Honeymoon Phase

Life continues to be wonderful here in Sevilla, I am currently completely consumed by the honeymoon phase of my stay now and all I can think about is extending my time here for as long as I can! I really feel like I could see myself living here someday, at least for a small portion of my life before settling down. My Spanish has finally begun to really take off!!! Last time I wrote it was on the upslide but now I can feel my progress rapidly accelerating and I believe Friday night was the catalyst.

Friday night embodied just about every aspect of the type of experience I’ve been longing to have since coming to Spain. My new friend Roman (whom I was so lucky to find and befriend) invited to me to experience a “real” Sevilliano tapas dinner far off the tourist or extranjero radar. I invited my friend Katie and her intercambio Pablo to join us, and Roman came and picked us up Friday night accompanied by one of his friends (also named Pablo). The five of us drove to a completely different side of Sevilla and navigated though a labyrinth of narrow side streets until finally arriving at a tiny, hidden little hole-in-the-wall gem of a tapas bar. As I slowly become more and more immersed in the culture here, it’s fascinating to note the subtle (and not so subtle) differences between life here and life back in the US. For example, the smaller a bar or restaurant in Spain is, the more popular it will be. Furthermore, the more crowded a bar is, the more people will continue to pile in because it’s a sign that the bar is “the place to be” for the night. When we arrived, the place was so packed that, even if there had been chairs (which there were not), there was no way we ever would have found a place to sit and eat (finding a place to stand was challenging enough). I was sure that Roman was going to suggest we try somewhere else, but instead we stayed right where we were until we were able to secure a small two-foot space on the bar that was big enough to fit a few plates. The boys then proceeded to order a series of tapas for us consisting of salmorejo (a thicker version of gazpacho), calamari, red meat, a stuffed mushroom, and house prepared olives. I learned that every bar in Sevilla has it’s own signature style of olives and no two places serve the same kind! Each bar soaks its olives in a specific blend of spices, herbs, and juices for a few days until they take on their own unique flavor… and the olives at this tapas bar were phenomenal. After dinner we went to a chic bar in the city and continued chatting and hanging out together until Roman took Katie and I home around 2 because we had to wake up early to go to Cordoba the next day.

Salmorejo

Something with ham, and calamari

Roman, Me, Katie, Pablo (Roman's friend)

Me, Pablo (Katie's intercambio), Katie, Pablo

Roman y yo

Pablo y Pablo

Roman, Me, Katie

Roman, Pablo, y Pablo range from 24-27 years old and, although they can each speak some English, we spoke in Spanish for the entire night. I remember telling them that I felt like I spoke more Spanish with them in one night than I had in the past 4 days combined. After Friday, I definitely sensed a drastic improvement in my Spanish, which has been THE most liberating sensation!!! Everything is finally beginning to click and the challenging, Andalucian style of Espanol is beginning to sound much more normal. I absolutely love Spanish and this entire learning process has been unbelievably rewarding. Roman, Pablo, Pablo, Katie, and I are planning on going out at least once a week together since we had such an amazing time that night!

In other news, I just finished my first class! The last two weeks of my language/grammar immersion have been INTENSE and consisted of 3 papers, 1 oral presentation (which I did on Dali), 4 interviews I conducted with native speakers and a subsequent paper summarizing my results, 3 museums I visited outside of the classroom, 1 midterm, and 1 final. WHEW! I begin my regular semester classes this week, which will be the following:

-Contemporary Spanish Literature

-Flamenco in Andalucia

-Cervantes and el Quijote

-Spanish Culture and Cuisine

I can’t wait to get settled into a rhythm! Also, I had my first meeting for my interest group, the gastronomy of Spain, and am SO EXCITED about it!!! The leaders made it sound like our group will feel much more like a family than a club and have been amazingly warm and welcoming. I feel like there are at least 10 different people I could talk to if I was ever having a hard time here and every one of them would genuinely care and do everything they could to help me. Throughout the semester we’ll have 5 cooking classes where we’ll learn to make traditional Andalucian food, visit the little pueblo of our leader Fran (whom I LOVE), visit a local brewery, and finally take a 3 day trip to Valencia with all expenses covered by the program. Valencia is the birthplace of the traditional Spanish plate paella and we’ll learn to make that as well as visit a vineyard! However the weekend turns out, I could not be more excited for it J.

I just got back from a day trip to Cordoba, the capital of Andalucia, and am currently planning trips to Morocco, Portugal, and Italy over the course of the semester. This semester abroad arrived at an absolutely ideal time in my life and has been more than I could have dreamed of. I can’t wait to update you all once I start my real classes!  I'll leave you with some pictures from my trip to Cordoba:

Hasta luego! xo