
An Eventful Beginning
I am finally in Spain!!! It seems like it has been days since I hugged Mom good-bye in Detroit but really it has only been a few days – a few days of one disaster after another! The whole process of flying freaked me out. I had to triple check that I had everything and even so I was so anxious about forgetting something especially because I waited until the last minute to pack! Before going to the airport, I ate lunch at my all-time favorite restaurant (Border Cantina) with Dad, Mom, and Kyle. Everything was going smoothly up until that point, but then the first minor hiccup in the plan occurred. Apparently my backpack that I stuffed to the rim didn’t fit airline carry-on regulations. FREAKOUT! After a mad dash to Target with the family, all was well because mom bought me a new carry-on and I managed to cram almost everything in it on the drive to the airport.
The flight from Detroit to Frankfurt went by faster than I thought it would; although, that isn’t saying much as I had built it up to be this big horrible nightmare! The fattest baby I have ever seen spent most of the flight screaming in the seat in front of me but headphones work wonders. At Frankfurt, we just barely made our connection, after being delayed in Detroit because of de-icing procedures. We were literally the last people on the bus to take us to the airplane, but we made it just in time. I slept the entire flight, managing to skip the meal they offered. That excitement aside, we finally landed in Madrid ready to start our Spanish adventure, or so we thought.
The Frankfurt airport managed to misplace 9 bags and a Gayle… How is that even possible?! We waited for hours and hours at the airport for Gayle’s flight to arrive and prayed that our baggage would come with it – all in vain. In our desperate search for somebody – anybody – that could give us some sort of concrete information we managed to make three trips to different baggage claims, three between terminal 1 and terminal 2, multiple trips to Spanair and Lufthansa service desks, and two illegal attempts to sneak into other restricted areas only to be yelled at by fat security guards. Our entire marathon through the airport managed to yield the meager info that Gayle’s plane was delayed 6 hours and that our baggage would arrive at midnight. How lovely!
Exhausted and stressed to the max, we checked into our hostel and waited for Gayle to find us. The hostel provided a much needed comedic relief as the walls were plastered in ‘artistic’ hand drawn porn. Only in Europe…
By 1 AM, everyone and everything was accounted for and we managed to snag a few hours of much needed sleep before catching our train in the morning.
The train ride went smoothly and after discovering that some taxi drivers in Sevilla can be downright assholes (made us take 4 cabs with our luggage even though we managed to cram into 2 on the way to the train station in Madrid!), we finally made it to Hotel Becquer – home for the next few days!! We survived our international trip from Hell!!!!!
Part of me still can't believe that I'm actually here, in Spain, about to only speak Spanish for the next five and a half months. And if the beginning of this trip has any indication as to how the rest will follow, I can only say that it is going to be an adventure.