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!