You heard me. This week was our last week of orientation, which was rawther uneventful except that it involved some final exams. Wait, you actually have to STUDY when you study abroad? Oh yeah. As such, I had my first outdoor study sesh on Tuesday morning, which was also the first day of fall. Autumn is one of my favorite things in the world, and I am a little sad that the weather here is so warm that the leaves aren't going to change for a while! But as long as tea and cardigans are involved, I'll pull through somehow.
Anyways, I live right in the middle of two huge parks - Parque de los Principes on the left, and Parque de Maria Luisa on the right. So this day I went to the former and sat down at the cafe in the back, spread out my grammar homework and got to work. When I finished, I went for a walk and came home for lunch. How civilized!
Exams went swimmingly of course, and Friday morning we went to orientation at the university for American students. A few words of welcome, some jokes about soccer, and one long lecture about the library system later, we were left on our own to explore. Now, a few words about the U of Seville - it's a 500-year-old university that inhabits an ancient tobacco factory. It is host to two main schools: filology and geography/history. Filology classrooms are numbered regularly, while geo are numbered in roman numerals. There are no designated sections, persay, for each school, so it's kind of a mishmash of classrooms that hardly hold with ascending/descending locational protocols. So, as we came to find, class 207 is not on the same floor as XXIV, which is in a cluster with XXIII and XXV but also across from XI and 112. To complicate matters further, it would seem as though adequate Spanish cartography systems died with the Armada, so we could not find a map to help our cause. On the bright side, it's a really cool building and there's lots of baroque art and sculpture everywhere, so if I were to get hopelessly lost as least it will be within the confines of an aesthetically-pleasing Spanish labyrinth.
Friday afternoon I rested up, stretched and carbo-loaded because...a bunch of us registered for the 10.5K night run in Sevilla! It was called the Carrera Nocturna, and began at the Plaza de Mexico, went down the river, over a bridge, through our neighborhood and back up the river to the Olympic Stadium. 6 other people from the program joined me, and we were all joking that they should release bulls at the start of the race. It was a massive crowd - There were FIFTEEN THOUSAND PEOPLE there! The run was amazing (we waved at our family as we passed by!), the city was beautiful lit up at night, and it was absolutely one of the best things I've done here thus far. Plus, at the end we got a sweet goody bag with a dayglo-yellow mesh muscle-shirt. yeeeesssssss!
Saturday we went to Cordoba, which was an amazing visit. They have a mosque-turned-church that is an architectural masterpiece, as well as a Jewish quarter and lots of orange trees! After our tour we got some free time to walk around, and I got a greek yogurt and honey ice cream cone. BEST ICE CREAM EVER. And today Melanie and I went to an outdoor art market by the museum, where local artists congregate to sell their paintings. It was incredible! We're definitely going back. So overall an amazing weekend, and tomorrow we begin our classes at the university!
Happy Yom Kippur, and wish me luck!
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