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.

Food and water are two of every human's basic needs.

Sunday was our second CIEE excursion of the semester. Cádiz, one of the last known cities in the time of Columbus, with great historical monuments and... the beach. Talk about "studying abroad."

Cádiz is about an hour and a half and since I lacked sleep earlier in the weekend, I enjoyed a nice long nap on the way there. We came in on the only land entrance to the city; the majority of the people that enter and leave do so through the many ports of the peninsula. Our tour guide first took us into the antique portion of the city to see the cigarette factory. This factory was inspired by Sevilla's tobacco factory, which had been a great source of economic gain for Sevilla. (The tobacco factory in Sevilla is now the University of Sevilla.)

A statue in memory of the women who worked in the cigarette factory

We continued on to part of an old Roman theater that has been excavated from underground. This Roman theater is possibly one of the largest in the world, but is unable to be retrieved because of its location under some of the most historical buildings of a later century. One of these buildings is the oldest cathedral in the city, which is relatively unimpressive and in general, ugly. But the historical importance stands and it remains preserved.

Oldest cathedral of Cádiz

However, that hasn't stopped Cádiz from having a beautiful and impressive cathedral. During the 16th and 17th centuries, they built a large cathedral in the center of the city. The cathedral was started in the Baroque style, and finished in the Roccoco style as architects changed and time passed. The change is visible in the building by the change in of building materials. The bottom portion is made from a material that actually has whole shells in the walls. If you go to the top of one of the cupolas, you can see all views the city and the Atlantic Ocean that surrounds it.

Cathedral of Cádiz

Used to build the walls of the cathedral and many other buildings of the century
See the seashell?

Me and Molly at the top!

We continued onto another plaza which was the location of a statue of one of the Catholic saints. Legend has it, if you show your bra straps to the saint you will get a boyfriend. So Jackie wants to know, did I do it? Vamos a ver... ;) After our tour we had free time, for which they conveniently dropped us off and picked us up at the beach. Niiiiice. It was way more crowded than Saturday, but it was still beautiful. Also, it will be appearing in the upcoming James Bond movie. I'm pretty sure I looked exactly like Angelina Jolie coming baywatch style out of the beach. Jajaja. (Look Hanah, I'm Spanish now too!)

La playa

This morning I went to el mercado de Ferria, one of the oldest food markets in Sevilla, for my class assignment. There were tons of fruits and vegetables and also meat stands. And then I saw it. Brains. I asked my señora about it later and she said its popular to feed them to babies because of the nutrients. Mom and Dad, I hope you never fed me brains. Future children, don't worry I think its gross too. After meeting a wonderful fruit stand man (wasn't quite as great as the dried fruit guy in Roma, Ray) who let me try his fruit, I bought approximately a billion plums for the low price of 1,40 euros. Mmmmm. I actually like these obnoxious assignments that send me 45 minutes away from my house to look at fruit because it gets me to a new place of the city that I wouldn't go to otherwise. Thanks CIEE ;)

Mercado de Ferria

Well thought I'd catch you up on my recent outings before this week got too busy. But before I leave you here's a shout out to the padre...

Podólogos en España!