Sevilla, Una Maravilla

Plaza de España en Sevilla

After what seemed like weeks of traveling, I am finally here in Sevilla!  My trip was long and it felt like I was always waiting.  My initial flight to Spain was cancelled and so I spent a night in a hotel near the JFK Airport in New York.  At first I felt like I had drawn the short straw because I would be getting to Spain a day late and consequently miss part of orientation, but as it turns out, luck was on my side.  There were four other students from my program stuck in New York as well.  When I met the other students, I was glad that I wouldn't be the only one late for orientation.  It was so nice that I didn't have to deal with the flight changes on my own.  I know I would have been more stressed if I had to figure everything out alone.  Even though the five of us missed the "getting-to-know-you" part of orientation, it felt like we were having a private orientation of our own.  We became friends very quickly since we had plenty of time to talk with each other.  All of them are very nice and I enjoyed their company. 

I was thrown right into the Spanish culture when I arrived at the hotel and my guides and advisers could only speak Spanish.  For the first day or two it was very overwhelming.  I was very tired from all of the traveling and hadn't practiced my Spanish since last semester.  I have become much more comfortable since my first day here and I hope that my confidence and abilities continue to grow.  The students in my program all speak Spanish at different levels.  Some are much better than me and I hope that they can help me learn more about the language.  My intensive language course starts Monday.  It will be basically a rapid fire grammar refreshment course to help prepare for the regular university classes.

Sevilla is unlike any city I've been to on the east coast.  The streets are packed with apartments and other buildings, but there are no skyscrapers.  The sun is beautiful on the streets and it is very warm.  To Sevillanos, it's cold here but compared to Massachusetts (which I hear has snow!) it is very warm.  Each day I've been here it has been around 60 degrees.  I can walk around the city in jeans and a pea-coat without shivering, it's great!  At night, it gets a little chilly but nothing below 40 degrees.

My first night here, our guides took us to eat tapas for dinner.  The verb "tapear", meaning to eat tapas, is one piece of vocabulary I will grow to love.  When the Sevillanos go out to dinner they order three or four dishes for the table to share.  They might order one chicken dish, one pork dishes, and two seafood dishes, for example, and share them all the way that we would share appetizers in the United States.  Our restaurant table was filled with tapas and pitchers of sangria.  Most tapas come with "patatas" or potatoes that melt in your mouth.  They're eaten as much as we eat french fries but taste much better.  My favorite tapa I've eaten so far was patatas covered with chicken soaked in an almond sauce.  It was delicious.

After dinner we went to a Flamenco concert.  Flamenco is the most popular dance style in Sevilla.  It is unlike any other type of dance I have seen before.  When I took dance classes as a girl, my teachers would choreograph steps that matched the music.  In Flamenco, the music is instead created from the dance.  Flamenco dancers use their feet and hands to create the music as they dance.  They may also click their tongue to add more rhythm.  The dance is very emotional and the loudness of the music along with the faces of the dancers reveals a lot about the mood of the song.  It was amazing that the only instrument at the concert was a guitar, because it sounded like an entire band.  I hope I can go to other Flamenco concerts while I'm here because I enjoyed it a lot.

Yesterday our guides sent us in groups of seven out into the city to play a scavenger hunt.  It helped us get accustomed to walking the streets of Sevilla and was also a great way to get to know the people I will be studying with this semester.  It was the first time I really got to see Sevilla during the day.  We saw the university and a few other cites that the city is famous for.  The weather was fantastic and I can't be more excited for where I will be studying this semester.

The streets of Sevilla are lined with orange trees like the one in my picture.  When the sun is out they are beautiful.  I've already fell in love with the city.  It's only a ten minute walk from my apartment to the university which is in the center of the city.  There are other students living on the streets next to me and I'm hoping that we have some classes together so we can walk with each other.  Everything else that I will need this semester is within walking distance.  My Senora says that the train is only a five minute walk from where we live.  Next to our apartment is a restaurant and an ATM which will be very convenient.  It's been hard to remember that one Euro is not equivalent to one dollar but even with the conversion, I can already tell that things will be cheaper here than in providence.  The food is much cheaper and so are the drinks.  Last night our program guides, who are full-time students at the university, took us to a bar after we ate.  The drinks were very cheap ("barrato" in Spanish) but very strong.  I bought a beer for only 1.20 Euro, which is about $1.50.  The rules about drinking are obviously different than the U.S.  First of all, I can drink legally (the drinking age is 18, not 21, in Spain).  Second, it's legal and totally acceptable to drink in public.  I've seen lots of people walk from one bar to another with a drink in their hand.  Many of the people at the bar last night hung around outside and very few that weren't ordering a drink stayed inside the bar.  I guess this is one of the perks of living in a warm climate and no open container laws.  The bar wasn't much different than the bars back home except everyone was outside (and speaking Spanish!).