Paella!


The chef


Water balloon fight!





The new kitten

Prado de San Sebastian, in front of my university



Jardines de Murillo, next to the royal palaces




inside the university

(I CAN”T believe that its already JUNE!!!)
Well the beginning of the night was normal—if you can consider studying in the gorgeous gardens of royal palaces normal. Jessica and I went to study at the Alcázar to study, then got a tapa because I was hungry, and finally went to her apartment to study some more. We eventually got sidetracked by the thought of our Germany/Poland trip (this was after getting sidetracked by a stop at the grocery store for strawberries and whipped cream, chatting with her roommate, etc.). So we spend a couple hours trying to figure out how to leave Seville after my LAST final exam on the 15th of June and get to Berlin the same day, since we’re not too excited about spending the night in the airport. We’ll only be gone until the 19th ‘cause Jessica might have to take an exam on the 20th, and because MY PARENTS COME THE 20th!!! But all the options seem pretty expensive.
When it got to be about midnight, I decided I better get ‘home’ for dinner.
When I got there, Loli and Amanda were having what seemed to be an important conversation. So I put my books and stuff down in my room and cleaned my room a little bit. Then I went back out in the living room and sat down with them. Their attention had now turned to the tv program that was on. “En búsqueda del pene perfecto”=in pursuit of the perfect penis--an uncensored show about some men’s obsession with size. Perfect dinner entertainment, huh? Yes, they were pretty engrossed by it, and so we watched it all through my dinner (remember, the ‘dinner table’ is right in front of the tv). The only really disgusting part was when they did an operation and SHOWED the entire operation. Cutting the skin, the insides, and everything. That was gross.
It was pretty funny when Loli started saying what “gilipollas’ these guys were, because, according to her, anything more than 20 centimeters is too much. She then elaborated and specified the perfect size and everything…
I think she and Fernando had had an argument of something last night, which might have played a part in her commenting, while watching this show, “at least they’re [men] good for something”. I couldn’t believe it. And I couldn’t stop laughing either.
Poor woman. I think she’s had pretty bad luck with relationships.

Well, I finished eating, thought about studying some more, but instead decided to do a little research for my Spain-France-Italy-Austria-Switzerland trip with my parents, which is definitely much more fun than studying.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I got together with my Literature tutor on Thursday and when she asked me, at the end of what was probably our last session, how I was feeling about the exam, I just told her that I really have no idea, but that I ‘think’ I’ll pass. She was like “oh, I’m not worried about that, I’m SURE you’ll PASS, I even thing there’s a good possibility of you getting a high grade…”. Yay! That made me feel SO much better!

My favorite study spot, the royal gardens:



(a picture from when Tad was here and we went to the Alcázar!)

Today I didn’t have class because it was a holiday (of course)—the day of the patron saint of Seville.
The festivities weren’t until late, so during the day I just I studied. I put on some sunscreen, a strapless shirt (so I can get rid of those tan lines I’ve been getting from just walking around so much!) and went to the park that’s a couple blocks away. I found a spot that wasn’t too close to the homeless guy that lives in our neighborhood (a scary looking guy because he has dreads that stick STRAIGHT UP—like a foot high. It’s really weird).
Anyway, it was SUPER hot and when I got up after about ½ hour, it was wet where my legs and stomach had been touching the blanket!! Then you know it’s REALLY hot, because I usually hardly sweat at all. It was gross. After another half hour I returned to my apartment because the sun was just TOO strong.
Later I went to the Cathedral to see the procession in which they carried the statue of the patron and another of the virgin.
After that I met up with Jessica and we went to go see the opera Carmen (or what we THOUGHT was an 'opera'). We wanted to see it because Carmen is, after all, from Seville.
Getting to the theater was quite a challenge. We had to go through a series of back streets/alleys, let by signs saying “Teatro Sálvador Távora”. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very big theater. As we finally approached what was ACTUALLY the theater, we passed the actors just chilling in front of the theater.
I say we ‘thought’ it was an opera—and I guess it was—but not the type we were expecting. In fact, it was much better than we expected because it was an 'andalusian opera', as they called it. Which means that the music and singing are flamenco- and saeta-style. Oh, with flamenco dancing too! They also played music from Semana Santa, which made me kinda emotional, thinking about how AMAZING my experience here has been, and how its coming to an end ☹.
But it was a lot of fun.
They even had a gorgeous white horse in the performance, but in a way it was actually really disgusting. It was dripping gross white slobber everywhere. At one point I started laughing silently and COULDN’T stop! It was really hard to keep quiet.
When the performance was over the horse got the biggest applause. Although Carmen and the other important actors didn’t come in too far behind.
Oh yeah, how could I forget. During the performance, the women actors all lit up cigarettes. Jessica and I immediately looked at each other and rolled our eyes. That's SO Spanish! I mean, I've seen people smoke on stage at home, but RARELY. What are the chances that the ONE performance you see in a county would have this characteristic? Well, seeing as how it's Spain...it shouldn't have surprised us!
As we left the theater the actors were once again standing outside. No longer dressed in costume, they were once again normal Spanish guys, and they showed it, too (in the form of well…not piropos, but just ‘talking’ to [passing girls=us])
We started walking back towards the city center and stopped for dinner. Surprisingly, it was delicious. Except that mine was literally SITTING in a pile of “Spanish salsa”. “Yum”, you might think, until you realize that what all Spanish Mothers call ‘salsa’ here is just, in fact, GREASE. Yep. “Here, you want a little salsa on that?” they’ll ask you. But by the time you figure out how to politely respond in Spanish “no thank you, I’m afraid I might have a heart attack as it is from all the olive oil I’ve eaten in the past 5 months”, she has already drenched your meal in ‘salsa.’
(I’ve included a picture from the restaurant, just so you can see that I am NOT exaggerating at all!)
But yeah except for that it was great. And the waiter turned out to be from Brazil, which made Jessica really excited because she could practice her Portuguese with him (as I sit there just smiling, pretending to follow the conversation. No, really I can understand about half. But only half.).
We continued on to Jessica’s apartment, from where I would get a taxi. Except that I couldn’t find an available one. The WHOLE ½ -hour way home! I didn’t mind too much because it was a PERFECT night weather-wise. Except that it was 1am. And its not a great idea for a girl to walk around late at night, especially if she’s dressed as I was—strappy sundress and heels, no jacket or anything (perfect weather, remember?). It tends to provoke Spanish males to make unnecessary comments. Or worse, drunken non-Spanish men, who (at least that night) make downright unacceptable comments. Example: “este chico quiere follar contigo”, said one guy, referring to his friend. If you need assistance in understanding this statement, you can use wordreference.com.

I mean, most of the time (including this night) I’m walking alone or with other girls at night I have my mace in hand, but even that doesn’t help comments like that.
Oh, speaking of mace, that reminds me…as I left Jessica’s, I ran into some tourists my age who were probably from Britain. They had really cute accents. I offered to help them find whatever they were looking for, and as I leaned in to see their map, one of the guys was like “my lord, is that pepper spray” (except he said it with his proper accent). “Is this a dodgy area?” Haha. DODGY. It was SOOO cute! I reassured them that no, it wasn’t a bad area, although I don't know that they were reassured.

Infamous 'Spanish Salsa':


San Fernando in front of the cathedral

Me infront of the iglesia del Rocío. The whole town is built for this pilgrimage, and is pretty much empty the rest of the year!


Jessica and me


The actual Virgen del Rocio, or Virgen of the Dew

Fernando showed up today, Saturday. It was about noon and I had just awoken. Loli wasn't here. So he called her and then left a little later. He came back later for lunch. So I don't know if they've talked about what happened or not. I mean, they went an entire week without talking or anything. Oh well. We’ll see.

(Later in the day)
O my gosh how embarrassing. I just got off the phone with Jorge’s mom. I wasn’t expecting to talk with his MOM when I called Jorge’s phone. In fact, I though ‘she’ was joking when she said who she was. Her voice was so hoarse that it sounded like a man! A lot of Spanish women have voices like that. I wonder if its from the smoking. Anyway, I just laughed (because I though it was one of his friends kidding around), and asked 'her' to give him a message from me. Good thing I didn't actually start joking around, because then she would have realized that I didn't think it was a woman!

A little side note: Although I haven’t learned too much in my classes here, I have learned a lot of other valuable skills. Like the art of avoiding cigarette smoke while walking down the street. Ok maybe this isn’t too useful at home, but it sure is here. And I’ve gotten so good at it that I almost do it subconsciously! Whenever I see one of those infamous little white sticks, I make a mental note of it, and RIGHT before I pass it, I take a huge breath and then slowly exhale. Thus by the time I need to inhale again, only the traces of smoke remain. That is, unless you’re passing by another smoker (which, unfortunately, happens A LOT!). So there it is. I’ll finish this intercalada story and get back to the main one (ha! I actually did learn something in class—a story that’s intercalada’ is a complete story within another story. 16th century Spanish novelists like to make these long novels with lots of ‘intercaladas’—I think just to torture the students who would be studying them 500 years later. Anyway…).

Ok, so I called Jorge because he’s in Rocío and tomorrow Jessica and I are going there and we’re supposed to meet up with him.

Here’s a video about El Rocío that you can check out.
http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/spanish-festivals/el-rocio.htm

Before I might have laughed when seeing this video. But now I get goose bumps!

Triana's brotherhood starting its Romería al Rocío!
Wednesday I woke up bright and early to meet Jorge in Triana. Today was the day Triana’s brotherhood set out on their pilgrimage to El Rocío, a town about 60 kilometers away. After greeting Jorge and his friends, I was going to stand aside, but Jorge was like “no, come with us!” So even though I wasn’t dressed up, I joined them for the first part of the procession. I walked with them for about 2 ½ hours, until they reached the entrance to the highway. I guess we weren’t walking the entire way. Actually, it moved so slowly that we had time to stop for a drink and then later find our place in the procession. And when I say stop for a “drink”, I really mean a DRINK. At 10 am.
We went up to the bar (they commonly have breakfast in ‘bars’) and Jorge was like, “what do you want? Café, batido (milkshake), anis, vino dulce?” Well, I knew vino dulce must be alcohol, so I opted for the other drink I had never tried—totally not realizing that he was actually talking about the alcohol anis! Luckily they water it down, but still. It was really strong, especially for that hour! His friends opted for vino dulce, which I ended up trying. It, too, was a little much for me. Being Spaniards, I guess they’re used to it. That sounds like a stereotype, but maybe this will help you understand: as we were walking past the other bars, I saw tons of empty beer bottles on the counters. Freshly emptied, mind you.
So later we went to where the ‘carriages’ were waiting and had a bite to eat (they have enough food to last the ENTIRE week!). We joined up with the procession again as it approached the entrance to the highway. I continued walking with them until they actually got to the highway, and then said bye. I retraced our steps and took a bunch of pictures of all the gorgeous carts. I can’t even describe them, so just see below:

Triana's brotherhood getting ready to leave (Triana is the old Gypsy quarter)


Triana's virgen on la calle castilla (about an hour after it set off but only about 3 blocks away, still in triana) on its way to El Rocío





It was funny seeing the procession actually go onto the highway!

Tuesday I was sitting in my European Union Economy class, which is quite possibly one of the most boring classes I’ve ever taken. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but the professor pretty much just reads from the book. So of course I sit there with the book, read ahead, and end up doing sudokus from the free daily papers or something like that. Lately I’ve really been trying to pay attention to the professor, but its nearly impossible. Tuesday was one of the worst days, it was SO horribly boring. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I turned the page and saw the topic we would be studying next, and I was just like holy shit: “la política de la pesquera”=FISHING POLICY!!

Tussam, the public bus company, is on strike this week. I forgot that yesterday until I boarded the bus. Or until I TRIED to board the bus, as I just BARELY fit on. They have way fewer busses running this week, so the busses on the busy routes are just PACKED!
At each stop, the already-full bus would stop, let about 2 people off, and open its doors to the crowd of 10 who wanted to board. But they couldn’t get on. So then the bus driver would yell back at the passengers “this bus isn’t moving until these passengers get on”, after which everyone would mumble and groan and squeeze in even closer to their neighbors. There was lots of yelling and when this one guy raised his arm along with his voice when he was arguing with this old lady, I thought a fight was going to break out.
Needless to say, it was a way more entertaining bus ride than usual!

Earlier today after econ I was talking with the other 3 Americans in my econ class and we decided to talk with our professor because we feel like we’re going to fail. It took us about ½ hour to decide what to say, and then when we went to where we thought her office was, we couldn’t find it! So we went to a professor whose door was open and asked him if he knew where hers was. He said he didn’t, but then when to get a map of the building. “don’t you have one of these?” he said to us. We just stared at it, wondering what it was. When he opened it up and showed us the maps we were like “ohhh…” because we realized what it was and because we realized that not only were we not in the right department, but that we were on a completely different floor. So he gave us the map (thanks, that’ll be helpful now that we have approximately one week of classes left!) and sent us on our way.
So we finally found the right department, and had to ring her “bell” to get buzzed in. Then we went and knocked on her door. She stopped talking to open the door and then we saw that she wasn’t talking with someone, she was just on her phone. But she told us to wait a minute so that she could finish her conversation. So we waited outside until she opened the door to let us in. We filed in—one by one—and couldn’t even close the door behind us because the office was so tiny.
We explained our situation and she told us that we could talk with the guy in charge, but that she couldn’t do anything for us. She said that she would treat us exactly the same as Spanish students. Just great.

When I returned to the apartment I had a really healthy Mediterranean lunch. Bacon and French fries. Yep! I felt like I was at Denny’s. Well, I guess there was gazpacho too, so that does make it a little healthier.