We're 'fans' of Sevilla

So, the last few days have been…interesting. On Monday, we were told that we just had to go in at 9 in the morning for our placement tests. However, that was definitely not the case. After said test, we ended up having class until 2 pm. So, basically, right now we have class from 9-210 every single day for 9 days, which totals up to 45 hours (or 3 credits). It is SUPER boring! Basically, our “Intensive Spanish Language” is just a review of stuff we learned way back in the first month of seventh grade Intro to Spanish. Luckily, we only have to keep doing this class until next week on Thursday, then we will be done and ready to get on to our classes at the University of Sevilla.

While that part kinda sucked, we have been doing some very awesome things too! On Tuesday (yesterday), we took a tour of the Cathedral. What an amazing sight! It is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, and the third largest Catholic Cathedral after the Vatican and Saint Paul. Just walking through the gardens are amazing, with all the intricate artwork carved into the stones and the sculptures. But then you walk inside, and its over 100 feet tall, and basically amazing! My favorite part was one of two things: first, we got to see the tomb of Christopher Columbus. (see pic below) His tomb is being held up by four kings, and its basically an awesome sight to see, thinking about his importance. There is a rumor, however, that all/part of his body is still in the Dominican Republic, but his son is also buried in the Cathedral, and after DNA test they determined that the bones in the tomb are his. The other really cool part was the tower. No building in Sevilla is allowed to be higher than the tower, so when you walk up to the top of it (which is quite a feat) you get to look down on a spectacular view.

Yesterday was also particularly awesome because Emily and I finally figured out how to use the train system. So, now, instead of walking all across town to get to class in the morning, we can just hope on the train (yay for lazy Americans!). Today, however, we couldn’t use it on the way home from shopping because it was shut down. Why? Because there was a protest in the middle of town! This is the second one that we have seen since we’ve got here, and its only Wednesday! What made me the maddest is that after we got closer to home, the train started moving again, but we decided that it was no longer worth the 66 cents to get on it…

As I just alluded at, Emily and I went shopping this evening after siesta. The shops here are so cool. Some are a bit expensive, but its nice to have small shops that specialize in one or two things instead of big department stores (which they do have on the other side of town, but we didn’t want to go over there). Anyways, after 3 hours of shopping, we walked home, and realized that all we had bought on that trip was 7 fans (4 for me, and 3 for Emily). They are “presents” for when we get back home, but I’m pretty sure that I am just going to want to keep them all! Basically, we’re definitely going to have to go shopping more when it comes time to head home…

My new home?

Yesterday, we finally arrived in Sevilla, after a grueling 7.5 hour bus ride (including our stop for lunch). The drive honestly reminded me of driving through south eastern Washington, with its dry weather and tumble weeds. Needless to say, by the time we got into city limits, the nervousness on the bus spiked tenfold. Everyone seemed excited to be looking out at our new home, but we were also on the lookout for where our bus would end up stopping. When we did stop, a large group of people were standing around waiting for us to get off the bus. And you could definitely tell that no one wanted to be first. Finally, we started to get off, and finding our luggage proved to be fairly difficult considering there was only about 32 of us.

Anyways, then we had to stand around until our name was called, and then we learned who our host parents would be. I’m not sure how Emily, my roommate, felt, but I was definitely apprehensive to raise my hand just cause I was so nervous. Our host mom’s name is Maria, and she is about 55 years old. After we shoved all our bags into her car (which almost didn’t fit), we did what we were taught as kids never to do: go home with a complete stranger. Man oh man was it a long ride. And I don’t mean distance wise cause it was actually pretty close to where we had been dropped off. Our mom just started going off in Spanish, wanting to know how our trip was, if we actually spoke Spanish, and a ton of other information. Thankfully, between Emily and I, I think we got it down.

At our house, we also have a grandma. We have yet to be told her actual name, but she’s a sweet 81 year old lady who likes to water her plants on the patio and watch Spanish soaps on the TV. I can’t tell if she is deaf, or just doesn’t understand our Spanish, but communicating with her is kind of difficult, especially because she talks way too fast for the two of us. Our host mom also has three children. One lives in Madrid but is apparently on a business trip in Japan. Another lives in New York. And then the third lives here, but is currently working (?) in Germany. It’s pretty cool because her oldest son is so smart and had such good grades that when he graduated with his Industrial Engineering degree, the King of Spain himself gave him a certificate of merit. I wish I could do something like that.

So, Emily and myself are in a room that is probably eight feet by twelve feet. It consists of two win beds (which are smaller than back home), a small round table with two chairs (where I am currently residing), a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers with shelves on top. And then we each had to find room to shove our two suitcases a piece into, which was really difficult. I just hope I get a chance to buy more hangers because that would make my life SO much easier. As it is right now, we only have like 7 each, so we had to fold most of our stuff and put them in the little amount of drawer space that we were left with.

Today, we got a tour of the ISA office and the building that we will be doing our studies in for the next two weeks. We also walked to where our actual studies will be once the semester starts. Once our planned tour was over, a bunch of us girls ended up walking down to the river. It is really pretty, but the water was really green, and definitely not like the water at home. My favorite part of the day was definitely going to take a quick look at the Plaza de España. It was used in Star Wars for the government building of Planet Naboo, which I find completely awesome. It is also full of amazing hand painted tiles that adorn much of the inside and quite a bit of the railing along the moat. I just can’t wait until we have more time to go back and properly explore it later, but we had to come home in time for lunch instead.

Some things never change...

Which can be a good thing, or a bad thing. In the last few days, it seems we have had a little bit of both. As mentioned in my last post, some people never left the bar at all on the first day. I must say, I was surprised to see them up and ready to go to El Prado yesterday, but they were there on time just like the rest of us. As soon as free time came about again, however, they went right back to drinking. In fact, the majority of them went clubbing and didn’t even come back to the hotel until 530 am (and we had to leave Madrid at 9).

But first, El Prado. Talk about an amazing experience, even though it was much too short.  We got to see great works by Goya, El Greco, Reuben, and more. But, the building is huge, so there was literally no way for us to see them all. Plus, our tour guides were mostly just trying to get us through everything as quick as possible because we also had a walking tour of Madrid afterwards. So, you only got a few seconds to see some of the paintings, but they were worth it. My favorite had to have been El Greco. His works were absolutely amazing! It was even really fun to see the progression of his work as you moved through the different halls of his paintings.

After El Prado, we ended up on a walking tour. It was super pretty, but also an extremely long and hot walk. It was also scary at one point because a blind man ran into one of the girls and then started yelling at her for nothing. During the tour, we got to see where Don Miguel de Cervantes lived (but it was torn down) and also where he was buried (before they moved his bones and forgot where they put them). For those of you who don’t know who this man is, he wrote Don Quixote de La Mancha, the third most translated book in the world after the Bible and Quran. Anywho, as a literary nerd, it was pretty awesome (not quite seeing the café were JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter awesome, but a very, very close second). We also got to watch a robbery, which was pretty fun. A guy ran out of the store, and all the security guards from that shop and all the other buildings around them started pouring out to chase after him. Then, a few seconds later, here they all come with him in tow. Sad that us four girls were so excited by it, but what can I say…we like cheap entertainment.

And back to the things that never change. The best part of this whole story has to be the girl that sleepwalks when she’s drunk. Apparently, she walked up and down our floor banging on doors trying to find hers, but was unsuccessful. My roommate found her near the elevators and decided it would just be easier to have her sleep in our room. Mind you, our beds were two twin beds, but they were side by side touching. So, around 4 am or so, I end up getting kicked out of bed by someone that I didn’t even now was there, let alone who they were (although I did figure it was someone from our group). After a couple of times, she finally moved back to my roommates bed, and I did get a bit of sleep. When our wakeup call came, she had no idea where she was. All day, people keep asking me how she ended up in our room, and I have no idea cause I am smart enough to wear ear plugs. And, not surprisingly, she had no idea how she ended up out of her room either. One would think that her roommate would be worried, but apparently not…And this morning, some guy was so hung over that he slept through his alarm and through his roommate trying to wake him up, so we ended up leaving almost a half hour later just because no one could find him and he wasn’t packed to leave Madrid yet.

Today, however, good things never changed. Things like Toledo, the first capital of Spain and the most beautiful town in the world. The town was first constructed by the Romans on a hill that has a river running around it on three sides (and thus is easily protected). Lots of the current buildings were built in the 1300s and 1400s. Our first stop was the church that Isabella and Ferdinand built in 1476 to hold their tombs (which actually ended up somewhere else). It has amazing architecture and even a garden with fruit trees in the middle. Next, we got to see the cathedral here Toledo. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go inside, but the outside is very pretty. Even just walking around town and looking at all of the shops is fun because they have so many little trinket stores here. Toledo is also known for their swords, and I’m pretty sure that Uncle Todd would be in heaven here with all the different kinds he could look at.

 

In short, Toledo is definitely my new home…until I go to Sevilla that is. But, I could definitely live there no problem at all and love every second of it! As you can see from the picture above, the views of the old part of town are wonderful!

And now, to meet my new host family.

And then we ate with the roaches

That’s right folks, the cockroaches. But, like always, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. After an interesting day (see previous blog post about horrible flight), I landed at Madrid-Barajas airport and had no idea what I was doing. I ended up going upstairs and getting all backwards, but finally after about an hour I found people from ISA! Then, we waited for two more hours on the hard floor. By the time we left, my butt and my feet were all asleep.

The bus ride to the hotel was kinda fun because you got to see how different/similar Madrid is to other places. Honestly, aside from the older buildings here or there, I honestly felt as though I could have been back in America somewhere like New York or LA. Thankfully, the closer you get to the hotel the older stuff gets! So, we have fountains on both ends of our street, and the state botanical gardens are directly across the street (although it costs to get in, so I’m probably not going to actually see them)!

After getting my bags dropped off, a group of us wandered around in search of food, and ended up at a tapas bar eating little sandwiches (note: this is not the roaches incident). And, of course, all those kids who aren’t old enough to drink at home were right there on the cervezas. And the sangrias. And more cerveza, and more sangria, and more and more and more. I swear, some of the people I have only seen leave the bar during our required meeting…

During our meeting, I got a new (as in 1990) Nokia cellphone to use while I’m here. I have to relearn how to text, but hey, at least I have 300 minutes a month to call home with! After our meeting, my roommate and I decided to wander around and find some dinner, and came across another group of ISA students, so we just ate with them. And this would be were the roaches came crawling on the walls! It was gross, but the food was amazing, so it was worth it. The service, however, wasn’t quite so amazing because I’m pretty sure that man wanted nothing to do with serving a bunch of Americans, even though we were paying just like everyone else.

Now tomorrow, we get an awesome tour of El Prado museum, then we’re taking a walking tour of downtown, then free time! I will try and post lots of pictures tomorrow, but for now, it is bedtime.

When Easy Jet screws you over

*Disclaimer: I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, so I’m very crabby, hence a very rant-y blog post for today J

Boy, when Easy Jet wants to screw you over, they do one hell of a good job! Before I get to that, how about I start from my last blog post. Yesterday, Tuesday, Zoe, her dad, and myself drove the 4.5 hours from Wigan to London. Her dad had to work today in Carby, which I am told is near here, and he was nice enough to drop me off at my hotel before Zoe and him went to their hotel and to work this morning. I stayed at the Best Western, which was nothing special, just like any Best Western that you would find in the United States.

This morning is where everything turned to hell. First, my 4:45 am wake-up call conveniently didn’t come until 4:52. This meant that I missed the 5:05 bus to the airport. By the time I got on the 5:20 shuttle, the driver started off the second I got in the door, so I had loads of trouble trying to get my bags into the holders cause of the way he was driving and they kept rolling away. And it sure didn’t help that all the English people on the shuttle just looked at me and not a single one of the men offered to so much as roll my bag back to me.

And now comes Easy Jet. First, even at 5:35 in the morning, the lines are about 100 miles long. When I get up to the front, I find out that you can only have one carry on, which doesn’t help with the fact that I had my backpack and my giant purse both full. After lots of struggles cramming everything into either my backpack or one of my suitcases, I finally made it up to the teller, where I had to pay £10 for every kilogram over the weight limit (which, I would like to point is only 20 kg, aka 40 pounds, per customer, no matter how many bags you are carrying). Needless to say, when all is said and done I will have ended up paying almost 300 USD for a flight that was originally supposed to only cost me $62. Gotta love the exchange rates these days…

To make things even more pleasant, by the time our gate number showed up on the screen, we only had 18 minutes until it said the gate was closing, and you had to cross the entire terminal to get to our gate. When we got there, the line probably had 100+ people waiting, and we got delayed almost 45 minutes. But, you don’t sit down to wait for your plane in this country, so you are just stuck waiting in a really long line with your feet wanting to fall off. Eventually, we found out that a crew member was sick and had to be taken off by the paramedics, which is what was causing the delay. While this part doesn’t bother me cause it couldn’t exactly be avoided, what does bother me is the fact that they were waiting until the end of time to tell us why our flight was being delayed and why we were all just standing around.

The nice thing about this flight is that even though it was “full booked,” I still ended up with the only open seat in the whole plane is right next to me. And, with Easy Jet you can pick your own seat, so I got what I feel like is a fairly decent seat. Now, one more way to squeeze money off of passengers on this flight is through the drink cart. Unlike any other flight I have ever been on, you can’t even get ice water for free. No, water costs you £1.5, which today is about $2.50, and a can of pop, just the small 8 oz ones, costs you £2. I paid £1.79 for a 20 oz bottle inside the airport and thought that was super expensive considering you can get it for 80p (the English version of cents) at most stores.

By the time that this is posted, I will finally be in Madrid, meeting my new roommate and officially kicking off my study abroad adventure. Now, our itinerary is looking pretty full for the next few days, with lots of museums and things to look at. I don’t actually get to Sevilla and meet my host family until Saturday, but I will keep you all updated on the fun and excitement over here in España!

Life around the 'ster!

I was informed that I wasn’t blogging quite enough, so here’s another update on what I have been up to. So, we got back from Scotland on Thursday, and didn’t really do anything fun and exciting. Friday, on the other hand, was a totally different story! Zoe, her friend Lauren, and myself drove up to Lancaster (about 40 minutes) to look around the town that Zoe and Lauren went to university at, and also to take a tour of the castle. Lancaster Castle is owned by the Duke of Lancaster, who is also known as the Queen of England. Until last year, it was used mostly as a prison and a courthouse. In the first part of the tour, we got to see all of the Coat of Arms of the sheriffs of Lancashire, which are specially made every year for the new sheriff if they don’t have a coat of arms of their own. I find this really cool because then your family has an official coat of arms for the rest of eternity.

After this part, we got to go down to the prison, which was awesome! In the first part, we got to see lots of the old torture devices and other prison tools, and even try some of them on. We then got to be locked up with 12 other people in an 8x12 cell with all the lights turned off so we could feel like an 18^th century prisoner. Definitely not fun, especially since I’m pretty sure that I ended up in the corner that was used as a toilet, judging by the state of the floor compared to everywhere else… After this, we got to go back upstairs and look at the criminal courtroom, which is still used today (luckily we were there on the last day of summer holiday so we still got a chance to see it without interrupting any proceedings).

The next part of the tour got really creepy, as it was all about the execution of prisoners. You walk into this room that has a giant table in the middle, surrounded by some chairs. Back in the day, this is the table that a coffin would be placed on, and the prisoner would have to walk by his/her own coffin on the way out to the gallows. Then we saw all the different aspects (short of the gallows) to how the prisoners were hung, and how they were carried through the trap doors so the dead bodies didn’t have to be dragged through the masses of people that would gather around for hanging day.

My favorite part of the tour was probably the next bit, which brought us into a room that the old nobility used to meet in. In it, there are a ton of chairs that date back to such an old age, and are so unique that they are worth over one million pounds for the collection! The cool part, however, was the chair in the corner, which just so happened to be a throne built especially for Queen Victoria in the 1800s. Granted, she only sat in the chair for two minutes, but I still got to touch something that a Queen sat on! Needless to say (given my obsession with royalty) my day was made!

Today was spent shopping at the Trafford Center, which is a giant mall in Manchester. They’re malls are amazing because every single department store seems to also have a café or mini grocery store in it. My favorite store, however, was Hotel Chocolat. Needless to say, the entire store was all different kinds of chocolates, and even chocolate covered cheesecake. I decided that it was definitely worth buying £10 worth, which isn’t a whole lot, but it will definitely be worth it in the long run! The mall also as Legoland, which we didn’t actually go into, but I did get to meet Harry Potter (or the Lego version of him anyways).

The most interesting store, however, had to have been the one that was part Sushi bar, part candy store, part bakery, and finally, part clothing store. What I loved, however, was that the majority of the food section was ‘specialty’ foods from America. This includes Lucky Charms, Reese’s, Pop Tarts, and Jiffy Puff marshmallow mix. Definitely not specialty in the United States, but definitely had a specialty price here in the United Kingdom. I guess it would have been more than worth it to bring an extra suitcase of all that stuff and make some extra money!

I think I am ready for the next Royal wedding with my new fascinator!