Lentils and Fish Sticks

The way Spaniards have meals is so different than how I am used to. Breakfast is only bread and tea or coffee, which is fine with me since I generally don’t love breakfast too much. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and let me say there is way too much food to be eaten. Today we had lentil soup… I had never eaten lentils before… they were okay, but I definitely won’t miss them once I’m back home. Then we had fish sticks… yeah… fish sticks. I didn’t want to be rude, so I took a bite, and politely told my señora that I don’t eat seafood. That’s what we were told to do at orientation. Because if we say we like something, and if we finish a meal we don’t like, chances are, we’ll be served it again. My señora wasn’t offended or anything, she just wanted me to try it, which I did. Also with that we had bread, salad, and fruit. Britton and I didn’t want to eat bread because it would fill us up, and we felt it was more important to eat the food that Gracia had prepared. When we were asked if we wanted bread, Britton said no thanks, and I proceeded to say no thanks also. However, Gracia didn’t listen to me… She decided that I needed to eat bread, and then proceeded to practically throw the bread at me. Needless to say, I ate the bread. Today we had orientation, which went well… nothing too exciting. We got our cell phones, but that’s another process in and of itself… You’d think I’d know how to make a phone call right? Wrong... Britton and I are going to try to figure it out tomorrow. We also had a guided tour of the city today. The people who give us the tours are around the ages of the students, maybe a little older. We broke off into groups. My tour guide’s name was Kiko. He was incredibly helpful. We walked all around the city, in the central part of the city, and also in the main park of Seville. It was absolutely gorgeous. None of us had been to these parts of the city before and it is so much different than anything I had seen yet in Seville. It was absolutely beautiful. There were beautiful buildings such as cathedrals, universities, and a humongous house which was better off called a palace that some famous Spanish woman used to live in back a long time ago- like 900 years or something. There were also beautiful fountains, and massive trees everywhere. It was gorgeous. One of the areas of the park was just filled with pigeons. It was crazy. I have never been to New York or places like New York where thousands of pigeons congregate, but it was crazy. They were everywhere. They would land on us also. You just stand there with your arms out, and in a few seconds, like 4 or 5 pigeons will land on your shoulders or your head. It was pretty great. We walked for over 2 hours, and I’m pretty sure my body hates me right now. The only good thing about walking this much, is that it will work off all of the food that Gracia makes us eat- especially the bread. Tonight, after I got back from the tour, Britton and I had dinner, but Gracia didn’t eat with us. Later on, I went out into the dining area and sat down to talk with her…. She was eating some kind of seafood that definitely had some sort of antenna… I think it might have been a prawn or crawfish or something like that. Whatever it was, it looked nasty. It had a shell, and these weird little feet thing coming out of the bottom of the body, and these huge antennas, that no joke, were like 5-6 inches long. Anyone reading this please pray I never get served that. I might puke. So Gracia comes into my room today, with a can of jelly bellys and is like “I can’t all of these… I need help.” So I’m thinking, put the lid on… however, she liked the idea of pouring a bunch into my hands better. I’m one of those jelly belly eaters who has to know what the flavors are before eating them, however, there wasn’t a card with pictures and names of the jelly bellys… I ate some gross ones. I’m gonna have to get used to those whole being forced to eat stuff haha. Funny story- Britton brought a box of chocolates for Gracia as one of her gifts- she gave them to her yesterday. This morning we wake up, and Gracia tells us she ate the whole box last night haha. We tried not to laugh. Well I miss you all, but am thoroughly enjoying my time here so far. My next post may not be until Monday, but you can keep checking. Love you all!

Primero dia en Sevilla

Seville is beautiful! Tuesday morning I got up and got ready to go to the airport. I flew out of O’Hare airport with the group. Checking my luggage and going through security did not take long at all. The flight left at 4:45, and it was an 8 hour flight… I was definitely ready to get off of that ridiculous plane. Once we got into the Madrid airport, we had to go through immigration stuff, and we got our passports stamped. We had a 4 hour layover before our flight to Seville. We tried to use the pay phones, and that was a process in and of itself. Literally, after about a half hour of trying, we finally got them to work. The flight to Seville was not bad at all- only an hour. I slept most of the way. We met the SIS coordinators at the airport, and we then took buses to our home-stays. Britton, my roommate and I got dropped off at our apartment, and met our Señora- Gracia Gomez Rojas. She talks fast- crazy fast. And the accent they have in Seville is very different than any accent that we have heard before. I’m understanding a lot more than I thought I would have, but still, this lady can talk! She is really nice, and I’m looking forward to living with her. She has a three bedroom apartment, so Britton and I have our own rooms. About 2 minutes after we brought our luggage up, of course Gracia decides it’s time to feed us- and I’m not hungry at all. She proceeds to give Britton and I mounds of food, and neither of us can eat it all… Then, Britton and I were going to walk to the school so that we could find out where it is, and send some emails- this was around 4pm. However, Gracia had other things in mind- she decided that we needed to take a nap until 6… Britton explained to her that we wanted to get a few things done before it got too late, and Gracia compromised and told us to rest until 5 pm… If you don’t know anything about the Spanish culture, naps and relaxing are a huge part of it. Now, I like resting and all… but this was kind of funny. Britton snuck into my room because she didn’t want to rest either… We found the whole thing really funny, and had to control our laughter so Gracia didn’t catch us not resting. I was tempted to start unpacking, but I thought maybe Gracia would notice that when she sent me to bed, my things were packed, and when I got up from resting, they weren’t… So I just sat on my bed for an hour haha. But in all honesty, Gracia seems like a really great woman, and I think she will be fun to live with. She has a great sense of humor, and we’ve already been laughing a lot with her.