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!!)