Cádiz, Córdoba, y el Cerdo

So last weekend there was "Carnival en Cádiz" which is a city about two hours away by bus. They have their carnival which is a week long, and we choose to go the first weekend. Everyone dresses up in costumes and goes all out. It's different than costumes in the United States because these are not necessarily your typical cat or indian outfits that you can easily put together. All bets are off.. my personal favorite costume was a group of cooked turkeys. They looked like they could have been set on a silver platter and eaten on thanksgiving! ; )
However, there were a lot of chickens, pirates (myself included) and even some policemen which wasn't that unusual. I had been hoping to see more of the city, but everyone seemed to meet up at the one main plaza and then travel down the little back winding streets. There were venders in the main sections selling sweets, churros, fries, hamburgers, nuts and other little foods to snack on. CAUTION: most of the stores were closed so people resorted to peeing in the streets...and it happened everywhere so you had to be careful where you walked. When in Rome..

To sum it up, there were loads of people just partying in the streets. It was fun, but I'm hoping I get to see more of Cádiz again on a regular day. This wasn't exactly a trip for tours!

This was our second week of classes, and I don't have too much to add except that I finally met with my business to start my internship. The building is near the downtown area which I LOVE and is gorgeous (river area) so I am excited to be there, but it is a good 35 minute walk to work. I had my orientation meeting with my "boss" on friday, and everyone there was so nice. It is a tourism company so my job is going to be directing people when they come in asking for directions or any other questions they have. I think this will be VERY helpful to practice my spanish each week, and I'll hopefully get to learn a little more insight about Sevilla. I start Tuesday...

Then after my meeting with work, there is a scavenger hunt type game called "Gymkhana" through our program. They give us clues to certain hot spots around the city and we have to find the location and take a picture in our group. Pam, Christine and I are a team and we spent the rest of Friday wandering around the streets of Sevilla trying to finish our tasks. On our way, we found the BEST ice cream shop called Rayas, which just opened up from the winter. We also found what we believe to be the spanish version of Dunkin Donuts (Duffin Dagle).

Then yesterday we went to Córdoba with our CIEE program. The city is an hour and a half away by bus, and is situated on the same river that is in Sevilla (Guadalquivir). It had some roman ruins, but it is most famous for La Mezquita which was once an Arab mosque. However, after the Spanirds reconquered their lands, they kept part of the building but made it into a church with a cathedral inserted into the middle. So there are two very distinct styles in this monument. the middle is very tall and brightly lit (the catholic part) surrounded by the arab pilars and arches which is much darker and more open in general. Today, the whole thing is considered the church/cathedral, despite the two distinct styles. It was pretty cool to finally see this place that I had been studying and learning about since high school.

Next on our tour we got to see a Jewish synagogue which was kinda cool because spain is SOO catholic. So that was interesting to see. And lastly, before our break we got to see the Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos which had some pretty gardens and some arab bathrooms and a tower that you could see the river from! It was pretty, and I love being able to look out and see all the buildings.

As a side note, the spaniards here are SO nice. This is mostly my experience dealing with kids my age, but they are always more than willing to speak in spanish with you and talk to you. My favorite example of this was one time we were in McDonald's (free wifi dont judge) and I was asking a group about the Sevilla soccer team since there was a game that day. Anyways, I went up to a table and asked him if it was a league game and the girl farthest from me responded, "un momento" (wait), got up from her chair, walked around the table, stood next to me and then asked me to repeat my question. I could never imagine anyone going through that much trouble in the United States to answer a question. Another time, a group of kids our age were outside hanging out before the night began aka botellon and two of them awkwardly approached our group trying to catch someones eye to say hello! I was the first one to see them so we opened up our circle to include them, and they were so nice. I think part of the reason I am so surprised about this because some of the customer service here is HORRIBLE. Like the one time we were kicked out of the cafe before I had even gotten my coffee. So this is a much better impression!

Finalment, el cerdo is the word for pig which I didn't know/forgot so I decided it made a nice alliteration (besides the fact that it is pronounced as an S in that word).

Relax, we're in Sevilla

This past week was pretty crazy here for me in Sevilla. It was our second and last week of our intensive session which meant a presentation, a final exam and papers/homework to complete. Somehow a three hour class each day seemed to be taking all of my time, and I know I haven't been the only one overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we have to do.

Wednesday we finally made the boxed brownies that I brought as a gift from home. We were encouraged to bring things from the United States to show our families here some of our customs or traditions, and I heard that they don't have boxed cakes/brownies etc here so I thought it would be fun to make with the family. Our mom had been saving them for when their grandkids were over (julia-9 and cecilia-6). The girls were adorable and loved them. They also somehow managed to steal my camera and ceci had her own photoshoot.

Friday night we stayed here for an event with our program, but Saturday a group of 15 of us went to Ronda and Marbella for the day. They are both south of sevilla. Ronda was a two hour bus ride and then Marbella was an additional hour after that. Ronda was gorgeous. It had some of the prettiest landscape I've seen. It was more rolling hills of green than anything else, but the views were awesome. There were a lot of lookouts to take pictures at and I took way too many, but I figured it was worth it. Also, we got to see some of the Arabe baños which is where the Arabs had their baths. Quite interesting.

We left Ronda around 6pm and then made it to Marbella. Marbella is on the Coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We checked into our hostel which was owned by a Scottish man! He spoke english and gave us a complimentary welcome drink and was very accommodating. The next day we walked along the beach and then along the port side of the city. There were a lot of shops on the boardwalk and they were all expensive brand name labels. I guess the reason it wasn't cute little boutiques is that one of the guides told us they were going to make this port a more touristy/upscale harbor which didn't happen when the spaniards decided they didn't want to have to give up their siesta in the middle of the day! Later we walked out onto the breakwall area and took a lot of photos of the city with the mountains in the background. It was a great weekend!

Anddd to top it off it was Superbowl sunday when we got back. The game went on around 12:30 am here since we are 6-7 hours ahead. We went to the Irish pub for the game ; )

Also on Tuesday, since Christine and I hadn't started on our internship, we made it to the cathedral and La Giralda which are both very famous in Sevilla and Spain in general. La catedral is the oldest gothic church in all of europe I believe, which is pretty cool. At the top of La Girlada, (it is a tower from) there is lookout points and you can see all of Sevilla. It is pretty cool to see and climb. There was a lot of touristy looking people when we went- some from France and a lot from China too. Fun Day!

Feb. 11

This has been our first week of real classes! I am taking three classes and doing an internship which counts for three credits. I already took my two week intensive session class which was three credits so at the end of the semester all 15 credits will transfer. I am actually waiting to start my internship because my company was late in sending in some government documents. This is good/bad at the same time because I have this week easy, but we still have to complete 100 hours of time in order to receive credit. THEREFORE, i have to work more hours later which they said will just get harder to do.

However, my other two classes now are business classes and one class that I took as an elective. It is mass communication in Spain and our teacher works at the radio station in Sevilla. We actually took a field trip to the studio on our second day of class and the stations that go through her company are CanalSur, Canal Fiesta, Canal Andalucia and Canal Flamenco. She showed us where they film and two kids even got to do a pretend radio interview. Kinda cool! However it was wayyyy across town for me, and took a good 30 minutes by bus to get to. I got see more of Sevilla though ; )

If anyone was interested in the food here, we had a new fun dish last night that I've never seen before and really liked. It was like an egg pizza. YUmm. It had the dough of a crescent roll and then basically egg maybe potatoe? and onion and maybeeee cheese. I said it was a mix of pizza and tortilla de patata for those of you what the tortilla de patata is like.