Cadiz, Class and a Pic-nic at the Park
The past two weeks after returning from London have gone by super-rapido. I finally have my classes settled after some switching around and rethinking. I sat in on one class I thought I was going to take, and knew after the first five minutes I was not going to keep it. The professor just droned on sitting at his podium in a low, quiet voice that I could neither hear no understand for two solid hours. I had to stay the whole two hours but ended up writing letters to my friends at home. My final schedule consists of Geografia General de España and La Esclavitud en America, which both count toward my Spanish minor at UNC, and Pensamiento Politico y Social del Siglo XX and La Historia del Cine, which both give me perspective credits for my journalism and mass communication major. All of them have good professors which speak clearly and loudly and are accustomed to having extranjeros, or foreigners, in their classrooms. All of the classes have at least some foreigners in them, although some more than others, but we manage to spread ourselves out and “mingle” with the Spaniards. And when I say mingle I mean look over their shoulders to make sure we’re getting all the right notes : )
The weekend after we got back from London, some of us UNC students decided to make a trip down to the Carnaval in Cadiz, you know, to see what all the fuss was about. Carnaval is an annual tradition held mostly in Cadiz but in the surrounding areas as well and is basically like Mardi Gras, but bigger. About and hour and 20 minutes from Seville, we took a bus planning to stay there all night and return in the wee hours of the morning. As soon as we stepped off the bus we realized it might have been worth the effort to organize ourselves some makeshift costumes for the night. We were the only people there not decked out in some sort of geisha, pope, nun, fairy, or unidentifiable creature outfit. So what did we do? We held our personal belongings tight and pushed our way through the winding city streets to the edge, the coast, catching our first glimpse of the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. By the time we made it back to the bus station at 5 am, the crowd to get inside had already formed. We made it to the first bus but had to get off and let on those whose tickets actually said they could take that bus. We caught the 6 am one, made it back by 8 and, needless to say, slept the entire day. It was worth seeing once, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to go back…
Last week I went to Samuel's church with him on Ash Wednesday. Called La Macarena, it was a beautiful church on the edge of the city. It was intricately decorated with large figures of both Christ and the Virgen Mary. Interestingly enough, Mary was the one at the front of the church while Jesus was at the side. However this goes along with what the program teachers have told us, that most people here pray to Mary. I couldn't understand much of what the priest said but it was nice to see how a Catholic church in another country operated. Similar to my church with a lot of standing up and sitting down, the only real difference was that they gave communion but no wine, however I did notice that the priest drank a cup. I asked Samuel why we didn't take it but he just said that was only something they did at their first communion.
Although the weather wasn’t amazing, Kate and I went to the Parque Alamillo today with our intercambio, Samuel. Everyone in the program was assigned an intercambio or someone from the school we attended for the month of January, EUSA, to talk to in English some and in Spanish some. While most of the Spaniards participate for class credit, Samuel only does it for fun and so we get to speak Spanish with him most of the time. We got to meet a lot of his friends and classmates from EUSA, and ate a pic-nic together. We had croquetas de pollo, tortilla Espanola, pasta atun, empanaditas de atun y tomate y quesos (chicken puppies?, egg omelet, tuna pasta, tuna and tomato little empanadas, and cheeses). Kate and I were the only Americans but there were also three German girls and three French girls there. We all played a game in the grass called “muerte” where there are two teams and you basically try to hit people with a ball and if you “die” you have to stand behind the game lines and hit someone to get back in. Afterwards, Dani, Belen, Samuel, Kate and I went to a café and talked of bullfights, Semana Santa and favorite TV shows despite the noise in the bar as an important futbol game was on.
Other than this, my time lately has been taken up with poker games, coffee dates and wandering around the city with a friend from UNC, who teaches English here now, and her roomates/friends. That’s right, I finally learned how to play poker. And while I’m not in it for the big bucks yet, I think Vegas should get ready…
Next weekend, the SAS group goes to Granada! Alhambra here we come...
