What a week!

Finished with my first week of university classes today! Shopping for classes was definitely hectic. Back at home I'm used to just taking whatever class is lined up for major (math major ftw) but here I have been trying out all sorts of humanities classes! After attending like 8 of them throughout the week, I finally have my final schedule. I'll be taking a Spanish film class, a literature class on Sevilla, a class on cooking and food in the ancient Mediterranean, and ordinary differential equations. ODE doesn't start til next Monday, and is at an entirely different campus. And it's going to be the only class where I will be the only American student...eep! Right now I'm banking on the idea that math should be more or less a universal subject, so hopefully it won't be too bad.

Yesterday, a few of us from JYS went on a day trip by bus to Jerez de la Frontera, a little town about an hour and a half south of Sevilla. Jerez means "sherry", and the town is famous for its bodegas, or wine-making factories. Jerez is one of southern Spain's pueblos blancos, or "white villages" scattered throughout the Sierra Nevada mountains. It is really quaint and easy to navigate, with cute plazas and fountains and a lot of gorgeous cathedrals as well.

We went on a tour of one of the most well-known ones, called Tío Pepe. One of the best parts of the tour was getting to go on a ride on this train:

I felt as if I were in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Anyways, we saw a bunch of contraptions for wine filtration. All the rooms were filled with the aroma of wine...it smelled so good.

And at the end there was the wine-tasting! I tried 4 types of sherry, two dry and two sweet. My favorite was the pale cream, a white colored sweet sherry. But I'd have to say that sherry, especially the sharper dry kind, is definitely an acquired taste. It was hard to get down without continuously munching on that bowl of potato chips that came with the wine tasting! 

But all in all, it was a gorgeous Saturday in Jerez de la Frontera chilling with new friends. Perfect way to end a crazy first week at the university!