getting to know sevilla.

My school schedule at UPO is still crazy and hasn’t been figured out yet. I sat in on a bunch of classes on Thursday and tried to get signatures from professors to transfer in the classes. But really I only got on a couple waiting lists and in other classes I’m feeling out how difficult they will be. It’s stressful but there’s not a whole lot to do about it and I know I’ll figure it out sometime next week.

The culture differences have definitely taken some getting used to with different meal times, lifestyle changes, and Spanish ideas/notions of the world. It’s definitely humbling thinking about how little you can live on and still live comfortably. Spaniards think Americans are so wasteful taking hour long showers, unnecessarily doing laundry, and overusing our heating/air conditioning. I’ve continued to take 5 minute showers and wear thick socks and layers to bed, to help myself acclimate to this culture. Also, this Thursday was laundry day. Manoli gave us this blue laundry bag that is probably 24” by 24” inches, which is not a lot of laundry when you think about it. She’s actually really good about laundry and in our house we have a dryer too which is nice (so that laundry comes back to us a few days later, not weeks later, because it is getting dry on a clothes line). She washes our sheets and our towels every Thursday as well, which most families don’t do either.

Anyways, it was really funny because Thursday was laundry day and the other night before dinner Manoli brought out some of our clean clothes. She looked at me with a worried look and picked up my stack of socks and she said, “Valerie tu calcetines sin compañeras!” (your socks don't match) She had been putting all the socks together and realized that most all of my socks have no matching pair. We all just laughed hysterically. I showed her that I was wearing mismatch socks at that very moment too. Then I explained how I always wear calcetines sin compañeras.

We’re not going out every night but we have definitely taking advantage of the fact that Spain is a nightlife country and different cultural practices. Thursday night, we went to a club called Buddha, which is really awesome to go to on Thursday nights. It was a lot of fun and we met some other students studying abroad at UPO with us and also some Semester at Sea kids. We stopped at this pastry stand on the way home and had really yummy churros with chocolate. They were so good!

On Friday, we slept in because UPO doesn’t have class on Fridays for foreign exchange students, so no one had school. After almuerzo (lunch @ 2:30), Ally, Erica, Rachel, and I went walking around taking pictures and really just exploring the city. It was a lot of fun and I was able to take some neat pictures.

(1) This is one of the places we went on our adventure today. El Corte Ingles has tent vendors who sell jewelry, dresses, bags, scarves, wrist bands, and little nick knacks for cheap.
(2) Sevilla is very famous for flamenco dancing. Ally and I saw this statue near El Corte Ingles and we loved it.
(3 & 4) Sevilla has some of the most gorgeous buildings and orange trees.