I'm from Michigan

Before we begin, I haven't updated in a while, so expect this to be a long one.

Today is the 23rd of February, which means in five days it will be my brother's birthday, which means that in six days it will be March, which is just plain ridiculous and difficult to believe. I have a feeling the time is going to start flying pretty soon here. I've gotten into something vaguely resembling a routine, and classes are really getting underway, so now I'm getting a little more into normal semester mode. Though it's hard when it's 72 degrees outside to believe that it's the beginning of the semester. (Sorry, Michiganders, I'm kind of a jerk about this whole bragging about our great weather thing. I've suffered through a Michigan winter every other year of my life so I think I deserve a break.)

Nothing much of note happened last week, other than getting further acclimated to my classes. This past weekend we went to Granada. Some background on my relationship with Granada: I almost studied in Granada. For a while that's where I thought we'd be going. Then, after discovering that the program goes a little later than I'd like and that Sevilla has classes more suited to my credit needs, I went with Sevilla, and so far I couldn't be happier. Going to Granada was going to be a true test of whether or not I'd made the right decision. I'm happy to report that while Granada is a beautiful city and it was really nice to be able to walk from the center of the city to the outskirts in ten minutes rather than 30, I wouldn't trade Sevilla for anything. What can I say, I'm loyal. There is one more great benefit to Granada: whenever you order a drink (alcoholic or non) you get a free tapa with it. This makes eating really cheap and often really delicious. I'm a little sad we don't have that here, but it's okay Sevilla I still love you for who you are.

On Friday, we had the day to ourselves to explore the city. I went with a couple of friends to the Parque and Museo de Federico García Lorca. If you don't know, Lorca is an iconic Spanish author from the 20th century. I've read a few of his works and loved them, so I was really excited to be in the area where he once lived. The museum is a house that he lived in for a few years and wrote some of his most important works, one of which I've read. I was really excited to go into his house and get to see where he composed these masterpieces, but Granada had other plans. The museum was closed (for ONE day, the only day we could be there) for some kind of hoity-toity intellectual conference, so we only got to take pictures of the outside. But at least I got to stand next to Lorca's house!

Saturday was our day to tour the Alhambra, which was quite amazing. I've learned about the Alhambra in school (it's a Moorish palace and fortress from the 14th century), and it's something I've always wanted to see in person. The tour took about 3 1/2 hours (!), but it was totally worth it. The Alhambra is HUGE and it's totally legitimate to spend that much time there. We also got to see the Generalife (pronounced hen-er-all-ee-fay, not general life), which is the summer palace. It was so surreal and amazing. The guy at the Lorca museum (whom we asked what other stuff in Granada we should go see) told us what I'm pretty sure was a story about Obama studying in Granada in college, because he said something about how he walked around "con su mochila," which means "with his backpack." And our tour guide told us about Michelle coming and staying in the really nice hotel that's within the Alhambra. The one disappointment about it was they're doing some sort of renovation on the lion fountains that are really iconic in the Alhambra, so they were in some room instead of in their original place in the fountain. I was really sad I couldn't see the original fountain and the area they're in was all blocked off and torn up. (No lion pictures because that was the one room where we couldn't take photos.) But there were lots of other fountains that are also representative of the Alhambra so I appreciated those. Overall, an amazing experience.

Besides Granada, not too much has been going on, except I think I may have finally made Spanish friends! First of all, I got all the classes I wanted, so score #1. Then, in my poetry class, we're supposed to have these work groups and the professor wants there to be 2 Spaniards and a foreigner. Yesterday, this girl came up to me and asked if I wanted to be in a group with her and another girl in our class because I'm American, so of course I accepted. Then today when I walked into class, she immediately waved at me and told me to come sit by her. I was a little surprised but incredibly glad that she invited me over. She introduced me to all of her friends and sat next to me and everything. I felt pretty special too because Spanish groups are known for being really close-knit and hard to break into, and this group seems pretty tight, so I felt privileged to be accepted. So much so that the situation actually kind of reminded me of the movie Mean Girls. And now, a comparison of the dialogues to illustrate my point (all Spanish has been translated so that the reader does not have to Google translate everything):

Mean Girls: "Wait a second! Sit down. Why haven't I seen you before?"
My life: "Hey! Come over here and sit with me!"

Mean Girls: "You mean you've never been to a real school before?"
My life: "How are your classes going?"

Mean Girls: "We have a new student, she just moved here all the way from Africa!"
My life: "Guys, this girl is from the United States!"

Mean Girls: "You can only wear your hair in a ponytail one day a week. So, I guess you picked today..."
My life: Thankfully there are no rules like this where I sat. I think. And I didn't even wear my hair in a ponytail today so I'm safe. These girls--at least, the one who invited me to sit with them, I didn't really talk to the others--are a whole lot nicer than Regina George, because she's a life ruiner. She ruins people's lives. (Note: title of the post is not only relevant but also a Mean Girls quote. I've got a million of 'em, folks.)

All in all things are going well. I have a four-day weekend coming up; I don't have class on Fridays anyway and we have the day off Monday, so that day I'm going to Gibraltar with some of my friends. Otherwise I'll just be kickin' it in Sevilla!

Photos (from top): why I love Sevilla (that's the river and it's basically my favorite place in the city), Lorca's house, view of the Alhambra and Granada, inside the Alhambra (sorry I don't know how to rotate pictures on here but I really like that one just tilt your head or something), Alhambra Moorish architecture, fountains in the Alhambra.

Everything Seems Different Until You Realize It Isn't

I would first like to say to all the baseball fans out there, Happy Spring Training Day, please enjoy it for me as baseball is not at all a thing in Spain. It is the complete opposite of a thing. If the ball isn't as big as someone's head, they don't really care about the sport. (EDIT: Except tennis. Thanks, Dad. EDIT #2: And golf. Thanks, Mom. My parents really want me to be thorough.) And that is the only significance of today that I am going to acknowledge (for the moment), thank you.

Now, relevant to the title: sitting up at 2 in the morning eating Lay's potato chips, drinking Diet Coke (though here it's called Coca-Cola Light), listening to music, and writing a Spanish essay. Sounds like my nights in Ann Arbor. Sounds like my night on Wednesday. We finally finished officially with our three-week orientation by turning in our final essay. I did something intelligent for once in my life and wrote the 5-page essay first, before classes at the university started, and only had the 3-page one to write. It was still difficult enough. In Spain, they use 1.5 spacing and longer paper, so it's even harder to finish a paper. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that in some senses college here is exactly like college at home. I guess it's just the nature of us all being human, or something.

Speaking of college, classes have been going fairly well, considering. I've picked the 5 that I want definitively; now I just have to hope that they're all open, because if they aren't, I have no idea what I'm going to do. I just figured my classes would probably not fill up too much--apparently it's not so much the literature ones that fill quickly--so I didn't make a huge effort to go to backup classes. I have seen some other people looking for new classes this week, so hopefully it would be possible, I'd just rather not deal with it. Here's my ideal list of classes:

• Escritura Creativa (Creative Writing): At the program center. Since I love creative writing in English, doing it in Spanish should be fun too. I think it will really help my writing skills. My speaking skills are what need the most work, but writing is always a good idea, especially for me. This one was kind of a no-brainer.
• Métrica Comparada y Traducción Poética (Compared Meter and Poetic Translation): This one seems slightly challenging, but it's subject matter that really interests me, believe it or not. Usually when I tell people I'm taking that class their eyes get really wide and they just stare at me and pretend that it sounds interesting to them. It's okay, you don't have to lie, I know it seems awful to a lot of people, but I find it really interesting. I also took a class last year on Spanish renaissance poetry so I have a little bit of background in the subject. Plus we're supposed to do a translation later in the term with a partner/in groups in which there's at least one Spaniard and one foreigner if possible, and I'm foreign so it's perfect! All around pretty pumped for this one.
• Comedia Española: Ciclo de Lope (Spanish Comedy in Theater: Lope de Vega): This is the most confusing to explain to people. It's Golden Age theater, right around the same time as my pal Shakespeare (not sarcasm, I love Billy), but specifically looking at the author Lope de Vega and his comedies. I read a piece by Lope in my Golden Age literature class (Jorge Ledo, you will probably never read this but I cannot thank you enough for giving me the best preparation possible for these classes, and for giving me A+s in both of your classes, and for generally being so awesome) so I know a little bit about him as well. The professor is really cool too, so that always warrants bonus points.
• Historia de los Estados Unidos (hopefully you could get this one on your own but History of the United States): Okay. I have been questioned about this one on multiple occasions. "Why are you taking a US history class in Spain?" Well, for one, at this point I feel as though I know more about Spanish history than I do US history, but that's possibly because I've had classes about the former far more recently than the latter. I'm also curious to see whether things are portrayed in a different light when they're being taught in a foreign country; I'm inclined to believe they are, but we'll see. And on the first day of class, I couldn't find the classroom so I walked in half an hour late, but when I went to talk to the professor he was super nice about it and told me not to worry and then we bonded over how he lived in St. Louis for a while so that made me want to take it more. Also because the literary texts class I was going to take instead turned out to be awful so I'm really glad I discovered the kindheartedness of my history professor. And finally, some of the documents we're going to read are in English, which I didn't know going in and so is not why I'm taking the class (promise) and doesn't make a huge difference but offers me a nice bit of relief from the constant español.
  
• Historia del Cine (again, probably can get this one on your own, History of Film): This just appeals to me because I'm a bit of a movie buff. I took a screenplay class last semester and really enjoyed it, so I'd like to study film a bit more. We're looking at cinema all over the world and watching a bunch of different international films, so that should be fun. Some of them are American, so yes, some of them will be in English. I know it seems like I'm cheating because three of my classes involve English at some point, but I just see it as taking advantage of my full linguistic abilities. They're still all taught in Spanish.
  

The walking-into-history-half-an-hour-late saga deserves its own description: First of all, the building where my classes are held makes no sense. Actually, the first thing I should mention would be that the building where my classes are held used to be a tobacco factory, because that's just weird. It's a GORGEOUS building though. I would post photos of it if I didn't feel so weird taking photos of where I go to class. It's not like I go around snappin' pics in Mason Hall back in Ann Arbor. You'll just have to trust me on this one, there are statues everywhere and I've seen at least 3 fountains and the staircases are huge and marble and everything is amazing. That being said, the layout makes absolutely no sense. The literature department is in this building as well as history/geography, and all of my classes are within those departments. It gets weird when you realize that lit classrooms are numbered with Arabic numerals, but history classrooms are numbered with Roman numerals. So because this is a history class, it's in room VIII. I knew where room VII was, so I went down that hallway because I figured VIII should be right next to it, I mean it's just one extra I, they've gotta be close together, right? Nope. I walked down that hallway, found VI and VII but no VIII. Walked down the other side of the hallway, found different versions of VI and VII, still no VIII. After wandering aimlessly for a while, I finally saw some girls I know from my program and one of them knew where it was, so she gave me directions. Turns out it's on the second floor--because that's logical--in some random hallway with random numbers surrounding it. But I decided not to care about walking into a 4:00 class at 4:30 and marched forth. Good thing too because seriously, that literary texts class was a nightmare, and not just because my umbrella got stuck on the doorknob as I was walking in (that's a whole different story).

I said before that I wasn't going to attribute any more significance to today for the moment, and now is the other moment in which I acknowledge that last night I had a lovely dinner with my Valentine, Sabriye, and our double date partners, Natalie and Leann. We went and got some delicious sushi and had great conversation--nearly all in Spanish! It was really nice. And today we had stuffed roasted red peppers for dinner because our señora wanted to serve us something red in honor of the day. I mean, I'm pretty anti-Valentine, but that's just adorable. I hope you've all enjoyed your February 14th; I ate an entire can of Pringles by myself today so I'd say I made the most of it.

Super Bowl? In Sevilla?

Yes, that's right, I watched the Super Bowl. In Spain. At 12:30 in the morning. In an Irish pub with just about every other American in Sevilla. Even the bartenders spoke English (they were all from England or Ireland). We made friends with Peter, our Irish bartender. I tried to teach him about football. He said it was the first time he'd ever actually watched a football game all the way through. Sabriye and I got him cheering for the Packers! He thought Aaron Rodgers looked more like the quintessential quarterback than Ben Roethlisberger, and if anyone knows what a true quarterback should look like, it's an Irishman. We also enjoyed making fun of how they showed Bono with an American flag in his jacket as part of the pregame-patriotic-America-history-football-freedom show. In his words, "Not even Ireland likes Bono."

I was actually incredibly happy the whole time we were at the game. And we stayed the. whole. time. I got home at 4:40 AM and had to get up at 8:30 for class the next morning. It's like my mom said, I'm young, I can survive. And survive I did; I made it to class on time and I went to my first class at the university today! Success! But more about that later. This was one of the most American things I've ever done, made even more American because of the fact that I'm in Europe. We all came to realize that we're not very patriotic at all at home, but last night everyone was so pro-America. Everyone except Christina Aguilera, who apparently messed up the lyrics to the national anthem? I couldn't hear her over the noise in the bar, so I'm taking the internet's word for it. The deal we got at the pub was pretty good. There was a buffet included in the admission fee where they had wings, guacamole and chips, hot dogs, and french fries. Pretty much everyone was American and speaking English. It was probably bad, but considering it was the Super Bowl and the Super Bowl is essentially a national holiday I think it was warranted. I just kept saying how happy I was. I think it helped with homesickness; being around a bunch of Americans eating American food and watching American football was a nice break from the typical complete immersion. As I said, I was rooting for the Packers along with Sabriye, while Natalie and Leann were on the Steelers' side. Natalie's fandom was decided entirely based on colors--she had black and yellow she could wear, but no green. It was a fun little rivalry. None of us were so invested in the game that we would be upset either way. And it turned out to be a really good game, did it not? I'm just assuming everyone watched it because it's the Super Bowl. Even if it's just for the commercials.

Ah, the commercials. Fun fact: the US commercials do not get shown in Spain! And it's terrible! We ended up seeing the same 5 British commercials--all of which were dumb and not funny and not even trying to be funny and really annoying and some involved chipmunks--the entire time. It bummed me out a lot, everyone knows the commercials are super important. Well, everyone except Peter the Irish bartender. We had to explain that to him, too. Another downside was the halftime show. The Black Eyed Peas? I weep for my generation. The only plus side was Usher. I kind of love Usher, but as a joke (but not really), so seeing him do the splits kind of made up for that whole thing where the Black Eyed Peas were there and performed and wore strange light-up suits and had aliens as their backup dancers. At one point I pointed to the dancers on the field and proudly proclaimed, "My people!" Alien robot.

Overall, the European Super Bowl Experience was very fun, but I did miss eating spinach dip with my parents or chips, salsa, and sour cream with my roommates in Ann Arbor. And it made today a bit difficult. I got up at about 8:30 to get ready for class, which was at 9:30 but we had to leave at 9 because it takes almost a half hour to walk to the program center. (Usually I can go faster if it's just me because my normal walking speed is at least a power walk for most people, and when I'm walking with others I get yelled at to slow down a lot.) The class I had first was creative writing, and I'm quite excited about it. Since I love creative writing in English, doing it in Spanish will be both challenging and really fun, I think/hope. Later I had my first class at the Universidad de Sevilla: Spanish theater from the Golden Age, specifically by the author Lope de Vega. I really enjoyed this one, too. The professor is really nice and seems to want to help out students. She isn't the original professor of the class, because apparently the other professor is sick and not going to teach this semester, so she's filling in. She told us she took this class and when she did there were too many readings, so she cut down on some of them from the original syllabus. A professor who wants us to do less reading? Sign me up. A lot of the people in the class are with Erasmus, the main Europe study abroad program. Three other girls from my program went to this class too, and there were two other Americans as well. My guess is there were fewer Spaniards because it's an optional class for their degree, so not as many people take it. The way picking classes works for us is we go to more than we'll need to check them out and see if we like them, then give a list of our preferences to the program director and hope there's space for us to take all of the ones we want. I have 3 backups at the university, none of which I actually want to take, so hopefully some combination of my primary 7 will work (we take 5 total). This Lope class seems good, though; I took a class last year on Golden Age literature in which we read a Lope work, so I have a little bit of background in the course material. And I'm choosing between this class and History of the US, which I think would be really interesting to take in a foreign country, but apparently the professor is boring, so I might just opt for this one. I'll have a lot of literature, but hey, I'm used to it.

Tomorrow I have six classes I want to visit, so it'll be a really full day. Here's hoping they all go as well as the first one! (They won't, but I've accepted that.)

Never Buy Rings in Foreign Countries

First of all, happy World Nutella Day. I am eating some Nutella as I write this, so I thought it was only appropriate to mention it. Go have some, it's delicious. End of PSA. Secondly, I'm aware that it's taken me a week to update, but bear with me, I had to write a paper this week so I'm still recovering from the realization that I have to do actual work while I'm here too.

I'm also trying to open a package of glue that I bought earlier today. Why do I need glue, you ask? Because I'm an idiot and forgot that I have the worst luck ever when it comes to buying rings, especially in places that are not Michigan. In Córdoba yesterday, I bought a ring, which was luckily fairly cheap but looks nice. As I went to remove my cardigan on the bus on the way home--yeah, the ring didn't even make it a full day--the sleeve caught on one of the pearl-like objects (because they are very obviously not real pearls) and it popped right off. Now I have to glue it back on. The saga of my unfortunate ring-buying experiences begins in North Carolina, where I bought a really pretty ring for myself with my Christmas money. As time went on, the stones started falling out of their settings so that now about half of them are gone. Disappointing. Then I bought a ring at a now-unknown location (read: I can't remember where) and the band broke and pinched my finger. Then I went to Toronto and saw one ring I really liked, but chose not to get, which I still regret, later buying a different one that turns my finger green. So I really can't explain why I thought it would be a good idea to buy a ring in Córdoba, since clearly it never works out for me. I guess I just haven't learned my lesson. Hopefully the glue will render it wearable once again and all will be well, more or less.

Besides the ring mishap, Córdoba was lovely. We went to the Mezquita, which was originally constructed as a mosque, but a cathedral was added to it later. It was very cool to see the different time periods and religions. We also got a tour of some of the city, the Jewish quarter specifically, as well as the synagogue. There are a lot of very narrow streets and alleys, even more so than in Sevilla. Our guide explained that they set them up that way to block the heat of the sun so that in the summer you can retreat to the cool shade. The city overall was far more touristy than I though it would be. I guess I didn't really think about it too much, but there were a LOT of tourists. And many of the shops around the judería (Jewish quarter) were souvenir shops. I've noticed also that Spaniards tend to joke about all the Japanese tourists around. My grammar professor cracked a joke about looking at the Prado's paintings online so that you don't have "cien japoneses" (100 Japanese people) standing in front of you while you're trying to see Las Meninas. Our guide in Córdoba also mentioned the numerous Japanese tourists in and around the Mezquita multiple times. I don't really have much to say about that other than it's comical and interesting. Tourism aside, I liked Córdoba. I do think I prefer Cádiz to Córdoba, but they're both nice cities. Although I'm pretty sure as long as you're in Spain, you can't go wrong.

As I said before, the past week entailed writing an essay for the culmination of our cultural orientation as well as taking an exam. We're done!...sort of. We still have a second essay to write. Essays here are even more annoying because the paper size is longer and they only use 1.5 spacing instead of double spacing, and that makes a big difference, to be sure. I decided to write the longer of the two essays first, since real classes are about to start and I knew I wouldn't want to have to try to do it amidst figuring those out. Monday is the day of truth, when Universidad de Sevilla courses begin. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to take, so hopefully all of my classes will work out. We choose classes by picking 10 or so that interest us, then visit them next week and decide which 5 we want to take. We take 1 or 2 at the program center, which are more like classes at Michigan and only include program participants, and we take 3 or 4 at the University, so that we have 5 total. I'm most likely taking 4 at the University and 1 at the center, and I'm going to take a lot of literature. I'm really excited, the classes look pretty awesome. I'm just hoping they won't be too hard and that I'll make Spanish companions. We met a few students last night who will hopefully be able to show us the ropes a bit. Check back here for a full report about classes! I'm sure it will be...interesting.

Photos (from top): Mezquita: mosque, Mezquita: cathedral, Mezquita: outside, flowers in the Jewish quarter, a pretty picture of some orange trees.