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!

Ronda

Puente Nuevo

The excursion to Ronda yesterday was really cool. About an hour and a half outside of Sevilla, the town is situated atop the mountains. We saw plenty of gorgeous cliffs and of course the breathtaking Puente Nuevo. Believe me, it is so much more impressive in person than in pictures.

The amazing vistas were able to muffle from the fact that it was so cold up in those mountains. I wore about seven layers, no joke, but was still shivering.

Oh, and yesterday I found out that I have chilblains. Two of my fingers in my right hand have been swelling over the past week. At first, I thought they must've been bug bites of some sort. But yesterday when I woke up, they were huge. So I panicked and video chatted my parents, who ended up solving the mystery. Apparently the cold weather here has really gotten to my body - chilblains are actually ulcers that affect the fingers and toes when exposed to extreme cold. Wtf? It's not even that cold here in Sevilla; it's much colder in Chicago and New York. I guess it's the rapid transitions from the cold, humid air outside to my heated room that became too much for my already-poor circulation.

But I mean, hey, it's another new experience. That's the way I like to see things in life :)

Semester classes start tomorrow! Very excited and anxious. I have a bunch of classes listed to try out, and tomorrow will be a Spanish film class, art history, and anthropology. Humanities overload much? Haha. We'll see!

Flamenco!

Last week, I went to "T de Triana", a flamenco bar near the center of Seville. Every Tuesday and Thursday nights, there are free flamenco shows. Well, free before the extremely pesky waiter forces you to buy a drink. Nevertheless, the performance I saw last Thursday was incredible! Here's a video of one of them. Yeah, it's sideways, but it's worth tilting your head for a minute to check it out ;)

¡Qué frio!

So cold today in Seville. We had our "welcoming ceremony" today at the Universidad de Sevilla, in which the directors of the university gave some opening speeches for all the exchange students from the US. One of them mentioned how today is the coldest day of the year in Seville.

And boy was it cold today. Although it was 9 degrees Celsius, about 48 degrees Fahrenheit and relatively warm compared to a New York winter's day, I was shivering walking through the city. I think it's due to the lack of heating in the house, leading to a constant state of coldness. Oh and the dread of going into the shower because it would mean entering the frigid bathroom. I really shouldn't be complaining though...apparently Seville had the highest temperature today of all of Spain.

Anyways, I also saw something else that I found interesting today. On the metro, I saw a Spanish man with his daughter. His daughter, a toddler of about three or four years old, was Asian. Adopted, presumably, and adorable (like all Asian babies hehe). But I couldn't help but be amazed at the idea that she would grow up speaking Spanish, totally immersed in the Spanish world. I don't know why, but I thought that it was just so cool and somehow totally strange. It's just that I barely see any Asians here in Seville. Just some tourists here and there. But otherwise the population is pretty homogenous, everybody very European-looking with European customs. And I guess I just assumed that people here are supposed to fit into a certain bubble of European-ness. So seeing an adopted Asian here kind of broke this bubble I created in my mind - "Spaniards" aren't people in a museum exhibit; they're human beings along with everybody else. Race and appearance are meaningless in terms of being part of a certain culture. I mean, you can judge somebody by the way he or she looks, but when it comes to knowing that person as a human being, outside appearance doesn't really tell you much. And it just gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside seeing the Spanish man with his Asian daughter...realizing that different cultures can really be shared, intertwined, appreciated. Does that make sense? I don't know. Maybe it's a sort of Asian pride I have, and I am just happy to see that the Spaniards are open to the culture of mah ancestors? Haha, I think the idea is still digesting in my head.

This is a rather rambly post, but on another note, group trip to Ronda tomorrow! It's gonna be a bone-chilling cold trip...it's like 40 degrees up there in the mountains. Teresa provided us with hats and scarves, since we did not pack for winter. Gosh, I really can't wait til it gets warmer. But I am excited for Ronda; it's supposed to be beautiful. Pictures to come!

"Sevilla a tu ritmo"

It's almost been three weeks since I arrived in Seville! I am starting to get used to living here...becoming a true Sevillana. Kind of. Conversations with my host family are starting to flow a bit more easily, my thoughts are beginning to transition to Spanish, and I'm even starting to get used to the eating schedule here, not to mention the vast quantity of bread and meat served at every meal.

After the past few weeks of biking and running around the city, I'm starting to get a mental map of Seville in my head. I love getting up every morning and going on a run around Nervión to familiarize myself with all the stores, restaurants, and other landmarks in the neighborhood. This morning, I actually saw two Chinese restaurants! It's really hard to find foreign cuisine here in Seville, and a few of my new friends here and I have been talking about how much we miss spicy food, so we're definitely going to have to check those out in the near future! I also saw a few bookstores I want to check out. Although my speaking skills have improved here, I'm going to have to work on reading. So gotta get my hands on some tween Spanish novels!

Right now I've been biking back and forth from orientation classes using my Sevici membership. Sevici is a bike service within Sevilla (its slogan is the title of this post - "Sevilla at your rhythm"). Basically, there are a bunch of bike stations throughout the city where members can rent bikes for 30 minutes at a time. It only cost 25 euro for a year's membership (!), so I got on it as soon as I heard about the service. The 30 minute rule is really no big deal, since it's easy to ride for half an hour and find another station to switch bikes and keep going. Besides, the ride from home to class is only about twenty minutes.

Speaking of rhythms, next week will be the start of the actual semester at the University of Seville! I have final exams for orientation tomorrow; can hardly believe it. Starting Monday, I will be attending my cursos concertados, classes specifically designed for exchange students, as well as regular classes at the university. It'll be a shopping period next week, so I guess things won't be set in stone, but it'll definitely be different from the laid-back schedule (or lack thereof) I had during the past three weeks. I'm anxious to find out what classes with Spanish students and professor will be like, but also pretty excited to meet some new people and get into my own set routine.

Meanwhile, I've been taking advantage of all the free time I have right now by going to some shows downtown, trying out different Spanish tapas at various restaurants, and spending time with my host family. The other day, Diana and I chilled on the roof with little Teresa (Paula was sick with a fever...it's currently flu season here) and started having a bit of fun with photobooth!