The Third Day

Sunday January 13, 2008

Today started out a little bit better than the previous day…all because I remembered to take my towel with me this morning to the shower. One win for team Emily. After showering and getting ready we had breakfast and then headed out to meet our class for a walking tour of the city. We walked to the plaza outside of where we have our class at and met our teacher from Simpson, Dr. Tracy, our teacher for contemporary Spanish culture from Seville, Victor, and the rest of the students on our trip. Victor showed us around the city and pointed out the different historical places. Today we walked past and saw: La Hiralda Catedral, La Plaza Salvador, Arcihvo de Indias, Real Alcazar, La Universidad, La Plaza de Espana, El Parque de Maria Luisa, Ayuntamiento (City Hall), Teatro Lope de Vega, La Plaza Virgen de los Reyes, and La Plaza Nueva. Victor pointed out the things that we need to watch out for which included: the insistent palm readers, thieves, and horse buggy drivers that like to look at the women. After the walking tour we decided to stop at a little bar called “Horno del Duque,” and I had my first glass of wine in Spain. It was only 2 Euros and it was a good experience to order something from a Spaniard and actually get what I ordered! They talk really quickly and the also leave off the end of words frequently, which makes it really hard to understand. After the bar we came home and had lunch, which was chicken and fries (really good) and we went out again to meet up with some students from school. We met at a plaza and then when to El Parque de Maria Luisa but at this point it was pouring down raining. So we decided to cut the tour a little short and we stopped at Starbucks and the Café de Indias for ice cream. I of course opted for the ice cream, which was delicious. We stood around in the street, took some pictures, and then talked for a while about the adventures that we had done over the past three days. We ran into the director of CML, David, in Starbucks and we talked with him awhile. After all was said and done, we left for home. It was about a half hour walk back to our house. A couple classmates came with Allison and I to look at the outside of our house to see the size, apparently our house is a lot bigger than most, which was fun to find out. After showing off our house we headed inside and waited a while until dinner was ready. I think they are really trying to make us feel at home because we had two hot dogs on a bun with potato chips for dinner! For dessert we had chopped up bananas and apples with yogurt on top. Encarna sat down and talked to us for a while about our majors and about our day in general. From the stories that I heard today from the other students, she seems to be a really good host mom. Rocio talked to us for a while as well about the day and we asked her about renting bikes here. She said that it was a good idea and that it was really cheap, so we are looking into that for sometime soon in the future. Tomorrow I need to look into getting a jacket here because with all of the rain it has been a lot colder than I expected. We have our first day of class at 9 in the morning tomorrow and it should be interesting. After class, lunch and siesta we are going to try and look for coats and maybe scarves. There are still sales from Christmas so it’s easy to find some good deals! Plus all off the stores here are to die for and have the cutest things that you will ever see in them. Bueno, es todo para hoy…Buenos Noches. (Well, that’s it for today, good night).