The last couple weeks have been BRILLIANT! From Granada to Sevilla to Paris and back, the adventure never stops! Sevilla worked out really well. Katy and I took a bus from Granada to the bus station in Sevilla which was in the center of town and was walking distance from our hostal. We did an awesome job of getting from place to place on our own in an unknown city with only a tour guide book map to lead us. Sevilla is incredible! Its very colorful and charming and is a bit bigger than Granada. The people seem friendlier and the environment cleaner... but no free tapas... Overall, Granada seemed gray in comparison.
Since this was our week off from school, pretty much everyone went on some trip outside the country. There was another group from our program who was stopping in Sevilla before heading to Portugal. We ended up staying in the same hostal as them for fifteen euros each for the night. This worked out really well. I tried to call the place before hand to reserve a space, but I guess I found the wrong number. The man there wanted to charge Katy and I each 45 euros for the night because we hadn't called in advance. Luckily, he's one of the smarter business people in Spain (they can be hard to come by) and realized that we either pay 15 or nothing. So
he gave us the room for the night for 15.
Our time in Sevilla was very low key. Most of our time was spent talking with the group in the hostal or at a cafe. Betsaida, Jake, Katy, and I were all under the weather and everyone was beat from the previous weeks and travelling. hmm, so well, we saw the only thing in Sevilla that I know of to see: The cathedral. It was huge and impressive and beautiful, of course. There was lots to see inside. I took a bunch of pictures, but with being sick, I was a little too impatient to really learn about everything I saw. There are lots of tombs inside of past
bishops and other important people. There were these four enormous wooden statues holding a coffin that was supposed to have the remains of Christopher Colombus, but a few years back, scientists determined its not really him. Either way, it was an impressive sight. Well, I pretty much just took random pictures from there of little things I found interesting. There w
as a lot of detail. Wood carvings on the walls and such.
I thought this little guy on a cast-iron bar kinda looks like my dad. (hehe what do you think mom?)
Well, I always find the most impressive thing in any cathedral is the pipe organ. I would have loved to hear someone play it, but all I could do was
look at it and imagine what it could do in a place like that. It must be pretty powerful.
I just want to tell you that as I was writing this, a marching band played down my street. Its a bit strange - I don't live on a main street or anything. Today is a national holiday for Spain. YAY NO SCHOOL! I wonder if the band is winding all through Granada. That was a special treat. :3)
So, that night in Sevilla we walked around quite a bit. We went back to the cathedral and saw it all lit
up. Pretty amazing. Then we went to a kebob place to get something to eat. This was an experience in and of itself. Everything we ordered was a problem. Caitlin ordered a croissant (ok, not typical at a kebob place, but still - it was on the menu). The waiter didn't understand. We tried to explain to him for a while, but he brought ou
t a pita bread. I ordered mint tea and he brought me black tea. Betsaida offered to take it so I told him again that I wanted mint tea. He brought me green tea. At least he remembered the honey. Jacob goes to take a spoonful of honey and sees a bug in it. No big deal right? I then take the honey to pour into my tea, but notice the entire jar is FULL of ants! Katy gets her fanta to go with her meal. The guy brings out a glass half full of Fanta. What the hell is going on? Incredible... just incredible. I felt all that could be done would be to take a picture and talk about it later...
Katy and I woke up the next day and got ready to head off to PARIS!!! We tried soo hard to catch the bus to the airport! We must have dragged our luggage miles going back and forth as every person we asked pointed us in a different direction. As time ran out, we had no idea where to go except the city bus station where we hopped a taxi to the airport. This was the least stressful flight I have ever boarded. Security was pretty much a joke. There was hardly anyone in the airport! I'm pretty sure the gate we boarded at was the only gate in the airport that had any activity. We took a Spanish budget airline (Clickair) into Paris Orly Airport where exiting the plane brought us right into baggage claim where my Aunt Lilly was waiting for us! It couldn't have been easier. Paris was delightful! I had been there once before for a few weeks after graduating high school, but I must say this little trip had me fall in love with the city. The weather was very cool - in fact, it was raining when we got there. It was so beautiful! I also wasn't jet-lagged! It was perfect! We stayed with my aunt at her apartment in Montmartre - the old artists' district of Paris. Katy and I spent the next four days doing all the tourist stuff. We went shopping (ha! New clothes! woot!), went to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, took a boat trip on the Seine, saw Notre Dame, and walked all around Montmartre. The hardest thing about being in Paris was the language barrier. Katy and I were very used to being in a foreign language country, but we didn't realize just how well we can communicate in Spain until we walked into a cafe in
Paris and stared blankly at people as they asked us what we wanted. We could seriously not understand a thing! I me
an, it makes sense considering I've never taken a French class, but for whatever reason, 
I was not prepared to n
ot be able to not be able to communicate.
We had a couple adventures while in Paris. On Wednesday, my aunt had to go to work and left us with the key, her cell phone, and a map. This was the day Katy and I wanted to use to paint the town red. All we had to do before getting started was run to the boulanger for some
bread and have breakfast. When we return to the apartment with the bread, I realize that somehow I had left the paper with all the
information my aunt wrote out for us... including the entry code to the building. I also left her boyfriend's business card, my aunt's cell phone, and just about everything else that could have come to our aide. All I had was the key to the apartment door and a small map of the city (I left the big one I was used to inside
too...). We waited a bit to see if anyone would walk in or out of the 
building, but it was mid-morning and everyone was at work. Well, we were dressed (though perhaps not dolled up as cute as we would have preferred) and we had our money, a little map, and our cameras. So, we set off into the city as we were and had an AMAZING day seeing the sights of Paris!
When we returned home Wednesday night from my aunt's dance class that I somehow found from a three year old memory, there was a man entering my aunt's apartment building who was staying in the apartment directly below my aunt. He heard us talking and asked us where we were from. He seemed overjoyed to be in the presence of Americans. It was pretty awkward actually. He was Arabic, himself and was extremely friendly. He invited Katy and I to come down and have a drink, but our better judgment kept us from going there. Keep reading! I'm going somewhere with this. When my aunt returned home, we had dinner and were sitting around talking for a bit when we heard an explosion!!!! We went downstairs to make sure everything was alright. It came from the apartment that friendly Arabic man was in. Another man answered the door looking rather suspicious. Then the friendly guy came out and tried to give us cheek kisses as if nothing happened and he was just happy we paid a visit. My aunt told him what we heard and asked if everything was OK. The man apologized and said he "dropped something heavy"... uh huh... ok.
The next morning (the morning Katy and I head back to Spain) we are awoken by a different neighbor who is making rounds to get everyone out of the apartment because THERE IS A FIRE! Its coming from none other than our friendly troublemakers apartment (who is no where to be found)! Can anyone say METH??? Well, this was pretty exciting. It was a pretty good fire, I'd say, but luckily not good enough to harm my aunt's apartment right above. We were a bit worried that we wouldn't get our stuff out in time to catch our flight, but luckily they put the fire out pretty quickly and no one had any problem with the residents going inside right afterward... Things in Europe seem a lot more easy-going like that. Thinking I may never
be in another fire and seeing as no one was hurt, I shamelessy took a picture... My aunt's apartment is the one that has flowers on the balcony that are mostly covered up by smoke.
So, that was exciting... hahaha! I'm glad everything is alright, of course.
Back in Granada, I went out with my roommates Shermine and Dimnia. They are from France and they are WO
NDERFUL girls! Dimnia is the one in black and Shermine in... what is that color? Mauve? So we had a blast at this place called Tantra Gar or Car or something. haha!
Gosh, so what else can I say?
OH HAHAHA!!! School!!! I started school this week. Um, its going to be HARD! Back home classes are manageable with a bit of effort. Go to class, do homework, take tests...
Here, the fact that everything I'm taking is in another language means I'm never 100% sure that I understand something and that I exert a lot of effort just to stay alert to what is going on! It will also be harder to know how I'm doing as the trimester progresses. Students are evaluated here very differently. Its almost all participation and a final. Hardly any midterms or papers. Well, I see it as a challenge and if I don't get straight A's (which I'm realizing is hardly even a possiblity), I'll accept it and know that I learned a hell of a lot while I was here. The classes I'm taking are Advanced Grammar, Hispanic-American Literature, Spanish Culture and Civilization, Translation, and Oral and Written Production. 5 classes baby! Ok, well keep me in your thoughts and prayers and keep wishing me luck because I'm going to have to work at school five times harder here than at home just to get by.
Until next time then...
~Veronica
Since this was our week off from school, pretty much everyone went on some trip outside the country. There was another group from our program who was stopping in Sevilla before heading to Portugal. We ended up staying in the same hostal as them for fifteen euros each for the night. This worked out really well. I tried to call the place before hand to reserve a space, but I guess I found the wrong number. The man there wanted to charge Katy and I each 45 euros for the night because we hadn't called in advance. Luckily, he's one of the smarter business people in Spain (they can be hard to come by) and realized that we either pay 15 or nothing. So
he gave us the room for the night for 15.Our time in Sevilla was very low key. Most of our time was spent talking with the group in the hostal or at a cafe. Betsaida, Jake, Katy, and I were all under the weather and everyone was beat from the previous weeks and travelling. hmm, so well, we saw the only thing in Sevilla that I know of to see: The cathedral. It was huge and impressive and beautiful, of course. There was lots to see inside. I took a bunch of pictures, but with being sick, I was a little too impatient to really learn about everything I saw. There are lots of tombs inside of past
bishops and other important people. There were these four enormous wooden statues holding a coffin that was supposed to have the remains of Christopher Colombus, but a few years back, scientists determined its not really him. Either way, it was an impressive sight. Well, I pretty much just took random pictures from there of little things I found interesting. There w
as a lot of detail. Wood carvings on the walls and such.
I thought this little guy on a cast-iron bar kinda looks like my dad. (hehe what do you think mom?)Well, I always find the most impressive thing in any cathedral is the pipe organ. I would have loved to hear someone play it, but all I could do was
look at it and imagine what it could do in a place like that. It must be pretty powerful.I just want to tell you that as I was writing this, a marching band played down my street. Its a bit strange - I don't live on a main street or anything. Today is a national holiday for Spain. YAY NO SCHOOL! I wonder if the band is winding all through Granada. That was a special treat. :3)
So, that night in Sevilla we walked around quite a bit. We went back to the cathedral and saw it all lit
up. Pretty amazing. Then we went to a kebob place to get something to eat. This was an experience in and of itself. Everything we ordered was a problem. Caitlin ordered a croissant (ok, not typical at a kebob place, but still - it was on the menu). The waiter didn't understand. We tried to explain to him for a while, but he brought ou
t a pita bread. I ordered mint tea and he brought me black tea. Betsaida offered to take it so I told him again that I wanted mint tea. He brought me green tea. At least he remembered the honey. Jacob goes to take a spoonful of honey and sees a bug in it. No big deal right? I then take the honey to pour into my tea, but notice the entire jar is FULL of ants! Katy gets her fanta to go with her meal. The guy brings out a glass half full of Fanta. What the hell is going on? Incredible... just incredible. I felt all that could be done would be to take a picture and talk about it later...Katy and I woke up the next day and got ready to head off to PARIS!!! We tried soo hard to catch the bus to the airport! We must have dragged our luggage miles going back and forth as every person we asked pointed us in a different direction. As time ran out, we had no idea where to go except the city bus station where we hopped a taxi to the airport. This was the least stressful flight I have ever boarded. Security was pretty much a joke. There was hardly anyone in the airport! I'm pretty sure the gate we boarded at was the only gate in the airport that had any activity. We took a Spanish budget airline (Clickair) into Paris Orly Airport where exiting the plane brought us right into baggage claim where my Aunt Lilly was waiting for us! It couldn't have been easier. Paris was delightful! I had been there once before for a few weeks after graduating high school, but I must say this little trip had me fall in love with the city. The weather was very cool - in fact, it was raining when we got there. It was so beautiful! I also wasn't jet-lagged! It was perfect! We stayed with my aunt at her apartment in Montmartre - the old artists' district of Paris. Katy and I spent the next four days doing all the tourist stuff. We went shopping (ha! New clothes! woot!), went to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, took a boat trip on the Seine, saw Notre Dame, and walked all around Montmartre. The hardest thing about being in Paris was the language barrier. Katy and I were very used to being in a foreign language country, but we didn't realize just how well we can communicate in Spain until we walked into a cafe in
Paris and stared blankly at people as they asked us what we wanted. We could seriously not understand a thing! I me
an, it makes sense considering I've never taken a French class, but for whatever reason, 
I was not prepared to n
ot be able to not be able to communicate.We had a couple adventures while in Paris. On Wednesday, my aunt had to go to work and left us with the key, her cell phone, and a map. This was the day Katy and I wanted to use to paint the town red. All we had to do before getting started was run to the boulanger for some
bread and have breakfast. When we return to the apartment with the bread, I realize that somehow I had left the paper with all the
information my aunt wrote out for us... including the entry code to the building. I also left her boyfriend's business card, my aunt's cell phone, and just about everything else that could have come to our aide. All I had was the key to the apartment door and a small map of the city (I left the big one I was used to inside
too...). We waited a bit to see if anyone would walk in or out of the 
building, but it was mid-morning and everyone was at work. Well, we were dressed (though perhaps not dolled up as cute as we would have preferred) and we had our money, a little map, and our cameras. So, we set off into the city as we were and had an AMAZING day seeing the sights of Paris!When we returned home Wednesday night from my aunt's dance class that I somehow found from a three year old memory, there was a man entering my aunt's apartment building who was staying in the apartment directly below my aunt. He heard us talking and asked us where we were from. He seemed overjoyed to be in the presence of Americans. It was pretty awkward actually. He was Arabic, himself and was extremely friendly. He invited Katy and I to come down and have a drink, but our better judgment kept us from going there. Keep reading! I'm going somewhere with this. When my aunt returned home, we had dinner and were sitting around talking for a bit when we heard an explosion!!!! We went downstairs to make sure everything was alright. It came from the apartment that friendly Arabic man was in. Another man answered the door looking rather suspicious. Then the friendly guy came out and tried to give us cheek kisses as if nothing happened and he was just happy we paid a visit. My aunt told him what we heard and asked if everything was OK. The man apologized and said he "dropped something heavy"... uh huh... ok.
The next morning (the morning Katy and I head back to Spain) we are awoken by a different neighbor who is making rounds to get everyone out of the apartment because THERE IS A FIRE! Its coming from none other than our friendly troublemakers apartment (who is no where to be found)! Can anyone say METH??? Well, this was pretty exciting. It was a pretty good fire, I'd say, but luckily not good enough to harm my aunt's apartment right above. We were a bit worried that we wouldn't get our stuff out in time to catch our flight, but luckily they put the fire out pretty quickly and no one had any problem with the residents going inside right afterward... Things in Europe seem a lot more easy-going like that. Thinking I may never
be in another fire and seeing as no one was hurt, I shamelessy took a picture... My aunt's apartment is the one that has flowers on the balcony that are mostly covered up by smoke.So, that was exciting... hahaha! I'm glad everything is alright, of course.
Back in Granada, I went out with my roommates Shermine and Dimnia. They are from France and they are WO
NDERFUL girls! Dimnia is the one in black and Shermine in... what is that color? Mauve? So we had a blast at this place called Tantra Gar or Car or something. haha!Gosh, so what else can I say?
OH HAHAHA!!! School!!! I started school this week. Um, its going to be HARD! Back home classes are manageable with a bit of effort. Go to class, do homework, take tests...
Here, the fact that everything I'm taking is in another language means I'm never 100% sure that I understand something and that I exert a lot of effort just to stay alert to what is going on! It will also be harder to know how I'm doing as the trimester progresses. Students are evaluated here very differently. Its almost all participation and a final. Hardly any midterms or papers. Well, I see it as a challenge and if I don't get straight A's (which I'm realizing is hardly even a possiblity), I'll accept it and know that I learned a hell of a lot while I was here. The classes I'm taking are Advanced Grammar, Hispanic-American Literature, Spanish Culture and Civilization, Translation, and Oral and Written Production. 5 classes baby! Ok, well keep me in your thoughts and prayers and keep wishing me luck because I'm going to have to work at school five times harder here than at home just to get by.
Until next time then...
~Veronica
posted by V-Ron at 3:20 AM
2 Comments:
Hey Roni!
Just wanted to leave you a li'l message to tell you your photos are fantastic and I'm so glad you're having a great time abroad!! What a kickass place to study!
Much Love,
Marissa
It's always good to hear you're doin well. Sorry I never write back but thanks for thinking of me in your messages. The guitar is tons of fun. I picked it up along with piano and proved to myself that it's never too late. I hope you realize the same. Keep it real and keep doin your thing. I'm goin to Greece for a month in the summer...finally.
You only go down this road once, do it the best you can.
Stamati
Post a Comment
<< Home