Ce-ing Ce in Granada!!

This weekend we had a ‘free’ school trip to Granada (free meaning most likely, judging by the 4-star hotel we stayed in and awesome meals, it was merely factored into our original cost to study here), and it was pretty fun. The best part was definitely ce-ing Ce!!!! (for anyone who may not know, Ce (pronounced ‘see’) goes to Ithaca with me and is studying in Granada this semester. And, for anyone who also may be wondering, he does not go by his nickname Ce here anymore because it is too confusing with Sí, so he goes by his real name, Kwesi.

But anyway, Friday morning we got on the buses and headed out to Granada. It wasn’t too far, about 3 hours or so by bus, and after we got there we had lunch on our own and free time for the afternoon. Ce met us at the hotel and then we walked around for a while and he showed us around some parks and the ‘river,’ aka stream.

After our break, we went to the Catedral and Capilla Real (Royal Chapel). It was really cool because I had studied parts of the cathedral and chapel in art class, so it was really cool to actually see them and remember the characteristics.

We had a little more free time after we were done there, so we walked around the Arab quarter a bit, which was sooooo much like Morocco. We got some ice cream at the most AMAZING place ever, that had all the flavors decorated with oranges or grapes or whatever the flavor was, and the we hung out for a while at a café until we had to go to dinner.

After dinner, we met up with Ce again and he took us to his tetería (tea shop) he goes to all the time. Since he’s such a regular, he’s friends with the owners and we got to talk to them for a while. The tea shop was really cool because it was decorated with lanterns and cool Moroccan rugs, and the tea was sooo good. We stayed there for a pretty long time, and then we headed to another one of Ce’s regular hangouts, a chawarma restaurant, where we got some chawarmas, or pitas with all these delicious ingredients baked inside. 

Saturday we hung out with Ce again in the morning and tried to go to a marketplace, but most of the vendors weren’t there because they were scared away by the stormy clouds. So instead we went and met Ce’s Señora, who is the cutest lady ever, and then eventually headed back to the hotel for lunch.

After lunch, we went to the Alhambra and Generalife (not pronounced General Life but actually Hen-are-a-leaf-a), which is this old Moorish castle/palace with gardens and the palace of Carlos V, who conquered the Moors. We were pretty lucky because we missed the rain that came as we were driving home. Although we weren’t quite so lucky when it was pouring back in Sevilla when we got home.

Well that is all for now. ¡Hasta luego!

La vida de mi casa

So I haven’t said much about my home life for a while, but things have been pretty good. My Señor is so cute and funny, a couple days ago he remembered that this one food we were eating, tortilla de camarones (shrimp), was my favorite, so he barely ate any and said the rest was for me because I liked them so much. It actually ended up being entirely too much food and I could barely finish it because it was so much, but it was really thoughtful that he remembered it was my favorite.

My roommate and I never asked my Señor what his job is, and now since it’s so far into the semester, it would be extremely weird and awkward to ask, so Rosie and I keep snooping around trying to find clues to figure out what he does for a living. For a while, I seriously thought he didn’t have a job because he spends so much time at the house helping out with his autistic son and housework. But we decided that the money they get for hosting Rosie and me isn’t enough to sustain the family, so we began developing theories as to what he does.

Our first was that he is some type of manager of a store or something because he receives a lot of phone calls, and that job may not require leaving the house a lot. But I didn’t think that was it because he would have to spend a decent amount of time away from the house anyway, plus I noticed that his college diploma is on the wall of the son’s bedroom, so I thought that might mean he has some type of more advanced or specialized job.

My next guess was he is a professor at the University of Sevilla, because then he would only have to leave the house for the classes, which could be pretty short and scattered at weird hours. But I have never seen him grade any papers, and he would probably have to have office hours, so I ended that theory.

My current guess is he is a stockbroker. I’ve seen him on the computer, and he could easily do this job from home, so I think it’s a good guess. Plus, he read the newspaper extremely faithfully, so maybe he’s checking up on the economy??

So other random things about my house that are interesting:

1. My Señor’s ringtone on his cell phone is the theme song to Pirates of the Caribbean

2. My Señor and Señora rode on the horses together at Feria when they were younger and dating

3. My Señora told us how when she was younger, one time when she went out for Feria, she left on a Friday night and stayed out partying and dancing until Monday morning.

4. My Señor is a hardcore Sevilla fútbol team fan, and when he watches the games, he yells and screams at the TV as if the people on the screen can actually hear him.

5. I think my Señor knows more English than he lets on, because he keeps saying random stuff in English, like sugar, coffee, Sunday, and a lot more.

So I guess that is all for now.

Hasta luego.

Feria de Abril

This week was the second biggest holiday in Sevilla after Semana Santa: Feria. I’m not quite sure how it came about, but it basically is just one huge party in Los Remedios, a district in the city. A billion casetas, or tents, are set up, some being ‘private’ that people pay dues for all year to be a part of, and others are ‘public’ that people like me could go into.

Inside these tents, tables, chairs, bars, live music, and a stage are set up so people just hang out and drink and dance flamenco, or the sevillano dance, all night. Literally. People stay out until insane hours of the night every night this week. And the kids don’t have school most of the week either, and many stores have special ‘Feria’ week hours. It’s nuts.

And a majority of the women walk around in their flamenco dresses, which are absolutely GORGEOUS. They’re in the craziest colors and patterns, most of them polka dot but others paisley or solid. It’s funny because everyone walks through the city as if it’s perfectly normally to be wearing these huge dresses with insane colors and flowers pinned to their hair, when for anyone else visiting it looks more like Halloween night or a costume party.

And it’s also perfectly normal for women to spend 300 or more euros on one of these flamenco dresses. And my Señora informed me that women usually own at least 4 of them to alternate during the week, because of course you can’t be seen wearing the same dress everyday. AND, trends of the dresses change every year, so then you have to buy a new one every year or so.

Because of the rain, I didn’t go out to the Feria festivities until Wednesday, when the rain let up a little. A huge entrance gate was set up on the Feria grounds, and there were thousands and thousands of people walking around in their dresses and dancing in the casetas. We found our way to the public tent, where we bought some of the traditional Feria drink, white wine mixed with 7-up.

After watching the dancing for a bit, we headed to the amusement park right next to the Feria grounds, and walked around there and ate gofres, or waffles with chocolate and whipped cream. It was pretty funny watching all the teenage girls in their dresses go on the rides.

On Thursday, we didn’t feel like going to Feria again since we’d gotten a good taste of it before, so we went to the Contemporary Art Museum instead. It was pretty interesting because it’s inside an old monastery, so it was cool seeing both the art and the old monastery. It was horrible getting back, though, because there was so much traffic from Feria that it took a good hour and a half to get back by bus. That night Laura and I went to see The Game Plan, or Papá por Sorpresa, in the movie theater. It was dubbed in Spanish, and after you get over how it looks a bit weird, it’s not that bad. I understood almost all the movie, and I thought it was really cute.

Friday we headed to the nearby town Jerez for the day. They’re known for their wine and sherry, so we went on a tour of a bodega and tasted a few of the drinks. Saturday we went to Ronda, a town almost as ‘gorges’ as Ithaca. It’s built around these huge gorges, so we hiked for a while and wandered through the town. Sunday we went back to Feria to check out the horses, because my Señor kept raving about how amazing they were. And it was pretty cool, there were a billion and a half horses and carriages carrying around people in Flamenco dresses. And that was all of Feria.

Now I shall go attempt to do work. Hasta luego!

p.s.

Here's the link to some more pictures.

Semana Santa and London

Flamenco and Madrid

On Thursday my school threw this AWESOME party so we headed out to that. There was a live band playing Flamenco music and everyone was dancing, so it was a great atmosphere. 

Friday we had off classes, so Laura and I headed to the Museum of Art and Customs, which was pretty interesting. There was a temporary exhibit on foreign correspondents in Spain, which was really interesting. Then Friday night Laura, Alicia, and I went to the amusement park in Sevilla and hung out there, which was soooooo fun. We rode the ferris wheel and two other rides, one of which was the scariest i have ever been on in my LIFE. It's pretty impossible to explain, except if you've ever been to Knoebel's it's the same as the Fandango except faster and higher. 

Then Saturday and Sunday I had a school 'field trip' to Madrid for my art class. We took the train on Saturday morning, which was really short so it only took 2.5 hours. After we got there and checked in, we headed out to the Prado National Museum, where we saw a bunch of El Greco, Goya, and Velacquez works. These were really cool because we had just learned about the works, so it was cool to actually see them instead of just slides. Then we went to this other museum that had a huge exhibit about Picasso, so we spent a pretty long time there before we had the rest of the night to ourselves. A bunch of us had a HUGE craving for American food, so went broke  down and went to Hard Rock Cafe, where I finally got to have mac and cheese with ketchup for the first time in MONTHS!!!!! 

Sunday we did a walking tour and saw the Plaza Mayor and some other buildings since had just studied Baroque period. Then we went to our last museum, which had a bunch of foreign works and we just walked around by ourselves. 

This week is Feria in Sevilla, although I have yet to go to anything for it. It's been freaking POURING all week, so I refuse to walk the whole way to the district where all the Feria partying is going on. Apparently there's a lot of Flamenco dancing and horses going around and stuff, so hopefully it stops raining later this week so I can go. 

So I suppose this is all for now.

Hasta Luego!

'Ello!!!

This weekend Laura and I were off to London to visit a bunch of cool people from Ithaca. Our flight was in the afternoon on Friday, and after landing in Gatwick and getting to the apartment, Laura, Seth, Luke, Laura, Mary, and I chilled for a bit before we finally went out for Indian food. 

On Saturday we had the grand tour of London, and hit up just about every site there is to see. We went through Hyde Park and saw a cool Peter Pan statue, then we were off to Buckingham Palace and Westminister Abbey and Parliament and lots and lots more. Eventually we headed over to the Borough Market and got a LOT of free food from stands and bought some good brownies and toasted cheese sandwiches. Then we headed over to the London and Tower Bridges and the Tate Museum. 

After that, Seth and I went to the London Eye and then Spamalot. The show was really really funny, it was basically a huge spoof on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. After the show we tried to find someplace to eat, but no one wanted to serve us so we eventually just went back to the flat.

Sunday we got up bright and early and headed to Platform 9 3/4 and then some more markets. Our flight was in the early afternoon, so we had to get to the airport relatively early to check in. The line took FOREVER to get through, so we barely got through in enough time to get our flight. But we did, and then we got back to Sevilla by 7:30. It was pretty nice because it was still daylight because this weekend was daylight savings time, and it was even nicer because it was actually warm. 

Semana Santa in La Ciudad

So after my trip from Morocco, I was back in just enough time to catch the end of Semana Santa, or Holy Week. The week is a pretty big deal in Sevilla, and they have a LOT of processions and parades and it’s pretty much one big week of solemn reflection on the death of Jesus. (They actually don’t really do much with the Resurrection, mainly just the death.)

Thursday it rained for most of the morning and afternoon, so a lot of the processions were cancelled. But then before dinner I headed out to a church downtown and caught the procession called La Pasión, which started out with a bunch of people in outfits that look almost identical to the outfits the Ku Klux Klan wears (I’m being serious, I’ll have pictures up eventually so you can see) and then was followed with people carrying these huge float/image things of Jesus and Mary. The whole thing takes FOREVER to go through, literally hours and hours. Some of them last all night and they walk for 12 hours straight. It’s pretty crazy. 

But anyway, after that procession I went and got some dinner before heading to some more professions that started after midnight. EVERYBODY (including my 15-year-old host brother) was out watching them, and we watched two or three before heading back home at 4 am.

On Good Friday, Laura and I walked out to Triana (a district kinda far from where I live) and caught another procession called La Esperanza de Triana (The hope of Triana, who is one of the patron saints of Sevilla). Then we went to this amazing organic restaurant and had tofu. In the afternoon we bought fútbol tickets and headed out to yet some more processions before hanging out downtown for the night.

On Saturday, we had all had enough of processions, plus there weren’t that many more anyway, so Laura, Janette, and I headed out for a VERY long walk to a park out in Triana called el Parque de los Príncipes. We hung out there for a while, then after dinner we went out to the fútbol game against a Madrid team. The Sevillanos are CRAZY about their soccer, it was pretty nuts. People were yelling soooooo loud obscenities and then singing all these different fight songs. It was a good time. But unfortunately, we lost 2-1. But the other team was ranked higher anyway, so I guess they were better.

Easter Sunday my roommate and I headed down to the big cathedral for mass, which was the weirdest mass either of us had ever been too. It just had music and chanting for the first 45 minutes, and then when it finally started it was still kinda different. I was pretty happy because I could understand the lessons and sermon, although I guess it is kinda expected that I’d understand most of it since I already knew ahead of time what to expect out of the readings. But anyway, we left after the sermon because we had been there for an hour and a half already and didn’t know where the service was going.

Then for lunch I finally had dessert!!!!! We have only had dessert one other time at my house, so it was pretty amazing. It was this delicious thing that was like cheesecake, but better.

And unfortunately, that was the end of Semana Santa. The most unfortunate part was probably that I had to head to class after what seemed like the longest break of my life. But I guess I am here to study …

Also, here are some pics from Morocco

Morocco