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.