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.