Blue Toilet Paper and Other Fun Surprises

Okay, I'm back for more blogging. But as I was gearing myself up to write again, I realized that there is so much I forgot that I have done. I really need to get more on top of writing things down after they happen so that something like these last two blog posts don't happen again.

Anyway, last week I would assume was more of a normal week. It was my second week of class, so I got more adjusted into the swing of things. And luckily for me, my Interamerican Relations professor totally forgot about class on Thursday, so I was able to have a very nice morning, sitting out at a cafe, reading my book in the beautiful Sevillian sun. I found this cafe across from campus that has a 1 euro café con leche. I'm fine with having a 1 euro habit instead of a 3.something dollar coffee everyday. I'm definitely getting used to the café con leche, but I would rather have more café than leche, and definitely less pure sugar, but I'll take what I can get.

On Friday, the study abroad group went to Cádiz, a spanish city on the southern coast, which was about a little over an hour bus ride away. We had to meet at the bus at 9:45, and Jessica and I were a little behind on packing our lunch so we were about 5-10 minutes late. And suddenly I got a call from Allison saying hurry up because the bus just left but then it stopped again once all the students were telling our group leader that so many people were still on their way. Luckily, the bus waited and Jessica and I almost ran there to catch it. You would think that they usually call it for a quarter 'til the hour because they don't expect to leave until the hour, or at least that's what happened when we went to Granada, but they were sure in a hurry to get on the road. I'm glad we made it.

Before we made it all the way to Cádiz, we stopped in Jerez, which is a small town known for it's Sherry and wineries, and actually I believe that's where my house mom is from. Anyway, we got a tour of the wine cellar and learned all about how they store the wine, or sherry, I'm not quite sure what was what. I knew all these cool facts, but because it's been almost a week now, I seem to have lost them from my mind.

So after the mini lecture and tour of the cellar, we went into another room to watch a film about how this wine was made and then we got to try 5 different types and see why it is that this wine is so famous. Well, they were all types of white wine, although they seemed to get darker and darker the sweeter they became. I happened to not like any of the five that we tried. They all had a very similar and strong taste, something unlike I had ever tasted before. The first was very dry, and the last was soo sweet that I could probably only have the small amount that I had because there's no way I could finish a whole glass. They did, fortunately, provide chips, peanuts, and crackers which was helpful. I'm glad to have been there and tried them, but I do not hope to encounter that wine again.


Afterwards, we hopped back on the bus for a 20 minute ride to Cádiz and landed at a beautiful beach, where we had "free time" to eat our bocadillos (sandwiches) and hang out. It was a very nice day--we were fearing it was going to be too cold, but it was probably in the high 60s or even 70s. We ate our sandwiches, and then hung out for a while. I was inspired to take jumping pictures, and then everyone on the beach copied, but hey, I guess that's what being cool means.





Then we all met up once more to go on a little more of a walking tour of Cádiz. Cádiz is very well known for it's huggggge fiestas of Carnaval. I think it's best explained as a Mardi Gras meets Halloween, minus the candy, plus the costumes, multiplied by the drinking. So the city goes all out for it and the decorations they had up looked great. They have a ton of live music and dance stages and people are just going around having fun. Well, I am telling you this from word of mouth because I didn't actually go. We were only in Cádiz for the day and the party starts a night (duh) but the biggest party was on Saturday and we went on Friday anyway. But here are some more pictures of Cádiz.




That's really it for Cádiz. We got back to Sevilla on Friday night and spent the weekend here. Saturday was one of the nicest days. We had superfantastic weather and it was just wonderful to go outside. Jessica and I took a long walk in the morning and then we met up with a few other girls and just sat by the river and hung out. I was just talking to my mom about this today, but it is just so great to 1. hang out by the river and do nothing but enjoy the day and yourself and your friends, but also 2. the quality of life is just (so much) better here. On a good day, everyone is out hanging out with friends and family and just walking about the town. The benches and grassy areas and everything were just full of people having a good time. And I certainly enjoyed that. Also, the river is basically in the back of my house here, so it's nice to be so close to something like that.

School has been good this week too. Today was a great, great day though, so I will leave you with this (and I can't really think of a funny anecdote right now, so I'll try to come up with that later). Elisa (the 11 year old girl) has been sick all week, and today she was super bored and talked to me for about 30-45 minutes. I thought it was superrrrr because that's the most progress I have made with her and it's been one month. Granted, it is hard for me to communicate with her because she speaks so fast and I can't speak well, but she's also been very shy towards me. Today was a breakthrough and that made me really happy. And then, to top it all off, I went on a bike ride AGAIN today! That's twice in a month and that's serious progress. I'm impressed with myself.

Oh, and the blue toilet paper title was simply because the surprise of the morning was that my toilet paper is blue.

This Friday I am going to Lagos, Portugal, so that should be fantastic. I will write more then!

Haley

La primera semana a la universidad + Granada

Hello there! I am terribly sorry that I haven't blogged in about two weeks now, and there is so much to catch up on! So, unless I'm feeling really into typing right now I might split up my blog into two different posts--I have to see what I can remember from so long ago! My internet and I have been having problems together. It hasn't been working so well with me and it seems that every other day or so, I'm on the phone with Dell or doing something to try to fix it. Now, I am finally sitting down to write! Also, I received some complaints about the blog being in spanish and that people were getting confused by the three things/ buttons that were in spanish. If you noticed, I gladly changed the language to english for you all. I also tried to change the set up for the commenting area, and so if I'm not mistaken you can easily comment without being a member of the blog or anything. Hopefully that will make it easier for you all.

Last week, the 9-12, was my first week of school. I had my class list sorted out and had a general idea of what it was going to be like, but we had the freedom to go and try out a few classes before really signing up for them. I started out my first class on Monday at 1 called the Projection of the Three Cultures in Sevilla. I arrived and was dismayed by three things: 1. I didn't know it was the three cultures in the middle ages, 2. the class was super boring, 3. the professor wouldn't make eye contact with any student and so when he talked to the class his body faced the class, but his eyes were staring at the top of the ceiling--not just above our heads but at the ceiling. I think it hurt my head knowing how hard it is to keep your eyes up there for so long. Anyway, it was very distracting just watching him not watch us! haha, immediately I knew that I had to rearrange my schedule and so I have.

So, I switched that class to a Cine class (film) which I was going to take anyway, but now I'm just taking it at a different time. It's fantastic. On the first day that I went we already watched a film to get us into the art of spanish film and while I thought it was okay, it was still exciting to watch. However, I'm not at a level yet where I can understand spanish films without at least having spanish subtitles, which we didn't have. I'm going to have to learn how to focus on understanding the films.

Afterwards I went to my flamenco art as a process of communication. That class is going very well so far--our teacher is a tocaor (or a guitar player in flamenco terms) so he's been teaching us the theory behind one of the forms of flamenco so far and then follows up and plays for us to understand it. I've never seen any body play the guitar like that in my life. It's an incredible art and I hope this class goes well.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have an interamerican relations class. It's probably my least favorite class right now, but I will continue to take it because it is at a good time and there's really not much else that I am interested in at that time. Our reader (notebook, journal, whatever you want to call it) has a lot of readings in english, and so far he has just stood at the front of the class basically reading the essay word for word, but saying it all in spanish instead of the english written there. It's not such a good way to spend two hours.

But then I have semantics, which again isn't going super fantastic, but I like it anyway because a lot of my friends are in there and I took a spanish linguistics class last semester at Berkeley and really enjoyed it, so I have a little background already to start me off.

So my schedule is great so far, on Mondays and Wednesdays I have class from 1-5, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class from 11-3. No class on Fridays wooooo, so it's good to travel or do whatever. All my classes are taught in spanish, which is excellent, but I have learned something about myself. Each class is two hours, and that's a long time to concentrate for any kind of class. So not only do I have to concentrate for extra long, I have to concentrate in spanish. As you can imagine, my brain has to take breaks every now and then, so that's something I'm going to have to get used to as well.

On to more fun things! On the 13-14 of February, my group went to Granada! We woke up very early to meet at the bus stop by 8:45 and from there we made a pit stop to El Torcal de Antequera, which was this beautiful mountain/hiking path with these pancake looking rocks. They had told us that we were making a stop, but none of us realized it was going to be such a big hike, and because we weren't prepared, it became a very very long day-walking wise. The hike was very cool, but the drive up the mountain was not worth it--buses and windy roads don't do it for me. Anyway, the hike was about an hour, and we saw lots of animals, mostly goats I believe, and that was perfect because I was listening to the Mountain Goats on the way up!! I know I just make these entries so entertaining...

After the very muddy hike up and down steep rocks (something I forgot to add before, but one of the things for which they did not prepare us), we continued to Granada. Another windy ride down the mountain and an hour drive and finally we were there! Our hotel was right near the Alhambra, which I will talk about in a minute, but it was also on top of the biggest hill I have seen in a city in a while. For you Berkeleyans, think about going from College Ave up dwight until you get to the top, but maybe about a half a mile's worth. It was so steep going down just to get to the center, and we were already pretty sore from that hike we had taken a few hours before. We walked around the city for a bit, and it was beautiful! There were so many little vendors selling morrocan-esque things, so it was like going to morroco while being in spain. We hung out down there for a while until we needed to get back to the hotel for dinner, but good thing we left a little early because that walk back up hill was RIDICULOUS!!!! Please imagine me screaming that because it was just that bad. After the hike and not really being prepared for the amount of walking that we were doing, this up-hill trek was just too much. There were many pauses not just because we needed to take a break, but because we were laughing so hard about how impossible this was that we couldn't breathe again and then had to take a break. Needless to say, if we ever went down that hill again, we took a taxi up--it was okay though because we only stayed one night. My legs hurt for many hours after that.

Friday night we went to a Flamenco show in one of the many caves that shapes Granada's landscape. It's so awesome because there are a lot of hills around Granada (obviously) and many caves, and so over time, people have built there houses into caves! So, it looks like a house from the outside, but that's usually just the outside wall and then all you can see is the mountain. It's pretty cool. So, the flamenco show we went to was in one of these cave/house structures. Until that point, I had never really been to a flamenco show, and it is such a big part of Andalucían culture, so it was really fun to watch. I decided to film a little clip of it on my camera, and let me see if it uploads for you all to watch too! (sorry, you have to turn your head sideways until I figure out how to change it up)

The next day we toured around La Alhambra, an old Arabic castle/mini city (the Red fortress) that was completed in the 1300s, and eventually taken over by the Catholics in the late 1500/1600s, like everything else. The architecture and grounds were amazing and you could see both styles of the early Arabs and the later Catholics. The palace was just so huge that we only saw a fraction of it, and it has been used traditionally for centuries until it became one of the biggest tourist attractions.


Some of the barracks in the fortress

Jessica, Alli, me and Flor--on the left you can see the very snowy Sierra Nevadas.

View of Granada from La Alhambra

Before we left Granada, we went down to the city for lunch again and ate these Turkish entities called döner kebaps which was deliciousness in a sandwich. It was very similar to something I have eaten greek-style, and I wish I took a picture of it, or took one back with me because it was so freaking good. It was like a pita-sandwich with chicken-gyro meat, lettuce, tomato, cheese, the yogurt sauce, and some other kind of sauce and it was absolutely ah so good, I don't know what words I should use right now to describe it. Overall it was a great trip and I would happily go back there again, minus all of the hiking, and especially to get that sandwich again.

I will finally end this post with a great little anecdote that occurred just last week before we went to Granada. On Monday, my first day of school, I had class from 1-5. We usually eat lunch at the house around 2:30/3ish, and after class, even though I was starving, I went out with a couple of friends to talk about travel plans. So, I finally made it home around 7 and was super hungry. I went upstairs and María was there and was like, "oh, Haley, pobrecita, you must be so hungry you haven't eaten all day!! I left out your lunch and there is dinner coming up soon too so you should eat something don't be hungry!" and then I responded, yes I know I had class so late and I am so so hungry, thanks for leaving the stuff out for me, I think I am going to eat a 'mierda'." (Okay, now while the story I am telling you is not in spanish, I will have to explain these translations). Right after I said "mierda" I thought to myself, oh shit! (sorry mom) because I literally just said "shit". Mierda means shit, one of those slang words, you know? So, immediately I was like, ohhh no no no sorry so sorry aaaah, what is that word what is that word!!! And I was saying all of that out loud because I completely forgot the word for snack. It just left my mind and I was like "how do you say...uh..I don't know, what is that meal between lunch and dinner???" and she goes, "merienda??" and I said YES YES merienda--I want a merienda and I felt so badly for saying mierda, and she goes, "you do know what mierda means, right?" and I said, yes I know it's a bad word I am sorry. She said it was okay because I am still learning spanish, but it was a pretty funny occasion in my life. Those are the types of stories I save up to try to share with you all.

Okay, I am going to go now, but I'm going to write another blog very soon to get you caught up on this last week (including today, the 20th) but I will have to do that later on.

Un besito,
Haley

Bienvenidos a Sevilla

When I last left you, I had just arrived in Sevilla. Now, it has been exactly one week that I have been living here and I haven't had the energy to blog, but I'm trying to force myself to blog more often and write about things when they actually happen so that I don't build up a bible's worth of information for you to read.

We have taken a few tours around the city so far, which has been great because this first week has been dedicated to getting to know the city, the host family, and settle in before school starts. Luckily, school doesn't start until this coming Monday, the 9th, and I have certainly enjoyed this freedom.

On Friday we toured around the campus, but we are going to tour around again tomorrow (Friday) for our orientation, and I don't remember where anything was anyway, so that will be good. Interestingly, the University of Seville used to be a Tobacco factory, and there are still signs on the buildings that refer to that. It is a beautiful campus, and when I can take a better picture of it, I will post that (now that I know how to post pictures).

I didn't do much else this past weekend, especially Sunday because we experienced some thunder storms, or T-showers as I for some reason like to call them. It was crazyyy I haven't been in a thunder-storm for a really long time. I guess that's what happens when you live in the Valley and it barely even rains. So the whole day I was upstairs at the kitchen table with my roommate Jessica and María, reading, going online, and figuring out how to blog. I've found that there's a traditional custom here in the houses of Andalucían families which includes having your dinner table in the family room next to the TV and the couch, and what's even better is that there's a heater underneath the table so when you're eating and relaxing, you're warm too. So we just hung out on the couch with the heater as it was thundering and torrentially downpouring on Sunday and I did not leave the house. I know they say that you need to go out and explore the city and should not spend so much time online, but I know that the weather is going to get much better here, so if there are a couple extremely heavy rainfalls right now, I do not mind staying in to secure my health and not get soaked.

I was really worried that night because we had a scheduled bike tour of the city on Monday, and I feared that if it were raining, then I would definitely not want to go. Fortunately for us it did not rain on the whole 2-hour bike ride we went on. It was a really good idea and I'm so glad I went, but because it has been probably 8-10 years since I've been on a bike, I was very distracted. I couldn't concentrate on where we were or what we were exploring because I was so worried that I was going to run into someone or fall off or get hit by a car. It was a stressful first thirty minutes. And I'm not embarrassed at all to say this little anecdote. I was feeling really uncomfortable on the ride in the beginning, just where the breaks were and everything that I was trying to get used to, but something really seemed odd about the breaks. Finally we came to a stop and my front wheel basically turned around on its own and I realized that I had been riding the bike almost backwards!! I don't know how that happened, why I didn't notice, or how I continued to ride for as long as I did. Regardless, I laughed a lot about that and everything was fine after. I told you I haven't been on a bike for a long time!!


So, from there we started our grammar review class. It was pretty pointless because we talked about very basic grammar for 2.5 hours. We've had a class everyday this week and today will be my last class. I guess it's a good review, but it doesn't actually help me because I know most of the rules pretty well. If you give me a paper with fill in the blank verbs with different tenses, I can pretty much get it--it's like a math problem or something. But when it comes to speaking, all the rules leave my head and I can't get anything out. I guess it's just a different part of my brain that manages these functions.

Tuesday we visited the Cathedral and Tower of Giralda in Sevilla. It's right in the heart of the city and it's from the late 12th/13th century, originally built by the Arabs as a Mosque, but later turned into a church like almost everything in Spain. The Cathedral is one of the biggest in the world, I forgot if it was the 2nd or the 3rd, and in it resides one of the many tombs of Christopher Columbus, who apparently has his body scattered in a few different places. Next to the Cathedral is the Tower of Giralda, which is spectacular as well. There are no stairs in this tower to actually get to the top, so you walk up and around all of these ramps, about 40 of them I believe, just to get to the top. I took some pictures, but the weather wasn't that great so hopefully I'll go back again to get better pictures for you.


This is the Tower of Giralda


From the Tower of Giralda looking onto the courtyard of the cathedral.

From the Tower of Giralda looking onto the cathedral.

Finally, yesterday we went to the Old Alcázar, which means Fortress. I had already been walking around the city center for a couple days, and hadn't even noticed that this place was right in the middle of it all--although to my credit it is surrounded completely by walls and maybe I just thought it was a park). People don't live in it anymore, but it used to be a residing place for spanish royalty when they made it down to Sevilla. Still today the royals use it when they want to--someone's daughter in the family even had her wedding reception there recently. Anyway, it was beautiful and everything was made out of marble and tiles because as I will find out eventually, it gets SUPER hot here and by having materials like marble, it's a good way to try to cool things down. Everything I've seen so far, especially this building has prominent influences of all three cultures, and it's really exciting to see them present together. They were pretty excited there because there were some Californian Palm Trees--haha. And if I heard her correctly, they even met and planned in one of the rooms we went in about Magellan's famous expedition. Also, there was this awesome labyrinth--I think it was for the children, it was pretty small, but I've always wanted to go into one like that and we had a good time. Of course we were waiting to see Pan and be taken into a magical world, but we made it out of there alive and well.





El laberinto.

Anyway, later that day (yesterday, Wednesday the 4th), it started getting pretty windy-which again is something unusual here. So I went home for lunch and then it started to pour again. I decided not to go to the grammar review class and I am so glad I didn't go because we had even more T-showers yesterday. It's been pretty horrible weather, but I think next week it's going to get better.

Briefly, onto the food, for any of you who have known me for all of my life know that I have had the tendency to be quite the picky eater. Up until college I wouldn't really eat anything that wasn't pasta or chicken--aka, not much. Then, as most of you know, I became a vegetarian, but I purposefully started eating meat for this trip so that I wouldn't be limited with my food choices (and man I probably would have nothing to eat if I still was vegetarian) and then I would experience more of the culture. I told you already about the ham, but the other night, for the first time since either the early 2000s, I ate a hot dog, or salchichas here. I swore those things off way before I even became vegetarian. I had stopped eating them on my own, but one day in carpool in high school, Ken Winters shared a story with me that reasserted my vow to never eat a hotdog again. However, I knew it was coming because Jessica (my roommate) had warned me about that kind of meal. My house mom seemed a little frustrated when I told her I used to be vegetarian because she said I already don't eat eggs so there would be nothing for me to eat, so I knew I had to suck it up and eat this hot dog. It tasted exactly the same as I remembered it, and I covered it in the mashed potatoes she had also prepared. And now, Jessica and I only hope that we have to eat those salchichas only a few more times before the semester's over.

I will leave you with a final comment--something that I've found interesting. The four of us have usually been eating dinner together every night so far (lunch has been different because I have had to eat earlier than them to get to my grammar class) but we will all sit down at that couch table together and eat different things. Jessica and I eat one thing and Elisa and María eat something else. At first I thought that was a little weird, but I justified it through something in my head that I can't fully explain. But now I have found out that they end up eating our left overs a few nights after we eat that exact thing. This is something I do not understand yet, and I am going to try to figure it out.

Besos,
Haley