America, I love you

So this week we have seen some serious regression in the area of experiencing authentic Spanish culture. It just kind of worked out that everything noteworthy that we did this week revolved around finding anything reminiscent of America here in Sevilla - and it was a really easy thing to do.


I'm not sure if I've stated this before, but I live in an area of the city called Los Remedios, which is the western portion of Sevilla and on the opposite side of the Rio Guadalquivir from El Centro. There are about 5 or 6 apartmetns of UNC students who live in Los Remedios and we have started a tradition of going out to dinner every Thursday Night. It's been a lot of fun, plus it's a nice change of pace, especially for me and Elizabeth because the food in our homestay has gotten pretty repetitive (we've had lentil soup 4 or 5 times already, and I don't even really like lentils). The first time we went to a tapas bar known mostly as a place for locals, the next time we want to a seafood restaurant, and the next we went out to get paella. This week we decided that we were in need of something a lot less Spanish, so we went out for pizza. It ended up being one of the better meals that we've had since we've been here. We ordered a ton of food - between 9 people we split 7 pizzas, 2 bottles of wine, 2 desserts, and a salad. Apparently we wracked up an abornormally high bill for a pizza place because when the waitress brought us the check it came with a free round of shots. Afterwards we all pretty much went home because most of us had a test the next day.

My program doesn't have class on Friday after the siesta, so we allows have a lot of time to kill between lunch and dinner. This Friday we went up to a part of the city called Nervion where there is a big shopping mall. It was about a 35-40 minute walk, but the weather was really nice so nobody really minded it. We got to the mall around 5:30 and it ended up having a lot less stores than we were expecting. We were going up the escalator trying to decide how we were going to kill the next 3 hours when we came across a TGI Friday's with a half-off happy hour drink specials from 5 until 8. Problem solved. We shopped for a little bit and then went to Friday's and ended up staying there for a couple of hours. It was really funny because, sitting in the restaurant, there was nothing to convince me that I was outside of the US - all of the food and drink names on the menu were in english, the waiter spoke to us in english, and all of the decorations in the restaurant were about New York and Chicago. There was another group of kids there from Texas Tech, so we hung out with them for a little while. We all had such a good time that we decided to make it our next tradition - Fridays at Friday's.

On Saturday morning we took a field trip to Italica, a site of ruins of an old Roman city approximately 2,000 years old. The main attraction there was an old amphitheatre, but the grounds of the site also had ruins of other parts of the city, including houses, a spa, and even a barber shop (called a "peluqueria" in Spain). It was beautiful, and the weather was great so our pictures came out awesome. The profile picture for my blog actually came from our visit to Italica - it is of myself and my friends Jordan and Rebecca standing on the second tier of the amphitheatre. Our Art and Culture professor was our tour guide and I'm pretty sure he knows just about everything there is to know about Spainish history so it was an interesting trip.

Saturday night the American charade continued. We went to a bar/restaurant called Texas Lonestar Saloon right in the center of the city to watch the Carolina/NC State basketball game. More or less every kid from our program was there, and since our program has about 60 kids in it we more or less took the place over. We were pretty loud and obnoxious, which made it all the more fun; we had cheers going back and fourth and yelled at the TV a lot, especially at the cheap shot that McCauley took at Copeland at the end of the game. When it was over we all sang our alma mater/fight song just like on the hill. It wasn't quite like watching the game at the Dean Dome or on Franklin Street, but it was still a great time. We are all pumped to watch the first Duke game, although it doesn't come on until 3 am here, and I have to catch a 9:55 flight to Paris the next morning. That's going to be a very late night/early morning.

After the game we ended up at an irish pub (in Spain, yes) close to Texas Lonestar saloon because it was raining and we didn't want to walk far. We were there for awhile - it was pretty crowded and a DJ started around midnight. No suprise, they played very American music including the Grease soundtrack, the theme song from Friends, and the YMCA. And to cap it all off, we are going back to the Texas place tonight to watch the superbowl.

Next week we'll get back to cultural immersion.