I'm still loving life in Sevilla! I don't have any pictures to update y'all with, sorry, but I have some things to tell about. First off, we booked a trip to Barcelona!! I say "we" because the majority of our TTU study abroad group is going to Barcelona the same weekend. We have a random three-day weekend, so we're all going to spend three nights in Barcelona. I am so excited, the director of our program said there is only one problem with Barcelona....once you go, you always want to go back. :)
I finally went to this bar that I've been hearing about for quite some time called "Texmex." They are known for showing American sporting events, especially football games. This past Saturday night we went and watched the Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh game - it was fun. One of the things I miss most is probably being able to watch football, thank goodness the season is almost over. They also have "Texmex" food. We decided we would try some cheese fries. They were nothing like we expected (with onions, jalepenos, bacon, etc.), they were more like chili cheese fries, but they were pretty good! They definitely had some flavor/spice. We also asked for jalepenos, thinking there was no way they would have them, but they did! I was so excited I could have just eaten the jalepenos by themselves (didn't even care that they charged me 1.20 euros for 20 jalepeno slices). They were really good, maybe a little too pickled, but still amazing compared to everything else here. I'm ready to go back and try some other "Texmex" food. I know it can't compare to anything actually in Texas, but, these days, I'll take what I can get.
I'm hoping to be able to watch the Super Bowl while I'm here. It will definitely be going on during the middle of the night, but I don't care. We will probably either watch it at the Texmex bar, or we may play it on our projector and watch it at The Center...that's what they did with the National Championship game, but that was before our first day of classes, so I opted out of that. We'll see though!
Classes are still going well. We've had a couple quizzes so far and we have another quiz tomorrow. We have our first exam on Monday that will be over how well we speak during a mock interview...it should be interesting. Today we had to give a little Powerpoint presentation over jobs and what jobs we would like to have in the future. It's kind of cool that we're doing things in our classes here in Spanish that we could easily be doing in our classes in the States in English. During our classes we also will go to "el bar." A "bar" here entails a lot more than a bar in the states. Bars here have cafe con leche/breakfast, food and alcohol, so when we go to the bar for class, we order cafe con leche and maybe some toast or breakfast (all they eat over here is a light breakfast) and we talk in Spanish and/or do activities out of our workbooks.
My friends and I have actually fallen in love with this one bar that we continue to go to during class, and we've also found our favorite thing to order. We even went today AFTER class because we were all craving it. We order a cafe con leche (the strong coffee in Spain that I previously mentioned) and una tostada entera con mantequilla. "Una tostada entera" is a whole toast, but the toast here isn't the same as the toast in the States. A whole toast here is more like a mini loaf of bread - cut in fourths. If you just ordered half of the toast you would just get either the top or bottom of the loaf - not the whole thing. "Con mantequilla" is with butter, toast with butter and a coffee. That's what I get here that I think is amazing...you would think it's nothing special...except the coffee is addicting and a definite caffeine booster and the bread is so fresh and delicious when toasted with butter on it. There are lots of other options of what you can get on your toast, olive oil is a popular one here. They also offer various hams and other sauces. For our one coffee and tostada entera we pay 1.80 euros - we're in Heaven. A cheap, yet filling breakfast and caffeine boost...what more could a girl ask for? AND it's at a precious little bar where we can sit outside if we want.
Last night, we had our first meeting with our tutors (basically they are people who are paid to be our friends). We will meet with them every Tuesday night through the end of February. I think it could be a really good way to improve our Spanish because they all speak mostly Spanish to us, but yet understand English well too, so they can help us with words we're unfamiliar with. My class, which is much smaller, got paired up one-on-one with a tutor and in the lower level class they had two to three students per tutor. We literally got paired up with them and then everyone went completely different directions to different bars and such. Then we all sat and had a drink and talked with our tutors for an hour and a half. I'm not positive if we're going to have the same tutors each week, or if they will mix it up so we can meet different people? I guess we'll see how it all plays out!
Have I mentioned all of the little dogs here? They're everywhere! They aren't all small - some of them are definite horses, but the majority of them are medium to small sized. They are all so cute and it makes me miss my Wilson. :) A lot of them will have cute little sweaters on and their owners will be walking them. There is absolutely no grass here, so you can only imagine where they go to the bathroom. On the sidewalks? Why not? Dog poop is ALL OVER the sidewalks here...you kind of have to look down while you walk or else you may end up face-down on the sidewalk before you know it. It's definitely disgusting, but is completely normal here and is something we have to get used to. Ha, I bet a lot of you didn't care to know that.
This Friday we're going to Cordoba. It's going to be a longer trip than Italica because it is a little further away, and, again, I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures to show after we've been there. I'm still working on getting my work schedule figured out for the book store, I will probably have my first day of work next week. I'm ready to get started so I can officially be in my routine for the rest of the semester.
Hasta luego,
Paige
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