Random Day

Today has been a pretty relaxed day for me.

Pica's daughter and granddaughter are here! They live in Madrid. Her granddaughter is precious and has been standing outside my door talking to me all evening...



This morning I just walked around again. Today is a beautiful day in Sevilla, as most of them have been. I bought stuff this time at "Hecho en Sevilla". :)

I also caught part of a show, these people were playing lots of music and dancing. Fun! It was the kind of thing that Dad would have loved.

Sunset

There was a beautiful sunset outside my window this evening...

Exploring

This weekend, almost everyone in my group is in Italy. I decided not to go with them, since I'm going to Italy with Julia in a few weeks.

So, I decided to spend the morning exploring Sevilla by myself. I just walked around for a few hours. I found and saw part of the Parque Maria Luisa. It is a beautiful park. I also found the Plaza de Espana, a beautiful big building. I stumbled upon an arts and crafts fair, "Hecho en Sevilla" or "Made in Seville" in the Plaza de Espana, and I will definitely be returning there to buy some things!

La Plaza de Espana

I also happened to be in the Plaza de Espana when they put up the flag. It was a big ordeal, with a band playing music, and many uniformed people standing around. I'm not quite sure what all was going on, but it was neat to see!

Then, I wandered around and found the cathedral area again, it is a very touristy spot, and there are many other sites to see near there. I almost went into one of them, but I didn't have time before lunch, so I'll go back tomorrow. There was a man near there painting with pastels, these beautiful scenes of Sevilla. I started looking at his paintings, and found his one oil painting and I decided to buy it. We talked for a bit, in broken Spanish and broken English. He explained to me that he used to do the oil paintings, but he decided that they are too hard, he has to do them in his house and work really hard on them. On the other hand, the pastels are easier and he can do them on the streets. I am so excited about my purchase of his painting!

The man I bought the painting from, Jesus.

A beautiful fountain, with the gorgeous trees with purple flowers on them...such a pretty place in Sevilla!

Different

Housing here is very different than it is in the states. I have not seen what I consider a normal house yet. Everyone lives in apartments. But, they aren't necessairily very small. I am in a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment. Also, I have 3 keys to get into here. One, to get into the coutyard area surrounding the apartment complex. One to get into the apartment building, and then one into the actual apartment.

The complex, from the outside.

Just inside the doors, there are courtyards on each side here. It is so pretty!

Also, the "Texas Tech campus" here in Seville is really just the second story of a building. This is the outside of it, we all have keys to this door too, because it is always locked.

Here are some beautiful flowers that we pass every day on the way to school!

The Cathedral of Seville

Today after class, our whole class walked to the Cathedral of Seville. It is the third largest cathedral in the world. It was huge! And beautiful. This cathedral was originally a masque, and when the Christians took over, they turned it into a cathedral.

On the way, we saw the University of Seville, it was very pretty!

Here are some pictures of the cathedral.

Inside, there was a huge organ! It was just incredible!


It is said that Christopher Columbus is buried inside. There is a tomb for him and everything. Our teacher explained to us that a few different countries believe that they have Christopher Columbus' body, but no one knows where he really is. And, they don't want to do DNA testing, because no one wants to be wrong, because they all make money off of it! I found that pretty amusing. Here I am in front of the tomb.

La Giralda is the bell tower at the Cathedral of Seville. I think Dr. Delgadillo said that it was about 330 feet high, we went up 35 ramps and one flight of stairs to get to the top. It was beautiful up there! You could see the whole city of Sevilla.

Here I am in front of part of the city.

Rachel, me, and Devonie in the top of La Giralda

This is looking up at La Giralda from the bottom.

La Playa

Today, we went to the beach! It was actually very fun! We went in to class early this morning, so that we could get out early and the entire class including our teacher took a train to the beach at noon. We got there around two and didn't have to catch the bus back till seven. I slept the whole way there because I'm always so tired!!

It was a beautiful beach!

We were in the town of Cadiz, and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.



Here I am with K'Lann, after we got out of the water.

Me, K'Lann, Megan, and Kelsey - the housemates!

Wreck'em Tech! :)



While we were swimming, some people in our group made a double T in the sand around Hilary.

On the way back to the train station we saw two dalmations!!! (As many of you know, 101 Dalmations is one of my favorite movies of all time.) This is the best picture I could get...I was so excited!! :)

Sunday- Italica!

On Sunday, our group and the group of Tech kids who are here taking a Spanish class went to the city of Italica.



It is a city of Roman ruins which is in the process of being uncovered. It was very interesting to see the things that they had back in the time of Christ, here in Spain! There is a town on top of part of thie city, and the people there are scared that the government is going to come in and take their homes away, so that the discovering can continue. This summer, some Spanish college students are going to do a dig near where we were.





This is the Roman Coliseum. It is the third largest in the world. It seated 20,000 people at the time, the top layer of seats was knocked down, but it was massive. It's incredible that it has lasted this long, people would fight lions and eachother in the bottom part, from what I understood.





Here I am down in the bottom of the Coliseum.




This is the whole business class with our teacher, Dr. Delgadillo, and his wife, at the bottom of the Coliseum.

One of the tunnels under the seats. This engineering, with the arches and everything, is incredible to me!





The view down the street as you enter the city of ruins.

The theater that was built for 6-8 hour plays, made up of monologues about the actions going on onstage. The man who discovered it was digging for his garage, he lived in a house that was towards the left of the picture. He was digging, and hit part of the theater. Several people were taken out of their homes as the government found out, and now no one in the city requests permits for any type of construction, because they know that they are sitting on top of tons of history.

It was a beautiful place, and it was very neat to see these things that are new discoveries from thousands of years ago.

Saturday Night

Saturday night pretty much the whole group went out for a little while.

These are my house-mates. Kelsey, K'Lann (my roomate), me, and Megan.

Part of the group in front of the river. :)

It was a pretty building...but it was also dark outside.


K'Lann and I left the group early and on the way home went to a Chocolateria! It was a stand with lots of chocolate items for sale. It was a fun concept, but honestly I didn't like mine. Hers was good though!

Then we took a Prius taxi home. That made me happy, I felt like I was at home...although it was weird to be in the back seat! Haha.

My Home for the Month..

I am living with a host family here in Spain. Really, she's a host-mom. There's no one else here with us. There are four girls from the program that are living with her here. She's been housing Texas Tech study abroad families for 8 years now, so she's completely used to this. But, the previous students were here to learn Spanish, so they all knew way more Spanish than we do. She doesn't speak any English, so we're all learning a lot! She's aware and always tries to make sure we understand what she's saying.

It's part of her "job" as our host mom to provide us with 3 meals a day.

Breakfast is toast or something else small that we make for ourselves.

Lunch is a 2 course meal often times. Dessert is fruit. It's served at 2:30 pm, followed by a siesta!

Dinner is a smaller version of lunch. Dessert has been yogurt. Dinner is served at 9:30 pm. Pica (our host mom) says that she is trying to stay skinny, so she doesn't eat dinner.

She eats lunch with us, and so we eat in the living room. It is very interesting how the houses are set up differently here. Here's a picture of the living room...

The TV is always on to some sort of Spanish sports or news when we are eating lunch. But we also try to talk to her in Spanish. Two of us are much better at understanding her than the other two, but we're all still working on it.

This is my bedroom. K'Lann is my roomate. She's great! My bed is on the right. There is a window right by it, which is our only air circulation, because they don't use air conditioners here!

This is the kitchen, we eat breakfast and dinner on the little table to the left.

Getting to Seville

I am studying abroad in Seville, Spain this summer! I'm taking a business computer class here, while learning a lot of Spanish...just to survive!

Here I am with Matt and Matt at my last lunch in the states! Of course, we went to Chili's! I miss them!

When I arrived in Madrid, I saw a guy, Sam who is in our group in Seville. He and I decided to take a taxi together to get to the train station. His luggage had been lost, so we waited in line for an hour so that he could file a missing luggage report. Once we got to the train station we were running late, (it was about 12:30) and we could either take a 3pm train in 1st class, or a 7:15 pm train in 2nd class. Unfortunately, we had to take the 3pm train because we were suppposed to meet for our study abraod program at 5 pm! The train takes about 2 and a half hours to get from Madrid to Seville. Anyway, we both freaked out somewhat. The day had not gone as planned, at all. But eventually we got on the train and although 1st class was crazy expensive, it was also neat!

We took the Ave, which is a high speed train that runs through parts of Spain.

This is the Ave, right before we got on it.

Sam and me in our 1st class seats!

This was the lunch that they brought us as part of the first class treatment. All I ate was the fruit, but it was fabulous, especially the pineapple! We had REAL silverware- 2 forks, 2 knives, and 2 spoons. It was pretty cool!

This is the best of my attempts at getting a picture of the beautiful countryside on the way to Seville. The train was moving too quickly for me to get a better one!