Blame Pepe

So I did once say that my History of the US class was not a complete cop-out because there were some interesting differences in perspective, so I thought I’d list a few now in case you were doubting me. One of the things that my professor has talked about a lot is the process of impeachment. Even though we have rarely used it in the course of our country, my professor seems to be a big fan of the idea. He said that it is unfortunate that Spain doesn’t have a similar process because then there is basically no way of getting rid of corrupt politicians. I thought it was interesting because it’s not as though American politicians are not corrupt because impeachment exists. I guess at least the opportunity to weed out particularly bad ones is a good tool to have in a political system. Another thing he mentioned was how Washington was a model for the future because he was a military man. Of course I knew that Washington was the head of the Revolutionary war but I never thought about how much that has affected our politics even now. In the whole Swiftboat controversy with Kerry in 2004 it was such a big deal that the president had served in the military. Washington in some ways created an ideal for a president and even over 300 years later we still compare our presidents to him.

Niña, Pinta, or the Santa María?

 

fishing boats - not related to Columbus

Monastery - related to Columbus

On Thursday it was my first day teaching English to the son of one of the women in my tennis class. And by teaching, I mean speaking in English for an hour. He can speak really well for a 10 year old and knows way more than I will ever know about planes, so he spent a lot of time explaining different types of planes to me. He asked me about why we only have one last name in the US because Spaniards all have two. It was really fun and much more relaxing in comparison to the first few lessons with Marina, so that was nice. On Friday I did a little shopping with some friends and watched Nadal play Tsonga with Luiqui. Luckily, Nadal won because Luiqui gets pretty upset when Nadal is doing badly. After a delicious dinner of cauliflower and chicken, I went on a walk with a few friends. On Saturday, we had our last group trip of the semester. We went to Rábida and Niebla, two small towns less than an hour away from Seville. In Rábida we visited the created-for-tourists version of the place where Columbus set sail, with boats and all. It was pretty cheesy but did have a beautiful view of the river, palm trees included of course! Then we went to a monastery where Columbus had stayed, which had audio guides that were palm pilots. It was so random that they were palm pilots - I think regular audio guides work just fine. The monastery was pretty but nothing spectacular and we were wondering what Niebla would bring. Turns out Niebla was basically a ghost town where we were given two free hours to eat lunch (which most of us had already done) until we had a visit at a castle. We found one of the only restaurants in the town and sat there for basically the whole time until we went to the castle. The guy who introduced the castle was so unenthusiastic about it, it was kind of funny. In the dungeons they had all of these descriptions of torture methods they used to use and a model of a grim reaper. It was quite odd. The views from the walls were very pretty though. Even though the trip wasn’t nearly as exciting as the other places we had gone, it was still fun to hang out with everyone and see somewhere new. I’m pretty sure they could have picked somewhere better though because the program director, who came with us instead of Pepe who normally gives us the tours, told us to blame Pepe for the trip. She didn’t want to be associated in any way with the planning of the trip. Haha oh well. The trip was still worth it if only because when we got back, we heard drumming going on so a few of us went to follow and see what it was. My friend Carolyn and I got separated from the rest of the group when someone asked for directions but when we got to the end of the street, there was a group of men singing. We decided to stop and watch and they turned out to be a really great group of singers. They were hilarious and had very good voices and the crowd was really into it. Especially this little old lady standing next to Carolyn and me who kept laughing hysterically and talking to us about how funny they were. It was really really entertaining and we ended up staying for two hours watching them sing because after every song, we just kept saying one more! It was such a spontaneous way to spend the evening (the best kind) and I definitely laughed a ton even I didn’t get all of the jokes.

Castle

One of the many creepy things in the dungeon