So I went on a day trip to Córdoba this past Saturday and it was fabulous, and I took about a million pictures. I'm working on a blog post to go along with them but it is taking forever, and I really wanted to post today so here it goes.
Today was my first day of REAL classes here in Sevilla, up until now I had just been taking a two-week intensive grammar class. That being said, my 'real' class that I took today, Culture and Cuisine of Spain, was much more relaxed than my grammar class. All we did today was meet our professor and she explained what we would be learning about and how the class would be graded, it all took less than half an hour, and class is scheduled to be an hour and a half... This can only mean one thing, I'm finally going to get to experience the much talked about but highly elusive "syllabus week", where you just show up for class and don't have to worry about learning or homework. People claim this happens back at UW-Madison but those people must not be taking the classes that I have been, 95% of all my classes back in Madison always start off with a lecture right away.
After class I headed home, and shockingly all of the shops were open, advertising the final week of sales. This was dangerous and very tempting, although I resisted I ended up with a caramel colored real leather jacket with quilted lining for just 35 Euros, and a skirt. Did I really need another coat, probably not. Has it already become the best coat I've ever bought, yup. It really makes me blend in with all of the people here and it is the perfect weight for the weird weather thats been going on here in Sevilla, cold in the morning and night but scorching during the day. Over lunch my Señora and I talked about the movie streaming site Megavideo being shut-down, she was very upset about it because none of the traditional sites such as Netflix or Hulu work here. It ended in me awkwardly trying to explain SOPA to her, I'm not sure how much got through but I tried.
Now for the most exciting part! Today was my first meeting with my intercambio group. The intercambio program is run through my school, CIEE, and is a way for Spanish and American students to get to know each other and work on their English and Spanish. My intercambio group consists of six Spaniards, two girls and four boys, and 5 Americans (including myself), four girls and one boy. We met at the Universidad de Sevilla at 6 pm and went to a café nearby where we stayed until 10 pm! The café had a promotion called "Super Lunes" or "Super Monday" and the deal was two mugs of beer and a plate of nachos or fries for 2 euro, we took advantage of this deal. We spent four hours talking about everything from where we were from, to our majors to how to say certain words in each other's languages. They loved to hear us speak English almost as much as we liked to listen to them try to speak it. I thought that was interesting because Spaniards usually get a kick out of Americans trying to speak Spanish not English. I think a lot of it was due to the fact that the five of us were all better at Spanish than they were at English. One of the funniest things that happened this evening was spending five minutes trying to teach them how to pronounce the words "bird", "beer" and "beard" differently. It was hysterical.
We meet every Monday night which is perfect for me because I only have one class on Mondays, at 9 am so I'll have plenty of time to do homework and hangout with my intercambios. The Spaniards are all really excited to have intercambios because there aren't enough Americans to go around, so if you get one you are kind of special! In addition to meeting some new Spanish friends I met new American friends as well, the other four Americans are here with CIEE but through the business program. I'm in the Liberal Arts program so I'd never met any of them, but the were all very welcoming and included me even though they all knew each other already. I think I will get a lot out of the intercambio experience, and I'm really looking forward to Monday nights now!
On a less happy note, as I'm assuming you all know there is a decent amount of financial unrest in Spain right now. They're broke, they have a ridiculously high unemployment rate and the people are not happy. Although I'd read about this in the news back home it had never affected my experience here. I hadn't seen any protests and you see less homeless people here than in Madison, but today I saw my first protest. It was in la Plaza Nueva which I walk through to get to the Universidad. Funnily enough I didn't know a protest was happening until I stumbled across it, because it was 5 pm and the streets are really busy during this time so I thought it was just the usual crowd until I saw the flags. Even though I walked right into it I didn't feel unsafe, it was very quiet and peaceful and unlike some of the protests I've experienced (read Madison) the protestors left me and everyone else alone. There was no heckling or even trying to explain to passersby why they were protesting. I was curious as to why exactly they were protesting so I looked it up, apparently they were protesting the threat of having some of their social security benefits taken away. I'm glad I know what it was about but I hope things stay as calm as they have been in Sevilla while I'm here.
Tomorrow I'll probably post about Córdoba but I'm going out for my friends birthday so we'll see! Hasta Luego.
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