Everyone in the world is asleep...

Pensamientos

The couples here are exactly what you would imagine European couples would be. Maybe I'm just an American wanting to fulfill my previous romanticized expectations I've had, but every time I see them in the street, they're always holding hands and kissing each other without a care in the world about anyone around them (massive PDA is everywhere.) It's not the kind of holding hands and kissing that occurs for no reason or out of complacency. It always looks so passionate, and everyone looks in love.

In the gardens of Alhombra, Granada

Went shopping the other day. Though the prices were rock bottom, I just couldn't bring myself to rummage through a table that looked like it projectile vomited clothes.

Rebajas en Zara

Lost 30€, but don't tell my mom.


It's been averaging 104 degrees Fahrenheit here lately.

We need to install a bike rental program from CH to Carrboro. They have a program where you can pick up a bike at any station (which saturates almost every block) and drop it off at any one you want. My roommate and I have been riding around two people on one bike. Absolutely love it.

If you're wondering about the food, it's been a little lackluster. Burger King was a disappointment. However, our señora's food has been amazing.

Serious bit: 

Went to Granada and Córdoba this weekend. I kind of wish I wasn't so tired and slightly hungover when we went sightseeing. After I starting feeling better in the mosque or cathedral we were perusing, I started having an amazing time: truly appreciating all the little details and hours of awesome manpower that it took to construct structures that still stand to this day and house thousands of patrons everyday. It's amazing what people will do for their faith. Imagine spending hundreds, maybe thousands of hours carving the same elaborate mosque.

The most important thing I realized when I visited these landmarks is that it's not about being able to check them off bucketlists or being able to post boring pictures on Facebook no one will ever look at. It's truly an internalized experience that can only be experienced on the most personal level. Even the most magnificent sites will never hold meaning unless they are derived from your own mind. Seeing a site is not about what you see with your eyes but the thoughts that are created from seeing what you see. 


Never thought sightseeing would be so trippy.


We visited a mosque built, literally, for royalty. Imagine living back then and having your own castle. Ahhh to live like a king.

View from the castle

I think I've woken up from a coma. There was a period in my life where I oozed creative thoughts and, honestly, 

happiness towards the world around me. Hopefully, I've found it again. This morning I had so many thoughts, I could barely get them down on paper. I felt like the guy from Memento*. Right now, I can barely grasp the creativity I felt this morning to put in this post. I think that's why I'm always sending my random thoughts in the form of mass texts to my friends. A text is so instantaneous. My phone is always readily available, and I can disseminate my thoughts to the world outside. If they stay in my head, they're lost almost forever.

Less serious bit:

It's amazing how quickly you get used to being sweaty and being ok with it.


It's amazing how much deodorant I need.

Interacting with my host ma and seeing how wonderfully elegant she is reminds me of some people back home *cough* Katherine *cough* that would make great hosts for exchange students - once they're older of course.

I love how everyone is so cheap here as far as energy usage goes. Everyone is an environmentalist here. Everyone always turns off lights when they leave the room or doesn't use them if it's possible. Short showers, and no one here would ever shower twice in a day no matter how sweaty they would get during the day. Light air conditioning. Walking EVERYWHERE. If you know me, you know why I love it.

Granada

People permanently on vacation:

Guide book authors

Food critic/Film critic/Site critic/any kind of critic

Tour guides

Bloggers

Study abroad administrators

Paris Hilton

Hilarious comment on siestas: "Spain is a country where the unemployment rate is over 20-percent, yet the people still observe naptime every afternoon."
Check it out at http://tiny.cc/58d11

I need to live life - better.

More to come.

*I'd think one thing and 5 seconds later, it'd be like a brand new day with brand new thoughts. Google it and/or watch it.

Chupito

Sevilla reminds me so much of Vietnam. The way the signs are kind of beat up. The streets are filled with honking taxis. There are always people walking around on the streets. The buildings all have shops on the bottom floors and above those stores are apartments. The airport. The car dealerships. (Oddly,) the smells. Even the billboards look similar. It's such an odd mix of Westernized, modern people submerged in older, Spanish colonial buildings.

Vietnam

Same same but different

Stayed in Hotel Alcázar the first day - supre nice. Best thing about the hotel: bidet. Never felt cleaner.

We went to dinner at a hole in the wall kind of place with all the higher-ups of the program. Open air kinda place. In Sevilla, there’s insane mazes of alleyways that have pubs and bars and restaurants that still manage to draw people.

After dinner, we went to a bar named Flaherty’s. Sounds Irish, huh? It was filled with a mix of Spainards and foreigners. Heard a good bit of English being thrown around. Turns out, we need to step our Spanish futból game up – there’s like 15 different chants we need to learn (Spain won thank goodness.) Drinks are about the same cost in America if you convert everything. Like I said: the exchange rate kind of sucks.

Afterwards, we wandered through the streets of Sevilla. Up every tiny alleyway there were closed shops and happy sports fanatics. The city really wakes up starting about 10 pm (yea, I'm surprised that wasn't a cliché either.) Everyone likes to go to plazas and grab a drink. We finally ended up at la Plaza Salvador (I’m pretty sure.) We talked to quite a few locals. A couple recommended “tinto de verano” to us. It’s wine mixed with some kind of sparkling lemonade. It was good, and it was cheap. And everyone in our program has been obsessed ever since. While it's usually a faux pas to drink anything else but wine with wine, Spainards add juice, ice, Fanta even. 

At about midnight, everyone moves from plazas to discotecas and it really starts turning into a huge club scene. But for the night, we just decided to head for the hotel. Didn't have my camera so no pics. Sorry, use your imaginación.

Next morning, we met our señoras/host families. 

Straight out an Ikea catalogue.

I live with my roommate, Jordan. Our señora is absolutely brillante. She’s a Biology teacher who lives with her son (who has yet to wake up.) Her apartment is nicely decorated, modern, great - better than some homes in the States. We have our own little room and bathroom. There’s central air conditioning, and it’s about an eight minute walk to school. She welcomed us with huge arms (well not huge like fat, but you know what I mean), and she seems awesome to put it simply.

Sala

The view.

Got the hook up on some phones at Vodafone (don't they have that in VN?): two-fer-one. Feel like I'm in sixth grade again. You know when you first get cell phones? You don't have that many texts, and your parents told you to use it as little as possible? Pre-paid kind of sucks. Well we threaded our way through blocks and blocks of small streets, through la Universidad de Sevilla and finally through a plaza (read: mall) in blazing 100+ degree heat. 

The room and roomie

(I didn't bring Brian!)

Definitely wanna go back and go shopping at La Plaza Nervión sometime though. My bank account best prepare itself for warfare. (Males can stop reading here:) Our señora told us there's sales for the next two months here for almost no reason. Prices are completely slashed, and the clothes are actually stylish. No wonder Europeans and Spanish girls here are always stylish. Where we only have H&M and f21, they have at least seven equivalents. Heaven.

Cocinera, señora y segunda mamá

American things here:

Family Guy (dubbed)

Simpsons (dubbed)

Twilight (dubbed - at least in the commercial the announcer is Spanish)

Every American movie that's currently out

Mr. Clean (a.k.a. Don limpio)

McDonalds (of course)

(Lots of) Starbucks

Harry Potter's Dean Thomas actor (Read interesting tangent below.)

[The first night we were out, we were at la Plaza Salvador, getting drinks and chillin'. One of the girls in the program saw a guy and being as outgoing as Americans can be, walked up to him and asked if they had met before, because he looked familiar. He said he didn't recognize her and that he was British. The next day at the hotel we realized it was, because he was Dean Thomas from Harry Potter.]

Ugh. I look tanner. Hopefully, it's just the lights in this room. (And yes, it's a quasi-narcissistic self-taken webcam pic, but I feel like I haven't taken any pictures with me in them.)

Same same but different

Just the short, the down and the dirty.

More to come.