how much do i love my señora?....let me count the ways!

maria rosa has to be the best señora sevilla has to offer...

this morning i had to finish a paper about the museo de bellas artes and i couldnt figure out how to say "cut off his head" (i was talking about john the baptist) and so i tried to describe it to maria rosa and she told me the verb was guillotinar and helped me spell it and then checked other parts of my paper :)

and later she took me and jacquelin shopping for our carnival costumes.  carnival is a holiday in february where everyone is dressed up in crazy costumes, goes to cádiz (a town an hr outside of sevilla) and parties all night.  i think its a week or 2 long but we are going feb 21.  we have a private bus that will take us from sevilla 930pm saturday and bring us back sometime sunday morning!! anyways, so maria rosa took us to the most well known costume shop in sevilla.  its a costume shop year round and is for adults (but isnt the kind of "adult" costume shop we know in the states!).  so i bought a short-red-hair wig, huge crazy sunglasses & a blue boa.  ill probably wear a white tank with tight back jeans and boots to pull off the crazy punk rock chick look.  jacquelin bought a really intense mask (like the kind at masked balls) and a purple boa.  when we got back the 3 of us (me, jacquelin & maria rosa) took turns trying on our costumes and taking pictures (dont worry, ill put everything up in a day or 2!).  we had such a laugh, i think maria rosa wants to be young again and come with us to cádiz! ooo and before we got home we stopped at corte ingles (department store) to get a present for her friend, and the grocery store and the fruit store.  jacquelin and i felt like little girls following our mother around while she does errands, it was great!

and tonight after dinner i helped her with the computer.  she wanted to know how to spell check her mail because she saw my computer fix my spelling.  so me and her sat there for 10ish minutes while i tried to figure out what everything meant in spanish and then finally i got the bright idea to change her hotmail settings to english so i could figure it out.  of course i got it in 2 seconds, changed it back to spanish and taught her how.  she is like grandpa when it comes to computers, she needs step by step instructions, but she was so happy that she could spell check her emails before she sends them out!  and after we just sat there and looked at pictures of the SIMOF (Salon Internacional de Moda Flamenco - high fashion flamenco dresses) show.  i was thinking about going out tonight but i had so much fun looking at the beautiful dresses with her (and it was raining) that i decided not to.  maria and oscar just like having us sit around with them.  its why they host girls every semester, its like having daughters again (well not again, because they have 2 sons, but you know what i mean).

i really did luck out with my living situation.  i live in the center of the city (perfect location),  i have a great roommate that im friends with and i have great padres who want us around and enjoy us being here :)

oo and i finally got the courage to email my intercambio (a native who i speak spanish with and they help me and they speak english with me and i help them)!  and juanfran emailed me back and wants to meet up!  hopefully hes cool and i can have a spanish friend!!! xoxo

the next day!!

guess what?! i am writting the next day!!!

so i think maria rosa wants to make me and jacquelin fat!  she always puts sooo much food on our plates (think the amount that eric eats!) and i feel bad not eating it all because whatever we dont finish, they just throw away!  and even after we finish what is on our plates they offer us even more food and we have to repeat "¡estoy llena! ¡estoy llena!" (im full! im full!)  maria rosa is such a mother, so much like the jewish mothers i know (cough cough!)

oo and lunch today was interesting.  their son nacho (erics spanish name!) was supposed to come and visit this week (he had doctors appts) but got snowed in in London.  apparently they got a meter of snow and none of the public transportation was running!  but maria had started to prepare his favorite dish yesterday (what a good mother!) before we found out he was snowed in.  so today for lunch we at his favorite food.  it was a garbanzo bean soup with onions, chicken and some other stuff in it.  that was great.  but in the middle of the table was a huge plate of what looked like meat.  so after i finished my soup maria rosa takes a piece of what looked like chicken (but it was probably pork), and started to shread it up on my plate.  then she added a few pieces of chorizo that started to crumble.  to top it off she blobbed on something that was maybe gelitin, or a hunk of fat, or an egg...we couldnt figure it out lol.   she told me to cut it and mix it all up and enjoy.  so i did, and it wasnt bad until i ate a blob of the gelly thing that i didnt mix in properly.  the second it entered my mouth my nostrils flared (mom you know what that means!) and it was all i could do to swallow it and follow it by a piece of bread.  needless to say, my stomach had the mcgurgles all afternoon!

so after lunch i went to class and my teacher had someone come in and talk about the bull fights (corrida de torros).  and we learned that there are 3 matadators and 3 parts to the fight.  the first part is when the bull just runs under their cape-thing.  the second part is when they stab them on the shoulders, and the 3rd part is either when the poor animal dies or they decide he put up a good fight and let him live in a pasture with lots of cows to make love with.  we watched a few videos, and the first part was cool, but the 2nd and 3rd got a little violent and disturbing for me.  i just have to keep reminding myself that its another culture over here and its not the violence that they go to see, but rather the dance, and passion and tradition of it all.  regardless of how i might look at it, i still want to go see a bull fight when they start in april.

and lastly today i went to the museo de bellas artes which is right down my street.  i went because i have to write a paper on it for my class.  it was a beautiful building (check out the pics once i upload them) but the art wasnt amazing to me.  it was all very religious (very catholic) with lots of virgins and babies with wings and people being crucified.  some of the paintings were beautiful and intriging, but it was a little much.  one thing that was really cool was a statue of the head of john the baptist (i didnt know who san juan bautista was until my friend told me it was john the baptist and he was decpitated).  the head was laying on its side so you could see where the neck should have connected to the body, and then you saw the inside of the neck, what it would have looked like if someone was really decapitated.  i thought that was cool.

anyways mis amigos, its about 12:30am and i still need to write a paper!  te amo!

Catch up on my life!!!

Oyyyy I need to write more often in my blog!! I swear I will be better after this post! 

So what have I been up to since the last time I wrote??

 Well, I moved into my homestay, and I absolutely love it!!  I live right en el centro, off a cute street name San Vincente. I have to go through 2 gates to get to my courtyard, then another door to get to the stairwell to take me to the second floor where I have to use yet another key to get into my apartment.  It’s a very nice 2 bedroom 2 bathroom place with a modern (but small) kitchen and a living room/dining room area.  Maria Rosa and Oscar are my Spanish parents.  They are probably in their late 50s, early 60s.  They have 2 sons who have grown up and moved out.  One lives in a small town right outside Sevilla and is married and has a adorable 3 year old son.  The other is a DJ at some famous club in London.  Maria and Oscar let us do as we want, and our only time restrictions is meal times, which we all eat together.  There is a couch and in front of it a dinner table with 3 chairs around it.  Oscar has his chair that faces the tv and I sit next to him on the couch with my roommate Jacquelin next to me and Maria across from me.  There is no central heating in the homes here because it is only cold for about 2 months out of the year therefore impractical.  There is a heavy tablecloth over the table and a heater under it, so we put our legs under the tablecloth to keep warm while we eat.  I have liked almost everything that Maria has cooked so far.  Whenever we wake up we have breakfast, which consists of bread and jam.  I brought them my local black raspberry jam and they absolutely love it!  We have only been here 2 weeks and are about to be scraping the jar.  They particularly love it on cheese.  M&D when you come be sure to bring at least one more jar for them!  Anyways, lunch is around 2-230 and is the heavy meal of the day.  We have had soup and some kind of meat, or a rice dish, or paella.  Dinner starts between 945-1030 and we always have this great salad.  Lettuce, carrots, tuna, pears, apples, hard-boiled eggs and the corn with a light dressing made of oil, vinegar and salt.  And then they usually make me and Jacquelin something else to eat, like a tortilla de patatas or fried chicken, or a sandwich, because they think we need more food lol.  Maria is the easiest to converse with because her accent is not as heavy as Oscars, but slowly our conversations are getting more and more in-depth as our Spanish improves. 

Anyways, the cool excursions I’ve been on:

Itálica - roman ruins right outside of sevilla.  Check out my pictures, it was really pretty.  My favorite part was the mosaics that were on the ground in the houses (or what is left of them).  They were so intricate, that you can only imagine the kind of wealth one must have had to enjoy a house with mosaics on the ground.  Also the theater (mini coliseum) was amazing.  Only the lower seating sections were left, but it could hold 20,000 (pretty sure) people!  There used to be the traditional theater events like gladiators, but also in the middle was a huge empty pit that they would fill with water and have reenactments of maritime battles.  We got to walk around inside the theater and go underneath the seating where the gladiators and performers would wait to come on.  Very cool trip.

My next excursion kept me inside the city.  Los Reales del Alcázar - an old castle/fort with many different architecture styles.  It has many Arabic influences such as the mosaics and gardens with fountains in the middle for tranquility.  But then some of the architecture is gothic, with the crossbeams and carvings on the walls.  One of the rooms is where Columbus got permission to find another route to India (but instead found the Americas).  I thought that was pretty interesting, because I didn’t know that event took place in Sevilla (all you history freaks, don’t cut my throat if you think I’m wrong, that’s what my audio guide said!).  There were rooms with gold ceilings and huge tapestries coving the entire wall.  At the back was a huge garden with a really pretty fountain (estanque de mercurio).  Check out the pics, because a picture is worth one thousand words!!

Quick overview of my life here:

I am now in the middle of my 2 week intensive Spanish class, which is 3 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Next Monday I start my regular classes!  Every tueday and Thursday Jacquelin and I have flamenco lessons with Maria Rosa.  She is a dance teacher and put us in her class!  It’s a lot of fun, there are 3 other guys in the class.  Maybe when I see everyone I will give you a performance!

My friends here are great, over ¼ of my program is from PSU, so I have a good number of penn staters that I hang out with, but also a lot of other friends from Illinois, Wisconsin and other schools.  I go out almost every night around 11:30 or 12.  During the week, I will just relax in a bar with some friends, because we cannot have people over at our house.  Its very uncommon for Spaniards to socialize in the house.  On the weekends we go to the discotecas or flamenco bars and don’t get home til at least 5, and even then the locals think we are sissies and stay out much later than us.

All and all, I love my life here.  There has been only one other time that I have been to a place and felt that it was where I was supposed to be, and that was the first time I visited PSU.  I got that same feeling the moment our bus took us from the airport and into the city.  It’s a great feeling to know that I made the right choice. 

Love you all (and I promise I will write more frequently from now on!!)