We Love Sundays @ the Beach!

During my first full weekend here in sunny Spain, I went to the beach!  Every Sunday, a touring company here in Sevilla called We Love Spain hosts outings to the beach, so a few friends and I signed up to tag along Sunday, September 11.  (Just as a side note, I felt somewhat guilty spending the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at a beach, but I seriously felt so far removed from the whole memorial since there is not 24/7 media coverage of everything here in Spain.)  This weekend's beach outing was to Huelva, a Spanish coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean!  The beach town near Huelva that we ended up visiting was called Punta Umbría.  The total price of the trip was 20€ (or around $28) so it was pretty decent since it included round-trip coach bus transportation, a bocadillo for lunch, free sangria and beer, and access to such beach things as frisbees, which I would otherwise not have at my disposal! 

We departed Sevilla at 10am, arrived in Punta Umbría around 11am and headed to the sand!  It was a really nice beach and a really beautiful day!  I went walking along the shore collecting seashells (and there were SO many seashells), I played frisbee and beach ball, and went swimming in the ocean for the FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE!  It was so much fun!  The waves were huge, so it was fun jumping around in them.  The only downside was how salty it was!  BLECH!  Though the wave that crashed up my nose did seem to work like a neti pot and temporarily alleviate my congestion from my cold!

And, what would a day at the beach be without caring for the intoxicated?  Much less entertaining, I suppose.  There was one 40 year old woman in our group who may have indulged in the free sangria and beer a bit too much (and somehow managed to acquire a bottle of tequila).  Needless to say, she was in bad shape.  In hopes of sobering her up, my friends and I tried to take her on a walk (or a stumble) to get ice cream, which just made a mess of her face.  She wound up falling over in the sand, and after I picked her up, she went to the bathrooms and demanded my other friends give her a shower.  An hour or so later, she woke up from her coma, left her vomit-stained towel, and went straight to the water.  I followed her, expecting she'd drown herself otherwise.  Before I could even get to her, she fell over and was just sitting in the ocean with waves crashing into her face.  So a couple of us had to lift her out of the ocean while some others got the We Love Spain staff to take care of her since she was becoming a handful!  So she definitely made the day interesting!

Sunday at the beach was great fun and I look forward to more beach days in the future :] ...but hopefully with less sunburn!

The beach at Punta Umbría

The Atlantic Ocean!

A sea of seashells

Mahou Negra at the beach...what a life!

Walking around Punta Umbría looking for ice cream!

The majority of the group that was at the beach!
(I am the pale, unathletic one on the left...you know, the typical beach-going type)

Ahora estudiamos...

Half of studying abroad is studying.  It's not necessarily the fun part, but it will be a big part of my semester here.  My university here in Spain is called Universidad Pablo de Olavide - UPO for short.  It is not located within the city of Sevilla, but rather in the outlying farmland, so I have a 5-10 minute metro ride to school everyday.  I got a 45 trip metro pass for only 31€.  That's a fairly good deal.  I'll be spending a lot on the metro this semester since I make at least 2 trips every day!  And the metro is VERY nice.  It's new here - only about 2 years old - so it's much fancier than the El!  There's only one line, so you can't go everywhere in the city, but luckily my school and house are right on the line!

Gran Plaza - The plaza where I catch the metro every day (it's only about 5 minutes from my house!)

The Metro of Sevilla - FANCY!

The campus is nice.  It looks kind of like an old prison.  The windows have bars on them and there is a huge tower that looks like a sniper tower.  But apparently it's a recycled university from the dictatorship of Franco in the 1950s.  There's pretty much one long outdoor hallway with buildings on either side, so it's nice.

The rectory and the "sniper tower"

Pablo de Olavide - the university's namesake!

The long hallway through the campus

Some of the UPO campus buildings and verdure!

More UPO buildings (notice the bars on the windows!)

I wound up getting an advanced score on my placement exam, so I was able to take all of the classes I wanted!  My schedule is the following:

Monday/Wednesday

12:00-1:20pm - The Mediterranean World and Spain (This is a history class about the Mediterranean civilizations until around 700AD.  So I'll be learning all about Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Egyptians and Arabs.  It will be interesting because I've never really had an in-depth course on ancient history.  And we will also take a field trip to the Archeology Museum and maybe to some archeological sites in the region!)

1:30-2:50pm - Women in Europe (This class is sort of a history of feminism and a look at current social issues regarding gender inequality.  This is the only course that NCC would count as an advanced level Spanish course, so I need it to finish my Spanish major.  The professor seems to be really excited that I am in the class because she has probably never taught a male student about feminism.  So I may return to the states as a feminist.  You have all been forewarned!) 

Tuesday/Thursday
1:30-2:50pm - Intercultural Communication (This is another course I need for my Global Studies major.  It is interesting enough.  We'll be learning about how to communicate with people in other cultures both verbally and non-verbally and also on how to develop intercultural understanding.)

2:50-4:00pm - LUNCH!  (Yes, that is lunch time!  In Spain, lunch is normally served between 2 and 4pm, so since I'm not at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my host mom packs me a lunch, which usually consists of a bocadillo (sandwich), some type of salad, and a piece of fruit.  The last two days I have sat out in a pine grove and have shared my bocadillo with a stray black cat.  He also liked my corn and tuna salad!) 

4:00-5:20pm - Ecological Systems (This is the only course I am taking in English and it fulfills my science gen ed requirements which is nice to get that out of the way!  It will be interesting since I've always been somewhat interested in environmental things.  And we will be doing experiments in a greenhouse!  How cool is that?)

My new lunchtime friend!

Friday-Saturday-Sunday 

WEEKEND!  This is when I plan to enjoy the "abroad" half of study abroad.  There are some bigger things I want to do like visit Portugal and the Balearic Islands, but I think I'll also be doing some smaller day trips around Andalucia (the southernmost province of Spain, of which Sevilla is the capital!)  So keep following my blog to find out where I'm off to next! 

Sunset walking back to the metro after orientation
(Don't be fooled by the beauty!  It feels like 110° at this time of day!)

¡Bienvenidos a Sevilla!

Hola todas!

I have been living in Sevilla, Spain for roughly 3 days and finally have some time to write my first blog entry!  I'd first like to thank all of my family and friends for supporting me and for reading!  Hopefully I can update you all quite regularly!

Anyhow, I left Chicago on Friday, September 2.  I was much less anxious about traveling alone than I was last year.  My semester in Germany really helped me to gain a lot of confidence going out alone into the world.  I did have a lot of anxieties though.  I was pretty nervous about meeting my host family and new roommate.  The other issue I was worrying about was mentally and emotionally separating this experience from my semester in Germany.  I literally had the best time of my life in Germany and I met some of my best friends there, so I was just nervous that my experience in Spain would pale in comparison.  I know that sounds really elitist or ungrateful, which I'm not trying to be, but I just need to work on enjoying this semester as a separate life experience.

I had 3 flights to get here - Chicago-Philadelphia-Brussels-Sevilla - so that totaled roughly 20 hours of sitting alone in airplanes and airports.  Not so much fun, especially considering I got maybe 2 hours of sleep!  When I arrived in Sevilla, I had to find my way to my host family's house.  I feel that in most programs, the host family would greet you at the airport and drive you home.  But not this one.  But I had everything planned out!  I knew which bus to take, where to get off, and how to walk to the house, so I was excited to independently navigate the city.  However, nothing ever goes according to plan when traveling - and I should have known that!  The bus I took did not follow the assigned route and did not announce any of the stops.  So I was frantically trying to see what street we were on to see where to get off, but wound up at the end of the route at some park.  The bus driver directed me to another bus, which I did not want to get on, so luckily I found a metro station right around the corner.  The metro took me to a plaza about 10 minutes from my host family's house, so I easily walked there and everything worked out!  And I saved like 20€ by not taking a cab!

My host family is really great!  I live in a really big, beautiful home with Mayte Casanova and her husband Ángel and their dog Sacha.  Their 30 year old daughter Cynthia also kind of lives with us.  They're all really nice and Mayte has cooked a lot of delicious Spanish food like tortilla, paella, fish and pork.  So I'm definitely enjoying the food a lot!  I also have a housemate named Ryan from Maryland who's pretty cool.  So I don't really have any complaints about my housing - which is SUCH a relief!

My new house for the next 4 months

My new bed

My desk and the door to my balcony!

View from my balcony

My new dog - Sacha!

Yesterday, I took the metro to my new school Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) to take the placement exam.  Luckily I met up with my friends from my school, so it was nice to see some familiar faces!  After the exam, we had a tour of the campus, which seems just ok.  Then I went into the city center for the first time (I live in a sleepy neighborhood on the outskirts)!  I went out exploring with my friend Megan from home and we got some tapas and tried getting cell phones figured out - which is turning into a nightmare for me!  We then met up later in the afternoon again to walk around, get drinks and go on a tour of the city.

Guadalquivir River and the "Golden Tower" in downtown Sevilla

TAPAS!

Avenida de la Constitucion - the main avenue in the city center

The Cathedral - it's the largest Gothic cathedral in the world! (I still haven't gone inside)

La Giralda - the minaret/bell tower of the cathedral

This morning, I met up with Megan and her roommate Natalie and Emily, another girl from our school, to go to Plaza de España and Parque Maria Luisa.  It was really fun.  We rented a 4-person bike and rode around for a half hour.  It only took us 15 minutes of strenuous pedaling in the 90° heat to realize that we were pedaling with the brake on.  No wonder people who were walking were faster than us haha!  But it was a really fun morning in a beautiful part of town!

Riding around Parque Maria Luisa!

Plaza de España

Me, Megan and Natalie at Plaza de España!

Overlooking the south tower from a shady spot!

Tomorrow we begin classes so life may be getting slightly more hectic.  Hopefully all of that goes well!