¡España!: 3 More Weeks To Go

I cannot believe I only have 3 weeks left here in Spain, time is flying by! I am SO excited for the upcoming weekend, a group of about 6 girls have booked a trip to Lagos, Portugal! We found flyers in the ISA office and it is a great deal! We get to leave from Granada and travel to Lagos on a bus and the company has set us up in a really nice hotel with free breakfast. They are also offering to boat cruises at sunset and coupons to some popular night life places. I know a couple of girls that went this past weekend and they said it was AMAZING! I am pretty excited, even though I only have two more weekends here. The last weekend we are going to Nerja for the day, but a group is talking about spending the night. We will see how my money situation is then and if I need to get home to start studying for my finals. It is nice not to have tests or quizzes in class during the week and just have one written final and one oral final. I feel like I am learning so much more than I would be in the United States. I feel like the teachers would sit and lecture on each subject and vocabulary, but here we just converse with one another and our teachers will correct our grammar and help us as we speak to them. It will definitely be bittersweet leaving Spain, I miss my family and friends that are home but I am learning so much here.

As for this past weekend, it was a pretty low key weekend, even though I traveled to Sevilla. On Friday my group met for drinks and tapas. I tried papitas borachas, it is kind of like a cubed potato with a nice little zesty sauce on top of it. If you know me, you know that I am not a big fan of spicy foods, it kinda had a little kick at first but then it was really good! I also tried someone else's tapas which was egg plant with honey drizzled on top. I had never had egg plant before and was pretty unsure about the taste, but it literally tasted like french toast, it was amazing! After we were at tapas, we met everyone else at the chiputeria at about 1:00. It was pretty packed, but it was fun just to socialize with everyone! My roommate and I decided that since we had to be on the bus at 9:30 in the morning that we needed to get home pretty early since we figured we would be touring Sevilla once we got there. We left the chiputeria at about 2:30 and headed home, one of the boys walked us home of course for our safety! We crashed and burned when we got home and woke up the next morning to get ready for Sevilla. We were on time to our bus once again, but two other girls were late and our coordinators actually made the bus leave them behind, ahh! Thank goodness they didn't leave us in Madrid, I would have cried ha. Sevilla is about 3 hours from Granada, so the bus ride was not too bad! Once we got to Sevilla we got off the bus for literally 15 minutes to take pictures of the Plaza de España. We then got back on the bus and headed to check into the hotel and the coordinators gave us the rest of the day off to explore and go to the pool. About 6 of us girls went and got a snack and wanted to walk around but of course it was siesta time so everything was closed, we headed back to the hotel and went up to the pool. It was SO hot in Sevilla, it is very humid just like the south so I was use to the way it felt. After the pool we were being lazy till we decided to get dressed to head out for dinner. Now, Sevilla likes to take VERY long siestas because we found an authentic mexican restaurant, but they did not open back up till 10:15! A group of 14 of us ended us splitting up into smaller groups and finding a random place to eat. My group chose Italian and I ended up sharing a bacon pizza with my friend Liz. It was very yummy! After dinner we walked around and could not find anything to do ha. Sevilla is not very known for their night life so we headed back to the hotel and all kind of hung out, it was very low and pretty nice!

Now onto the day of touring! Sunday was packed with lots of touring for us. We first walked around the town a little bit into small neighborhoods that eventually lead us to the royal palace's garden and then onto the royal palace. We had a tour guide that spoke in Spanish the entire time so I tried to take it all in, but still a little difficult for me to hear and understand everything. The palace was beautiful and I learned so many interesting things that I will never forget. In this palace there were sea shells all over the walls and doorways, those sea shells represent a Christian atmosphere. The sea shell was once used to pour the water at a baptism so they placed these shells all in the palace to show that is was a Christian place. There is a picture shown below. After the palace we took a lunch break and then had a tour of the Cathedral in Sevilla, it was the biggest and most beautiful cathedral I have seen yet! It was amazing! The organ was probably my favorite, it is known to be one of the top 4 best organs in the world. It has 750 pipes, there is also a picture shown below. After our cathedral tour was over we all decided to climb up the 34 ramps to the top of the cathedral's tower. Needless to say my calves are a little sore today ha. It was a good hike up there but so worth it! The view of Sevilla was so amazing to see! We finally headed home and pretty much everyone slept on the way home from all the walking we had done. Eli was delighted to see us when we got home, she is such a sweet lady. We now have accumulated a new roommate over the weekend! We now have a Greek male living with us, but only for a week. It will definitely be interesting, but he is married and a lot older so I am sure that makes my dad feel better. He knows like 6 different languages, its crazy, but a nice man to.

As for the rest of my week, it will just be going to school and getting ready for Portugal this weekend! Classes are still about the same, but I am continuing to learn more and more every day! Here are pictures from my weekend!