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