highlights of last week:

last week went by so fast. i was busy with catching up on hw, going to tcu dinners/events, making sure i took a siesta, and getting ready for florence.

Clara and I had coffee on Monday so that was really fun. I met her boyfriend too for a little bit and we got to chat at Café de Indias en el centro.

For lunch on Monday just Merillat and I were home, so Manoli was just loving on us the whole time. She even brought us out dessert!! It’s supposed to be our little secret, but I will share with my blog followers of course. She brought us a plate of fresas y chocolate (strawberries with chocolate syrup!), oh it was wonderful! And Merillat and I just laughed the whole time about how she loves us so much.

CSUN gave me an extension on my decision deadline so I don’t have to decide by Friday, but instead I can email them by April 15th.

Glory Robinson, from TCU, is in town so Mary Alice and Glory took the twenty five of us to tapas on Monday night to a really cute place called El Colmaito de Cai. And as vegetarians Ali and I were better fed than the last time we had tapas with Mary Alice on our TCU outing. On Tuesday, they took us to coffee and a flamenco show, which was really good.

I’m going to Florence on Thursday and meeting Dustin there and seeing Allison Ollre. Dustin & Allison are friends from TCU. Dustin is studying abroad for the year at Oxford and he has a month break to travel in between the semester, so he’s currently doing his Italy trip right now and I decided to tag along. Allison and I are old frog camp friends and she’s also an SLP major who is studying abroad in Florence this semester. I’m probably going to have lunch with Allison Saturday or Sunday. I’m sooo excited because I’ve never been to Florence, and I’ve always wanted to go!! Estoy deseando!! (I can’t wait!!)

Things to look forward to: My 6 day Morrocco trip is coming up and Ali, rica, & I will be roommates for that and we are sooo excited to have more adventures together. Jas/Miya are coming to Sevilla for Semana Santa, Dustin will stop here too the week after, and April will be full of tons of adventures. Estoy ilusionado! (I’m excited!)

londres with daniela.

Life is offering me absolutely wonderful experiences and adventures that I am just taking in and loving every minute of it. Sevilla is continuing to be wonderful. School is good and the weather in Sevilla couldn’t be better right now. It’s sundress and flip-flops weather, which is absolutely amazing for my California soul.

Last week, Merillat and Traci had a friend in town, and Liz’s mom is in town still and so they didn’t eat with Lola and me all week. Also, Lola has school all day on lunes/martes (mon.wed) and so I was the only one eating at home for some meals. BUT this was excellent because it served at great bonding time with Manoli aka proceeding to be her favorite even more & more practice with my Spanish.

The whole graduate school thing is continuing to be stressful as decision deadlines are coming up and I’m getting more impatient waiting to hear from more schools. The past weeks have been filled with skype calls from mom&dad about news, chats with kaysabeth, and emails with elizabeth on what to do. I just don’t know where I’m going to go yet. We’ll see.

But about londres… Daniela and I went to London this weekend and we stayed with her friend Mawuena who is studying abroad there. I’ve been to London before with Jenna and so it made me miss eurotrip round1 a lot. But there were things that Jenna and I didn’t do while we were there, so Daniela and I finished the London adventure for now. It was a great weekend and we did so many things. Also, it was cold but it wasn’t as freezing as I thought it would be. Thursday, Daniela and I went to the Tate Modern, which is one of the best modern art museums ever. It has Monet’s Water Lilies and Jackson Pollock’s Summertime in it, which are some of my favorite paintings so I was just happy sitting and staring for a while. Then, we went to changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge, and the Tower Bridge. We also climbed up the Monument, which is this huge pillar/monument in London that was built in memory of the people who died/places that were burned in the great fire of London. It has 311 very small, narrow steps up to the top but it was really fun because Daniela and I were laughing at each other the whole way up. It had a great view from the top, even though Daniela was scared of getting too close to the edge (even though it had a gate..hahaha). On Thursday, we also tried to get into the Tower of London but we got there too late so we went back and took a tour/went inside to the Tower of London on Friday. Thursday, before heading back to Mawuena’s apt. we went to Harrod’s for sweets. I had a cupcake it was sooo good and it made me miss Sprinkles.

On Friday, we went and took our London Eye flight, which was lots of fun. Before getting on the guy was like no sharp objects or mase in there right?? He was joking but of course with Jenna & my history with London/heathrow/mase I was not amused. Ahahaha, that’s a story for another day… Friday, we also went by Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey before heading to Abbey Road. Literally, Daniela and I were at Abbey Road trying to get the perfect picture like the Beatles cover, for over an hour. It is still a legit street that people drive on and we went around 4/5pm ish and so there were tons of cars and other people trying to get pictures too. We actually ran into Maria and Iman while we were there. They are friends of Mawuena’s and they were staying at his dorm with us too. What a coincidence, right? They jumped in our picture and we got a semi-ok picture but settled for that because it started to get cold, and we were tired so we left. Saturday, we adventured around and went to TopShop (a store based out of UK) kind of a mix between H&M and Forever. But it’s super cute and I was like way excited to go. I got a new green dress and a new bathing suit to wear in Italy next weekend.

Another highlight of London was seeing Marie B!! Marie is visiting Kelsey Tudor (not to confuse Kelsey with my sister) this week because Kelsey is studying abroad in London this semester. She got in on Friday afternoon but I left on Saturday so it wasn’t for sure if we were going to see each other. But we were chatting/planning to meet sometime and it turned out that Mawuena’s apartment was literally like 3 minutes walking from Kelsey’s dorm. So we met in the middle at a pub called Gloucester Arms. It was soo sooo soo good to see B. I was so happy!! It literally made my week, I was so excited to see her. Marie and I caught up and got to chat about life over Strongbow, which is like cider from London that is really good. We also talked about being in Europe together again. Last time we were in Paris together on Marie’s first night in Europe too! ca(b.o) in Europe, again! And how next year, we are going to go to Mardi Gras & Cabo together, so exciting!

Daniela and I flew home Saturday evening and got back to Sevilla, around 10:30ish. Showered, got ready, and then had a wonderful welcome home to everyone – Mal, Amir, Brian, Daniela, and I; hanging out at Amir’s. It was a good way to come back and it has been a while since we’ve all been together because of traveling, visitors, and midterms. We ended up going to Plaza Alfalfa to a bar called Robotica which has bomb mojitos and then on the way home Brian & Peter got hotdogs from the burger/hotdog truck. So it was a night out, well spent.

London was just wonderful. It was a really different city because, well, for one, people speak English, and second of all, it has a lot of American people/products/culture but it also has a lot of European culture. They have a Whole Foods in London (how amazing) and they had ziplock bags at Sainsbury’s!! Ziplock bags are like gold. Literally. I can’t find them anywhere in Spain and Tori even brought me some, but my worst fear is running out of them. Also, London another big city too, I feel like a lot of the places that I’ve been traveling like Madrid & London are so much bigger than Sevilla. Plus they have metro systems instead of walking/busing to get around, which totally makes me appreciate the fact that Sevilla is so much smaller. People say Sevilla is a big city, but it really doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time. It just has a different pace of life and maybe that’s the Spanish culture coming play and maybe that’s just how Sevilla is but I just love being around it. Ana Claudio says that it’s el ambiente (like the ambience- the people/the feel/the environment of Sevilla) that people love. I really think she’s right, it’s what I love about it. It’s just so different from everything else. Being here just fits me really well. And to be honest, I really lucked out because before coming I had never been to Spain. I love love love traveling to other cities and chasing the sun around the world but it’s just very comforting and fitting to come back here. And it makes me so happy to come back to Sevilla and feel grounded.

language learning.

so one of my main goals coming to Sevilla included becoming fluent in Spanish, other goals included traveling parts of Europe I haven’t seen before, meeting other study abroad students from all over the US, and learning about and embracing Spanish culture. I feel like I’m doing really really well in all areas. BUT the fluency in Spanish is coming along a lot slower than I thought it would. I’m learning so so so so much from my classes with Ana Claudio and Penelope and it’s definitely being reinforced and ingrained into my mind because I get to use the language everyday. I try to learn something new everyday. And grammar points/new words that I learn I try to use them right away whether its en los calles o cuando estoy hablando con Manoli (in the streets or when I am talking with Manoli). But the problem is that it is such a slow process. I thought I would be fluent faster I guess. And it’s hard not to compare myself to other people whose Spanish is much better than mine. It definitely gives me new insight as an SLP on learning language and how frustrating it can be to not be able to communicate everything that you want to say. Also, it has taught me a thing or two about learning language and being on the other side of the therapy table, I guess. But more and more it is becoming more difficult to have the motivation to really struggle through with Spanish and keep going with it, just because it is hard when I have English to fall back on and it makes my life a lot easier to just speak in English (now, don’t I feel like a deaf child that knows sign and is trying to learn to listen and acquire spoken language – Elizabeth will totally get this). Also, the fact that there are so many American study abroad students in Sevilla doesn’t help when my language goal gets rough. It is also really hard for me because I’ve always done well in school because I work hard, I just want this to come easy with hard work too. But really it’s more than that, it’s not just memorizing and knowing information but it’s about incorporating it into my life and using it. I was talking to Amir about it yesterday and I think it’s really about having the motivation and proactive-ness to keep going with it. Amir has like 4 intercambios. I have one, I need to step up my game on this Spanish language learning business. In a few weeks, we decided that between our friends that we are all going to speak only in Spanish all the time. We’ll see about that, I don’t know. Anyways, I had coffee with Clara (my intercambio) today, which was really good. We talked for a while and the time went by really fast and I had to run home for dinner. I see myself slowly progressing and learning, we help each other a lot so it’s really really good to meet with Clara. But sometimes I wish it was just a faster process and that it would come a lot easier.

tori’s visit.

Last weekend, tori and I were in Madrid. We went all over Madrid on a free walking tour with Sandeman’s New Madrid (http://www.newmadrid-tours.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=26) that turned out to be really good. Then, we went to Museo Reina Sofia, which has Picasso’s Guernica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)) in it. Afterwards, tor and I saw this pasta/pizza place outside of the museum and decided to eat there. Sunday before we left, we went inside Palacio Real and inside the cathedral. We had seen them on Saturday during the tour but we really wanted to go inside so it was well worth waking up early to do so.

Sunday afternoon, we took a 6 hour bus back to Sevilla. Ah, so long. But we came home and Tori got to meet Manoli, Antonio, and all my other roommates. I took her sight seeing this week and we went to Catedral, Real Alcazar, Museo de Bellas Artes, Museo Archleogico, Parque Maria Luisa, Plaza de Espana, the Mercadillo, La Carboneria for a flamenco show, y Museo de Artes. We ate tortilla de patata at Casa Monolo and it was so good. I also took tor to mama terra for kebabs – bc the falafel is so good there. And we even ran into the hamburger truck man on C/ Betis on Friday night – wonderful eggs in a hotdog sandwich! We also cooked pasta with butter and parmesean at Amir’s one night, which was lots of fun too. Also, to celebrate her last night here we went to Rio Grande (a restaurant on the river) for paella and the churro stand for desert. We did lots of laying by the river this week and just walking around el centro because the weather was wonderful. She left for the airport this morning at 4:30 for her 7am flight. It was a good week and midterms are finally over. I only had one midterm for Spanish Conversation with Corey and a quiz for Spanish Civ/Culture this week while most people had more this week than last. Lots of visitors are flooding in to our lives lately too, tori came to visit me, brian’s whole family was here last week and this week, and Merillat’s best friend from tcu is visiting this coming week too. March/April are going to be crazy busy with visits from friends/family and traveling all over too. Jas&miya are coming for semana santa, dustin comes the week after, and then a few weeks after that my mom comes too.

It was a relatively slow weekend in Sevilla because it was a stressful week with midterms at UPO and all. On Saturday, Lola, Jacob, Amir, Tori, and I went to the gypsy market which was really neat but it was a lot like the mercadillo near Avd. De La Paz. Amir and I bought strawberries at the gypsy market and they were really good.

Also this weekend, Dustin and I finally figured out plans for tuscany and we are going to hit Livorno, Pisa, and Florence while I am there. I’m really excited for this weekend because I’ve never been to Florence before and I can’t wait for the beach/to get tan.

This morning I woke up and Amir and I decided to go to the mercadillo because he wanted to get more mandarinos. But he ended up buying the world aka lots of things besides mandarinos. On the way there we ended up running into some kind of march/protest of some kind. Obviously, Sunday is a day for marches/protesters to be out. It happens frequently and it’s kind of strange. The mercadillo was good, we spent a few hours there and I ended up running home for lunch because we always leave too late. I didn’t think I wanted to get anything but I actually got acietunas (olives) at the mercadillo. They were really good. Sevilla is famous for olives so I had to give in and get some.

quick life update.

quick life update: tori is in sevilla this week and we are having a grand adventure/celebration of our ten year friendship. we met in madrid on saturday, she flew from LAX and I took a bus from Sevilla. It was wonderful. We went crazy and did Madrid in 24 hours on no sleep. Then we took a bus back to Sevilla and she is spending the week here, sleeping in my very small not extra long twin size bed.

In other news, I got into Cal State Northridge as my first graduate school acceptance!! SO EXCITING! It takes some pressure off, but not really because that just means that I have to really start thinking about where I want to go and make a choice in the coming weeks.

Also, to add to my joys today I got a 91 on my Lectura y Redaccion (Reading & Comprehension) midterm with Ana Claudio. She's my favorite professora ever.

Well, since I need sleep and I didn't take a siesta today bc Tori and I were adventuring I really should go to bed. I will update with more later.

Hasta Luego!

daily life and my favorite things.

The rain is back. So sad. Hopefully, it doesn’t last long and it goes away when Tori comes. This week I had the first of my midterms, two on the same day actually. Intermedio Espanol and Lectura y Reddacion on the in the same morning, it was rough but at least now it’s over. I’m so so so excited for this week because Tori arrives in Madrid on Saturday!! It will be amazing. We will spend Saturday and Sunday in Madrid and then come back Sunday afternoon to Sevilla. She will stay all week and then leave next Sunday morning. It was funny when I asked Manoli if she could stay at our house, she was like… “Where is she going to sleep?” And I was like, “Oh, ya know, in my bed.” Manoli was like really confused at first. She really didn’t understand. Ya, it was an interesting conversation, but it’s fine and Tori gets to stay with me, so that is wonderful.

The other day I was talking to Katy on Facebook chat and she told me to tell her everything and what I do everyday because she wanted to know what’s going on in my life here. So I thought I would share with you too…

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I wake up at 7am to Manoli knocking on the door saying “Desayuno!!” It’s great she’s my personal alarm clock. Then I eat breakfast with Merillat, Lola, and Liz. I get ready and leave the house by 7:30 then I meet Ali on Ave. Argentina and we bond/chat/talk/vent about life and walk to school together. Then we walk to San Prado - it’s a bus station – like the main one, since they are STILL building the underground metro in Sevilla, oh what I would give for it to be opened already. Anyways, then we catch bus 36 to UPO (la Universidad de Pablo Olavide). On M/W mornings, I have Intermediate Spanish with Penelope Recio and Reading and Comprehension (Lectura y Redaccion) with Ana Claudio, I love both my professoras. Intermedio is always fun and really not that bad because we are always joking around with the boys in the class or making fun of Amer for being late/missing the bus. Lectura is always good but sometimes hard with Ana but she’s so funny because she pretends to not know any English because she doesn’t want us to speak in English but I really think she is putting on an act, and she’s secretly fluent. I have both my lunes/miercoles classes with both Merillat and Christine, so we always walk together and sit together too. In between classes Merillat and I always snack on galletas we take from breakfast. After classes, Ali and I take the bus and walk home together. Sometimes we go on an afternoon adventure; we need to start getting better about this and really doing something every lunes/miercoles. After an adventure, I will go home for lunch at 2:30 with Merillat and this is great because Merillat and I are Manoli’s absolute favorites. Really, she never ever ever complains about us and she makes us the best food always, it’s muy bien. We love it and we always laugh about it because everyone else is jealous. In the afternoon & early evening, I will hangout/do homework/lay by the river with Ali and/or take a siesta. Right before or right after dinner, I will chat with Kaysabeth or a variety of others on skype or fb chat, which is nice to get love from home. M/W nights all the kids who don’t have class on Tuesday/Thursday tempt me to go out (Daniela, Brian, Lola, and Amir), and sometimes I do. Since I’ve been sick I haven’t been going out on weeknights but we’ll see how long that lasts.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are not much different. I get up early at 7am still but I don’t have class until 10:30. I wake up so early bc I want to talk to Mom/Dad/Kaysabeth on skype and Liz gets up for class anyways and I’m a light sleeper so I might as well get up anyways. Classes on martes/jueves include Spanish Civ&Culture in English with Enrique Moreno and Conversation with Ana Claudio. I have Spanish Civ&Culture with Merillat again, I like the class and I’m taking it pass/fail which is great. Conversation with Ana Claudio is lots of fun, I sit next to Corey in it and we just chat in Spanish and Ana laughs at my pocket dictionary. I ride the bus home at 1:20 with Mal and I chat with her about life and what we are going to do later that afternoon. Then I go home for lunch with Traci and Liz. Usually, I don’t take siesta on martes/jueves bc I adventure in the afternoons with Daniela, Mal, Brian, and Amir. Sometimes not, sometimes I sleep. And then we’ll do something in the evenings before dinner. Then dinner is at 9:30, and Thursday nights we will go out and stay out late because no one has class on Friday. We usually go to Amir’s to hangout before hand and decide what we are going to do. Amir is the only one who isn’t in a home stay, he is in an apartment of his own. The Adelante program gives them a choice whether they want to be in an apartment or in a homestay, anyways its nice for us to be able to hangout at his place because in homestays no one really gets to come over to your house, you just hangout out with people in public places. Fridays, usually start after lunch because we are sleeping in and enjoying the day of no school. Except odd Fridays TCU kids get to go on an odd Friday outing with Mary Alice where she will take us out for breakfast or coffee, or some cultural excursion to just chat and spend time with her to give us bus passes and make sure that we are doing well. Fridays have consisted of roaming around Sevilla, sight seeing, taking pictures, and going on different cultural excursions. Saturdays here are pretty much the same too, including attempting homework somewhere in there during the weekend but it usually gets put off until Sunday morning or the day of class – on the bus. 

Anyways, that is what a usual week looks like. It’s pretty good and I love it. I still wake up every morning and pinch myself to make sure this is really my life. I was fb chatting with Allison (who is in Florence) and she asked me what my favorite part of Sevilla was. No one has asked me that yet. I really had to think about it for a minute though because I have so many favorite things. My favorite things might just be the walking and the river and the Triana Bridge. I love love love the Guadalquivir River. It makes the city sooooo beautiful and I walk across the Plaza de Cuba and/or Triana Bridges everyday to go to school and the centro. I love walking home from going out at night, and walking home across the Triana Bridge. It just makes the city look so gorgeous. And plus there is a churro stand right near the start on the centro side, so it’s always fun to get a late night snack too. Fun fact: the Triana Bridge was the first bridge built in Sevilla and it was the only bridge in Sevilla for a really long time. I love living in Triana too. Traci and I were talking about it and how Triana is the heart of Sevilla and Sevilla is the heart of Andalucía and Andalucía is the heart of Spain, so basically we are in the best, most Spanish town in all of Spain. Life couldn’t be better than that, right? Also, I love love love walking everywhere. Part of me doesn’t want the underground metro to open because walking makes me feel healthy and it clears my head. I think that’s why I love European cities so much too, because everyone walks everywhere and that’s why they are not fat.

pictures: 1- a picture of the triana bridge from the centro side, probably one of my favorite pictures i've taken thus far, 2- churro stand! 3- triana bridge by night

feliz cumpleaños a lola y brian.

What a week. I am finally finally finally feeling so much better because I’ve been on antibiotics and on Tuesday I decided that I need to rest or else I would land myself in the hospital soon. I took siesta almost everyday this week which was good for my soul and good for my health. The weather has been amazing too. It has been around 70s-80s during the day but during in the early morning and at night it gets a little colder. It was so nice out actually that Ali and decided to take advantage of it and lay out by the river this week to siesta. It was fabulous. We also laid out by the river to catch up on homework and read a little too.

La senora con la que vivo, Manoli (the senora that I live with), has been sick but she went to the doctor twice this week and he finally gave her antibiotics. This is pertinent to my health also because she cooks all my food. Anyways, so Manoli is better now too, so all is good in the world.

Monday, I met with Clara, my intercambio, which was very exciting. University de Pablo Olavide has this program with intercambio (literally meaning like exchanges) where you are paired up with a Spanish student who wants to practice English and you want to practice your Spanish so you converse with each other to help each other learn language. It was lots of fun, I wasn’t feeling that well but I had a good time talking to Clara we met at Starbucks and I got tea which helped my throat too. We are going to meet every week and chat, some of the time in Spanish, some in English, and some Spanglish too.

Wednesday, Ali and I began our lunes y miercoles afternoon adventure club and went into Catedral to take pictures and explore Europe’s 3rd largest cathedral. It was lots of fun. We are going to be going on afternoon adventures on Mondays and/or Wednesdays every week because we get out of school at the same time together.

Thursday night was interesting too. Mallory met these Spaniards at an intercambio tapas event at UPO on Wednesday and we went out with them on Thursday night. We walked around town a bit, then went and hung out by the river before going to a discoteca later that night. We actually sat in a circle by the river and played ‘never never have I ever’ while they spoke in English and we spoke in Spanish. It was really funny and it helped us practice Spanish too! I was really not feeling well later that night so I went home early with Daniella and didn’t end up going to the discoteca but later Brian and Amir had a run in with some punks who wanted money from them. At first they asked for gas money because they said their moped ran out of gas and so Brian gave them a euro. But then the guys started asking for their credit cards and wouldn’t leave them alone. Amir started yelling at them and shouting once one of the guys pushed him and then so the Spaniards who were getting churros with Mal called the cops and the guys left. It was a crazy story. I’m glad they’re safe and nothing bad happened, it’s good that Daniela and I went home too so that we weren’t there either.

This weekend we celebrated both Lola’s (Danielle’s) 20th birthday on Friday and Brian’s 21st on Saturday. It was so much fun. Friday, we went to the Banos de Arabes (Arabic baths), which was so so so relaxing. It was 2hour spa-bath treatment where we got to go in a cold, mild, and hot bath, salt water pools, jacuzzi, and a sauna room. Also, we got a 15 minute massage and had tea afterwards too. It was great to have a spa-type day and we even convinced the boys to do it with us too.

Friday night, we hung out at Amir’s apartment for a while had cake for Lola and Brian and sang happy birthday to both of them. Then we went out to Calle Betis and Buddha later on which ended up being really fun. Amir always gets stopped at the door at Buddha because he never has nice shoes. Hahaha, then he always tells him he didn’t know and that next time he’ll wear them. It’s great. But anyways, it was a great way to celebrate both their birthdays.

Saturday, we all slept in because we stayed out pretty late. We ended up studying in the basement of Mama Terra (a restaurant with wireless internet) because mid terms are this week. Also, we spent a good portion of the afternoon trying to figure out whether The Reader was playing at the movie theater in English or Spanish… it was only in Spanish so we opted not to see it because we were tired.

Sunday afternoon, Amir, Brian, and I went to the mercadillo (kind of like a farmer’s market) on Avenida de la Paz. Melissa lives over near there so we met her there. I brought the dslr to take lots of pictures of it but Amir was a hater most of the day and told me someone was going to rob me so I should put the camera away. I put the camera away not because I thought he was right, but because I wanted him to stop being a hater about it so I only got a few pictures. It was fun, I love outside markets but I’m a bad barginer so I have to work on that. I bought cute earrings for a euro (they are super cheaply made too so I’m going to put nail polish remover on the backs). Brian finally bought sunglasses, Melissa bought shoes, and Amir bought like 4 kilos of fruit. It was a very successful day.

Things to look forward to in the next month: Tori is coming to Spain for her spring break to visit me! I'm meeting her in Madrid on Saturday and then she will come back with me and spend the week in Sevilla. Christine and Elise are traveling on a European excursion for their spring break too and so I am meeting them in London, also, while Marie bbbbBbbbbbBbb will be there too. At the end of the month, I'm meeting Dustin in Florence and we'll travel in the Tuscany region and hopefully meet up with Bailey too. So many loves from home and so many adventures in the next month. I can't wait! :)

Pictures: 1- Amir buying oranges at the mercadillo, 2 - shoes being sold at the mercadillo, 3 - Brian, Lola, Mal, Amir, and I right before entering the Arab baths, 4 - Ali and I laying out at the river