Overall it was a pretty quiet week around here - mostly just went to class and finished up my summer job applications (finally done!). Monday night I went to this free 'learn how to teach English' workshop, which was sortof a waste of time. It was basically a 3 hour commercial for the program's yearlong course which takes place in Madrid. It was interesting to think about teaching English, though. I definitely have a pretty good grammar background because of 4 years of Latin, but I would have to brush up on the terms for everything because I only know the grammar vocabulary in Spanish! I might try to get a job here teaching English, I think it would be fun, and it would be a great way to work on my Spanish, even though it doesn't seem like it at first.
On Tuesday I didn't go to the school because the kids had a field trip to the Alcazar, so after class ended at 11, I sat outside by the fountain for 3-4 hours and read/wrote in my journal. It was beautiful, warm, and peaceful, and it was nice to have some time to sit and think - and I'm writing the journal in Spanish, so I still got to practice a little bit. On Wednesday, one of the professors who works for our program arranged a get-together for us with a bunch of Spanish students. We all went to this bar and just spoke Spanish and got free drinks - it was great! Really fun to meet them and talk to them. A couple of them were studying translation and interpretation, which means they spoke 3 or 4 languages. I was pretty jealous. But they were really good about speaking with them in Spanish and not switching over to English. We ended up spending a good amount of time with them, going to another bar afterwards to try some tapas and sweet wine made from grapes and oranges, and then to another place to dance. Hopefully we'll end up hanging out with them again, they were so nice! One of them was trying to teach me some of the slang that the young people use - he got up to lesson 8. It's tough for me to learn words in a noisy bar, though - I do much better when I can see them written down. But I did pick up a few things. I never noticed before how much slang we use in English and how difficult it would be to understand us for a foreign student in the US.
Besides that, Hannah and I finally started running yesterday, which is good because Dan signed me up for a sprint triathlon on June 13th, so I need to be in relatively good shape when I get back from Spain (which, by the way, is definitely in time for Brown commencement). A bunch of people from the group went to Morocco this morning, but I decided to go to Ronda with my friends Hilary, Thad, and Megan. It is this beautiful town about 2 hours from Seville, and just outside of it, there is a cave with paintings from 25,000 years ago. Can't wait.
Oh, and Sharon's coming to visit me over her Spring break! So exciting!
Friday, February 27, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Crazy Cadiz
Here are my pictures from the past couple weeks:
Cathedral
Alcazar
Triana
Jerez and Cadiz
Alameda
Granada
Last week was much less stressful than the previous week - pretty much just went to class and hung out in the afternoons. My classes are going well and are basically no work, which is awesome. Although I have already had a 15 minute presentation for my European Union class, but luckily it was about Spain and we coincidentally have spent the past month learning about Spain. Each person is responsible for presenting 2 of the countries in the EU, and I was lucky enough to get Spain! But besides that, I have basically had not much work to do - one poem to read but the professor told us that if we didn't understand it, we shouldn't worry about it. It's probably good though, because I have been focused on trying to find summer jobs in the past couple weeks, emailing and writing essays. Fun. We'll see what happens with that.
Besides school, a bunch of us have been taking a weekly dance class on Tuesday nights where we are learning the 4 Sevillian dances that we will need to know for the Feria. The first one was pretty tough, since it is very different from anything we have ever done before, but we are finally catching on and it's really fun. I haven't taken a dance class since I was 10, I think. The two hardest things about Sevillian dancing is that they start with the left foot instead of the right and that the music barely goes with the steps. Hopefully we'll catch on before the end of April. Other than the dance class, I decided to volunteer at a school in a class of 9-year-olds. I went for the first time on Thursday afternoon and it was really fun, but hard because unlike adults, kids don't slow down their speech for you and speak with a lot of abbreviations and colloquial phrases. I think I'll catch on soon and that it will really help me improve my Spanish. I pointed to Connecticut on a world map and they couldn't believe I live there, since it is so far away from here. Crazy. Besides the school volunteering, I am hoping to be able to teach English a couple times a week, and I am taking a free workshop this week to learn a little bit about it. And I think I also want to be matched up with an intercambio so I will be able to speak once a week with someone my age, hopefully a student at the University. Basically I'm doing anything and everything to learn as much Spanish as I can while I'm here.
This weekend was really fun, especially since I didn't even realize until late Friday afternoon that it was only Friday and not Saturday. I guess when I only have class M-Th and my Thursday class is from 9-11, it seems impossible for the weekend to be so long. I'm definitely going to go through some sort of shock when I go back to Brown, haha. On Friday afternoon I went with my friend Hilary on a self-guided tour of the Centro part of the city. We saw the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall), a bank that is in a building that was part of the Spanish Inquisition, and the palace of a Countess who basically stole all of her decorations from the nearby ancient Roman city called Italica, where we went a couple weeks ago with our program. Seriously, this woman had every floor covered with a mosaic from Italica and hundreds of Roman objects on the walls and in cases. It's no wonder there's not really anything left in Italica besides the remains of the buildings! It was fun to wander around the Centro, especially because I walk through it every day on the way home and now I have a better idea of what everything is. Friday night I went to see Slumdog Millionaire with a couple friends, and it was great. And in English, with Spanish subtitles. They don't really watch Spanish films here - basically for every 4 English movies there is maybe 1 Spanish movie. Most of the movies are dubbed over in Spanish, but there are a few theaters around that play the original versions in English with Spanish subtitles. Same thing with TV, it's really strange to me. I would think that they would get sick of the really annoying voices and the fact that the words never match how the mouths are moving. But I guess not, they are just used to it. I didn't feel bad for watching a movie in English - I tried to watch the Spanish subtitles as much as I could.
Saturday I spent with some friends planning our trips, and then Saturday night we went to a Carnival in Cadiz, which is about a 2 hour train ride from Seville. Apparently there is a month-long carnival in Cadiz and there are thousands of young people there at night just partying and hanging out, but in costume. Since they don't have Halloween here, this is their chance to dress up and there were huge groups of people dressed up as chickens and bullfighters etc. The strangest part was that their were people dressed up as Black people and Chinese people - something I can't even imagine ever happening in the US. I guess it's just because they don't really have cultural diversity here, but I don't know, I was creeped out by it. So everyone was dressed up on the train and we had to sit on the floor on the way there. Halfway through the train ride the security got off or moved to a different car and everyone started smoking! I couldn't believe it, I don't think I've every been on public transportation where anyone has smoked around me. Everyone was also drinking out of plastic kitchen cups with ice and had open bottles of alcohol, it was crazy. When we got there we were immediately surrounded by thousands of people and we basically just wandered around the city for a couple hours. It was really fun, although around 3 am we were ready to leave. We walked over to the train station and waited in line for it to open at 4:13am, which made no sense to me - why not just 4? So we rushed into the train station and set up our return tickets and ran to the train so we could get seats. We sat there for almost an hour before the train left, got into Seville at 7, took the bus home, and got there around 8am, only to go right back to sleep and wake up this afternoon at 3:15pm. Lunch was waiting when we woke up. Oh how I love Spain, and my Senora.
This week should be pretty relaxed too - I'm going to get my homework done after this and then probably do a little more planning tonight. And this week I'm also going to start running outside I think, especially since it's between 60 and 70 degrees every day. I finally feel like I've really settled into my life here and can accomplish the thing I want to do every day and it's great.
Oh, and my computer's back! Skype me!
Cathedral
Alcazar
Triana
Jerez and Cadiz
Alameda
Granada
Last week was much less stressful than the previous week - pretty much just went to class and hung out in the afternoons. My classes are going well and are basically no work, which is awesome. Although I have already had a 15 minute presentation for my European Union class, but luckily it was about Spain and we coincidentally have spent the past month learning about Spain. Each person is responsible for presenting 2 of the countries in the EU, and I was lucky enough to get Spain! But besides that, I have basically had not much work to do - one poem to read but the professor told us that if we didn't understand it, we shouldn't worry about it. It's probably good though, because I have been focused on trying to find summer jobs in the past couple weeks, emailing and writing essays. Fun. We'll see what happens with that.
Besides school, a bunch of us have been taking a weekly dance class on Tuesday nights where we are learning the 4 Sevillian dances that we will need to know for the Feria. The first one was pretty tough, since it is very different from anything we have ever done before, but we are finally catching on and it's really fun. I haven't taken a dance class since I was 10, I think. The two hardest things about Sevillian dancing is that they start with the left foot instead of the right and that the music barely goes with the steps. Hopefully we'll catch on before the end of April. Other than the dance class, I decided to volunteer at a school in a class of 9-year-olds. I went for the first time on Thursday afternoon and it was really fun, but hard because unlike adults, kids don't slow down their speech for you and speak with a lot of abbreviations and colloquial phrases. I think I'll catch on soon and that it will really help me improve my Spanish. I pointed to Connecticut on a world map and they couldn't believe I live there, since it is so far away from here. Crazy. Besides the school volunteering, I am hoping to be able to teach English a couple times a week, and I am taking a free workshop this week to learn a little bit about it. And I think I also want to be matched up with an intercambio so I will be able to speak once a week with someone my age, hopefully a student at the University. Basically I'm doing anything and everything to learn as much Spanish as I can while I'm here.
This weekend was really fun, especially since I didn't even realize until late Friday afternoon that it was only Friday and not Saturday. I guess when I only have class M-Th and my Thursday class is from 9-11, it seems impossible for the weekend to be so long. I'm definitely going to go through some sort of shock when I go back to Brown, haha. On Friday afternoon I went with my friend Hilary on a self-guided tour of the Centro part of the city. We saw the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall), a bank that is in a building that was part of the Spanish Inquisition, and the palace of a Countess who basically stole all of her decorations from the nearby ancient Roman city called Italica, where we went a couple weeks ago with our program. Seriously, this woman had every floor covered with a mosaic from Italica and hundreds of Roman objects on the walls and in cases. It's no wonder there's not really anything left in Italica besides the remains of the buildings! It was fun to wander around the Centro, especially because I walk through it every day on the way home and now I have a better idea of what everything is. Friday night I went to see Slumdog Millionaire with a couple friends, and it was great. And in English, with Spanish subtitles. They don't really watch Spanish films here - basically for every 4 English movies there is maybe 1 Spanish movie. Most of the movies are dubbed over in Spanish, but there are a few theaters around that play the original versions in English with Spanish subtitles. Same thing with TV, it's really strange to me. I would think that they would get sick of the really annoying voices and the fact that the words never match how the mouths are moving. But I guess not, they are just used to it. I didn't feel bad for watching a movie in English - I tried to watch the Spanish subtitles as much as I could.
Saturday I spent with some friends planning our trips, and then Saturday night we went to a Carnival in Cadiz, which is about a 2 hour train ride from Seville. Apparently there is a month-long carnival in Cadiz and there are thousands of young people there at night just partying and hanging out, but in costume. Since they don't have Halloween here, this is their chance to dress up and there were huge groups of people dressed up as chickens and bullfighters etc. The strangest part was that their were people dressed up as Black people and Chinese people - something I can't even imagine ever happening in the US. I guess it's just because they don't really have cultural diversity here, but I don't know, I was creeped out by it. So everyone was dressed up on the train and we had to sit on the floor on the way there. Halfway through the train ride the security got off or moved to a different car and everyone started smoking! I couldn't believe it, I don't think I've every been on public transportation where anyone has smoked around me. Everyone was also drinking out of plastic kitchen cups with ice and had open bottles of alcohol, it was crazy. When we got there we were immediately surrounded by thousands of people and we basically just wandered around the city for a couple hours. It was really fun, although around 3 am we were ready to leave. We walked over to the train station and waited in line for it to open at 4:13am, which made no sense to me - why not just 4? So we rushed into the train station and set up our return tickets and ran to the train so we could get seats. We sat there for almost an hour before the train left, got into Seville at 7, took the bus home, and got there around 8am, only to go right back to sleep and wake up this afternoon at 3:15pm. Lunch was waiting when we woke up. Oh how I love Spain, and my Senora.
This week should be pretty relaxed too - I'm going to get my homework done after this and then probably do a little more planning tonight. And this week I'm also going to start running outside I think, especially since it's between 60 and 70 degrees every day. I finally feel like I've really settled into my life here and can accomplish the thing I want to do every day and it's great.
Oh, and my computer's back! Skype me!
Monday, February 16, 2009
Granada
We went to Granada this weekend as a group - a trip that my program had organized. It was really great, lots of interesting things to see and do. And the best part was we got to stay in a hotel! Granda is about a 3/4 hour drive from Sevilla so we left here on Saturday morning and got there around 1:30. We checked in to the hotel and then wandered around the city for a while to find a place to eat our bocadillas (sandwiches) that our families had made for us and then to explore what was there. We stumbled across a vitamineria, which is a little shop that makes fresh fruit juice and smoothies. I got juice with pomegranate, pineapple, and orange. We pretty much just wandered around until about 4pm, when we went back to the hotel to rest a little before meeting up with the group at 4:30. Unfortunately, we were running about 4 minutes late and the group left without us and 3 other people! Luckily, we had done some exploring before so we were able to find them, but it was a bit stressful. So much for the Spanish stereotype of always being late, I guess i learned my lesson - even though almost all of my classes have started at least 10 minutes late, haha. Anyway, Granada was one of the most important Arab villages that was taken by the Reyes Catolicos in 1492. First, we went to the Capilla Real, which is the Church where the Reyes Catolicos, or Ferdinand and Isabella. are buried with their daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. I thought that we were just going to see their tombs which we did - huge marble statues right next to the altar - but then we went down some stairs and all of a sudden we saw 5 coffins. It was pretty unreal, since the Reyes Catolicos died almost 500 years ago. We looked around a little museum in the Capilla Real which had things like clothing and a crown from Ferdinand and Isabella and then we walked up to the Arab village, from which you can see an absolutely beautiful view of la Alhambra, which is the palace in Granada. We walked down the mountain after viewing la Alhambra at sunset and stopped at an ancient Arab pastry shop. We all got different things and shared, some were good and some were not so great... but basically they use a lot of nuts, in their dessert and not that much sugar. I think it's really that we just use so much sugar in the US that things here don't taste very sweet even though they are. Anyway, after a little while, we found our way back to the hotel where we were served a private dinner and a lot of wine. We hung out for a while in one room in the hotel and then ended up going to an Erasmus party, which is the program that organizes study abroad for Europe (at least I think I'm describing it correctly). Anyway, it was really interesting because there were so many different people there, and everyone's common language was Spanish! Although some of the people spoke better English than Spanish, which was interesting. It ended up being a fun night!
We woke up really early on Sunday morning and we at the Alhambra for a tour by 9:15. La Alhambra is the palace in Granada that is a mixture of Arab and Christian buildings. Basically, the Arabs had built this huge palace and when the Reyes Catolicos took over, they and their son-in-law (Carlos I) added a lot of other buildings, but the ancient Arab palace is still completely intact and it is incredible. The two women that run our program here in Spain know absolutely everything, and one of them led our 5 hour marathon tour through la Alhambra. We were able to see a lot, including the ancient Arab palace, the palace built by Carlos I, and a beautiful view of the entire city of Granada from the tallest tower in la Alhambra. Basically, it was awesome. I'll definitely post pictures here when I get my computer back (should be in a week! thanks Mom and Dad!). We went from la Alhambra back to the hotel for lunch, and then back to Sevilla to sleep, because by that time, we were exhausted. It was a fantastic weekend, and it is so incredible that we have learned so much about these places in our orientation classes so far and now we are able to go out and see them.
We woke up really early on Sunday morning and we at the Alhambra for a tour by 9:15. La Alhambra is the palace in Granada that is a mixture of Arab and Christian buildings. Basically, the Arabs had built this huge palace and when the Reyes Catolicos took over, they and their son-in-law (Carlos I) added a lot of other buildings, but the ancient Arab palace is still completely intact and it is incredible. The two women that run our program here in Spain know absolutely everything, and one of them led our 5 hour marathon tour through la Alhambra. We were able to see a lot, including the ancient Arab palace, the palace built by Carlos I, and a beautiful view of the entire city of Granada from the tallest tower in la Alhambra. Basically, it was awesome. I'll definitely post pictures here when I get my computer back (should be in a week! thanks Mom and Dad!). We went from la Alhambra back to the hotel for lunch, and then back to Sevilla to sleep, because by that time, we were exhausted. It was a fantastic weekend, and it is so incredible that we have learned so much about these places in our orientation classes so far and now we are able to go out and see them.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Class = Stress
After a bit of a stressful week, I finally decided on my classes. Brown has a silly requirement (Brown? requirements?) that students who are abroad must take at least half of their classes at the local institution, but when I went to the regular classes, I found them very difficult to follow because the professors speak so quickly and with such strong accents. Anyway, after a several email exchange with the study abroad office, I was able to get other classes approved for this requirement and now I am all set. These are the four classes that I think I will be taking this semester: The image of Spain through the cinema; Spain and the European Union; Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Middle Ages; and Literature and the City: the Case of Sevilla. They all sound pretty interesting and definitely different from the classes I normally take at Brown, so I am excited to learn about very different subjects. And they are, of course, all in Spanish, which is a challenge but theoretically will get easier as the semester moves forward. I am really enjoying having class in Spanish so far, it keeps me on my toes.
Hannah and I didn't really do much besides school last week to be honest, which is a bit of a drag, but I'm guessing that it might have been my most stressful week of the semester so I guess I can't really complain. School here is so different than in the US - for example, I asked my professor the other day when the exams were so that I could plan my travels and he said he didn't know yet. So oh well. In my classes in the US, the exams are mentioned on the first day, first thing. I asked my Senora about this and she was like yeah, that's pretty normal, things are really relaxed around here. And if you miss the exam, it's probably not a big deal. Haha.
Speaking of travel plans, I think I finalized mine, which is awesome! I am going to take 2 big trips: one with a couple friends to Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, and another by myself to visit friends in Milan and Paris. Besides those, we are going to definitely make it to Portugal and hopefully to Madrid and Barcelona for weekends. I'm really excited about it, but a little disappointed that we probably won't be going to Morocco. There is a trip in 2 weekends through something called Discover Sevilla, but it is all filled up at this point and I'm not sure we are going to have enough people to create another bus. I mean, I guess it all works out because I think Morocco is on the UN's 'do not visit' list.
Hmm I'm trying to think of what else is new over here. I'm busy working on a list of places to apply for summer jobs, and I finally submitted an application to Health Career Connections last week. Now I'm just working on Summerbridge, and hopefully I'll be able to find a few more in the next couple of weeks.
My Spanish is still improving, little by little, although we haven't spoken as much Spanish lately as we did at the beginning of the trip. It's probably inevitable, but I still would like to try and speak it more. The other day, I was talking to my Senora about Gazpacho because she was saying she makes it a lot in the summer and I was trying to ask her if Spaniards put cilantro in their Gazpacho. Anyway, I didn't know the Spanish word for cilantro, so I was trying to explain it by describing it, but then I realized that all the food we use it for they probably don't have. So I was about to give up when Hannah said the word 'cilantro' with a Spanish accent, and Loli knew exactly what she was saying. I guess cilantro in English = cilantro in Spanish. I should try that more often, haha.
We watched Eurotrip in my European Union class in order to look at how Americans view Europeans and now I have to write a 2 page paper about it. I love school here.
Hannah and I didn't really do much besides school last week to be honest, which is a bit of a drag, but I'm guessing that it might have been my most stressful week of the semester so I guess I can't really complain. School here is so different than in the US - for example, I asked my professor the other day when the exams were so that I could plan my travels and he said he didn't know yet. So oh well. In my classes in the US, the exams are mentioned on the first day, first thing. I asked my Senora about this and she was like yeah, that's pretty normal, things are really relaxed around here. And if you miss the exam, it's probably not a big deal. Haha.
Speaking of travel plans, I think I finalized mine, which is awesome! I am going to take 2 big trips: one with a couple friends to Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, and another by myself to visit friends in Milan and Paris. Besides those, we are going to definitely make it to Portugal and hopefully to Madrid and Barcelona for weekends. I'm really excited about it, but a little disappointed that we probably won't be going to Morocco. There is a trip in 2 weekends through something called Discover Sevilla, but it is all filled up at this point and I'm not sure we are going to have enough people to create another bus. I mean, I guess it all works out because I think Morocco is on the UN's 'do not visit' list.
Hmm I'm trying to think of what else is new over here. I'm busy working on a list of places to apply for summer jobs, and I finally submitted an application to Health Career Connections last week. Now I'm just working on Summerbridge, and hopefully I'll be able to find a few more in the next couple of weeks.
My Spanish is still improving, little by little, although we haven't spoken as much Spanish lately as we did at the beginning of the trip. It's probably inevitable, but I still would like to try and speak it more. The other day, I was talking to my Senora about Gazpacho because she was saying she makes it a lot in the summer and I was trying to ask her if Spaniards put cilantro in their Gazpacho. Anyway, I didn't know the Spanish word for cilantro, so I was trying to explain it by describing it, but then I realized that all the food we use it for they probably don't have. So I was about to give up when Hannah said the word 'cilantro' with a Spanish accent, and Loli knew exactly what she was saying. I guess cilantro in English = cilantro in Spanish. I should try that more often, haha.
We watched Eurotrip in my European Union class in order to look at how Americans view Europeans and now I have to write a 2 page paper about it. I love school here.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
It's Been a Little While
Sorry for the lack of posting. My computer was unfixable in Spain and I had to send it back to the US so Dad can take care of it, like he always does. Hannah has been awesome and let me use her computer a lot, my Senora also has a computer that I can use sometimes, and I realized that my Ipod touch has wifi, so I have been using that to check my email. However, I apologize in advance if I don't respond quickly to your emails or facebook posts - it's only because I don't want to take up too much time on other people's computers and it really takes forever to type something long on my ipod touch.
Anyway, enough of that. Since my last post, I have been doing lots of fun things! Let's see, the last thing I wrote about here was the futbol game. The past 2 weeks have been filled with orientation classes every day from 3:30 - 7 and ended with 2 exams and a final assignment last Thursday. It's a relief to have those classes over because I didn't really like the schedule of having class so late in the day. It also caused us to have to eat lunch without our Senora. However, I'm a little nervous for classes to start on Monday, just because I'm not really sure what to expect. So far, I am definitely taking a class offered by my program called Spain and the European Union as well as a class offered by the University called The Image of Spain through Cinema. Besides that, I am deciding between a couple and I am also deciding if I want to take a psychology class. Pros: Probably will get credit through Brown, it is called Social Psychology and Health and Brown offers nothing like it, it will definitely be really interesting to learn about psychology in Spanish. Cons: the building is pretty far away, I have a chance to not have class on Tuesday/Thursday if I don´t take it, part of my goal here was to not do work and it will probably be challenging, although I´m not sure about that. We´ll see what happens, I´m going to try it on Tuesday and then decide. I´m also shopping a class about Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain as well as a class about 20th century art (where we´d be studying Miro, Rebecca!).
Enough about classes. I´ve really been trying to take advantage of the city while I am here and still have lots of time. It rained a lot last week so we barely did anything, but the past couple days have been beautiful, although a little too cold for me. Which I know I shouldn´t be complaining about as most of the people that are reading this are in New England, but we don´t have central heating. So we went on a walking tour of the Northern part of the city that included a visit to an arts center which had a photography exhibit as well as a visit to a monastery which was unfortunately closed. We´ll have to go back because apparently they only take visitors on Mondays. Also, we went to a really interesting Church in San Lorenzo. The part that really distinguished it from the other churches and cathedrals we have seen so far was that this is their community church and it was ornately decorated and enormous. It was beautiful, although intimidating, and it got me really excited/curious for what Semana Santa is going to bring. This past weekend, we went to the Museum of Fine Arts. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that museums are free in Seville on Sundays. That is something else that has been different here: there are a million student discounts on everything and ways to do things for free. I guess there is just so much history around that they want you to experience it. The Museum was absolutely fantastic, and included works from the Renaissance up to the 1900s. There were also a lot of works by the famous Sevillian painter, Murillo, who we learned about in our orientation classes. I love being able to learn about something in the classroom and walking 10 minutes to experience it. Pretty great. Besides the educational stuff, we´ve been trying to navigate the night life as well. My Senora´s daughter gave us a list of clubs to check out and we went to one of them the other night - it was fun, but definitely not our style. Oh well. There are a ton of bars and clubs about 3 blocks from us that we´ve been figuring out and that´s been really fun.
Finally, the last thing I´ve been trying to get done is find a summer job, which is proving difficult without a computer and from Spain. Luckily Hannah is trying to find one too, so we can commiserate a little bit. Right now, I´m working on applying to something called Health Career Connection where you apply and tell them where you want to work and if they accept you, they find you something to do. Sounds pretty cool to me, but I have no idea how competitive it is. I´m also going to apply to Providence Summerbridge, where I would be teaching middle schoolers for the summer. Sounds tough, but also probably really rewarding. We´ll see what happens. Right now, I´m supposed to be writing a cover letter, so I should really get to that. I only have so much time before class starts!
Last piece of exciting news: Ethan is coming to visit me in April, during his Spring break! I´m really looking forward to it already, especially because he´ll be here for the last 2 days of Semana Santa. Sharon is looking into visitng, and right now I´m planning my travels for the semester with all my friends from my program. They are: Morocco, Portugal, a week long trip to Berlin/Prague/Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid, and Paris. Pretty long list, but luckily I found a flight to Barcelona for five euros. I´m not sure how that´s possible, but I´m really not going to argue with anyone. Anyway, I´ll try to keep this updated a little more!
Anyway, enough of that. Since my last post, I have been doing lots of fun things! Let's see, the last thing I wrote about here was the futbol game. The past 2 weeks have been filled with orientation classes every day from 3:30 - 7 and ended with 2 exams and a final assignment last Thursday. It's a relief to have those classes over because I didn't really like the schedule of having class so late in the day. It also caused us to have to eat lunch without our Senora. However, I'm a little nervous for classes to start on Monday, just because I'm not really sure what to expect. So far, I am definitely taking a class offered by my program called Spain and the European Union as well as a class offered by the University called The Image of Spain through Cinema. Besides that, I am deciding between a couple and I am also deciding if I want to take a psychology class. Pros: Probably will get credit through Brown, it is called Social Psychology and Health and Brown offers nothing like it, it will definitely be really interesting to learn about psychology in Spanish. Cons: the building is pretty far away, I have a chance to not have class on Tuesday/Thursday if I don´t take it, part of my goal here was to not do work and it will probably be challenging, although I´m not sure about that. We´ll see what happens, I´m going to try it on Tuesday and then decide. I´m also shopping a class about Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain as well as a class about 20th century art (where we´d be studying Miro, Rebecca!).
Enough about classes. I´ve really been trying to take advantage of the city while I am here and still have lots of time. It rained a lot last week so we barely did anything, but the past couple days have been beautiful, although a little too cold for me. Which I know I shouldn´t be complaining about as most of the people that are reading this are in New England, but we don´t have central heating. So we went on a walking tour of the Northern part of the city that included a visit to an arts center which had a photography exhibit as well as a visit to a monastery which was unfortunately closed. We´ll have to go back because apparently they only take visitors on Mondays. Also, we went to a really interesting Church in San Lorenzo. The part that really distinguished it from the other churches and cathedrals we have seen so far was that this is their community church and it was ornately decorated and enormous. It was beautiful, although intimidating, and it got me really excited/curious for what Semana Santa is going to bring. This past weekend, we went to the Museum of Fine Arts. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that museums are free in Seville on Sundays. That is something else that has been different here: there are a million student discounts on everything and ways to do things for free. I guess there is just so much history around that they want you to experience it. The Museum was absolutely fantastic, and included works from the Renaissance up to the 1900s. There were also a lot of works by the famous Sevillian painter, Murillo, who we learned about in our orientation classes. I love being able to learn about something in the classroom and walking 10 minutes to experience it. Pretty great. Besides the educational stuff, we´ve been trying to navigate the night life as well. My Senora´s daughter gave us a list of clubs to check out and we went to one of them the other night - it was fun, but definitely not our style. Oh well. There are a ton of bars and clubs about 3 blocks from us that we´ve been figuring out and that´s been really fun.
Finally, the last thing I´ve been trying to get done is find a summer job, which is proving difficult without a computer and from Spain. Luckily Hannah is trying to find one too, so we can commiserate a little bit. Right now, I´m working on applying to something called Health Career Connection where you apply and tell them where you want to work and if they accept you, they find you something to do. Sounds pretty cool to me, but I have no idea how competitive it is. I´m also going to apply to Providence Summerbridge, where I would be teaching middle schoolers for the summer. Sounds tough, but also probably really rewarding. We´ll see what happens. Right now, I´m supposed to be writing a cover letter, so I should really get to that. I only have so much time before class starts!
Last piece of exciting news: Ethan is coming to visit me in April, during his Spring break! I´m really looking forward to it already, especially because he´ll be here for the last 2 days of Semana Santa. Sharon is looking into visitng, and right now I´m planning my travels for the semester with all my friends from my program. They are: Morocco, Portugal, a week long trip to Berlin/Prague/Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid, and Paris. Pretty long list, but luckily I found a flight to Barcelona for five euros. I´m not sure how that´s possible, but I´m really not going to argue with anyone. Anyway, I´ll try to keep this updated a little more!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
