I just woke up from a 6 hour siesta... Oops.

I knew it was bound to happen one of these days. I always wake up with a bizarre confusion of what part of the day it is. Am I waking up with a time table of eating breakfast, getting dressed, and running to class? Or am I in a lazy afternoon where I can wake up and do homework, watch TV with my señora, and go out as a please? I can't count sleeps here Jackie because I sleep more than 7 times a week...

Anyway, I went out last night with Molly, her intercambio Ramón, and some other CIEE people after my dance class. Considering that my dance class ends at 10 PM (which means 10:15 PM) and is on the other side of the city, it wasn't until 12 that I actually made it out to the Torre del Oro... the infamous location for botellón. Luckily since I had been walking outside I knew enough to rock the tights with my new boots to keep warm.

Later in the evening we went to a discotheque and after about 40 minutes of creeping, we finally got the awkward group of guys that was dancing next to us to realize that we wanted to learn their moves. These 4 guys (2 from England, 1 from France, 1 from German) were sufficiently awkward but were seriously breaking it down. I was starting to wish I had paid more attention in all those years of One Broadway hip hop so I had more to offer. Molly and one of the English guys had a dance off... the results of which are unknown. If you ask us, Molly won, but this guy was a bit full of himself and just would not concede. The music also didn't include Lady Gaga so Molly wasn't quite on the top of her game. She also tried to teach them the fist pump, but it just wasn't quite the same as Portugal.

Anyway, I went to bed at 4:30 and woke up for a tour of the Medieval Castles of Sevilla at 8:30 AM. This doesn't exactly constitute an appropriate night of sleep for me. There is a reason I don't do this when I'm at Hope and actually have legitimate things to accomplish every day.

The Castles we saw were pretty cool, but nothing in comparison to what I had seen in Spain previously. Nevertheless, I've included some pictures and a brief history lesson for you all to enjoy :)

The castles are always situated at the top of the city so they have they best view of everything coming in and out of the city. This morning we encountered some serious fog though so we couldn't make out much of the pueblo below us.

View from the top of the city

Watch tower that had been well-preserved

I was surprised at how underdeveloped this pueblo seemed. It was very small and the majority of the houses did not seem to be in very good shape. I guess I had considered all the pueblos to be more of suburbs, but what we found looked more like what I had seen in Matamoros, Mexico, than anywhere else.

One of the nicer views of the pueblo

After checking out these remains, we continued on to another pueblo, which happened to be the hometown of both of our guides. So of course when we got there all of our comments fell along the lines of, "This is the greatest city I've ever been in!" Now I much prefer Sevilla to the small pueblo we were in but I will give them mad credit for their pastries. They are known for their panderias and for a good reason.

This oozed chocolate all over me. Be jealous.

Of course, there were also churches and remains of medieval castles to check out as well. (But at this point I think even our guides knew the dulces were the selling point of the trip, jaja...) Along the way we ran into at least 7 people our tour guides knew: one guide's brother and uncle, the owner of the bomb panderia we went to, the other guide's mom - the list goes on. We eventually made it to the top of one of the other towers and I pulled out Mike, the Flat Stanley I had been sent by one of Jackie's friends who is student teaching this semester. It was pretty funny because when I pulled it out everyone started asking me, "Is that a Flat Stanley?!? That's so cool, I did that when I was in elementary school!"

The Baroque church in the pueblo... their own Giraldita.

Side note: The españoles add -ita to anything they want to make smaller. Hence Giraldita is a mini Giraldo, which is the huge tower in the center of Sevilla. My señora likes to say 'hasta luegita' or 'hasta mañanita' instead of 'hasta luego' or 'hasta mañana.' This is kind of like saying, 'see you in a little bit,' but its funny to hear these common phrases modified by the locals.

Flat Mike from the top of the tower.
The sunglasses are my own personal addition via post-it note.

I got back home from this little excursion at 2:30, perfect timing for lunch and a siesta. I knew I wanted to catch up on sleep so I changed into sweat pants and climbed under the covers. This was a pitfall. Normally I try to distinguish siesta from night time by sleeping in my regular clothing at siesta and sleeping on top of the covers. I also normally just close the curtain and let my room be partially lit. But no, I closed the shades (my señora has the intense kind that don't let anything in) and checked out of the world for 6 hours. It doesn't help that my señora left and the house was completely silent. Oh well, I guess this is part of just letting whatever happens with the day happen. I'm glad I got something accomplished this morning though!

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. Here are some brief highlights...

Mike on a carriage ride

Tuesday was Columbus Day (from the other side of the ocean!) so I went to the Museum of Flamenco Dance and wandered around the city a bit with Flat Mike. Yes, Tami and Ali, one day I will take the two of you for an outing of the city. I'm just trying to pace myself so no locals start noticing me and my paper people :)

Paella with chicken, clams, shrimp, and squid

My señora made me paella! It was AMAZING. Again, you have my permission to be jealous.

Did you know the Plaza de España in Sevilla was used in Star Wars?

My interest group had a meeting that talked about Sevilla being used in the filming of different movies. We watched the clips and it was kind of sad to see the way the city had been distorted. (Excluding Star Wars because I feel like they can do whatever they want.) Particularly awful was Knight and Day, which made Cádiz and Sevilla into one city with some awful green screening. Sevilla is so beautiful that it was kind of a bummer to see the way it gets reduced to the touristic icons of the media. We had talked about this in my Flamenco class this week as well, during which I found out they consider the cowboy to be one of the main icons of the United States. Guess it shows how off our perceptions of other countries can be since the closest I get to cowboys is the food court at the PA farm show. Mmmm, milkshakes :)

Well that's all for now, I'm off to do some homework and pack before leaving for Granada with CIEE tomorrow morning! Love from Spain and I hope you all in Hershey are enjoying a fun wedding-planning-weekend :)