How is everyone?!- I miss you all so much! I´ve gotten a lot of e-mails from different people asking about how my semester has been so far and I was in the process of writing a mass e-mail until Corgan suggested I start a blog instead (thanks!). I´ve been in Sevilla for a week and thus far I have loved every minute of it. The city is absolutely beautiful- there are old spanish gardens everywhere, the architecture is incredible, and all of the streets are lined with orange trees. Here´s an update on everything that has been going on; I´m sure this is repetitive for some of you (sorry about that) and it´s definitely long for everyone- a lot has happened this week. I´ll try to update more often so that I don´t leave a novel for you guys to read everytime I upload a new post. Also, sorry for any weird typos in these posts- the spanish keyboards are hard to get used to. Ok here we go...
Tuesday/Wednesday: Traveling here was...really bad. Grace and I left Charlotte at 12:47 pm, flew to Detroit and had a short layover there, and then boarded my flight to Amsterdam. It took off about 30 minutes late because naturally the weather in Detroit was awful. The flight to Europe took about 7.5 hours and was pretty bumpy and uncomfortable; I had never been on a flight that long, so I had never really tested my ability to sleep on an airplane until last week - and I found out that I can´t do it at all (although it didn´t help to be sitting next to a very large man from France who snored the entire time). We landed in Amsterdam around 6:15 (about 20 minutes late because of the delay in Detroit), 10 minutes after our connection to Madrid had started boarding. We ran through the airport, got held up at customs, and just barely made the flight. We landed in Madrid around 10:00 am and found out that our luggage didn´t make the connecting flight. We met a kid named Austin from Texas Tech who had the same problem as us, as well as 4 other kids from our program, so we all camped out in the airport together. Most of our luggage arrived around 3:30, but some bags were still missing, so we didn´t get out of the airport until 5 pm. We took the train from Madrid to Sevilla and finally arrived in the city around 8:30- two hours later than we were supposed to arrive. In total, from door to door, we all logged at least 30 hours traveling time. By the end we were all dead.
Thursday: In the morning we moved into our homestays. I met my roommate and she´s awesome- her name is Elizabeth and she is sophomore at UNC from Texas. We live with a retired woman (our "señora") named Angeles who lives alone with her cat...and fits that stereotype perfectly. She´s nice and is a pretty good cook, but she is very, very stingy- we are dealing with serious generation gaps. We live in an apartment in an area of the city called Los Remedios, which is pretty far from our school but close to Calle Betiz, which is the street with a lot of the restaurants and bars, so I have no complaints about that :) The apartment itself is really nice (Elizabeth and I each have our own room, which is great!). The only thing that is awful is the fact that is is FREEZING. There is no central heat in the houses here, and Spain is in the middle of its worst cold front in 15 years. I have to sleep in 3 layers and with 5 blankets. It´s nuts.
Thursday night: I went out with a bunch of kids from my program- everyone gets along so well, we have had a great time together so far. We were expecting to experience some serious culture shock with the difference between American nightlife and Spanish nightlife...and we couldn´t have been more wrong. We ended up at two bars- the first was called La Funducion, but ever since that night we have called it "The Frat House." The second we walked in the bartenders started pulling out Budweisers and setting up beer pong tables while Lil´Wayne and Rhianna played in the background. It felt as if I had never left Chapel Hill. The second bar was called Long Island and actually had a UNC pennant on the ceiling. So much for cultural diversity.
Friday: Nothing really exciting- we had meetings at the school all day. However, this was the first day that I really felt the difference in the way that Spaniards structure their day in comparison to Americans. In Spain, people generally wake up later and go to work around 9:30 or 10:00 and work until 2:00. This part of the day is called "La Siesta". Everything closes and everyone goes home for lunch- the biggest meal of the day- and a nap/rest. Then, at 5:00, everyone returns to work and all stores and businesses stay open until 9:00. It´s been interesting and a little difficult to get used to- it makes the days last so much longer. I do like the afternoon nap though; I don´t think I could get through the day without it, especially the mornings after we all go out.
Saturday: Our program set up a scavenger hunt around the city, and if it weren´t for the fact that this was the coldest morning so far, it would have been really awesome. Still, despite the weather, we got to see some really cool stuff. We ended up in the main part of the city, which is called El Centro, and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring and shopping. That night we went out to bars and clubs in El Centro. That night we learned first-hand that Spaniards go out and stay out very, very late- we went home around 4:15 am and all of the bars were more crowded than ever.
Sunday: Elizabeth and I slept really late and spent what was left of the morning/early afternoon doing organizational stuff for school the next day. After la siesta I met a group of friends and we went exploring around the city. Around 6:00 we went to our first tapas bar- these are a big part of Spanish culture, especially here in the Andalucia region. Tapas are small plate appetizers meant to be split between a group of people. We really didn´t know what to order, so we got a pitcher of sangria and told the waiter to suprise us with different dishes- this was a good call, the food was awesome. Afterwards we wandered around some more and found something crucial- a group of bars showing the Giants/Eagles game. I was pumped!- until we lost. Good news was one of the bars we found that night told us that they would show UNC basketball games and all of the tournament in March. Now if we could only start playing like the #1 team in the country again, everything would be great!
Monday: Classes started, but I´ll leave that for the next post.
Please stay in touch- I want to know how everyone is doing back home!
Early congratulations to Dan and Jen! I´m so bummed I can´t be there with you guys, but have an amazing weekend and say hello to everyone for me!
Miss and love you guys! ¡Hasta luego!
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