Visitas, monjas, café y rebajas

Visitas, monjas, café y rebajas are four of my favorite Spanish words and definitely describe my day today. It all started out with a visita or tour to the Universidad de Sevilla where I will be taking my Phonetics and Literature class starting next week! There are two campus for the Universidad de Sevilla, and we visited the one that is downtown in Centro where I live. The campus is about a twenty-five minute walk from my house, so a little bit farther than CIEE but still not too bad. The building where my classes will be is very large, one building is home to four different departments and five libraries, however in comparison to Madison the Universidad here is very small. What it lacks in size it makes up for in beauty though, all of the floors are marble, and there are vaulted ceilings and statues galore. In short it is breath-taking like 99% of the other buildings here in Sevilla. Also, our tour guide was quite the cutie as well so that made getting up at 8:30, that's early here, worth it!

The tour got done at 10:30 and we don't have class until 12, so we all headed back to the CIEE study center with an hour to kill. On our way back to CIEE we passed Convent Madre Dios, and one of the girls got all excited saying that we could buy sweets from the monjas or nuns. To make extra money for the convent, the nuns back sweets from ancient recipes and sell them. So we stopped in at the convent and bought twelve magdalenas for 4 euro. They were delicious, they reminded me of cornbread muffins but a little sweeter, very tasty and the convent is only two blocks from the study center so I'm definitely going to try some of the other treats they sell.

After buying muffins from the monjas we headed to the cafe just around the corner from CIEE and got some café. It was a much needed pick me up after the morning that we'd had, it was a lot of walking. We chatted about what trips we wanted to take, we're working on lining one up to Morocco and Gibraltar, and then it was time for class. Class was beyond boring today, it seemed to drag on forever despite Óscar's best attempts to liven the mood.

Finally, after class I went home for almuerzo, my señora had made curry and rice. So good! She is an awesome cook, and we talked about what classes I will be taking in the coming weeks. Then I took a short siesta with Pantera. Around five I went shopping with a friend to hit the rebajas or sales. I looked at a bunch of shoes but didn't end up buying any, I did however end up with two shirts and a dress, all for 35 euro. That is why I love rebajas, I will be so sad when they are done. Then it was on to homework, bummer but overall an awesome day!

Side note, while I was in class today I got a facebook message from one of my roommates back in Madison informing me that we have not one, but two bats in our apartment (one in her room and one in the kitchen) so she had taken refuge in my room. Unfortunately, that makes three bats that have tried to occupy our apartment so far this year, but I'm sure it will be taken care of by the time I get home :) On the bright side, now she has remembered to water my poor plants so some good has come of the bats!

Nos vemos!