2/3/11
New plan for the blog. Since I don't have internet in my apartment and whenever I can get to a place with wifi I always have tons of stuff to do online, I will now be writing blog entries in a Word document and then post a bunch whenever I have wifi (and I'll date them in case I upload them in a non-chronological order accidentally).
Well, in all my excitement about our weekend adventures I forgot to write about my intercambio! The University of Sevilla has a program where you get matched up with a Spanish student who wants to practice their English and help you with Spanish, and last week I finally got to meet mine! Her name is Carmen, she is 18 years old and from a small town about an hour north of Sevilla. We spent about and hour and a half walking around Parque María Luisa and talking in a solid Spanglish. She is studying marketing and is very sweet. Also, there is a café chain here in Sevilla called MASCARPONE with some of the best gelato ever....and her dad is somehow involved in the process of making their ice cream!!
My roommate Amy also had her first meeting with her intercambio last night, an 18 year old boy named Daniel. They decided to each bring some friends and meet at a bar so the first meeting would be less awkward and more casual, so I went along with her. It was really nice to meet some more Spaniards (something that I've felt has been lacking in my experience here since there are only Americans in my classes), and they were hilarious! We spent a large portion of the time learning "key" Spanish phrases from them....most of which were inappropriate insults I will refrain from posting.
Now that I have been in classes for almost a month, the two hour class periods are not so bad as at the beginning...but some days it is still a challenge to concentrate the last half hour or so. I have also come to the realization that I have chosen the right major (Biochemistry) because I don't think I could survive another semester of strictly history, literature, etc....even though it is all very interesting, I definitely miss my science classes and lab time. Also, I find it interested how the professors here can lecture for two hours straight, most with out visual aids (however I have one younger professor who uses Power Point) except for writing a few words on the board every ten minutes or so.
Last night I also went to another Sevilla FC match with six other Americans. Once again we were in the standing section (which I would equate to a student section in the U.S.) and Sevilla won 3-0 over Real Sporting Gijón. The game didn't start until 10 PM and even though it was less crowded than the last game I went to, it was ten times more fun!! Most soccer teams here have a team song or hymn and I found it interesting that at the beginning of the game the team hymn was sung by all the fans but the Spanish national anthem was never played. While many of the cheers and songs sung by the "biris" (the name for the fans in the standing section) were incomprehensible for us, some of the Americans I was with were surprised by the negativity and brutality of some of the cheers....however, I just had to laugh because they were nothing compared to some of the cheers you can hear at Bulldog hockey games ;)
New plan for the blog. Since I don't have internet in my apartment and whenever I can get to a place with wifi I always have tons of stuff to do online, I will now be writing blog entries in a Word document and then post a bunch whenever I have wifi (and I'll date them in case I upload them in a non-chronological order accidentally).
Well, in all my excitement about our weekend adventures I forgot to write about my intercambio! The University of Sevilla has a program where you get matched up with a Spanish student who wants to practice their English and help you with Spanish, and last week I finally got to meet mine! Her name is Carmen, she is 18 years old and from a small town about an hour north of Sevilla. We spent about and hour and a half walking around Parque María Luisa and talking in a solid Spanglish. She is studying marketing and is very sweet. Also, there is a café chain here in Sevilla called MASCARPONE with some of the best gelato ever....and her dad is somehow involved in the process of making their ice cream!!
My roommate Amy also had her first meeting with her intercambio last night, an 18 year old boy named Daniel. They decided to each bring some friends and meet at a bar so the first meeting would be less awkward and more casual, so I went along with her. It was really nice to meet some more Spaniards (something that I've felt has been lacking in my experience here since there are only Americans in my classes), and they were hilarious! We spent a large portion of the time learning "key" Spanish phrases from them....most of which were inappropriate insults I will refrain from posting.
Now that I have been in classes for almost a month, the two hour class periods are not so bad as at the beginning...but some days it is still a challenge to concentrate the last half hour or so. I have also come to the realization that I have chosen the right major (Biochemistry) because I don't think I could survive another semester of strictly history, literature, etc....even though it is all very interesting, I definitely miss my science classes and lab time. Also, I find it interested how the professors here can lecture for two hours straight, most with out visual aids (however I have one younger professor who uses Power Point) except for writing a few words on the board every ten minutes or so.
Last night I also went to another Sevilla FC match with six other Americans. Once again we were in the standing section (which I would equate to a student section in the U.S.) and Sevilla won 3-0 over Real Sporting Gijón. The game didn't start until 10 PM and even though it was less crowded than the last game I went to, it was ten times more fun!! Most soccer teams here have a team song or hymn and I found it interesting that at the beginning of the game the team hymn was sung by all the fans but the Spanish national anthem was never played. While many of the cheers and songs sung by the "biris" (the name for the fans in the standing section) were incomprehensible for us, some of the Americans I was with were surprised by the negativity and brutality of some of the cheers....however, I just had to laugh because they were nothing compared to some of the cheers you can hear at Bulldog hockey games ;)
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