Soy española, pero no puedo hablar el idioma (I´m Spanish, but I Can´t Speak the Language)

This is going to be one of those entries where I write lists about random things that probably aren´t really worth your time to read. Nothing exciting. Nothing well-compiled. Just random things that have occurred to me. I guess it´s better to do this and end up talking about daily things than to only talk about the trips I go on, but still. Sometimes what I end up writing in these is worthless.

1) I am mistaken pretty regularly (once every 2-3 days) for a Spaniard when I´m walking by myself and people will stop me and ask me for directions (even when I have my headphones in). It´s nice, I guess, because it means that physically I look Spanish and I look like I know what I´m doing (both lies). I´ve mastered the ¨no, sorry, I have no idea where that street is, I´m a stupid foriegner¨ response. Typically the person smiles and me in amused sort of way and moves on.

2) There are 2 ways people can give the amused smile. The first way is condescending. Like ¨oh, you´re stupid and you have a funny accent.¨ The second way, though, is really nice. It´s more of a ¨aw, that´s cute, you have a funny accent and I find you endearing.¨ These days I tend to get more of the second than the first, but when the first kind of response happens, it can definitely be a downer.

3) I went with my friend David yesterday to a free showing of the Future Shorts documentaries. It was shown through the University of Seville, but each department is in a different place, and we didn´t know where the Facultad de Bellas Artes was (or that it turns out that it has multiple buildings and the building we wanted was about 15min away from the central building). We were sufficiently lost and asked a bunch of people for directions. The last woman who we asked was so helpful and fantastic. She found us endearing. And her directions were the best. So this encounter yesterday and the man who asked me where some street was this morning both got me thinking about this stuff. This stuff. Specific, I know.

4) It is cold and rainy here. Ok, cold, I know it´s all relative for you NY ones... I think it´s in the 50s (still too lazy to totally figure out the celsius thing), but houses aren´t heated, and at night it gets really cold (ok, like high 30s). I´ve become one of those people who things 55 degrees and rain is brutal because I´m accostumed to 80 degrees and sun. How obnoxious!

5) Happy Halloween!! Halloween is actually celebrated here, sort of, among kids. And the foreigners, obviously. But I was surprised to find stores with costume supplies and things like that. I don´t know if trick-or-treating is a thing or not.

6) I can´t believe tomorrow is November. Time is flying by. There is still so much I want to do here; I´m so glad I have another semester. It´s funny: on the one hand I miss Cornell and I miss the intellectual stimulation and the academic challenges, but on the other hand I´d like to stay here for as long as possible. They don´t really line up. So I guess in a way I´m actually saying that I miss homework dominating my life? Should I really be admitting that? But no, it´s true. I have one, one-page response to an article due in my Anthro of America class on Wednesday and I am pumped. I shall savor that bit of homework... ok, ending here.

7) Mayte and Fernando are in England visiting their daughter, who lives there, and her new baby. It has been just me, Katie, and Nando (the son) in the house. Good times. It feels like living with a kid who is going crazy because his mom isn´t around... For breakfast a few days ago, Nando left out Cola cao (powder for hot chocolate), chocolate twinkie things, AND an absolutely enormous chocolate bar. All chocolate. For breakfast. He came back from running errands while I was eating breakfast and gave me some candy to top it all off. Again. For breakfast. It has been fun. I actually like it, sort of, because I have been cleaning the kitchen and helping him out with making food for us -- things that the program specifically says we are not supposed to do (the kitchen is normally the señora´s territory). Mayte is chill about it, but she normally has everything under control and doesn´t need help, whereas Nando, yeah... he could use some help!

8) I decided to stay with Mayte next semester, too.

Un fin de semana en Granada (A Weekend in Granada)

Ok. Granada. We went with the center. I'd been to Granada once before in High School, but all I really remembered was the Alhambra. Going again this past weekend with the center was really good. Some of the neighborhoods in Granada I absolutely love--hippies with dreads are much easier to find there than in Sevilla. There is a pretty large North African influence in Granada, too, so there were a few streets filled with African tapestries, jewelry, and other goodies for sale, along with plenty of tetarias (tea places with hookah). The general attitude of Granada (granted, I stayed in the center of the city and I'm sure the bulk of the suburbs are just like any Andalucian city) was more alternative than Sevilla, I think, and things were cheaper (free tapas with drinks!). My favorite was going up into the Albayzin, one of the oldest neighborhoods that goes up into the hills opposite from the Alhambra, and wandering through the hilly side streets. All of the houses were white-washed. At the top of the Albayzin was a plaza with a bunch of hippies hanging out and an excellent view of the Alhambra (as you will see from the pictures below).

I'm not sure what else there really is to say about Granada... ha, oh, except Liliana and I made it a tradition that whenever we stop at a rest stop, we get off the bus and do a lap around the building. It felt so good to run -- I haven't been able to since, oh, early May. It wasn't painful or anything, which is great news, but my shins are now really sore, which is lame considering it was such a short distance. But I am ready to start running again and I'm ready to build up my endurance. I'm excited to do that. I remember how much my ankle hurt to walk at the beginning of September and how the prospect of running was just totally out of the question. Now it's not. Progress!

On to pictures:

Outside of the most famous church in Granada, we happened across some stands selling all kinds of spices. I like this picture. I feel like I could put it in my kitchen. You know, theoretically. My theoretical kitchen.

Me and Liliana at the base of the Alhambra and on the main street of the Albayzin.

Walking up through the Albayzin to get to the plaza. Typical roommate love between Kristin and Liliana (yes, we give Americans a good name).

View from the Albayzin over to the Alhambra on the other hill with the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

The Alahmbra from the square in the Albayzin.

Liliana, Me, the Alhambra. Sitting in the square with our legs hanging off over the side. Hmm, I wonder if you can guess who is who (sarcasm; it should be fairly easy).

The next day on our guided tour of the Alhambra. This is a view out from the main tower of the Alhambra. Katie and me. I was trying to take a legitimate, mature roommate picture, but she would have none of it.

Inside the Alhambra. Mad mudejar like nobody's business.

Detail on the pillars in el patio de los leones.

More detail. I really like this photo.

We went to the Generalife garden that's attached to the Alhambra, and I started playing with flowers and views...

...and this picture and the one above are of the same thing, just with different focuses... that is DEEP (hah, come on... I know you miss me).

A patio in the Generalife. Pretty sure this one was in my Spanish book in high school.

I like going places with the center because we get guided tours of what's most important, we get transportation, and we get put up in really, really nice hotels. The hotel where we stayed in Granada was spectacular AND there was a free continental breakfast that was out of this world. Easily the best breakfast I've had in Spain. I know my family's probably actually paying for it through the study abroad program costs and fees, but still. I'm sure the center gets some kind of deal on hotels and things when we go on excursions. And I like them. A lot.

El stimulación intelectual (Intellectual Stimulation)

1) The center offers free tutorías for any class that you may be having trouble with. A tutoría is basically like a study session, led by either a doctorate student at the university or by one of the Professors that taught our pro-cultural seminar through the center at the beginning of the year. I just requested a tutoría for my Anthro of America class and, since I'm the only person in the program taking that class, I know for a fact that it will be just me and the leader-person. Bring it on! I requested the tutoría not because I feel behind or anything like that--I understand the concepts completely that are discussed in class. It's more just that she drops names left and right and refers to the concepts/theories of that person offhandedly during class and it's really hard for me to follow. She talks quickly but I don't tend to have a problem understanding her except when, funnily enough, she refers to an Anthropologist with an English last name. The pronunciation is so different here; the names are impossible to decode. I'm sure some of the time I know who she's talking about and I've probably read a bit by him/her, too... but I just can't understand their name with the Spanish accent! So I think a tutoría will be good to help me organize all of those names and theories and everything. And hey, why not? It doesn't cost extra and I have the time! It's more speaking in Spanish, too!

2) I miss intellectual stimulation. Yes, my classes are in Spanish, and yes, that can be challenging, but the expectations here are so different (aka very low). Each of my classes rarely has homework, but the syllabi do have lists and lists of recommended books to read. I went to the university library to try to stimulate myself intellectually on my own, but the library didn't have any of the books on the recommended lists! I was really bummed. I know I didn't come here to have a relocated Cornell experience or anything, but it's hard to figure out how to learn the same incredible volume of information here that's constantly stuffed in my ears at Cornell. (That said, this morning I went and got a library card for the public library which looks very promising and I can't wait to go back.) I'm just not used to working this hard to be able to read interesting books that pertain to my classes and what I like.

3) Their library is the size of Lib Cafe (ok, and maybe the front area of Olin, too). That might give you a little perspective.

4) I can't believe I'm writing an entry complaining that I don't have enough work to do. Do I miss being stressed? To be honest, yeah, a little. But on the other hand, it is fantastic to have a break from the Cornell stress and be able to relax, be on my own, and think.

5) I like thinking.

Mis pensamientos filosóficos (My Philosophical Thoughts)

Ok, no. Not really. Sorry to get your hopes up.

So first off, two things:
1) I had been feeling like my Spanish wasn´t getting that much better, but I think that was false and I was just being the pessimist that I am. I can understand movies, commercials, the news, and radio much better than I could at the start of September. It still isn´t perfect and I definitely don´t understand 100% (sometimes even 90% is pushing it), but I can understand the general ideas enough to comprehend what´s going on. That´s a huge improvement. At Cornell, I would have died without subtitles on movies or tv shows. I didn´t necessarily need English ones -- Spanish ones were ok, too -- I just needed extra help in understanding stuff. But not as much anymore! So that´s great. Also, I´m managing to do this with Andalucian accents, too, which is fantastic. Every so often Katie and I will see something on TV that´s in a Latin American accent, and it´s pretty funny how much easier to understand it is. So good, after this year in Southern Spain I should be able to take on any Spanish accent from anywhere. Bring it on! (ha, no.)
2) I just had my midway-through-the-semester check-up appointment with Luisa about my housing. At the beginning of the semester, I had a really hard time understanding her. The housing interview was hard. She speaks with a heavy accent and the few times I actually could understand her, it took me so long to compose what I was going to say that I still felt stupid. But not anymore! I understood almost everthing and I could tell that my speaking speed had improved, too. It was good. I needed a checkpoint like that to prove to myself that I am, in fact, improving.
The bottom line: improvements! Yay!

Moving right along...

It´s hard to make friends. Not foriegn friends, Spanish friends. Apparently among the ERASMUS kids (European study abroad kids), Spanish students are notorious for not being very friendly. Kind of like the French. There are also a lot of exchange students at the University of Seville because it is the second-largest university in Spain, so it´s not like us foriegners are a special treat or anything like that for the Spanish students. Some have been friendly, but still. Making friends is hard. I´m going out on Friday night with Katie and Natalia, Luisa´s friend´s daughter who´s a fashion student, so that should be good. Natalia and I will hopefully start up an intercambio situation or something, where we´ll meet weekly and chat half in English and half in Spanish. I´m going to seek out other intercambios, too, though. I´d really like to make more Spanish friends... I practice my Spanish a decent bit at home, but the Spanish that students use is so different (obviously).
So the friends front can be rough. I´m not lonely or anything like that, I just feel like I´m not that immersed in Sevilla life, and that´s a huge reason why. Working on changing it.

I also forgot to mention that when we were in Parque Doñana, our driver asked us where we were from, and when he found out we were Americans, he told us that Antonio Banderas had been in the park the day before and did a special tour. He was going to make a promotional video to protect the park or something... weird! It was so casual, too: ¨oh, yeah, Antonio Banderas was here yesterday.¨ Anyway, just thought I´d mention that.

Generally, it feels weird to be out of the Cornell bubble. Good and bad at the same time. At Cornell, my friends and acquaintances are all starting to freak out about their junior year, their senior year, the real world, getting a job, going to grad school, standardized tests, etc, but I´m not freaking out about anything. Studying abroad has put me in this world totally separate from all of that. It´s nice because, well, I´m not worrying on a daily basis and life is simple and happy, but it´s also intimidating because I feel like I could go back to Cornell senior year and feel incredibly behind. Bottom line: I don´t know what my plans are for after graduation and I´m not worrying/thinking about it much at all. Sort of good, sort of bad. I have been doing some reading for College Scholar stuff, though, so hopefully I can keep that up and that will be good. My goal is to know what I want to write about for my senior thesis by the time school starts senior year. That will help things. I think it´s a good goal. Achievable, as long as the idea I get is specific, but also flexible.

Um, we don´t really have homework here. Yeah, some, but most of it´s recommended. Each class comes with a ton of recommended reading, and maybe one thing every few weeks that´s required (this is for university classes only, not the center class). So yeah. It´s weird, but I´m not complaining. I just have to make sure I use my time wisely.

I want to start working in a nonprofit. Pepe helped Katie find a good one. I need to do some research. The problem is, I don´t even know what type of organization I want... there are so many!

It´s raining today (gasp! rain?! in Sevilla?!) and I don´t have enough clothes on me. It wasn´t raining when I left at the crack of dawn to go to work, so I don´t have a jacket or umbrella or anything like that. It´s cold! I don´t like being cold. It feels worse than being too hot. Oh well.

We´re going to Granada this weekend with the center. I´m excited. Liliana and I told Pepe that we wanted to room together. Well, more specifically, we wrote ¨Emma + Liliana para siempre¨ in a pink heart and put other hearts and stars around it and turned in the paper to Pepe. He didn´t even blink (ha, Palin joke, I´m funny) and just looked at us and asked if he should book a room with one bed or two. Needless to say, I feel really comfortable around Pepe and Luisa because I´m in the center so much. That´s a great benefit to working in the center -- having them as friends is really valuable.

That´s all for now! Sorry I don´t have a more exciting finale. Or just entry in general, for that matter.

El Parque Nacional Doñana

Liliana and Katie acting silly at one of the main entrance signs and they WALKED OFF THE TRAIL! *gasp*

Yesterday turned out to be quite the adventure, and it could not have gone better.

Katie, Liliana, and I arose bright and early to catch our 8am bus out of the Sevilla bus terminal. The bus we were taking doesn’t normally stop at the park, but it passes right by, so Katie asked the bus driver if he could stop there, which he did. When we got off, we realized why the bus doesn’t normally stop there. We were left on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. No buildings, no other cars (granted it was early in the morning on a Saturday). There was just one little sign pointing to the Parque Doñana. After taking some pictures at the dinky little sign (all on Liliana’s camera, unfortunately), we followed its arrow and headed through the gates into the park.

We walked down a road for about 20 minutes. It was clear that people don’t normally go to the park by bus. The layout was very much for cars only, and we found out why a few minutes later when we arrived at the visitor’s center.

(Some quick background information: I had made a reservation for a jeep/bus tour thing through the park. Parque Doñana is very carefully preserved, and the only way you can see the bulk of the park is if you do one of these tours. The tours are 4 hours, which none of us knew (read: none of us had bothered to check and we assumed it would be less than that). Our plan for the day was to roam around whatever trails and paths we could, eat our bocadillos, do the tour, and go back to Sevilla).

We didn’t know when the last bus back to Sevilla was—when Katie had gone to ask at the bus terminal, their system was down and the woman had told her to come back later, but Katie had class—so we went up to the front desk to ask the woman. She gave us a weird look. We assumed it was just because of our Spanish. She checked the schedule and told us there was a bus back at 3:30pm and then another one at 6:30pm. I said something about how that was good, we could take the 6:30pm one after the tour, etc. She gave me another weird look and said “no, no podeís” (no, y’all can’t (yeah, I know, welcome to southern Spain)). We were confused. She told us the tour lasted 4 hours, so we wouldn’t be back until 7pm, after the last bus drove past on the main road to Sevilla. She asked us why we hadn’t checked this before, and we had no good answer. I guess none of us thought that the tour would be 4 hours and assumed that there would be enough busses going to Sevilla.

We had to make some decisions and do some serious brainstorming. We could just walk around the few little paths near the guest center and then leave to go back home on one of the buses, but doing that you see pretty much none of the park (I’ll be blunt and say that the paths were pretty lame). Still cool, still glad to have gone to the park, but not nearly as cool as getting a jeep tour along the beach, into the forest and the whatnot. So we walked along the lame paths behind the guest center thinking. (It is also worth noting that when we weren't talking, the silence in the park was unbelievable. I forget how loud real silence actually is.) Anyway, we checked maps and decided to see if there were any other buses to any other cities around the park after the tour, because it was probable that from there we could get a bus back to Sevilla (or, worse case scenario, at least have somewhere to stay for the night). The woman had also suggested to us that we might as well try asking other people on the tour to see if they were driving back to Sevilla after and if we could have a ride, and we all agreed that there was no reason not to do that.

We went back to the guest center after our walking and asked about other busses. She said no, there were no others. It wasn’t even just a weekend thing—there are never any busses after the tour, which was surprising. Ok, so that left one option: asking people for a ride back to Sevilla.

Ok, pause. I am not the kind of person to randomly saunter up to strangers and ask them for rides. I wouldn’t do it in the US, I wouldn’t do it in English. I just wouldn’t do it. Add Spanish to the mix, and yeah, it gets even worse.

So we loitered in the waiting area as people came in. We were all skeptical and all assumed we would just be heading back on the earlier bus and couldn’t do the tour. Katie was the bravest. She asked two different people. The first older woman just literally totally ignored her. Repeatedly. It was rude. The next couple said that they couldn’t understand what she was saying, which is pretty hard to take when you put yourself out there, so that was hard, too (Liliana and I thought Katie’s sentence was perfect and didn’t know what the problem had been). Katie said she was pretty much done trying. Understandable.

Time was running out. 4 minutes until people were supposed to start leaving to board the jeep-things. Liliana was prepping herself to ask the next people who came by. I was chicken, and went to go use the bathroom.

On the way back from the bathroom, something changed in my head. I don’t know what. I got back, they hadn’t asked anyone else, and at that moment an older couple (40s) showed up. Before thinking too much, I walked up to the woman, said we had a question and started to explain the situation. Before I could finish, she said “look, where do you need to go? Sevilla?” I said yes. She said “ok, no problem, we’ll take you there. 2 of us, 3 of you, it’s perfect, 5 seats in the car.” We talked with them for a few more minutes. They were so nice, so friendly. We offered to pay them, which was shot down pretty much immediately. We arranged a meeting place for after the tour just in case (there were several jeeps going out and we weren’t in the same one).

After that encounter, we could not stop smiling. We had asked. Two nice people had said yes right away, no problem. We were in Parque Doñana. We were going on the tour. Everything was going to work out. Things like that NEVER work out. But it did. And it was so fantastic. We had done the impossible, more or less.

Then we got on the jeep-thingie. Each one holds 20 people, and ours was the only one that was empty(!!). It was about half-full, meaning we all got window seats. The day had been going badly, we were bummed, and all of a sudden things were going our way.

The tour itself was pretty awesome. It was 4 hours of off-roading, bouncing around, seeing lots of different animals (the wild horses were my favorite), driving along the beach, and learning about the park, in general, from the driver. We only were allowed off at 2 different spots. I think this bit is better explained in pictures than anything else.

One of the other jeep-thingies going along the sand on the beach. This is what we rode in!

Katie embracing nature/conquering the world (ha, not sure if those go together) at one of the stops.

None of the pictures I took from the ride are that great, but I suppose it's better to put up one than none. Lots of the time was spent among these trees and grasses, stopping here and there to look at animals like this one.

After the tour we met up with Carmen and her husband (actually, as we learned later, they weren’t married because they were too lazy. The man (Julian, we think) knew a little English, and he told us “very lazys, no boda” (boda means wedding)). We got into their little red Mercedes hatchback and drove off. On the way back, they took us to a little town, El Rocio, to see the magnificent church there (there are no paved streets in El Rocio because the main method of transportation is still horse). There’s a huge festival there in spring, apparently, that’s like Semana Santa in Sevilla. They were so happy to show us around and explain different things to us. It was really clear they enjoyed having us along. We saw a wedding in the church, too, which was awesome. As we were standing there, in El Rocio, outside of the church, Liliana, Katie, and I couldn’t stop smiling. Our dilemma literally could not have turned out better.

The church in El Rocio.

On the ride back from El Rocio to Sevilla, we talked about all kinds of different things. They were vacationing from the north and were stopping in Sevilla on their way to the Costa del Sol. We talked about Bush and politics (I think if we were republicans we probably would have gotten kicked out of the car), we talked about Americans, generally, we talked about the different regions of Spain and the cultures there (Carmen and Julian were so, so much easier to understand than the people in Sevilla), we talked about music… it was just great.

We said goodbye to them in the center of Sevilla. No weirdness, no give me a call sometime, no obligation, no nothing. Just ok, thanks, this was great, have a good vacation type of thing. Oh, and hopefully America is smart enough to elect Obama :o). There were no strings attached on either party.

What happened yesterday renewed my faith in humanity, more or less. We were strangers to them, but they trusted us, we in turn trusted them, and we had a really fantastic time getting back to Sevilla. It’s so simple, but something that’s really hard to find these days.

So that’s that. I will not forget yesterday.

Las cosas que he anotado durante las clases (Things That I've Noticed During Class)

The university here is different than in the US. I knew that going in--just the whole format of school here is different, generally--but there are some details I've noticed in the past weeks as I've started to settle into my classes that surprise me.
1) Students are always asking each other stuff about the class. Students openly copy each others' notes (or, even better, ask to borrow someone's notes to have them copied in the la copisteria (copy store) for our department. A girl asked me the other day if she could take my notes to copy because she had missed class. So, they copy notes. They also openly talk about what they wrote for the assignments that we turn in and read each others' work to get ideas. I know I come from a hoity toity school in the USA where academics are cut-throat, but still. I think in almost any college student from the US would notice a difference. I don't mind it, it's just not in my nature to let some random girl see all the notes I've taken. It's because I've been trained to be competitive with class. Just to be clear: it isn't that friends let other friends copy their notes. It's random. If anyone in the class asks you for something or about something, you're expected to help out.
2) I don't have class before 12pm on any given day. That said, I work in el centro starting at 9am on Wednesday which is not fun with the commute, but still. I don't have to be focused for learning at all in the morning. I've spent so many weeks trying out all sorts of classes that my schedule still hasn't really officially been set in my mind, but I'm sure when it is it will be glorious.

I'll also share a normal day during the week because I realized I haven't really discussed that much yet. It's pretty boring and straightforward, but still good.
Just as background information: Monday and Tuesday are more relaxed than Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday I don't have class. Monday I work in the center for 2 hours and have a class from 8-9:30pm (Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore), Tuesday I work in the center for 2 hours and have 2 classes. Wednesday and Thursday I have 5-6 hours of class and I also work in the center for 2 hours on Wednesday. So that's the rough layout.
Ok, on to the daily schedule.
I wake up around 8:30 or 9, have breakfast, get my stuff together, and go. I have found that my Spanish-speaking abilities are pretty much nonexistent before 10, so I like the mornings where I can just go without having to try to talk in Spanish. It isn't that I don't want to talk to them--it's that I do want to talk to them and just can't because my brain isn't functioning.
Normally I bring a bocadillo (sandwich) with me for the day so I don't have to go back for lunch. I spend the day in el centro or in the university in class and I normally eat my sandwich in the little garden/grassy area outside of the main university building. It's very picturesque. Some days I also get a coffee with someone or something like that, but for the most part once I'm done with class, I go home. Monday and Tuesday I have class till 9:30pm, like I said, and then Wednesday and Thursday I go till 6:30pm. I go home, relax a bit, talk with my family, talk with Katie, maybe do a bit of homework (but I try to do most of it over the weekend in parks and stuff like that), eat dinner and watch Pasapalabra, etc. Sometimes internet, too, if we have good signal.

Now that I'm getting into more of a routine, I want to add more to my schedule. There's a lot more I could be doing; there are many more ways I can take advantage of my time here. I just need to put myself out there more, which I haven't done yet.
Katie's starting work at a nonprofit that Pepe hooked her up with. I need to do things like that. Or just go out at night more and talk to locals. Or something. I know there's time to do all of that, but I want to do it sooner rather than later.

In other news...
I'm teaching Fernando English tonight. We're going to have a lesson. He's really excited.
I'm also going to a National Park tomorrow with Katie and Liliana for the day. It's a huge wetland park with lots of endangered species. You're not allowed to hike through it--you have to take a guided jeep tour, which we're doing. It will be a really nice way to spend the day. We're going to leave crazy early so that we have more time to hike and embrace nature and all of that good stuff.
Katie and I also just booked tickets to go to London in 3 weeks. I'm really, really excited for that. It was surprisingly cheap (I think my love affair with Ryanair has begun (ha it rhymes)). I'm going to meet up with my friend Caroline there (she's from Cornell but is spending the year at St Andrews) and then she's coming back with us to Sevilla! She has a break, so she'll spend the week in Spain/Morocco and then the next weekend we're going to go to Toledo, I think. It should be great! I can't wait to see her. The people here are good, but I miss my close friends from Cornell. And Caroline fits that category, for sure.

That's all for now. I could have elaborated more on the details of my days, but I'm not sure what you want to hear about and what can be skipped. So I guess all the details will just come as they come... I'll take more pictures, too. That will help.

Barcelona y Tarragona

I spent the weekend in Barcelona (and went on a day trip from Barcelona to Tarragona), where we found Catalan to be even more confusing and horrible to understand than the good ol' Andalusian Castellano. We had Monday off for "Fiesta de la Hispanidad"... not sure exactly what that is, but it gave me a long weekend so I'll take it. I went to Barcelona with Liliana, Kristin (Liliana's roommate), and Audrey. All of them are from Michigan. I guess that's not very surprising. Anyway, we spent the weekend walking all over creation. I think the best way to show what we did is through pictures.

The Boqueria was easily one of my favorite places. It is an enormous market filled with fresh foods of all kinds for very cheap prices. We went there for lunch one day, bought cheese, bread, olives, and a lot of fruit, and hauled our feast over to Parque Guell (later in the photos) for a picnic. We also picked up food here for dinner for the night that we spent in the airport. Oh, yeah: we spent our last night in the airport because our flight boarded at 5:50am and we were too cheap to pay for a hostel for only a few hours of sleep. That was fun.

I. Love. These. Flowers. So little, so colorful, so cute.

Still in La Boqueria... you'll be shocked to know that I didn't love the meat section quite as much as the other sections (read: I made immature gagging noises whenever we walked down a row with stuff like this). You could still see the hair on the pigs' snouts.

Enjoying the wonderful freshly-squeezed orange juice! Left to right: Liliana, Audrey, Kristin.

In one of the many aisles of La Boqueria. It's not a great picture of me, but I feel like I should be putting more pictures of me up on the blog. Plus I like the woman behind me in her sunglasses. It makes me think of you, Angie.

At first I thought this was cheese, but no, it's fish.

*immature gagging noises*

I don't normally take pictures of the inside of churches (they all start to look the same and I never really want to look back through those pictures later for fun once I take them), but the Catedral in the old Gothic neighborhood was really something. It was built in the Middle Ages. The church felt older and barer than any other church I remember being in.

Another cool thing about the Catedral was that it had a patio with all sorts of trees, shrubbery, and ducks!

I guess I should have warned you that food was going to be a theme of this post. Shops like this made me aware of how close to France we were. Then again, there are shops sort of like this in Sevilla, too, so I might've just wanted to feel French for the weekend.

It's so hard to capture the mood and beauty of the old winding streets. This was as close as I got.

We were pretty close to the water. The bright blue water, white boats, palm trees lining the dock, and beautiful architecture on the shoreline were quite a combination. I had a hard time capturing this, too -- I don't know if it was me or the fact that I had my little point-and-shoot camera as opposed to my beast.

The view down from the little balcony our hostel room had (we shared our room with two guys from Bilbao).

We spent a day on Gaudi, more or less. I love his stuff. Here is one of the apartment buildings he designed. Dad, it reminded me of you. I feel like you were a building, you might be something like this.

La Padrera, the apartment building on a corner that has no ninety-degree angles. I wanted to go in, but it was expensive and the line was at about a 40-min wait. Still, the outside was very cool.

Bonus points if you know what this is!

One of the many fantastic views from Parque Guell (also from Gaudi). The tower building thing is in the park, and then out from there you can see part of Barcelona and the Mediterranean.

Me in the park. I tried to get a good picture of those benches, but it didn't work out.

Kristin taking a picture in Tarragona, which was a very cute little town about an hour-and-a-half away from Barcelona by train. It was an old Roman city, and the main attractions were the ruins there. The old center of the city was also great (on the top of a cliff/hill thingie; the peak of the town) and we spent a decent bit of time wandering around there. A little fair/market was going on and I had the best chocolate covered churros I've had yet. Mmm mm.

The amphitheater in Tarragona with the sea behind it.

Again.

So I know this picture is pretty irrelevant to everything, but I love it. It might be the best picture I've managed to take with my dinky camera. We found this little guy when we were walking along the old (3rd century BC with Medieval Age modifications) city wall. Audrey and I thought she took some pictures of me there, but she must not have pressed the button down hard enough. Oh well. It was gray and gloomy and rainy, anyway, which is another reason I don't have better pictures of the the buildings in Tarragona. I guess it doesn't matter too much--they all start to look the same, anyway.

I have been thinking a decent bit about my College Scholar proposal and what I want to write my thesis on. I kind of want to incorporate southern Spain in some way, but I'm still not sure exactly how. Nando explained some conjugation of past that Spanish has and English doesn't as "feeling farther in the past" than other past tenses, and that really interested me, but I'm not sure how I would go about writing about that. Especially because I have never taken linguistics. Oh well -- I'm keeping my eyes and ears open and hopefully something will jump out at me one of these days. I also need to do some reading. Right. Add it to the list.

Una lista aleatoria (A Random List)

This is not Barcelona. This is random stuff that happened before or after Barcelona.

1) Leche (Milk). On Thursday night, I was talking with Mayte while I was eating dinner. Turns out there was a huge misunderstanding that's lasted, um, the entire time I have lived with her. She thought Katie and I didn't like milk. We thought that they didn't have milk. El centro told us to never go in the fridge and that the kitchen is not our domain. Mayte would leave us out cereal with no bowls or milk or anything, so we never ate it and just assumed that there was no milk (it's also in cartons and looks different here, so even if we opened the fridge it wouldn't have been immediately obvious). She now keeps bringing it up, shaking her head and calling us stupid girls and asking us what kind of family wouldn't drink milk. But hey, the benefit is now that milk is back in my diet. Milk here is different (very processed), but milk nonetheless. Ok, maybe I should have kept this story to myself.

2) Intercambio (Exchange). I am going to have an intercambio with a sevillana girl, Natalia, sometime this week. I called her last week and had my first real, authentic, kind of lengthy phone conversation in Spanish. It was hard at times, but she sounded really nice and was really good humored. I was also pleased with myself that I didn't stumble too badly over anything. I'm excited for the intercambio. I want to have more interaction with the Spanairds, but it's hard when I have so much of an American bubble constantly around me. I've realized I have to make a conscious effort to really immerse myself (as with any study abroad program that Cornell has, I would imagine--they do too good a job taking care of you!). So conscious effort I will make!

3) Visas. There was a day last week where kids in the program were trying to buy tickets online and get money out of the ATM. Most people's cards were frozen. The airlines wouldn't accept dollars and the ATMs wouldn't give them Euros because of the instability of the stock market, etc, etc. I haven't tried to take out money, but I think it was just for that one day. Weird.

4) Naranjas (Oranges). I'm sick, and this morning when I came back and Mayte heard my voice, she made me fresh-squeezed orange juice with honey in it. It feels nice to be home. Er, um, back in Sevilla.

El comienzo de las clases (The Start of Classes)

The front of the main building (which, I cannot stress enough times, is humongous on the inside) of La Universidad de Sevilla!

This past week has been a blur of classes, professor-stereotyping (it should be a sport or something), and getting lost in the enormous main building of La Universidad de Sevilla. I have tried more classes than I think I can count and have been confused about how to get where I am going more times than I would like to admit. The old Tobacco Factory, where my facultad (department, more or less) is located, is absolutely enormous. The building doesn't look that complex from the outside, but on the inside it's a maze of patios hallways of all sizes and shapes that don't make sense. That said, I think I can get myself around my facultad adequately now and I think, as of today, I have made my final decisions on which classes I'm going to take.

As a common principle, classes start late and end early. Also, there are a large amount of older people (40s, 50s, 60s) in the classes and getting their degree, too.

Detail on the outside gate of the main university building.

In the fall semester, we take 4 classes: one through el centro and three through the university. Most kids take their 3 classes in different facultades to mix it up a little bit, but pretty much everything I'm interested in is housed in "Geografia e historia". No surprise there, I guess, as it has Geography, History, Art History, and Anthropology, but still. I do feel a little lame for taking all my classes in more or less one hallway. In this whole process, it was an enormous luxury to have no requirements at Cornell. Some of my friends are subjecting themselves to classes that sound horrible because they need the credit to count towards whatever major they have so that they can graduate on time. I do love the College Scholar Program.

So in el centro I'm taking "La vida cotigiana bajo Franco" (Daily Life Under Franco). I may've already written about it because it started awhile ago, but I can't remember. I really like the class a lot. It's taught by UMich Professor, who teaches the same class normally at Michigan. It's a 400-level and challenging, but fantastic nonetheless. We meet for more hours than the other classes offered in el centro, but that's because each week we watch a movie that provides some kind of commentary on what we're learning about. It's good. The professor uses a lot of original sources (photos, movie clips, and texts), which I like a lot. Franco's dictatorship is also just really interesting to me... it happened so recently and it was such a vastly different lifestyle (women needed written permission from their husbands to do a lot of things, lots of movies and books were banned to all, etc). Whenever I see older married couples, I automatically start thinking about how different their married life was (and probably still is) for them.

In the university, I'm taking two anthropology classes. No surprise there. It took me awhile to stumble upon two that I liked. I had originally picked Anthropology of the Iberian Peninsula, Anthropology of Mediterranean Villages, and Anthropology of the Americas. Classes here tend to have very general titles, and I don't know if it's a personal thing or the atmosphere I was brought up in (ahem, intellectuals, hi father), but I tend to be very skeptical about classes that claim to teach broad themes, like "Human Geography" or "Social and Cultural Anthropology" (I kid you not; both of those are legitimate classes). Anyway, I tried to pick classes that had more specific titles, which didn't do me much good. Anthro of the Iberian Peninsula was really intimidating. The teacher wasn't nice and randomly called on people, so I scratched that one off my list pretty quickly. I liked the professor of Anthro of Mediterranean Villages a lot, but we have to give a 45 minute presentation to the class, so, needless to say, that one was scratched, too. Fourty-five minutes of original anthropological thought is hard enough in English and doing that in Spanish would be really hard. Maybe next semester. Maybe.

So that leaves Anthropology of the Americas, which I was most skeptical about because of the total ambiguity of the name, but it turned out to be pretty fabulous. The teacher is hard but good: she takes attendance and asks for various essays and opinion pieces throughout the semester, something that is very rare here, but she's a very organized teacher who knows what she's talking about. The class seems like it's going to focuson the interactions between the US and Latin America and the Professor, Pilar, is really critical of the style of US Anthropology and the whole idea of using Latin American civilizations as "the other," "the savage," etc. I think Pilar's class will be really interesting. It won't be entirely a critique of American thought or anything like that, but it will definitely be interesting to get an outside perspective on Anthropology from a woman who seems like she knows what she's doing.

Great, so three classes and only one worked out. That left me needing two more classes.

I was deciding between Andalusian Geography and Local and Sustainable Development: The Andalusian Case. I just decided earlier today, after sitting through one of the most boring and poorly-given lectures of my life, that I would go for the Local and Sustainable Development class. I have been having a moral dilemma with this one because the Local and Sustainable Development class is a total joke. Like completely, utterly, 100% joke. The. Professor. Talks. Like. This. Because. He. Knows. That. The. Class. Is. Made. Up. Of. Mostly. Foreigners. Really. He talks like maybe my 7th grade Spanish teacher talks. Maybe. But I think she even spoke more quickly than him. The teacher is a nice enough guy, but the class is very slow-paced and his expectations are very low. On the other hand, Andalusian Geography, although it was boring, was also filled with much more information and would have been much more difficult. So I was in this dilemma of whether or not to take the challenging-but-I-will-learn-something class and the joke-but-I-will-do-well-without-trying class. After the first class of Andalusian Geography yesterday, I thought I was going to go for it, but then today I realized just how boring and awful the professor's lectures are. So I switched. I'm taking the easier Development class instead (which means leaving my awkward cheek-kissing friend. Oh well).

Two side notes:
1) Every so often I think about how my parents are paying twice as much as they need to be for this program. If I were going to UMich, I would be doing the exact same (literally, EXACT same) things this semester for half the price. Cornell, you better be helping my personal growth and all that jazz for those 6 other semesters I spend on the hill...
2) I get 15 credits from Cornell per semester no matter what I take, assuming that I pass everything. I understand why they do it that way, but that seems like overall a horrible idea. It encourages most kids to take total joke classes. I actually don't think of myself like that--three of the classes I'm taking are going to be reasonably difficult and I'm excited for the challenge--but I'm sure I'm in the minority. The UMich and Penn kids have to take back all of their work to show to their universities, and then their universities decide which classes were worth 3 credits and which were worth 4. I guess I like our system better and it's easier and all that, but still. I see flaws in the system. Oh yes, yes I do.

Back on track. So I'm taking Franco, Anthro of the Americas, and Andalusian Sustainable Development. That leaves one more class that I need. I searched far and wide for a class. I asked around and I went to back-to-back classes for a good chunk of yesterday. It's hard to find a class that fits in with my schedule, that people say is good, and that I have interest in. But yesterday I found it. I found my class. It's Anthropology of Contemporary Societies. Like I said before, I didn't even consider it at first because of the hilariously ambiguous name, but my friend Audrey was going yesterday to the first day of the class so I decided to go, too. It's a late class--8-9:30--which I don't love, but it's alright. The professor was completely fantastic. Especially in Spanish, I'm finding the professor makes the class. He was this little old man (and when I say little, I mean little... maybe 5 foot, max) with poofy white hair and smiled and laughed at his own jokes. He talked quickly but it was still pretty easy to understand him (more or less). He seems like a good teacher and is a really encouraging, supportive guy. He ended his spiel by stressing how ERASMUS students (basically, quickly defined, meaning foreigners) should not be afraid of him or his class. He stressed how flexible he is and how he wants us to come in to his office hours if we need help writing (there's a big paper at the end) or if we have any questions or doubts of any kind. There's a paper and a final exam at the end of the class, and he went off about how he's very flexible with the paper and we can be creative, blah blah blah. He was talking about how we can do a movie, write a song, etc, etc, and that kind of flexibility is very hard to find here. So yes, his class it is. According to the yearlong schedules, he's also teaching an Anthro class next semester I wanted to take, which is great.

So yes, there you have it. My schedule, more or less. I'm also working in el centro at the job I got 6 hours a week.

And, as it turns out, I don't have class on Friday, which is a nice bonus. I didn't plan it that way, but I'm certainly not complaining.

This weekend is the only long-weekend of the fall semester--we have Monday off--and me, Audrey, Liliana, and Kristin (Lili's roommate) are going to Barcelona. I'm excited, but getting tickets was an involved process... they hit you with so many under-the-table charges here! It costs 8 euro to pay for your ticket online with a visa card, it costs 2 euro to book your actual seat, it costs 20 euro per suitcase (so hopefully our bags fit the 'carry on' limit, which is very small), etc. It's very sneaky of them. Very sneaky indeed. But Barcelona, here we come!
Final note: Go see Vicky Christina Barcelona if you haven't already. Really. Just do it.

Excursión a Ronda (Excursion to Ronda)

(This picture is being added late because it was just put on Facebook today, but I like it a lot. My friend Caitlin took it of me at Ronda, and obviously I was totally unaware...)

Side note that has nothing to do with this entry: I JUST GOT MY ABSENTEE BALLOT IN THE MAIL!!!!! YAHOO!!!! Pepe gave it to me when the mail came in and said "oh, hey, this is great! now you can vote for McCain!" and then walked away chuckling. He's a funny guy.

Last Saturday the program took us to Ronda for the day. Ronda is completely beautiful. I was more blown away by Ronda than I have been by any other city I've visited. I think the pictures more or less explain themselves. We took a private bus over and up into the mountains, then had a 2.5 hour walking tour of the city, and then had a few hours of free time before heading back to Sevilla. Ronda is small and easily doable in a day. It's very, um, gorges. Actually, it puts Cornell to shame (I know, I know, shocking). Ernest Hemingway made the beautiful bridge that goes across the gorge famous by writing about it in one of his books (which escapes me at the moment). Walking around Ronda and taking in the views was phenomenal. I want to go back, ideally with my family when they come in December, but I don't know how cold it gets up the mountainous regions of Andalucia.

Me with my friend Audrey at one of the lookouts. You can't see the background very well, but it's all countryside.

Does this need a caption?

At the bottom of the gorge is a little river and really old Arab baths...

This is a view from the older side of Ronda into the newer side.

To be honest, the more I travel here, the less impressed I am with the photographs in the guide books. I could do that, no problem. It's not that the photographers are particularly gifted; their job isn't hard when beauty is surrounding you on all sides!

Description of classes and normal life, generally, to come in the next entry.