Alien Robot

The busy schedule of our cultural orientation continued through this week, with us seeing the Catedral and Giralda (the view from the top is to the left, as promised), a historically relevant hospital/church, the Reales Alcázares (a royal palace that was originally a Moorish fort), yet another museum, a classical music concert, and Cádiz. The hospital was pretty interesting, though I didn't take any photos so there's not much to report there. I don't have any photos of the Reales Alcázares either because, while beautiful, the weather wasn't the greatest, and we can get in to see them with our student ID cards for free, so I plan to return in the spring and take pictures then. Apparently that's when the orange blossoms on the trees bloom, and I'm sure it will provide some quality photo ops. But it was still very cool to see the architecture and the gardens. It was originally built by the Moors, and later Christians built on top of it, so there's a blending of two different architectural styles that's pretty interesting. The museum we went to was the Museo de Bellas Artes (fine arts), which mostly exhibited baroque art from Sevilla. It was cool and all, but honestly I think it was a little foolish for them to show us the bigger, grander museums of Madrid before taking us to the smaller-but-still-very-important-and-respectable Bellas Artes here. Few museums in the world could stand up to the Prado, so seeing this one after made it a little less appealing. Plus I'm feeling museum overload. Today some of the girls from the program went to another museum in Sevilla, but I clearly did not accompany them, because the only way you could get me to go to another museum right now would be through some form of bribery.

One of my favorite excursions we've had so far was the classical music concert. The symphony orchestra played three pieces, one by each Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, and Tchaikovsky. The Saint-Saëns was a very cool cello concerto, and the other two were symphonies. As a lover of classical music, it was a real treat to get to go to this concert. I love going to classical concerts back home, and honestly for a while I forgot I was in Spain because it reminded me so much of the concerts I go to back in the States. It reminded me of home. This is where a cliché about music being the universal language belongs, but I don't really want to write one, so fill in your own. I was really, really happy at the concert, so it's great that they include this in our program, and I'm definitely going to go back there for another concert someday.

The day following the concert (Friday), we went to Cádiz, a coastal town surrounded by ocean. You may be wondering why we went to a beach city in January, in which case I would be wondering the same thing. Or maybe you just assume that no matter what, we must be having wonderful weather, because it's 30 degrees and snowing in Michigan, which wouldn't be completely unreasonable. Anyway, at first I was justified in my skepticism when we arrived in Cádiz, because it was chilly, windy, and rainy, and nobody understood why we were there. There was a chorus of "is this a joke?" floating around our bus as we pulled across the bridge into town. Naturally we started things off with a walking tour, so we had to huddle under umbrellas and avoid puddles while we were lectured about Cádiz's history. Then came another cathedral, where we at least were able to sit down inside. Afterward, we went to look at the "cámara oscura"--literally translated as "dark camera" but I think referred to as "camera obscura" in English--which involves a large white plate-like object and some fancy mirror reflection to provide a live view of what's going on outside. It works kind of like a real camera, and the light reflects off the mirror onto the plate, I think. It's hard to explain, and we weren't allowed to take pictures, but I promise it's really awesome. And apparently there's one in San Francisco.

Luckily, after the cámara oscura, the day improved greatly. We went to lunch and had seafood paella (if you don't know, it's a traditional Spanish dish of rice and either vegetables, meat, and/or seafood and it's delicious). Our meal also involved a bit of performance: my friend Leann and I both love to sing, and several of my friends have discovered my memory bank full of songs, therefore referring to me as the "human jukebox" since they can pretty much tell me any song and I'll sing it for them. So Leann and I ended up singing in the restaurant, which was fine because we had a whole room to ourselves except for an old Spanish couple eating a few tables behind us. They didn't seem too enthused by our performance, but I can't possibly understand why. So I was demonstrating my human jukebox properties as well as consuming a lot of food considering I had already eaten a sandwich and an apple before lunch, leading to a discussion of my properties as a human garbage disposal, which brought to attention the fact that I am actually a robot. And not only that, but I've also been called an alien for reasons such as not having pierced ears and not owning a single pair of leggings. If I ever write a memoir, I'm calling it Alien Robot.

The rest of our day in Cádiz turned out really well. Once the weather improved it was so beautiful, we just walked along the seaside and took pictures. I definitely want to go back when it's warmer. Since I forgot to bring my camera with me (but thankfully remembered my umbrella), the pictures of Cádiz are my friend Natalie's that I "borrowed" from Facebook. The first one is of five of the six of us who traveled together from Michigan, and the second is the view of the city from the tower of the cámara oscura. Bonito, no?