¡Uy! Sorry it’s been so long since I updated. Homework and school kind of attacked. I will try to update you on everything important that has happened in the interim. I can’t believe I’ve been in Sevilla for two weeks now.
Saturday morning, Alicia, Kerry, and I went for a walk around the barrio of Triana. Alicia has a book of neighborhood walks that point out historical sites and various points of interest throughout neighborhoods in the city. Triana is on the other side of the river from Nervión, where I live. It’s famous for its ceramic factories, where they make the beautiful azulejo that I love. Now, most of the actual factories where they fire the pieces have been moved outside the city to reduce the pollution in the city, but a lot of artisans still have shops where they paint ceramics in Triana. We visited several, and I bought a couple pieces. We also saw the Mercado de Triana (the Triana Market). The building in which it is housed is fairly modern, but there has been a market there for generations. Inside, it was filled with walled off stands, each one with a specialized product, like fruits, meats, fish, cheese, etc. I really liked it because it seemed that the people who worked there were really into their work. It wasn’t the sort of place where the employees just scan barcodes and countdown the hours until they get off. The butchers knew meat, and the fruit sellers knew fruit, knew how to recognize good products from bad products, and enjoyed sharing their knowledge.
On Sunday morning, Alicia and I went to mass in a smaller church close to where we live. It’s the church where Carmen usually goes, and her brother was a priest there. Grand as the Cathedral is, I liked this church a lot better, because it was a lot smaller and more personal. But they used a lot of incense in the mass, which made my throat extremely dry.
Sunday evening, a group of us went out to celebrate Laura’s birthday. We went to a tapas bar near the Cathedral that had vino de naranja (orange wine). There is actually a place a couple doors down that is more famous for their vino de naranja, but it was pretty small and crowded, and there were six of us, so we opted for the larger one. I tried a glass of the vino de naranja. It was very thick and quite sweet, almost like a desert wine. I was able to drink it straight because it was so sweet, but it kind of had an aftertaste like orange flavored candy. I’d like to try the vino de naranja from the other bar, where it’s famous, but I don’t know that I liked it enough to get it again otherwise.
On Monday, my class at the Universidad de Sevilla began. I was not able to get into the Cervantes class I wanted, but I am taking a class about Lope de Vega, one of the foremost playwrights in baroque Spain. The professor is very nice, but she talks much faster and with a heavier accent than my professors at the center do. They all know to slow down for Americans, but Profesora de los Reyes can’t really cater to foreigners. There are, however, several foreigners in the class besides Kerry and I, including an English girl named Laura, with whom I’ve talked a few times. She is in this program called Erasmus, which is a European program for people studying languages at the university level. She said that all students studying a language have to spend at least one year abroad (a year in one country if they’re studying one language, or a semester each in two separate countries if they are studying two languages). She’s been here for a semester already, and she is teaching an English class at the university. She’s really friendly, and I love love love her accent. I kind of want to tell her how much I like it, but she would probably find that weird.
As a side note, there has been some confusion with the end date of the university class and my program, and I will be coming home about a month earlier than originally planned. I don’t want to go into details here, just wanted to let it be known. I’m a little miffed about it, but I still have three and a half months here.
I do however have some very exciting news—I am going to Morocco a week from Saturday! I am so stoked. I had been hoping to be able to make it down there. There is a group that CC-CS works with to send students to Morocco, but those trips are all four days at the least, and I didn’t want to miss a day of school. But a found a program called We Love Spain that sends students there for three-day trips. The girl working at the office when I booked said it’s a really good length of time to get a taste of Morocco, figure out what parts she might like to visit again.
And now for a few more assorted ramblings and observations:
In my language class, we were discussing vocabulary that has to do with non-profit organizations, and my professor told us that there is a group here in Spain called Clowns without Borders (Payasos sin Fronteras). They go to hospitals to entertain ill children. I think this is really cool.
We learned a phrase in my language class that is basically the equivalent of “Go jump in a lake.” It’s “véte a freír espárragos,” which literally translated means “Go fry an asparagus.”
It has rained almost every day this past week, and I am very ready for the sun to come out. My socks and shoes and pants get extremely wet, and with the houses as cold as they are, they don’t dry very quickly. This rain, however, may be a very good excuse to go buy a new pair of rain boots, as my old ones broke.
I am getting more comfortable with Spanish, but at the same time, language fatigue is definitely starting to set in. I can understand it pretty well, I’m getting better at using subjunctive verb forms, and I’m finding myself incorporating the words I learn in class in my everyday speech. But there are times where my brain just does not want to speak Spanish at all, and I start making elementary mistakes I don’t normally make. Hopefully that will pass soon.
That’s all I can remember for now. Buenas noches.
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