A Day in the Life of a Girl in Spain!

Ok, this might be a long one so brace yourselves. In this blog I'm not going to be talking about one particular thing. Instead I am going to try and just talk about the little things that are different that I would like to take note of in the future. Sometimes I will mention particular events but for the most part there is not timeline per say for this entry.

I guess the first thing I will talk about is the roads (calles) and sidewalks here in Sevilla. Now I'm not sure if all the roads in Spain are like this but from what I gather they are. Before I arrived I knew that since Spain was a much older country then the United States that the roads would be outdated of sorts, aka cobble stone. Which gives the city an authentic look to it and just makes everything appear more precious. I love looking down a cobble stone street in the morning. As you can imagine though this makes walking on them slightly more difficult, especially in heals. My suggestion here is not to wear them unless you know you wont actually have to walk very far in them or wear wedges. Sadly I don't even own a pair of wedges but the good news is I don't need the extra height. Though I am considering purchasing a pair while I'm here simply for the fact that some outfits look better in heals.

For the first few days I walked all the way to my school for classes and I live in one of the farthest areas in the city from the center. My feet began to feel the cobble stone very quickly however. Now I own a card for the bus, metro, and tram but still have a good distance to walk to get to the tram. Slowly my feet have become accustomed to the roads and have developed callus' but every now and then my feet suffer from a long night out in the city. Also it doesn't help that I'm naturally a little clumsy added on top of uneven roads.

I live in an apartment here in Sevilla with my señora. Most people in Spain live in flats. My apartment is very small but I don't need anything larger for myself. Some students in my program live in flats that are the whole floor of a building and one girl even lives with a family that owns a four story "house". I say "house" because it is more like townhouse I guess is the best English word for it. However, my apartment complex is a private community which means I have three keys to get to my casa, house. One is for the front gate, and those who have cars have a private parking garage as well. The first few times I tried using my key I had some problems getting the gate open but I think I have figured it out now. The second key is for the front door of the building and the last key is the front door of the apartment.

Now apartment doors here are very different then apartment doors anywhere else I've ever seen. On the outside there is a single knob on the door but it is in the center instead of to the right and does not actually even turn. When you want to open the door from the outside you must have a key that is inserted in the normal location to the right. As you turn the key it is the same effect as turning a door handle. To leave, there is a normal handle to the right that turns, but to close the door you must use the random middle knob on the outside to pull it shut. Locking the door means turning the key the opposite direction until you hear the door bolt twice and then pull out the key. So basically I'm super safe in my house :)

On Mondays and Wednesdays I have night classes which means for me I only have two hours between classes for lunch. It is impossible for me to make it home and back for lunch so I have my señora make me a bocadilla, and sandwich. Usually she packs a fruit and a juice box as well. One day she had packed me a peach and while I was standing on the tram it ripped a hole in the bag :/ it was a little embarrassing and after that I had to carry my whole lunch in my hands to my school. In hind sight this isn't such a great story I just thought it was kind of funny.

My señora is amazing and talking to her has become easier so this is very encouraging for me. She washes and irons all my clothes, its part of the program requirements but it's still nice. I try really hard to keep my room clean here but sometimes some things just get out of place and I will come home from class and my room will be straightened up. She cleans and changes my sheets for and cleans up my bathroom. I feel bad about all the work she does but it's also all apart of the program so she does it all the time. This is her tenth year hosting students! I love all the food she makes me and have been trying a lot of fish and like it. For lunch the other day she made a Sevillan specialty that is rice with shrimp, some sort of shell fish, and octopus. I tried the shrimp in it and liked it but it is a lot harder for me to get over the mental mindset of not liking sea food to try to shell fish and octopus. One day I will be brave enough to try it!

This weekend I was supposed to go horse back riding on the beach but not enough people signed up for the trip and it had to be canceled. So on Friday a few friends and I went up to the stadium, which is really close to my casa, and bought tickets for the futbol, soccer, game the next night. This was a really big game because it was between Sevilla and the Real Madrid. The next day I went to the center and did some shopping and bought a jersey for the game that night. I was so excited! Everyone outside the stadium before the game were crazy. They were all chanting and singing the songs of Sevilla for the game. Of course there were police everywhere to keep things under control but they were needed. They even had police men on horse back there as well.

Within the first five minutes the first point was scored. Sevilla! After the player made the shot he proceeded to do a back flip and the crowd went wild! It was so intense. The first half of the game was more exciting then the second. But the game went into over time none the less. Sevilla won 1:0! Afterwards we went to a bar that is owned by some Romanians that we meet through my friends host señora's grandson (he is 24). We all just sat around and conversed in Spanish and it was great! They gave us some free drinks even and helped us with our Spanish. The Romanians that own the bar are brother and sister, technically he (Maddy) owns the bar and he is only 20 years old! His sister(Christina) has only been in Spain for two months and didn't study it before she came and is fairly fluent. This gives me a lot of hope with my own endeavors at learning Spanish!