Help me RONDA, help help me RONDA!

This past friday was our last day trip with ASA (we have an overnight trip to Granada in march).  We went to Ronda, Spain which was a 1hr 45min busride from Seville.  I had never heard anything about Ronda (and probably a lot of you reading this have never heard of it either) but it was beautiful.  Even the busride there was incredible.  We were suddenly driving through this huge mountain area and although I've never been to Ireland, that is what I imagine it to look like.

We met up with our tourguide Jesús-- we missed Paco :(.  Jesús is a professional tourguide and when Michelle Obama visited Ronda, he was her tourguide!  The city was very peaceful and the sights were magnificent.  The houses look over this huge gorge and the Tajo river (the largest river on the peninsula).  Then we went to Casa Don Bosco which had the best views.  It was just incredible.  We definitely did not have enough time to take pictures or take in the views.  But it was seriously gorgeous.  Not to mention we had a beautiful day- the clouds look almost fake in my pictures!

Throughout our journey through the city, we stopped at more picturesque places.  On one side, you see all the whitewashed houses- it reminded me of Greece!  Then on the other side were the rolling hills that reminded me of Ireland!  We also stopped to check out some ancient banos (baths).  It started with the Frigidarium (the cold pool), the middle one was the Tepidarium (the warm pool), and then the one closest by the heater was the Caldarium (the hot pool).  Who would want to hangout in a cold pool?  I know I would be staying in the Caldarium.

We ended our tour at the bullfighting ring!  It was so cool.  We basically had the place all to ourselves so we were able to stand in the middle of it and take some pretty awesome pictures.  We're all made to be America's Next Top Model, obviously.  The ring in Ronda doesn't get much use.  I thought Jesús said there are only 2 fights there a year but my Senor said they have 3, so I don't know.  After that, some of us girls hungout outside at an outdoor restaurant and enjoyed the lovely weather with some pizza and sangria.  I wanted some ice cream after, but Ronda didn't have any!  So I had to wait until we got back to Seville where there is one on every corner.

Houses on a cliff that look out onto the gorge and the mountains.

I thought this picture best represented our ANTM photo shoot.  Check out those stances!  Way to go Tatiana and Lindsey!

Cassie and I make an excellent matador and bull!

So other than that, there's not much else to update you on.  I'm going to Rome on Thursday and I am SO EXCITED!  We're going for 4 nights because we have a 5-day weekend for some spanish holiday :).  I'm trying to have a Lizzie McGuire Movie experience here.  Hopefully I will magically be a famous Italian popstar's twin and I'll get to perform in the Colosseum.  It'll happen.  Then as far as other trips, I am booked to go to Greece with Melissa for a week in April!!!  I can't believe I'm going to Greece.  I didn't think that would actually happen this semester but it is!!!  And in March we're going to Cadiz (a provence close to Seville) that has the 3rd largest Carnaval party in the world.  I'm pumped.  The weekend after that is Granada.  And the weekend after that will be *fingers crossed* Morocco!  Why did the problems in North Africa have to happen this semester?  Seriously.  So hopefully Morocco will work out.

Madrid! And crazy Americans running through the streets of Toledo.

Last weekend was our overnight trip to Madrid.  We left Friday morning and took the AVE (Spain's high speed train) to Madrid and it only took 2 hours.  We arrived and even the train station was cool- it was like a rainforest!  There was even an area with baby turtles.  Walking around Madrid, it was obviously a very cosmopolitan city.  Our hotel was amazing!  During our 1 hour period of free time, Brittany and I found a pizza place down the street from our hotel and it was soooo good!  Then it was time for our tour of the city with our awesome tourguide, Paco!  He was the best.  My favorite part of the tour was when we suddenly entered the Plaza Mayor.  I totally forgot I would be seeing it, so I was really excited when we unexpectedly walked into it!  I'm happy we had beautiful days in Madrid because the plaza was full of people and street performers (those people are scary!).  After the tour, some of my friends in the program and I got some dinner- it was a bit pricey but delicious!  Lindsey and I shared a pitcher of the BEST sangria! 

Then it was time to experience Madrid's nightlife that I always heard about.  We found a sketch convenience store that whipped out a random bottle of tequila from under the counter, and the man got us a lemon, plastic cups, and a plastic knife that broke in .2 seconds haha.  So sketch.  But let's just say all of those ingredients led to an incredibly fun night.  We went to this famous 7-story nightclub that was conveniently down the street from our hotel.  It was called Kapital.  It was 18 euros to get in but it was soo worth it.  It had stage performers, a karaoke room (where people were singing "Under the Sea" in spanish), and different music on different levels.

Plaza Mayor

The Besttttt

Inside Kapital

I got back to the hotel at 5:30 from the club and had to wake up 2 hours later for breakfast and for our day trip to Toledo.  That was ROUGH.  I was dying all day.  But the breakfast was amazinggg.  It was a buffet of pastries, croissants, meats, toast, tortillas, cereal(SO bummed I didn't get any!), bacon, fruit, you get the point.  Way better than the non-existant breakfast I usually get here.  So then we took the train to Toledo.  It was a beautiful city!  I unfortunately missed a lot of the information/tour of the city because I was so out of it.  But I do know from my history class this semester that it was the first territory/big win for the Christians when they were winning back Spain from the Muslims. 

The most memorable part of the day, though, was our running marathon through the streets of Toledo.  We all had to meet in a plaza at 3 to catch our 3:40 train. We were a good ways away from the train station.  So it's a little after 3 and all of a sudden I see some kids in the group start sprinting and they're shouting "Run!  Run!!!"  I had no idea what was going on, I just followed everyone anyways.  It was only a little bit into the run that I found out our train actually left at 3:20!  Which meant we had like 10 minutes to get from point A to point B.  NOT enough time.  So, keep in mind this is in the middle of siesta, when the Spaniards are calm and relaxed (not that they ever rush anyways), and all they see is a huge group of 20 Americans trailing behind an older spaniard (Paco definitely had to be in his 40s, but he completely out-ran all of us!), just full-on running through the cobble-stone streets of Toledo.  Let's just say, that run must have done a number on all of us because we were sore for days after that trip.  But luckily, we just made it in time for the train, because it left just a few short minutes after that.

Toledo

Our sprint to catch the train!

When we got back from Toledo, a bunch of us went to the Reina Sofia (said to be the best modern museum in Spain).  There we saw a crust from a slice of bread on a podium, a lot of high-heels on display, and famous paintings from Picasso.  The most interesting part was the room dedicated to September 11th.  There were news articles all over the walls from countries all around the world after 9/11 happened.  It was crazy.  Getting back to the hotel was interesting.  Lindsey and I stared at a map of what we thought was Madrid for literally 10 minutes until we realized it was a map of Toledo.  Hey, we were very sleep deprived!

So we got back to the hotel, took a little siesta, and had dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Afterwards, a few of us went to this famous churros place.  People like Stevie Wonder have eaten there!  The night was still young (but I was exhausted out of my mind) but I refused to call it a night on my last night in Madrid.  So Lindsey and I went to the karaoke bar we had been eyeing up.  It was cool because they were all spaniards, singing spanish songs for the most part.  But we would get occasional songs in English, like Lady Gaga, or Bon Jovi (the spaniards love their Bon Jovi!).  It was funny to hear them because they would pronounce things like diner, "dee-ner" lol.  Sadly, after Lindsey and I finally chose a song to sing, we handed in our request too late because the bartender said "no more requests.  There's an hour and half wait and we close at 3."  And we handed it in at 1:30 :(

When I got back, around 2:30 (so early for spanish life!), I took the most AMAZING shower EVER!  So I've been deprived of hot showers ever since I got to Spain.  They're hot at my house sometimes (sometimes I get FREEZING ones), but the water pressure sucks so it's not a good shower either way.  The shower at our hotel had a double shower head, so it was twice the greatness.  I blasted the hot shower and literally stayed in there for a good 30-40 minutes.  Longest shower I've ever taken, but I will never forget it :)

After a whopping 4 hours of sleep that night, I had another wonderful breakfast.  But I still didn't have time for cereal :(.  Then our last stop in Madrid was the Prado Museum.  Paco was, yet again, a terrific tourguide.  We saw/learned about the famous paintings by El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya.  Then we sadly hopped on the train and said goodbye to Madrid.  I loved it and it was definitely one of my favorite places thus far.

The group and Paco outside the Prado Museum!



Itálica and Córdoba

So a couple of weekends ago, we took 2 day trips.  On the friday of that weekend, my school (UPO) organized a trip for the international students to Itálica, a city just 20 minutes outside of Seville.  It was the first Roman city on the Iberian peninsula (the peninsula that Portugal and Spain are on).  The Romans occupied the peninsula from the 2nd century BC until the 5th century, so you can see how old this city is.  But there are still remains, and the marble floors and roads are still in tact!  Itálica also had an amphiteather, aka its own colosseum!

Ya know, just chillin in the old bakery.

This used to be a house...2,000 years ago.

Inside the amphitheater!

The next day was our day trip to Córdoba with our program.  This has been one of my favorite trips so far!  Córdoba absolutely beautiful!  It looked a lot like Seville, with the white and yellow buildings and narrow streets.  It was only a 45 minute trainride from Seville.  The best part was the Mezquita.  The Muslims occupied the Iberian Peninsula between 711 to 1492 AD and this is one of the last Mosques because when the Christians took over the peninsula again, they tore down most of the Muslim mosques, except for this one because it was too gorgeous.  So instead, they built a cathedral on top of it!  It was amazing architecture and artwork.  It definitely took my breath away.  Another cool thing we did was we went to this leather store.  Literally everything was made of leather!  Even the "paintings" on the wall were made of leather.  It was awesome.

Inside the Mezquita

UPO girls in a pretty courtyard :)

A room inside the leather store

Some of mis amigas y yo

Finally in Sevilla!

So exactly one month ago from today, I moved into my new home.  My parents dropped me off in a taxi in front of an apartment building on calle Monte Carmelo in the Los Remedios area of Seville.  It was a really quick goodbye because there were cars lined up behind ours.  It was interesting trying to get into my building because I buzzed my apartment number, and all I heard was this spanish woman rambling on in spanish and I had NO idea what she was saying.  So I was like, "Señora Ana?" (I didn't even know what to call her).  Then she started going off in more spanish.  I was like whatttt am I getting into lol.

I was welcomed by an older woman (she was much older than I pictured her to be).  She showed me into my room where my roommate, Brittany, already was.  It's a cute little room.  And I mean little.  But it works.  There's one of everything (dresser, night stand, desk [yeah that one isn't very convenient.  It has 2 chairs though!]).  And don't worry, we have 2 beds lol.  So we had lunch with our Señora and we met our Señor.  They are both a very cute older couple- it's like having Spanish grandparents!  But they were IMPOSSIBLE to understand.  Southern spaniards are known to have a crazy accent that other parts of spain can't even understand what they're saying.  But now that it's been a month, things are much much better.  I mean, I still find my jaw dropping sometimes with a vacant look on my face trying to figure out what in the world they're saying.  But I would say that happens a lot less often than it used to.  "Sí" is still my most common response though.

Here is my room...it's a tad messy.  My bed is the one next to the window.

View from the window

That day and the next day when we got a tour of the city, I met everyone in my program.  There are only 8 of us who go to UPO (Universidad de Pablo Olavide) but there were still 11 more kids to come who go to the Universidad de Sevilla.  But the USev kids didn't start class until a couple weeks after us, so the 8 of us moved in first.  We had a week to kill before classes started, which was amazing.  The only thing we had to care about was shopping, cafes, siestas, and going out.  But sadly classes had to start eventually...

My first day all moved in!  In front of the fountain with a couple of cool chicas in my program.

Calle Asuncion!  One street over from mi casa.

So, School.  Yeah, I unfortunately do have to go to actual classes 4 days a week while I'm in this beautiful country.  BUT we get fridays off- hell yeahhhh!  It took me for-freaking-ever to figure out my schedule because the school sucked at picking my schedule in the first place (I shouldn't complain, I mean I did put those classes down for my top 8).  But they're drop/add policy is so stupid.  Instead of being able to drop/add online like in the states, you have to physically go to the class you want to add, see if there is space in the class (if there isn't, you're out of luck. That happened to me several times), and have the teacher sign a paper.  Ughh it was so annoying.  But I finally got a set schedule of 5 classes (sadly, only 4 are transferring over to WCU).  On mondays and wednesdays from 9am (yes I'm taking a 9am while I'm in Europe.  I don't even take classes that early at home) to 11:50am I'm taking conversational spanish (it's cool, I learn about what spaniards actually say.  You'd be surprised how many phrases in our spanish textbooks in the states aren't even used.  Can we get an update please?) and a spanish history class.  Then on tuesdays and thursdays from 10:30am to 2:50pm I have a regular spanish class, history of spanish art, and spanish culture and civilization.  As you can see, all of my classes revolve around spanish in some way.  I love it, I'm really learning a lot.  It's so interesting learning about all these places in class and then at some point, I see it in person!

I'll answer the question about the food (since that seems to be a popular question from people).  The food is good!  Very different from American food though.  My Señora is pretty repetitive with the selection.  I can't tell you how many spanish tortillas I've had.  It's sort of like a quiche, made of potatoes, eggs, and peppers.  We also have salad and bread with every meal.  Breakfast sucks.  It's 2 slices of wheat bread with jelly, orange juice, and a piece of fruit.  I am starvinggg by my last class on tuesdays/thursdays because I don't eat lunch until 4!  But lunch is usually served around 2:30.  It's the bigger meal of the day (also when my señora and señor join us).  It's usually a heavier soup (with either like beans, vegetables, meat [rarely]).  I guess it would be similar to a stew?  Then for dinner, usually around 9, we get the same, plain, noodle soup every. single. night.  With that we have like the spanish tortilla, or a sandwich, or maybe some fried fish or something.  There hasn't been a meal that I've hated yet.  I'm also becoming a bit of a coffee drinker!  I guess Europe was bound to do that to me.  And ice cream could probably be thrown into the mix of foods I'm eating here.  The area around the cathedral, there's literally an ice cream shop on every block (sometimes several).  It's dangerous.  But sooooo good!

The nightlife here is also a huge change.  I'm used to places closing at like 2am at home but that's the time things are just getting started here! I can't even tell you what time they close because I can't even stay up that late.  The latest I've been out has been 5:30 am and those spaniards are still partying!  Even the 50 year olds.  It's so weird, old people go clubbing.  But hey, I'm open to that!  But anyways, the nightlife is awesome.  There's this thing called "botellon" which is basically like pregaming in the streets.  Just grab some alcohol at the local grocery store (supersol!) and you're good to go.

Ooo one last thing about spanish life!  SIESTAS.  I obviously saved the best for last.  All the shops close down between 2 and 5 and this is when everyone goes home to have lunch and take a nap.  And everyone knows how much I love my naps, so it's no wonder I chose to spend my semester in a country that has one built-in to its daily schedule.  I've been sleeping a bit too much here though (there's something so exhausting about it!) so I need to start not taking siestas :(((( saddest statement I've ever made.

So after this extensive post (this is bringing me back to those xanga days bahaha), I think it's time to post some pictures of my new surroundings:

El Torre del Oro and the Guadalquivir river.  This is the only navigable river in Spain and the tower is where the gold was kept after the discovery of America.  This is the view from the bridge that connects my neighborhood to the center of the city.

Plaza de Espana.  Possibly my favorite spot in Seville.  Absolutely beautiful.

This is a little taste of what Seville looks like in general.  Lots of fountains, orange trees, and colorful buildings :)

La Catedral.  3rd largest in the Christian world.  And obviously too big to fit in one picture.

London, Paris, and Barcelona

So I'm a bit late (ok..actually over a month late) on this whole blog thing.  But better late than never!  This is my first time in Europe and I am LOVING every second of it.  I already know it's going to be extremely difficult to go back to the states after this.  I'm hoping that the next 3 months will just take their time and go by as slowly as possible :)

So before I arrived in Sevilla to start my semester abroad, my parents decided to make a little vacation out of taking me over here.  So for 10 days we went to London, Paris, and Barcelona.  It was awesome!  And you would think in the dead of winter that it would be freezing in these cities, but we surprisingly had really nice weather!

We started out with an overnight flight to London.  The plane ride was awful.  I was soo jetlagged the entire next day.  But we landed in London around 9am and went straight to our hotel.  The room was so small!  We then ate lunch at Harrod's.  It was so hard not doing some serious shopping there.  The rest of our trip to London included seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, taking a tour of Westminster Abbey, riding around on the double decker buses, seeing Chicago on broadway, checking out the Egyptian exhibit at the British Museum, seeing the royal jewels at the Tower of London, and eating lots and lots of fish and chips, of course :)  Overall, London was such an amazing city and I will definitely be going back sometime in my life.

What's a visit to London without a picture in a phone booth?

Buckingham Palace!

I had to imitate the cover of Winning London (Mary Kate and Ashley Movie- duhhh)

Parliament and Big Ben

Next, we took an extremely easy 2 hour trainride under the Chunnel to Paris!  This city was a bit of a culture shock because it was my first time in a country that didn't speak english- and I don't speak french!  But we surprisingly made it through pretty easily.  It was definitely a test of my nonverbal communication skills (I mostly knew what people were saying through their body language).  Here, we caught the beautiful view of the city from the 2nd level on the Eiffle tower, strolled down Avenue des Champs-Elysees, saw the insides of Notre Dame, took a night cruise down the Seine, ordered crepes from a street vendor, hiked the bajillion steps to see Montmartre, and saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre!  Paris was beautiful, and I would love to see it in the Spring when everything is in bloom.  But I definitely suggest going in the winter- it was only a 10 minute wait to get to the top of the Eiffle Tower!

View from the Eiffle Tower!

Yummy crepes hot off the street :)

The Louvre

Then it was time for Barcelona!  I feel like this city should just be called Gaudi-land.  Everything had to do with him!  lol it was a great city.  I loveddd seeing some palm trees.  They make me so happy :)  Our first night we at outside close to the beach!  We had paella de mariscos (seafood paella) and sangria.  So delicious.  The next day we saw La Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell.  This city was so full of life!  And apparently roller blades and skateboards never went out of style here.  Now that's my kind of city!

Paella y Sangria :)

La Sagrada Familia- a piece of work that will never be finished.

Entrance to Parc Guell.

Before I knew it, we were headed to Sevilla! My new home for the next 4 months.  And it was by far my favorite city :)  My parents and I stayed in a hotel for 2 nights.  The day they left is the day I moved in with my Señora.  I'll save all the info. on my new home for a different post.