It's Still Really Hot Here

school

You know its hot out when you go to your corner grocery store and try to climb into the fridge.  Which happened this week.  Shoutout to everyone who is experiencing fall weather.  Enjoy it for me.

It's been a long time between posts again.. uh oh, sorry Mom and Dad. Today was our first day of school!  Our 3-week language and culture immersion orientation with JYS ended last week.  Today I had class for exactly half an hour.  So not that much to update yet other than I located the university cafe and thought about buying some folders and then didn't.  The University of Sevilla is huge and antique and slightly intimidating.  And it has a moat because it used to be a tobacco factory, which totally makes sense.  Marie pointed out yesterday that if that moat were at a school in the US it would be the butt of every senior prank ever.  We are considering filling it with inflatable sharks in the dead of night.

Cádiz

 I have two weekend trips to report on from the past 10 ish days.  Last weekend I went with 8 other girls on the bus to Cádiz, which I think is the oldest city in Spain, possibly even in Europe.  There are a lot of uncertainties in life when you only partly understand what is being said.   The beach was pretty nice, I guess.  Kidding, it was gorgeous.  It was also jam-packed with people, lots of them topless.  Classic Spain.

thanks for the pic, Serena!

This past weekend, JYS paid for our whole group to spend 24 perfect hours at a shockingly luxurious hotel on the beach in Chiclana to celebrate the end of orientation.  So basically I've been spending a lot of time at the beach... which just means I have about a zillion more freckles, which my host dad has pointed out.  He also told me a looked muy gracioso (funny) the one day I wore pig-tail braids.  I decided to take it as a compliment. Anyway, the hotel we stayed at felt like paradise complete with a gorgeous pool, showers with enough room to do jumping jacks (let alone bend down.. our shower at home is itty bitty) and a buffet feast for both dinner and breakfast.  We entered the dining room like a herd of children in a candy store (mixing similes? maybe) and proceeded to try everything and then feel sick.  You would have thought we had all been starved for the past few weeks.  Which we haven't because potatoes are, in fact, very filling.  (But actually, Marta makes great food, I'm not complaining.) The beach in Chiclana was glorious. I tried to pull a Michael Phelps and swim out to a buoy but then remembered that I'm not Michael Phelps and it was far away so I came back. Shoutout to Aric Barrow for being awesome and for turning 21 in Chiclana!

Chiclana

Several random things:

coming soon to a corner of
a screen near you

a) This week there were auditions for a movie that is going to be filmed in Sevilla, so naturally I went with Marie and Lissa and tried out.  All we had to do was smile and look American.  Literally. They were looking for  American-looking people under 30.  We waited in line for 2 hours, because what the hell, and then after a sorting process where we succeeded in looking like American students we were shuffled through a room where they took our forms and snapped a pic and shuffled us back out. We have high hopes of returning to NU as euro stars.

b) The other day Marie and I saw a woman holding her pet ferret.

c) Chinos.  I would like to take a moment to talk about one of the odd/awesome parts of Sevilla shopping, which is the chino (a questionably derogatory term applied to these dollar-store like places that are literally everywhere and are always owned by Chinese people.)  This seems like a stereotype until you realize that its actually true.. some kind of cultural phenomenon.  We have several different chinos within a few blocks of our apartment, and they are places of wonder somewhat like stepping into that room in Harry Potter where all that lost stuff gets stashed.  The cramped aisles are overflowing with the randomest assortment of anything you can possibly imagine for very little moniez.  Some things we have bought at chinos so far: a beach towel, a monthly planner, gummy candies, birthday candles, duct tape, tinto de verano, icecream pops, chapstick and a leaky container of a mysterious nature which was accidentally left in the hotel in Chiclana.

d) Dunkin Donuts (or Dunkin Coffee, as it is known in Spain) is Marie's and my guilty American pleasure, as they have cheap and delicious iced coffee, which is distressingly hard to come by.

d) Our family dinner with Marta's parents and sister and their study abroad students was a riot and so fun.   Grandpa Rafael's sangria was definitely up to par, and the mamas cooked a wonderful meal, which included lots of mini white bread sandwiches (which seem to be a thing here) and other delicious comidas.

e) As part of orientation last week we had to go see a Spanish movie in theaters, so we went and watched La Gran Familia Española, which was a great time. It was a good thing that we had just learned a bunch of Spanish swear words.