¡Saludos desde Sevilla!
If there's one thing I've learned my week since arriving in Sevilla, it's that Spaniards live in the street. People are always out and about, always sitting down to have coffee, churros, tapas or a drink with friends. People don't spend much time at home, and according to the CIEE staff who led our orientation, you could be fantastic friends with someone for years and never have been invited to their home. Honestly, while confusing at first, this cultural trait now makes a lot of sense to me for one practical reason: with no central heating or cooling, the houses are freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer. It's far more enjoyable to sit at a cafe and talk than it is to sit in your room with the space heater on full blast (I speak from personal experience). It also gives you the chance to socialize and people watch which are always fun, especially when done at the same time!
Overall, I'm having a hard time believing that I've only been here a week. With orientation information sessions, tours of the city's highlights, long meals with my host family, and an intensive class on the cultural history of Spain, it feels like I've been here for a month. In some ways I feel that I'm settling in. I can walk to a handful of places near my house without fear of getting lost, and I'm slowly learning some of the local slang. My host mother and I have had some interesting conversations, about the history of Sevilla, other exchange students they've hosted, and politics. In other ways I still feel completely out of sorts. Meal times are completely different here, with almost nothing for breakfast, lunch at 3 pm and dinner any time between 9 pm and midnight, depending on the day. I feel really confident in my Spanish skills, but I'm still having a hard time understanding people because they talk fast and drop a lot of consonants in their words. I don't feel the culture shock as strongly as I did when I arrived in Ecuador, but that doesn't mean I don't feel it. I just keep reminding myself that I have to give myself more time to get used to things. You don't learn cultural norms and values over night, or even in a week.
The first two weeks of my program here are an intensive language course, and I managed to test into the advanced class, where the goal is to cover more than two thousand years of history and culture on the Iberian peninsula. In three days we've covered early colonization of the peninsula, 600 years of Roman rule, the short rule of the Visigoths, and 800 years of Moorish rule as well. The first hour and a half of class is lecture, and for the second half we get to go visit different historical sights around the city. It's been fascinating to see the remnants of history scattered throughout the city, especially in the way that each successive culture built on top of the previous one. I think that by the end of the class I'll know enough to give a decent historical tour of the city to anyone who comes to visit me, that is, if I can manage to remember all the details.
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| View from the top of La Giralda, the bell tower (formerly a minaret when the building was a mosque) of the Sevilla's cathedral. |
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| View from my little balcony, featuring the top of the bell tower of the iglesia San Lorenzo. |
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| The river Guadalquivir, whose name comes from Arabic and roughly translates to big river. |
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| Iglesia San Lorenzo, the church close to my house. |
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The panoramic view of the city from Las Setas, a modern installation in an old plaza. It's called "las setas" because, from below, it looks like a bunch of mushrooms. (in Spain, 'seta' is another word for mushroom)
Hasta luego,
Elisa
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