So. As I’m sure is quite obvious by now, I’m not very good at keeping up with this whole blogging thing. Hopefully someday I’ll finish writing about my Scotland trip (thought perhaps I will have to be less detailed), but that’s going to have to go on hiatus. Because as of today, February 3, 2010 (I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to post this), I am spending the spring semester studying in Sevilla, Spain. I am going with a program called the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies. It’s a fairly small study abroad program; it only has programs in Spain and Argentina, and sometimes, though not currently, Cuba. I will be taking most of my classes at CC-CS’s program center, but I will also be taking one class at the Universidad de Sevilla. I have not been able to sign up for said class yet, as I believe I have to pass some sort of placement exam first. However, I can tell you about my CC-CS classes. For a three week Intensive Period, when we just have one class to focus on getting comfortable speaking Spanish, I will be taking Advanced-Present Day Spanish Usage. For the remainder of the semester, I will be taking Women Writers of Spain, Spain and Immigration, Cultural Realities of Spain (a one hour required class to help us deal with culture shock and contemporary Spanish cultural phenomena—I hear it’s pretty easy and fun), and Regional Folk Dance.
Beginning in a few nights, I will be staying with a host family. Right now, though, I am staying in the Hotel NH Plaza de Armas, where we will have our orientation for a few days. I got in about three and a half hours ago, after which I promptly took a shower, called my parents, and then fell asleep for a few hours.
The trip in was fairly uneventful. The only thing I can think of worthy of remark that for a little while, early in the morning, somewhere over Portugal, western Spain, and the Atlantic, outside the plane window was a sea of cloud, unbroken for as far as I could see, tinged with pink and orange with the sunrise. Other than that, it was an average flight, although oddly empty, such that most of the passengers in the main cabin had a row to themselves.
I was rather nervous throughout the trip, because although I’ve been abroad before, I’ve always had someone to hold my hand through customs and everything. This time, I was on my own. But everything went fine. Quite honestly, the thing I was most scared of for the entire semester was getting a cab from the Sevilla airport to this hotel. But luckily, I met up with some others in my program at the airport, so I was able to share a cab. And even if I hadn’t been able to share one, I think I was worrying too much. It ended up being a quite easy process. But there you go—I like to worry about silly things like taking taxis.
The hotel seems like a fairly nice one. There are some kind of generic paintings of bowls of fruit and cups of coffee on the wall. And of course there’s a wet bar with ridiculously priced beverages, including whisky and Bacardi. The window opens onto a Plaza of some sort—perhaps the Plaza de Armas for which the hotel is named—with a semi circle of blue poles in the center. There’s a shopping center off to the left of the plaza.
My impressions of the city so far are limited to my taxi ride and the view from my window. There’s more graffiti than I expected, but then again, it is a city. It had kind of an odd smell, too. Mostly, though, I felt how close everything was, as I often do in settings any more urban than Albuquerque (which, for those of you who have not been to my lovely hometown, is a legitimate city, but is much more open and spaced out then large, urban centers I’ve visited like San Francisco or Edinburgh). Such settings often make me feel kind of nervous, but I suppose I will get used to it. The descent upon Sevilla from the plane, though, was beautiful, as was the descent into Madrid. There are beautiful, tall, snow-capped mountains everywhere, and most of you know how I love the mountains. I really hope I have the opportunity to go hiking in them at some point.
Anyway, I will wrap up, as I’m mostly just rambling. The people I met at the airport and I were thinking of doing some exploring once siesta ended. I believe it ended a half hour ago, so perhaps we’ll go out soon, and then I may have something more interesting to say.
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