Warning: Actual classes approaching

NO MORE GRAMMAR CLASSES. THANK GOODNESS.

Our class struggled to the end of 3 hour long classes that sometimes seemed to make time stop. It was pretty painful. But even though my professor seems to be one of the strictest in the program, I honestly feel like my Spanish has improved over the past two weeks. That's all a girl can ask for, right? Tomorrow I have my final exam and my final essay due. Which means I should probably be studying instead of blogging. Don't worry parentals, it will come.

On Wednesday night, part of my homework was to ask my señora the meaning behind a Spanish phrase. Here's a couple of examples:
- Ser un melón (To be a melon) --> To be air-headed, unintelligent
- Darle calabazas a alguien (To give someone a pumpkin) --> To stand someone up
- Ser del año de la pera (To be from the year of the pear) --> To be old school

Oh, how nice to be learning idioms that relate to food. I like food. I like to be in the know, its all good... right? Well here was my phrase: Mandar a freir espárragos (To gives someone fried asparragus). My señora kept saying mierda (shit) and by the time I got to class I found out what my phrase meant: Go to shit. Theeeeen we had to make a skit which included our phrases. Which means I ended up having to tell some girl she looked fat in front of the whole class so she could tell me to go to hell. Though this vocabulary could be useful at the discotheque next time, I think next time our professor should tell us to ask one of the young Spanish students, not my 65 year old señora.

Another one of my assignments for class this week was to go to el Museo de las Bellas Artes, which is one of the largest art museums in Spain and is gratis! (free) to go into. It was fun to wander around and check out the art work, but I typically like to have background knowledge about what I'm going to see before I see it. I'm sure I'll go back later in the semester for one of my other classes though so it was nice to just spend a morning wandering around some of the most renowned Sevillan and Spanish paintings, especially some of the paintings of the toros and flamenco dancers. Oddly enough, in one of the first rooms I walked into I found myself face to face with a painting that I had studied in Spanish V at good old HHS. One of our homework assignments was to draw one of the famous pieces and write a description about it. And I had chosen this portrait done by El Greco. It was fun and unexpected to be able to see it in real life.

Retrato de Jorge Manuel, El Greco

This week we also had our first meetings with our intercambios, which are Spanish students who want to learn English and get paired up with CIEE students so we can improve our Spanish. We all met at a bar (at 10:00 PM on a Wednesday night?! What is this business?) that CIEE had rented out for us. However when we arrived there was no initial organization so all the Americans stood with Americans and all the Spanish students stood with Spainards. Talk about a middle school dance. After awhile we started one of the games where you have to find someone who had done this or that (bungee jumping? attended a Madonna concert? really CIEE?). Luckily, the second person I went up to to ask a question goes, "Are either of you girls Amber?," To which I 'cooly' responded "YES THAT'S ME!" Juan was nice and pretty understanding when I messed up my conjugations or couldn't remember a word. Overall, I'm pretty excited for the whole process. But don't worry parents, grandparents, brothers, and sister-in-law, he graduated last year from college so he is older and is not by any means a love interest. (Better Tami?)

Thursday I went to El Real Alcázar, the castle in Sevilla where the Kings and Queens reside when they come to the city. It was massive and it was gorgeous. It was really interesting because the castle was actually designed with a lot of Islamic artistry, even though it was built by the Christian king and queen. So many things in the city have been converted from their original Islamic purposes, but this embraced the intricate artwork and combined it with some of the more Classical design elements of the castles.

Room for presentation to King and Queen

Patio for Queen's help, adjacent to the room for presentation

Overlooking the gardens from the walkway

Water reservoir for Queen to bathe
ALSO MY FAVORITE PICTURE TO DATE! I made an impromptu tripod to keep it from getting blurry :) I'd say my photography skills are improving!

Seeing all of the artwork in the building made me excited for my my art history class this semester, Art in Islamic Spain. In general, I think my classes are really going to help me appreciate the history around me this semester. My other classes include: Flamenco in Andulucia: Culture, Language, Music and Dance; Introduction to Spanish Literature: The Middle Ages; and Women Writers of the 20th Century. I'm ready for them to start on Monday and to finally be in the real swing of school for the semester.