La Vida Sevillana

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...

It was strange thinking last night on the flight and bus ride home that the “home” I was going to was Seville, Spain and not Belews Creek, North Carolina, but that’s how it felt, like I was home again. The trip went smoothly all the way up until the day we were supposed to leave. It was nice being able to wake up everyday without a plan pr schedule other than what we had thought of the night before, and just doing whatever it was we felt like doing that day. While I didn’t get to cross everything off my ‘to-do’ list, I did cross of a majority of the items and even add some I hadn’t plan on doing. Kate and I flew into Stansted airport at 11:30 (London time) and went about changing our money and looking for a bus. As soon as we stepped outside the airport we knew we weren’t in Seville anymore as the icy wind cut our faces. We got on the bus after paying 10 pounds to someone trying to hurry the line along although we could have gotten the round trip ticket for 14. The bust took about an hour and 20 minutes to get us to the Victoria Coach Station, now about 1:30 am, where we proceeded to ask someone how to get to the nearest tube (subway) station. We were pretty much laughed at when they told us the tube stopped running about midnight. So there we were in the freezing cold wondering what to do…the only thing was to walk a few blocks to the Victoria Rail Station where we found buses that would take us to Tottenham Court Road. We then had to ask people on the bus (luckily we could use our English here) where to get off. Finally, at about 2:30 we got off the bus, found ‘the gold man on top of the theater,’ as Laura described it, and made our way to 99 Great Russel Street. We had told Laura we’d arrive by 1.

The next day we awoke to snow falling outside the window of Flat 7. Laura and her flat-mates went to class and Kate and I got ready to face the weather. We made our way back to Oxford Street where the bus had taken us and looked in some stores. Not that we were intending to buy anything of course. It was just amazing how close Laura lived to everything. You step outside and you’re smack dab in the center of the city, literally. We got groceries for our stay at the nearest Sainsbury’s. Groceries were surprisingly cheap for their standards. About normal priced once to convert it to dollars. Thankfully, Laura had given us a mini lesson on the money the night before and we didn’t have to hold out our change with confused looks on our faces. The rest of the afternoon consisted of walking to Trafalgar Square where we visited the National Portrait Gallery and the ‘Monet to Picasso’ exhibit at the National Gallery. We saw some famous paintings there like ‘Sunflower’ by Van Gogh and ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ by Monet. That night we went to a pub with Laura and Joey and had our first cider- like a beer without the bad aftertaste- a Strongbow.

The next day Kate and I got day passes for the tube at 5 pounds each. We began the day at Notting Hill and walked down Portabello Road to the outdoor markets. Kate bought a fourth of a loaf of rye bread that was to die for. We warmed up in a coffee shop for a while but then it began to rain…flats were a bad idea so we had to go back to Laura’s so I could change and get an umbrella. Out again, we went to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park where my dad had said he had been present for protests during the Vietnam War. We proceeded to Buckingham Palace where we peered through the iron bars at the funny little men in fuzzy hats. To my despair, they were not wearing the customary red suits but gray ones instead…perhaps it was their rain attire?? After that we moved on to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. Across the river we caught a glimpse of the London Eye, also called the Millennium Wheel- a huge ferris-wheel type ride built in the year 2000. Finally, we made our last stop at the Victoria and Albert Museum where we saw a fashion exhibit with clothes from the 60s (complete with the fad that was paper dresses) and a photography exhibit with the work of photographers like Wee-Gee who I had read about in my photography classes. Back at the flat, we all went out for Mexican. The food was overpriced and the service was poor, unfortunately. We watched the movie Trainspotters and then called it a night.

Day 3- Kate and I went straight to the British Musem, only a block away from Laura’s flat. We made a bee-line for the Rosetta Stone and where we studied its ancient writings. We wandered around the rest of the place looking at ancient artifacts from Egyptian pottery, to Greek war helmets to Roman mosaic art. Most of it dating back to a couple thousand years before Christ. After we had our fill we made our way to Niel Street and The Tea House shop where Kate and I bought some English Tea. She bought flavored black teas like coconut and caramel while I opted for the jasmine green tea. We were lazy the rest of that afternoon and watched Runaway Bride until it was time to go meet Russ two tube stations away. I worked with Russ at Gwynn Valley summer camp in the summer of 2005 so it had been a year and a half since I’d seen him. He brought two friends and we all went out for a drink, where Kate and I had a pint of cider : )

The next morning Laura took Kate and I to The Pancake House which is one of her favorite breakfast spots. It was also the only place I had ever seen a chicken and cranberry sauce bagel on the menu so of course, that’s what I ordered. After breakfast, Kate and I went to Covent Garden. There were a lot of people out that Sunday. It was the first day we had seen the sun and I guess everyone else was as happy about it as we were. We bough some candy, strolled through indoor shops and outdoor stands and even watched some outdoor theatre where a scraggly looking man performed his comical skit escaping from a strait jacket. He wore tights, a red crotch cup and a white t-shirt that read ‘beast.’ I didn’t ask. We met up with Russ and his friend James again and went fo frozen yogurt before it was time to go wait outside the red carpet. The baftas were going on that day right there in Covent Garden and we wanted front row seats to spot some celebrities. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosted an array of actors and actresses including Jake Gyllenhaal and Kate Winslet, neither of which we actually got to see. That evening we went to the same bar we had gone to the first night and ate fish and chips. We couldn’t go to England and not eat Fish and Chips. Curiously, the plate was served with a side of peas, but I was only too glad to see that they weren’t mushy peas as a menu we had seen earlier actually had ‘mushy peas’ written out at something people order.

Day 5. The day we were supposed to leave. The day we got to the airport 10 minutes after check in had closed and they turned us away. Bewildered, we got in line after exhausting any other options and waited our turn to reschedule our flight at the lovely fee of 50 pounds. The flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until the next day so we had to go all the way back to the city and stay with Laura another night. The bus dropped us off early in the city so we ended us rolling our suitcases about 8 blocks down the middle of the city at 11 pm. The next day, we arrived at the airport at 3:15. The flight was to leave at 6. We were one of the first in line to check our bags and made it back to Seville by 9:30. Off the bus, Kate went home and I waited for another bus to take me to the apartment. It didn’t show after 30 minutes and I only had three Euro in my pocket, not enough to cover a cab home. So I proceeded to roll my suitcase along toward home when like a final kick in the butt, the bus goes zooming by. I had to laugh.

Overall it was a good trip, not counting the trip home of course. But I’m glad to be back and not planning on going anywhere out of the country anytime soon.

Class is over and now the fun can really begin!  I just took my final exam for my January Spanish course and now I have to write a paper for it due in March.  All of that will count as one credit and the 4 other classes I take at the University will count as 4 more.  I am so excited to get into real classes with real Spaniards.  I already bought a University of Sevilla t-shirt too.

Tomorrow I will head to London with a girl I've become friends with.  I'll write about that when I get back but I hope to have some real English tea and to go to Stonehenge as well.  It should be interesting to visit the site now since there have been recent findings about 2 miles away of an ancient settlement known as Durrington Walls.  Eight houses have already been escavated from the wooden settlement and I hope to maybe get the chance to see part of history being unearthed!

 The rain has finally subsided a little here.  It was going on a few days and putting everyone in slightly bad moods.  We had to go to a museum in the rain, not a very interesting museum I must say, but going in the rain made even less appealing.  It was called Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares.  We did get to see some of the embroidery women made during the 18th and 19th centuries for their "ajuar" or the clothes/linens they make for the house once they are married.  Apparantly this is what a lot of women spent the majority of their young lives doing, and even hah problems with their eyesight and back, for bending over, peering at a needle all day long.  Needless to say, their work paid off and is on display in all its intricate beauty.  We also got to see a wine bodega, or cellar, where they store barrels and barrels of the stuff.

Short entry but now I must pack, and plan the rest of this trip.  I forget how much work it takes to get around here when I try to do more than walk.  two buses just to the airport, then the tube and cab once we land.  Oy!

 Fun Fact:  the Symbol of Sevilla is No8Do, only the 8 in the actual symbol is more elongated like a twist of rope.  The name comes from the 14th century during the reign of Alfonso the 10th.  The piece of rope is called a madeja and the actual symbol, No-madeja-Do is a slight play on words and literally means "no me ha dejado" or "it has not left me."