Photos: Top: The Guadaliquivir River that runs through Sevilla Bottom: Me, Arianna, and Mary in center city Sevilla.
Yesterday was my first day of classes. I was really really nervous because they were all to be taught in Spanish. My roommate Lisa and her friend Lauren turned out to be in my first class. This was handy because I was definitely not late for my first class. My first class was a Literature class that focuses on "El Quijote." It will certainly be a challenge seeing as it means that I have to read an entire book in Spanish...yikes. At least I know people in the class so we can work together some. My professor seems really nice though and I could understand everything she said! yay! It turns out that if I focus really hard on the professor, I can get a lot. It was also encouraging to hear lots of students who had been to other Spanish speaking countries and were really good at Spanish, say that Spain's dialect is reallly reallly difficult to understand at first. They speak really fast here, lisp their s's and z's into "th", and if their happens to be an s at the end of a word, they just drop it. CONFUSING. anywho. The professors are really great, and going home after school, I understood Lola a ton better. She had just gotten back...she was in Madrid visiting her son for a few days.
My second class is sort of like Reading and Composition at an Intermediate level. It will be hard, but I think I will learn A LOT in there. Useful things too, I hope. My third class is a Culture and Civilizations class and the professor is hilarious. I don't think he speaks any English whatsoever. If the professor wasnt good, that class would be horrifically boring I think. My first class is at 10:30 and I get out of my last one at 2:50. What a fantastic schedule, eh? That is perfect: I get home just in time for lunch and siesta! Which is perfect because everything is closed during siesta, so why go out anyway? (siesta is from 2 pm to 5pm). I officially think there should be a siesta in every country. It makes the general stress level of life go down significantly. Today (Thursday) I only have one class, and it is from 1:30-2:50. SO NICE! It is a Phonetics and Linguistics class...eek. I am a little worried about it, but hopefully it will be interesting and doable!
So, it is actually a bit colder here than I thought. Well, no. That's not true; I just thought that the warm would feel warmer. haha. And it is freezing in my house. No heat. When you live in the Mediterranean, and you only have one "cold month" a year, it is definitely NOT cost efficient to have heat in your home. I invested in some 3 euro slippers first thing. I also just purchased the cutest coat in the entire world. It was not expensive, and it will keep me very warm. The wind here is CRAZY. Kind of like Boone, except not as cold by far. It is so beautiful here! I just love it.
The exchange students are going on an "excursion to the Roman Ruins of Italica" in two weeks!!! yayayayay ITALICA....which is in Spain....
I will continue to keep you posted :-)
xo
ks
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