Weekend Recap

It's past 3 in the morning and I can't sleep well tonight - first night that I actually have had problems sleeping since I've been here. I was exhausted last night since I didn't siesta in the afternoon, but now it's just too hot to sleep. My water in my water bottle is this yucky lukewarm temperature, but it's better than nothing! So, since I haven't been sleeping well for the past hour, I got online to look at prices for traveling while I'm here. Surprisingly, Paris and Rome are the cheapest, so I think I'll do those in November and December, which would give me one cool trip per month... and two in October, actually. Gibraltar in two weeks, Barcelona and Morocco in October, and Rome in November, Paris in December. Warsaw was much too expensive.

In any case, today is Monday and our Intensive Spanish lessons start. Three hours of español everyday for two weeks. We'll see how that goes. I still need to purchase notebooks and flashcards for vocab. I've been learning a ton of new words, it's a bit overwhelming to keep track of it all.

Overall, the weekend went well. I woke up at 9 am on Saturday and my señora asked me if I get up that early a lot... I chuckled. If you know me, 9 am is sleeping in for me. Her daughter sleeps in until like noon or one. This is ridiculous. So, on Saturday I spent the day walking around our neighborhood with Jess and we ran in to some other people in our program doing the same thing. We went to El Corte Ingles, which people I talked to back in Seattle made a lot of noise about, but I'd say it was a disappointing experience. It's pretty much a department store like Macy's or Nordies with overpriced things. Shampoo and stuff was much cheaper at a little store nearby, so that's where we opted to go instead to buy things. After lunching and siesta'ing, we met up again with some people and walked around, went for some drinks (aka just orange juice and water - don't worry), and later that night we went out with the group and it was a ton of fun. We met a lot of españoles, had chupitas and tinto de verano, and overall it was just a fun night.

On Sunday morning, we had an orientation at 10 am at El Palacio where the CIEE Study Center is. I woke up and got ready and left - and everyone was still sleeping!! I didn't want to impose and dig through her refrigerator, so I left without breakfast and I was starving!!! I feel like they don't eat for long amounts of time, but when they do eat it is in massive quantities and I just can't do that. So, after our orientation (which was very boring, by the way), a few of us went for tapas and cafe con leche. I love the coffee. There has to be something like this in Seattle if we are the coffee capital of the world. Starbucks takes a backseat to this stuff. Anyway, after the siesta, I practice walked with Lolita and Matt to school so we know how to get there in the morning tomorrow without getting lost. It went well, and we weren't the only ones with that idea - a few other people were walking to the school, too! After chatting for a bit, Matt and I went on a hunt for a church so we could go to mass... and obviously, we were in the neighborhood with zero churches... so we had to walk down to downtown where there is a church on every corner! Most of the masses start at 8 pm, so we had two hours. We went to the Cathedral and luckily there was a mass going on there and it was very beautiful - a special occassion, too - a group was entering the priesthood and mass was for them. It was really interesting, I'd never seen anyone actually be ordained. After mass, we got ice cream because it is so hot here and I was wearing a sweater over my shirt to be proper for church and it was not a pleasant feeling. After getting home, I thought we would make dinner since I said I wanted to help after church... but, oh, no, obviously we didn't eat even though my last meal was a paella at tapas at like noon. Thank goodness for my snack drawer so I could munch on some almonds. My señora's boyfriend or someone came over at about nine and we had dinner at ten. Now, I'm exhausted at this point and all I want is to go to bed - my head was a bit dizzy from a combo of the need for sleep and the need for food... but eating at ten pm is not my thing!! But I had to to be nice, so we had tortilla españolas, which are delicious (tortilla with potatoes and egg whites inside) and tomatoes. After that, I was out... and I hate going to bed with a full tummy. Grrr. Today is a new day and hopefully I'll get more used to this odd schedule they have. Siestas throw me off - between 2 and 6 is my most productive time at home... here, I'm supposed to nap if I really want to act like a Spaniard, but I just hang out, read. Wierd.

Okay, I'm going to try to sleep now... let's just end with I hate mosquitos. I have bites all over my hands and arms and back and I feel like a third grader with the chicken pox. Seriously, I have at least fifteen bites. Ugh. Hah, do I complain too much?? I really actually do love Sevilla!