Ítalica y un Día de Relajante

Saturday morning I had to wake up early, (okay, well early for me and most Sevillanos on a Saturday), to meet people from my program for a tour of Las Ruinas de Romas de Ítalica. Due to this I stayed in for the night and ended up watching a movie with my host sister and her boyfriend. It was a lot of fun, even though I barely understood the dialogue and only got the basic storyline because I had looked it up online before the movie started. I would be interested to watch the movie before I leave and see how much I can understand...

Anyways, Ítalica is located about a fifteen minute drive outside of the city and even though it was a short drive I still really enjoyed it. I never realized that surrounding the city of Sevilla there are farms and a lot of green area, which is something that the city lacks, at least the areas that I have gotten to explore.

This trip was last minute for me and I didn't really know what to expect. As I was walking to the meeting point I thought the trip was going to be kind of pointless because it was extremely foggy and was getting worse. When we first arrived at Ítalica there was a lot of fog but within five minutes of starting our tour it started to clear up. It ended up being an extremely nice and sunny day, perfect for seeing the ruins and the beautiful land around them. The ruins were extremely cool and my guide was great and really enthusiastic and finished the tour early enough so that we could explore the amphitheater on our own for a little bit.

After waking up early and exploring Ítalica, I headed back to my place for another delicious meal with my host family. Then I was off to explore more of the city. This time I headed to the Flamenco museum and afterwards my friends and just walked around the city. We shopped a little bit and then got gelato, which like all of the food here in Sevilla, was amazing.

Even though I have only been in Sevilla for 12 days, I hadn't really had time to relax. There's always been somewhere to go and I was starting to get exhausted already. That is why I decided to have Sunday be a calm and relaxing day, except for the homework that I needed to complete (there's that 'studying' part that I sometimes forget about). I am so glad that I took a day to relax because I really needed it and I feel so much better and more prepared for the crazy-busy week I have ahead of me.

La Primera Semana de Clases

Monday morning marked the start of the “studying” in studying abroad. This wasn’t something that I was completely dreading. The past few days had been amazing and I loved exploring and getting to know Sevilla and my family here but I was also looking forward to have some type of routine to my schedule.

The first two weeks of my program consists of an intensive language class; the class is three hours a day, five days a week, for two weeks. I ended up in the easier class, which I was disappointed at first but after I thought about it was happy about it. It would allow me more time to focus on adjusting to live in Sevilla and the better my foundation in Spanish the easier it will be for me to succeed in more advance levels in the future. Class is in the morning at 9am and it gets out in time to explore the city for a little bit then head back to my place for lunch.

The class overall is not too hard and I have been able to improve my foundation in Spanish a lot already. There are sometimes that the class is too easy and boring but I am able to practice my Spanish and that’s all that really matters.

After class on Monday I finalized my class selection for my classes during the regular session; not the greatest schedule but it’s only for 12 weeks and the classes I chose seem really interesting, hopefully I will be able to get into them. Then on Tuesday after class we were supposed to have a meeting about a seminar class we could take but that got postponed to Wednesday. I ended up at a café (surprise, surprise) with a few friends and ended up staying there for a few hours because it started to pour down rain and there was no way we were going to walk back in that weather.

Note about the weather: There has not been a single day that it has not rained while we have been here! My umbrella has become a necessity, much like London, but all of the locals have told me that this will pass soon and within a month or so we should have good weather most days. I hope that’s true but I also survived the wettest June on record in London this past summer so I think I can handle a little rain.

Wednesday was when we have the meeting about the seminar and I am really excited about it. It’s a two-credit class where we analyze our cultural experiences in Sevilla and how culture is perceived in both the United States and Spain. Definitely a class that is perfect for me and I think that it is going to be extremely helpful and allow me to learn a lot about the culture that I am adopting for the next four months.

Wednesday afternoon was spent working on a presentation for the following day. Then after dinner I headed to a meet-and-greet for our Intercambio program. For those of you who don’t know, intercambio in when a student like myself who is learning Spanish is paired with a local student who is trying to learn English and we help each improve our language skills. I didn’t end up meeting my intercambio partner but it was nice to get out for about an hour and hang out with friends.

After class on Thursday I went on a tour of El Catedral de Sevilla, which is the largest gothic style church in the world and the third largest church overall (St Peters in the Vatican is the biggest and St Pauls in London is the second, just in case anyone was curious). The church is also home to Christopher Columbus’ tomb, which was extremely cool to see. After a tour of the church we walked up to the top of the Giralda, which is a 90-meter tower by the church that overlooks Sevilla. The view from the top was amazing and I clearly could see how someone can easily get lost in the maze of streets in Sevilla.

Due to the short length of our intensive class, our mid-term exam was the next day (Friday). So after the tour I headed back to study and try to prepare for the exam.

After my exam I headed to a market in Triana, another part of Sevilla, and to explore the ruins that are below the market. I didn’t know it existed but it was a required assignment and overall enjoyed exploring another part of the city.

La Semana Primera

Today marks the end of my first week here in Sevilla and so much has already happened which makes me even more excited to see what the rest of this amazing journey has in store for me.

After traveling for about 24 hours I finally landed in Sevilla around 1pm on Wednesday. Luckily I did not have a problem getting my luggage or finding people from my program, who put me in a taxi and sent me on my way to my new home for the next four months. The taxi ride was the most exciting and nerve-wracking ride I have ever taken. I tried to focus on the amazing city that I was going through, knowing that it was my new home. However I could not take my mind off of how nervous I was to meet my host family; always wondering if my home was around each of the many turns we took.

When we got to my new home I was met by my host mom and her older daughter’s husband and I was so glad that he was there because my host mom does not speak any English at all and my Spanish isn’t great at all (especially after traveling from Los Angeles and only getting about 3 hours of sleep). He doesn’t know a lot of English but I was extremely grateful for the little he did know.

I met the daughter that lives with them later on after an amazing lunch and met the father briefly later on that night. That night I met up with my orientation group for some introduction activities and then tapas for dinner.

The following day (Thursday) was another day of orientation activities. We have an interview in the morning to give CIEE an idea of how well we can speak. During that time we also headed to a café for coffee; this is something that I know is going to become a common occurrence. There are so many cafés in Sevilla and the coffee is AMAZING! For dinner that night we had tapas again, not that I am complaining or anything like that. Tapas are amazing and it is great to have dinner with our orientation group and get to know everyone better. We also had a small tour of our neighborhood.

Friday: During the first two days of our time in Sevilla we have stuck to our neighborhood and the area around the CIEE Study Center. Then on Friday we branched out and was given a tour of the city. It of course did not cover every part of the city, there’s no way that can happen in a few days nonetheless a few hours. Later that night we all headed to tapas (can’t complain at all) and then headed to a Flamenco show. The show was amazing and it was so cool to see Flamenco in the city where it comes from.

Saturday and Sunday: The weekend provided a break from orientation and most of our time was spent however we wanted to spend them. Saturday morning I went to CIEE for an information fair about organizations around Sevilla that CIEE recommends. After lunch I headed out with a friend to explore the city a little bit and take part in a scavenger hunt through CIEE. When we got to the meeting location there was no one else from our program so we decided to skip the scavenger hunt and continue exploring on our own. We ended up running into two people from our program, which is amazing that we did because what are the chances that we would randomly see two people from our program in a completely different neighborhood of a city the size of Sevilla. We walked around for a bit and then went to a café (seriously can’t get enough of the cafés here!). Afterwards we ended up walking by El Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla and decided to go in. It was a gorgeous museum, both the artwork inside the museum and the building itself. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to look at all of the artwork because the museum closed. I ended up spending Saturday night with my host family and her boyfriend. We watched a movie and just relaxed, which was exactly what I needed. They are both really nice and extremely helpful and patient with my Spanish (or lack-there-of) and they both know a little bit of English so if I got really confused they were able to help me. Luckily the movie was in English with Spanish subtitles :)

Sunday was supposed to be a relaxing day. It started out with a tour of El Álcazar, which is this massive palace that is one of the prettiest buildings I have ever walked through. After lunch I, along with a few friends, went to get churros. Note: churros in Spain are not like churros in America. They are not very sweet but you can put sugar on top of them and here is the best part: you dip them in chocolate! They were so good! After our amazing churros we walked around Sevilla and eventually found a tapas place for lunch, which was amazing, again.

That is a very rough summary of my first week. So much has already happened and I am so excited to see what the next 16 weeks have in store for me.

Pre-Departure

My first blog post is being written as I sit in the Philadelphia airport waiting for my flight to Madrid. I will then board another flight (4 hours after I land in Madrid :/), which will take me to my home for the next four months, Sevilla.

Studying abroad has been a dream of mine since I was 13 years old, sitting in my high school auditorium during freshman orientation. It was during a presentation about studying abroad in college that I became hooked on the idea. Traveling the world has been apart of my life ever since I can remember. When I was two years old my family and I moved from Toronto, Canada to Hong Kong. This was not an easy decision for my parents to make but it ended up changing our entire family's life for the good in so many ways that even fourteen years after leaving Hong Kong we are still discovering them. During the four years that we spent in Hong Kong we got to travel all around the Asia-Pacific area, with my parents incorporating these experiences into their parenting as much as they could. After spending four life altering years in Hong Kong my family made the move back to the States, California to be more specific.

Twelve years, and two cities later, I was graduating from high school and heading across the country to college at Indiana University Bloomington. My biggest draw to the campus was the School of Public and Environmental Affairs but another big aspect that I liked about the university was the vast number of study abroad programs it offered. When I first arrived on campus I had every intent on studying abroad for an entire year but that changed within the first semester for two reasons. One, I was not able to get into the spanish classes that I need to be eligible for year long programs. Secondly, which had a lot more influence on my decision to go for just a semester, my degree program makes studying abroad for a semester extremely hard. Classes for my major are not offered in many places. Regardless of how I got to where I am currently, I am extremely grateful for everything and everyone that has helped me get to where I am.

I am getting extremely excited about this experience and I know that I will get more and more excited as I get closer. I still have 16 hours until I land in Sevilla, so there's a lot of time to spend waiting for me to get excited.