Escuela, Fútbol y la Carrera Nocturna

The first week of school came and went so fast!  This was also the first week that we’ve had any kind of cool weather, let alone days of clouds and RAIN.  Ridiculous, I know, what is the world coming to when it rains in Sevilla?  The temp feels wonderful; it’s such a nice break from the sweltering heat that has been a constant theme in my previous posts.  You probably need a break from hearing about it anyway.

Shoutout to all the homies in Aspen!  I hear you have snow!  This week I met a kid from Vail and I knew he was actually from there because we simultaneously said that we couldn’t be friends.  I’m really good at meeting new people.  Also shoutout to the random guy I saw bouldering up the underside of a bridge the other day.  Badass. 

Classes started Monday! Our school, la Universidad de Sevilla, looks remarkably like a palace for being an old tobacco factory.  Its huge, stone archways open onto enclosed patios and lead down long and echo-y hallways full of loitering Spanish students and lost American students.  As a part of JYS, we have three options for classes we can take: seminars with kids in our program, cursos concertados with other foreign students (almost entirely Americans) and regular university classes with Spanish students.  We have two weeks to go to as many classes as we feel like before we have to formally enroll.  I am going to try to take one of each, though I’m not sure of my schedule yet.  It might be a disaster waiting to happen for me to try to take a normal university class.  My 5 classes that are about to be narrowed down to 4 by this week:

1.    cuisine culture of Spain (yum)

2.   the historical projection of the three cultures in Spain in the Middle Ages (don’t you wish you were a history major too?)

3.    the European Union (prof scared us all into submission the first day by having us try to fill in a map of Europe and name famous people... it was embarrassing)

4.    Spanish cinema (even though Juan Luis says Spanish movies are awful)

5.    human geography (this is the only regular university course on my list. And yes, what exactly human geography is is just as much a mystery to me as it is to you, but the prof was generally understandable and not boring so I’m giving it a shot)

So I went to school a few times this week.  I also had a lot of free time and no work yet. We are all semi suffering from stress-from-lack-of-things-to-be-stressed-about. Rough life, I know. I’ll shut up about it now.

On Wednesday we went to a soccer game at the Sevilla FC stadium!  Sevilla played Rayo Vallecano and if you haven’t heard of them, it’s because they’re at the bottom of the league, hence the cheap tickets and us attending the game.  Every time a goal was scored the whole stadium erupted and started singing and dancing.  We should really study the ways of the Spanish fútbol aficionados and transform the NU student section.  When I came home and showed Borja, my host brother, the video that I took, he also started singing and dancing along.  And then I learned a new word for cool (chulo) after I didn’t understand what he was saying and had to quickly slide back into my room to look it up.

My attempt at videography. Sorry about it, I was dancing too.

the horde passes the torre

This Friday was the Carrera Nocturna del Guadalquivir, which is an 8k race starting at 10pm that 20,000 of your buddies run with you.   My friend Reed and I didn’t sign up in time (yes, 20,000 spots did fill up, apparently) but we spur of the moment crashed the race and ran it anyway.  I would like to say it was worth the saved money, but, let’s be honest, half the reason you sign up is to get the cool free neon orange t-shirt. Darn it.  Also, I recommend that you don’t have wine and tapas before you run your next 8k.  And it was pouring rain.  Because the one night that 20,000 people plus spectators were running through the streets of Sevilla was the one night in the month I’ve been here that the weather decided to throw us a curve ball. It was absolutely awesome. The race finished in the Plaza de España where music was blaring so loud that even drenched and tired we wanted to dance.  

Marissa, Sam, Mike, me, Reed

la mezquita de Córdoba

Yesterday our group went on a daytrip to Córdoba.  Another perfect little Spanish city with a fascinating mix of cultural history.  The ancient mosque feels like you are entering into a multi-colored grand cavern that seems to have no end in any direction, only continuous rose and gray archways overhead.  In an interesting twist, the Christian kings that eventually drove out the Muslims from Córdoba did not destroy their mosque to build a cathedral, but instead plopped the cathedral right into the center of the mosque complex, such that you don’t even notice a large church is right in front of you until you have wound your way through the column-forest of the mosque for a while.  Incredible.  

Córdoba

Tomorrow it’s back to the grind with week two of European uni!  Every day I wind my way from our apartment through el centro, passing under the watchful shadows of the cathedral along with swerving bikers, begging gypsies, heel-clad Spanish mamas, accordion players, and the weird demon creature costumed people that set themselves up with some contraption that makes them seem to float.  Wow that was explained poorly and I don't have a picture. We generally hurry past those last ones anyway.  

here's the paella I ate yesterday as a send off