I think the last thing I wrote in that last letter was when we went to Madrid and Paris. That was really fun. Since then I’ve not really been going too many places; I’ve just sort of been hanging around Seville. That weekend after Paris, though, a friend and I went to Granada, Spain. It’s a town about 3 hours east of Seville. It’s my favorite place that I’ve been to this whole semester. It’s small and has basically one tourist attraction—the Alhambra, which is this fortress that dates back to, I think, the 9th century or something like that. It was really pretty and has been a fortress, a palace, a house, blah blah blah. It’s been a lot of stuff. So we went to the Alhambra. Well, Granada is in the middle of the mountains with the backdrop of Sierra Nevada, which is the highest mountain in Spain. So it made for a beautiful background to the Alhambra. That night, Friday night, my friend and I were wandering around Granada and stumbled across this perfect overview of Granada and the Alhambra and Sierra Nevada. A lot of people were hanging out there so when we found it we were kind of surprised. As we were hanging out there, this American kid came up to us and started talking to us and we made plans to hang out that night. So Amanda and I went back to our hostel, had dinner, which they made for us and it was some typical Granada dish, then met back up with that kid and went out for wine and tapas. It was pretty fun but we headed back to bed fairly early because the next day we had big plans to go hiking. So Saturday we got up and hung around for a little while. I ended up having a 2-hour conversation with 2 people, one from Slovakia, the other from Japan. After a while, though, Amanda and I set out on our adventure. We basically just walked out of Granada and hiked around the mountains all behind it. I wanted to go skiing on Sierra Nevada but Amanda was too nervous, haha! So we just hiked around behind Granada. It seriously was that fresh air that I needed, though. Being in the city had been killing me and I was going crazy, so going to the mountains was the perfect thing. After our daylong hike we headed back down to Granada and walked around. It’s an awesome town. I think if Boone, NC, were Spanish, it would be Granada. I think that’s why I liked it so much. So after a while we decided to head back to go catch the bus to Seville. We ended up missing it and had to stay in Granada another night (darn!, right?). I was happy for that. But we finally got back to home, sweet, home, Seville on Sunday.
That following week was midterms, so I studied a good bit and I did alright on my tests. I made lunch for my family one day (chili and cornbread!) and had a pretty calm week.
That Friday I went on a daytrip to Jerez de la Frontera, which is about 45 minutes south of Seville. It was a pretty cool town and is really famous for its sherry (“sherry” in Spanish is actually “jerez”—the name of the town). We spent the day there and took a tour of a bodega and hung out in Jerez. It’s an incredibly small town so we caught the 8:00 night bus back to Seville. The bodega was really pretty and the lady told us everything she knew about sherry making, which was basically everything there is to know. So that was an interesting little trip.
The next week we had off school. It was Holy Week and Seville has a ridiculous weeklong parade. All the churches make these float things. They weigh 100s of pounds and have bigger-than-life figures of Mary or Jesus or the Crucifixion or any Holy Week scene. Most churches have two floats—one of Jesus and one of Mary, and hundreds of people that dress up like the KKK and follow and lead the floats. This is a 500-year-old tradition and is really really famous. It was pretty cool and really crowded. I stayed here for the whole week, so I saw a lifetime’s worth of Mary-and-Jesus floats.
So the next week we had school again. Ugh. But that Saturday I went with the university’s sport department to go hiking. We went to Sierra Morena in Córdoba, about an hour east of Seville. It was a group of about 30 Spaniards in a charter bus that went out there (and 5 Americans). The hike wasn’t hard at all, but if you were to just listen to the Spaniards, you’d think we were hiking Mount Everest! The hike had two parts—one went through a botanical hilly garden. We made a circle through it and then went up the mountain to an overlook. Some of the Spaniards even bailed out after the garden, saying it was just too hard. Hahaha. Ohh Spaniards.
Anyways, the next Monday I had a visitor! A friend of mine from ASU who is studying in England came down to visit for a few days. It was really fun and I showed her all around Seville. She was here from Monday night through Thursday morning. It was kind of funny because I still had school, so she waited for me here at the house in the morning and she speaks only a few words of Spanish. Well my host mom would try and talk to her and she just had noo idea what to do. My host mom’s daughter speaks a little English, so she’d try and translate, but hearing about the mornings from my friend’s point of view was pretty funny.
That Thursday Stephanie went on her way back to England and I had a few hours to sleep a tiny bit and then pack to go to Italy. This week we have had off school for Feria (I’ll tell ya about that in a second), so we traveled a little around Italy. Two friends and I flew into Pisa Thursday night and Friday we spent a little while there. Basically the only thing in Pisa is the leaning tower so after we saw that we caught a train to Florence. Florence was my favorite town in Italy. It was just gorgeous and we hiked up this hill (one of the seven hills of Ancient Rome! Pretty cool, huh?) and saw an overlook of all of Florence. That night we went to dinner with a friend of one of the girls in our group and hung out in Florence and stuff. It was really fun and even prettier at night, with the river and all the buildings lit up. The next day we spent a little while in Florence then caught a train to Venice. Venice was gooooorgeous and just like the movies! I liked it a ton but it was definitely really expensive and really touristy. But it was beautiful. That night, instead of staying in Venice, because a hostel costs about 75 dollars (and we don’t like paying more than about 15 dollars a night), we took the 7-hour night train to Rome. We finally got to Rome and stayed just outside the city in a little campground. The city is amazing. We saw everything there was to see and I’m pretty sure we left no ground uncovered. We finally got back to Seville Thursday morning about 7 am.
It had been raining in Seville a monsoon for the past 3 days and they say we got a month-and-a-half’s worth of rain in 3 days! The river is so full. But everyone’s kind of bummed out because it’s been raining on this Feria week. Well, Feria is a huge deal. Basically it’s just another excuse for Sevillians to party it up. Everyone goes to this one designated Feria section of town (this part of town is not used for anything other than Feria—one week of the year) and gets dressed up in Flamenco dresses and sets up these tents and just eats and drinks and dances. It’s pretty crazy. There’s a little fair on one side, too. It’s really fun and it’s cool because it’s such a Sevillian tradition.
So tomorrow I have school again. We have to finish out aaaaallllllllll of April with no more breaks! I don’t know what I’ll do. But thank goodness we have May 1st off for another festival. Going that long with no days off? Shew!
Seriously though, Seville is really beautiful right now with all the spring flowers and birds and the weather is getting a lot warmer lately, too. I only have one month left here, though! I hope to come and visit my host family at least once over the summer one weekend or something since I’ll be fairly close.
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