They really do wear flamenco dresses here

So Monday was Yom Kippur and also the first day of classes at the university. I decided I would at least try to fast since I didn’t do anything for Rosh Hashanah. Luckily, classes in the History and Geography department, where most of the classes that I was looking at are, were postponed until Wednesday, so I only had one class. Normally on Yom Kippur I go to temple and then sit inside for the rest of the day complaining about how hungry I am, but I decided I should try to maintain a normal schedule here. I went into the center and tried to get started on a paper we had coming up so that I wouldn’t be in the house for lunch and go crazy. Even though I didn’t make much progress on the essay, I think it was good to move around a bit and keep busy. I ended taking a break from my procrastination to wander around because I was starting to hear my stomach rumbling and found some new cute streets and lots and lots of delicious looking restaurants (but maybe I shouldn’t judge when I’m starving…) Then I went to my the only class of the day and even more luck, the professor wasn’t there! I went home and watched a movie for a few hours until dinner finally arrived. Mati had left me some of the pasta from lunch so I had a pretty big dinner (nothing like a normal breaking of the fast but still good) and looking back, it was not too bad of a fast. I can’t believe I actually lasted until 8:30 and wasn’t completely dying. Anyway, now is as good a time as any to explain the ridiculous process that is choosing classes here. So first of all we only found out the schedule of the classes a week before classes started so I frantically arranged a list of classes I was interested in and fit into a cohesive schedule (without classes on Friday of course!) Then comes the actually difficult part. Exams here don’t take place until January, when we’re already back at school in Penn, so we have to ask the professor if we can take an early exam or do something different to supplement the time we miss and still be evaluated so we can get a grade and receive credit. Doesn’t sound so bad until you visit 6 classes and 3 of the professors tell you that you can’t move up the exam (of course the three classes I was most interested in). Suffice it to say that a week later (which is really sort of jumping ahead in time in terms of this blog but with the time differences going on time is so messed up anyway that I don’t care) I found out that another class I was counting on won’t work. So I don’t know which classes I’m taking but I have to figure it out soon since it’s almost week three of classes.

sunset on the river

On Tuesday, two of my friends and I went to a travel agency because we wanted to go to Morocco and thought it would be easier with a tour, but unfortunately the tour was all full. After that deflating news, we tried to plan a trip by ourselves, but it was a little difficult since we had lost all of our excitement and energy. After that I ran into a few other friends on the way home and went with them because one of them was going to get her nose pierced. Unfortunately the piercing guy wasn’t there, but we ended up getting roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, which I had never had before and were really yummy, so it wasn’t a loss at all. After dinner that night we ended up talking to Dunia, our host sister, and Belen, Mati and Luiqui’s granddaughter who is 17 so it would be weird to call her niece but I guess that’s how we would be “related.” It was really fun and interesting to talk to them – I found out that people actually wear flamenco dresses during Feria, the huge spring festival here, and we saw pictures of Dunia wearing hers, which was really pretty and flattering on her. We also talked with Belen a little bit about music and movies she likes (she loves Twilight and only likes Harry Potter hmmmm…) which was fun to hear. A lot of the pop culture here seems to be imported from the US – in all of the bars and clubs you always hear American music and there are more American movies dubbed into Spanish than actual Spanish movies in the theaters. Wednesday I had my first English lesson with the daughter of the program director here. She’s four and really cute, but it’s pretty challenging to teach her since there isn’t a lot of guidance (she has a book but it’s kind of useless) and she’s so young that she’s not very good at remembering the words even 30 seconds after she says them. So I’m trying to come up with more fun/interesting ways to teach her but if anyone has suggestions let me know! Friday Dunia left for Zaragoza where she is going to live with her husband. She’ll be back in a few weeks to get all of her stuff but we still had a nice lunch all together, which was fun since she has been working a ton this past month and we haven’t gotten to talk to her much. After lunch I went to the tennis center to try to sign up for lessons. It was a 35 minute bus ride to the sports complex and then I waited in the information room for twenty minutes before finally talking to someone who told me I could just go in and do a try-out to assess my level (which I had already known so I waited for no reason). There was only one teacher on the courts and he was teaching a lesson, so I waited for a break and went up to ask him if I could do a try-out with him. First he asked me if I could come back on Monday, but when I told him I could wait, he said he could help me in 15 minutes. Finally I actually did the try-out, which lasted all of two minutes, and he told me my level. Then I went back to the information room and waited again and then told the woman my level. She said there was no such level and made me go back to the teacher and have him write it down (I guess I heard wrong). I felt pretty stupid going back and admitting I had heard wrong but I did and he was nice about it. Then I finally went back and straight in to the woman who told me there was only one spot left in one class at a time when I might have class at the university. Since I couldn’t be sure that I was free at that time, I decided to wait to sign up even though that means my spot might be taken. Even though it was two hours spent to play tennis for two minutes and make basically no progress in signing up for lessons, I feel like it’s just one of those things that has to happen when you’re studying abroad so I wasn’t too upset about it. That night we decided to go to this “Feria de Naciones” (Fair of Nations) that is being held in a park near our house. It turned out to be really fun because there were tons of people walking around and all of these stalls from different countries. We tried a bottle of Sidra, this type of hard apple cider from Asturias, a region in the north of Spain, and watched a ridiculous dance group perform on the stage at the front of the fair. Oh and we also “learned” a dance from this ridiculous group to a song they play all the time here – so I’m sure I’ll break out in the routine next time I hear the song.

Saturday we had a day trip with the program to Ronda, a small city two hours away from Seville. Ronda is absolutely gorgeous – surrounded by mountains and sitting on a plateau that is split in two by a gorge called the Tajo. It was also spectacular weather on Saturday – sun shining, really blue sky, and not too hot. Perfect for walking around – which we certainly did plenty of. We started our trip with a walking tour of the city with a funny guide who was wearing some designer sunglasses and carrying some sort of clutch. He kept telling us to follow the sombrero – his big cowboy hat. We started at the gorge and the “new bridge” (it’s over 200 years old but the newest of the three bridges in Ronda) and then walked through the old part of Ronda and saw the main plaza and church. Then we stopped at the house that is now open to the public and has incredible views of the surrounding mountains. After taking about a thousand pictures, we went to the Plaza de Toros and the guide told us some history of bullfighting and other interesting facts. The plaza in Ronda is very old and has the largest diameter of any bullfighting ring, although not a very large capacity for spectators. Even though it is the oldest plaza de toros, it is actually only used once a year because bullfights are so expensive and Ronda is a small town. We got to see where they keep the bulls before the fight and then we ended our tour and went to lunch. A couple of us went to a restaurant the guide had suggested, which was really good and cheap and then we went to walk down towards the valley and some of the old bridges in the city. But of course we stopped at a bakery first to get some delicious cookies for the bus home. We wandered down for a while and found the Roman and Arab bridges. Then we slowly ascended and found some more amazing views before returning to the bus station to go home. Even though Ronda didn’t have as many touristy sites as other places we’ve been to, it was nice to be able to just wander and look at the scenery – a perfect day trip.

mountains surrounding Ronda

Tajo in Ronda

old bridges in Ronda

On Sunday, Maureen and I went to a novillada – basically a minor league bullfight. We had wanted to go to a corrida (the real bullfights) but the only one left was during a weekend we would be traveling so we decided to go to the novillada to get a feel for what a bullfight is like. Novilladas have the same format as corridas, just toreros (bullfighters) with less experience. Since it was a novillada, the stadium wasn’t full and there were lots of tourists, but still a fair number of Spaniards as well. The bullfight was really interesting – I would even go so far as to say I enjoyed it. At first, I had some trouble with the gore, and of course I don’t like to see anything die, let alone an animal so large, but once I got over that part, I started to appreciate it for the artistic merit and the talent that it takes to be a torero. I’m not saying that I fully support the killing of an animal for sport, but there really is a lot more to bullfighting than just killing the bull. The torero has to go through a lot of different steps to tame the bull and demonstrate his control. The bull is so close to the torero it is pretty scary to watch, but most of the time they seem to have it under control. I say most of the time because with the second bull, one of the bullfighters was charged by the bull and went flying in the air. He was okay and managed to get up and finish, but it was pretty crazy. The last bull actually ended up catching the torero with its horns and he was carried out of the ring and another torero finished for him. That’s one of the reasons the bullfight was so interesting – every bull brings something new and you really have no idea what is coming next. Even though I didn’t understand fully what was going on, I could tell there was a specific way the toreros had to move and things they had to get the bull to do because sometimes the crowd would start cheering “olé” if the torero was doing really well. Also, after the first bull, the Spaniards took out white handkerchiefs and started waving them in the air, but only after the first one because the torero had done so well. There was something grotesquely beautiful about the spectacle that made it impossible to look away. I usually can’t stand to watch medical shows and I hate shows like Fear Factor that have gore just for the sake of gore but the format was so complex and the movements so intricate that the fight was much more than blood. It really is a question of honor for the toreros because they only attack the bull from the front, where there is an even playing field. At times, it was almost like ballet because of the intricate steps and graceful motions of the torero. Although not all Spaniards support bullfights (Mati wasn’t particularly enthralled when she heard we went), around 30% of Spaniards regularly attend corridas, so I’m very happy that I got to see a cultural tradition that is still important to many Spaniards and is also so different from anything you would see in the US.  Forgot to mention that on Sunday night it was the Real Madrid - Sevilla soccer game, which is a pretty big match so we went to find a bar where they were playing the game.  We ended up at an ice cream store/bar where we stood and watched the game with lots of Sevillanos. It was so fun because everyone was really into the game - when Sevilla scored a goal everyone started singing a song for the team.  It was also great because when some people left, we got to sit down so we ordered a brownie sundae which turned out to be way better than TGIFridays and actually at a Spanish restaurant so it's not such a guilty pleasure. Oh and Sevilla won! Hopefully that's a good sign for their prospects in the Champion's Cup.

toreros and their helpers entering the ring