Monday January 21

Today for class we visited the Fundación José Manuel Lara, which is housed in the 16^th-century Casa de Fabiola, near the CIEE building. The house itself is less than spectacular because so much of the original furniture and decorations have been removed and replaced with replicas. The entryway was pretty, with tile-covered walls, and the white marble everywhere was cool too, but overall the place had a very sterile look. As far as I understand, the house is used today for forums and meetings, which explains why so much of it has been completely restored and/or substituted with replica pieces.

Right now, the house has a collection of photos of different cities in Spain by Charles Clifford, which is a nice exhibit. Overall it was a mediocre experience because there was a guide and even though he was nice enough, he spoke WAY too fast and with vocabulary that was over our heads (normally our professor serves as our guide). Frustrating. I only took one picture – it’s of a ceiling that’s covered in tiles, or azulejos.

Sunday January 20

At 3:30 this afternoon a bunch of us in the program walked to the cathedral and climbed la Giralda (the huge tower). It’s over 96 meters tall. The bottom 1/3 of it was built by the Romans, the middle 1/3 by Muslims and the top 1/3 by Christians. Really weird: it doesn’t have stairs - there are only ramps all the way up to the top. We learned that it was built that way so that anyone who went up to ring the bells or to stand watch could ride up on a horse rather than get exhausted (like we did) doing it on foot. The view from the top is amazing! Turned out to be really good exercise and it’s free for students. I took the first two photos on the way up, looking out of little window-like lookout points. The third one is of the view from the very top – so cool to look out onto the top of the cathedral. The last one is of Jillian and me – she’s doing great despite her fear of heights.

Saturday January 19

Walked ALL over Los Remedios and Triana today with Jillian, a friend from my program. We ate tapas for lunch in Los Remedios and walked to Parque de los Principes afterward. It’s a really big park in western Los Remedios with tons of orange trees, a pond, bridges, playgrounds, etc.

Ate dinner with people from our program at a place that serves montaditos – little sandwiches that come in a million different varieties. Later we went to the carbonería – a bar with a tons of tables and a big stage for amateur flamenco dancing. Really fun.

Friday January 18

Today I went shopping near my apartment because of all the good sales that happen in January and February, called rebajas. EVERY store has them and some stores will give you 60% or 70% off the original price. Really good deals. I bought a zip-up sweatshirt for 11 Euros and a button down shirt for 8 Euros.

Later, class started at 5 at the cathedral. It’s hard to understand how humongous it actually is until you see it. It’s way bigger than Notre Dame, and has a total of 7 naves, making it the biggest gothic cathedral in the world. It’s a little unusual because it has this big thing in the middle called the coro, which is where members of the church administration pray. It really obstructs the view of the whole cathedral and makes it tough to see how big the space is.

The first photo just gives an idea of how huge the cathedral is, plus it's a cool shot of some vaulted ceilings. The second one is a photo of the tomb of Christopher Columbus. His final resting place is actually a big controversy, because he died in Valladolid, Spain 1506 and was buried at the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville. But in 1542 his body was taken to taken to Santo Domingo and in 1795 he was moved to Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became independent in 1898, the remains were brought back to Seville. Columbus is, in fact, in the cathedral, in this tomb. The bronze figures are huge, and the tomb shows a casket borne by four kings, representing the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Leon.

The third photo looks weird but it's really cool. If you look closely you can see that there are two very different arches in it. The one is a gothic arch and the larger one is a Muslim, horseshoe-shaped arch. These two types of architecture, mixed like this, are found all over ancient sites in Seville. This image demonstrates that the giant cathedral was once the central mosque of the city, back when Seville was under Muslim rule (8th through 13th centuries). The patio, or external area that you can't see in the picture, was left in the Muslim style and is still very pretty today, surrounded by Muslim arches. The mosque itself though was transformed into a cathdral with gothic architecture. The word for Muslim and Christian architecture mixed together is Mudejar, although our professor said this isn't really Mudejar because they're just thrown together, not really mixed. Anyway, bottom line: visit the cathedral. It's cool.

Thursday January 17

Had a registration appointment today at noon. Later, class at 5 included a 2-hour walk around the old Jewish quarter of the city, called Santa Cruz. We learned that Santa Cruz was totally redone at the beginning of the 20^th century because it had fallen into disrepair and it was a dangerous part of the city. So it was rebuilt in the image of a “typical” Andalucian village – which actually makes it a big fakery. It’s really touristy and hasn’t preserved much of its history. Our professor pointed out some cool stuff, though, including which churches used to be synagogues, an old tomb (now built into a parking structure) of a Jewish man, the spots in the walls that were for the iron gates that used to enclose the quarter, etc. The main synagogue (only 3 were legal) was destroyed and now there’s only a plaza with a big iron cross…anyway now Santa Cruz has lots of hotels and small shops and restaurants. Everything there tends to be too expensive, and tourists buy it because they don’t know any better.

Then at 7 we went to a talk by Rosa Díaz, a Basque politician. She talked about language politics (Spanish vs. Catalán vs. Euskara), making changes to the constitution, “miracles of the masses”, etc. It was hard to understand her at first (not that she spoke Euskara or anything; she spoke Spanish) but that got easier. She spoke for an hour and then took questions for another hour. It was a long night – 4 total hours of class.

Wednesday January 16

Class met today at 9:30 a.m. at the Real Alcázar and then went on a tour of the whole southern part of the city. We learned that the Rio Guadalquivir (an Arabic name for the river that runs through Seville) used to run right through what is now a big public plaza, Plaza Nueva. We also learned that the whole city used to be enclosed with GIANT walls that ran all over the place, from the Real Alcázar to the Torre de Oro and everywhere in between. A lot of the walls (built during the 8^th and 9^th centuries) are still standing in different parts of the city – for instance there’s a big section that makes up the back wall of a café. Crazy. Then we went to a place called the Atarazanas, near the river, where ships were built centuries ago. It has huge vaulted ceilings and was reeeaally big. Then it was on to the Torre de Oro, which has been converted into a naval museum. We climbed all the way to the top – awesome views.

Later, after class that night, I tried a yema – a little sweet that is famous in Seville. It looks like a little egg, with white icing type stuff outside and a yellow yolk thing inside – and the inside is made using egg yolk. It was pretty gross, actually. But all the other sweets (dulces) that you can find here on every street in bakeries (confiterías) are awesome and more than make up for it. Not to mention the chocolate con churros…

Random blog

This posting doesn't correspond to a particular day. I took this picture the other day, and I've been meaning to post it ever since. See, there's just so much going on here. What is "snuts"? Something having to do with nuts, its seems, but what exactly? Also, what do you think they were going for with "banana crack"? Perhaps "banana split" was the intention. Maybe I'll go inside and inquire. Oh, Spain.

Tuesday January 15

Went to the Real Alcázar this morning with my class. I had NO idea the Alcázar was so big – from the outside it looks like just a wall or two. It is an entire interconnected palace of courtyards, private rooms, fountains, and huge gardens. It was originally built between the 9^th and 13^th centuries, when the Almohads were in power in Andalucía (they took power in 711 and remained in Seville until 1248, though they didn’t leave Andalucía entirely until 1492). Alcázar is an Arabic word meaning something like “fortified palace”, which makes sense because the building, located in the southernmost part of Seville, was used as headquarters for military, government and administration.

The palace was at its peak during the 12^th century, featuring both horseshoe and plaster arches, endless walls of azulejo tile patterns, ornately decorated and gilded dome ceilings and a labyrinth-like interior plan which keeps you guessing about where you are and where you’re going – this is partly why it is hard to judge the size of the Alcázar from the outside. The Alcázar also features an underground bathing space – which was very rarely used by the Christian rulers, who were very suspicious of anyone who bathed on a regular basis. Supposedly one of the kings had a very promiscuous mistress who often bathed naked in the bathing room, and everyone could look through the grates in the floors and see her. When Christian rulers took Seville from Muslim rule in 1248, the Catholic king Fernando III moved into the Alcázar and began making his own contributions to the structure. Three kings of Spain are currently buried in the Alcázar.

Afterwards Beth and Jillian and I got coffee, went home for lunch and reunited later that day for class at the CIEE building.

Monday January 14

I finally decided to invest in a wireless internet connection service called Instanet. You only need an electrical outlet to use it, which is great because I don’t have an internet jack or a phone line in my room. I had seen Instanet before at a big department store here called El corte ingles. So I walked there from my apartment in the morning, planning to buy it and have it all set up before the first class meeting of our intensive session today. But the sales girl who works specifically for Instanet wasn’t there. She only works 4-9 p.m., naturally. So that had to wait.

My class met that evening from 6-9 p.m. After about 90 mins in the CIEE building, we went out and walked all over the city together with our professor (adorable short little Spanish guy, Carlos). Specifically, we looked at the ancient Roman ruins of Seville. It’s crazy – we turned down one of the thousands of tiny winding pedestrian streets here and suddenly we were standing next to three humongous marble columns. They stand in between two apartment buildings, and are attached via wires to one building so that they don’t fall over. Carlos said they are believed to have been part of the original Roman forum in Seville. He also said that an apartment building used to exist AROUND the columns; these things used to run vertically through people’s living rooms. Not long ago, the city ousted the residents and demolished the building in order to better preserve the columns. Carlos said this kind of government action (kicking people out of their living space to preserve ancient history of Seville) makes many people keep mum when they begin to build a house in the city and they find precious relics of the past. Not wanting the city to delay the building of their house by months or years or maybe permanently, people often just try to build over them.

Sunday January 13

I slept until almost noon today, which was great. A few of us made the mistake of walking all the way into el centro (basically the historic district) to go shopping – we didn’t realize that everything is closed on Sundays. So we wandered around for awhile before going to the CIEE building, where we were supposed to go on a walking tour of the city. This was a bad idea for two reasons: bad weather (rainy and cold) and it was really unnecessary, seeing as we had already been in the city for about a week. Most of us already knew our way around…well, somewhat, anyway. So we went on a mini-tour and ended up on Avenida de la constitución, where everyone had chocolate (very different from America hot chocolate, chocolate here is almost as rich as a melted chocolate bar) and some people got palmeras (sweet pastries shaped like elephant ears) for dipping. Que rico.

Saturday January 12

Today everyone in advanced liberal arts went to Itálica, an ancient Roman city north of Seville. It has a beautiful old amphitheatre that reminded me in many ways of the Coliseum in Rome, plus marble statues of rulers, tile mosaics and an extensive sewer system which was created before the birth of Christ. Most of the floors and lowest portions of the walls of the homes still exist, and the mosaics (on the floors) are in really good condition. One house is called the House of Birds because its floor mosaic shows more than 30 kinds of birds. It is one of the first attempts to classify birds. Cats wandered through the amphitheatre and the ruins of the homes and followed us around (see photos). Itálica was only about 20 minutes from Seville, so it was a nice getaway.

Thursday January 10

Thursday 10: This morning we went to the university for a second time, to learn about differences between the Spanish and American university systems. Essentially, many American universities emphasize a liberal arts education, where students get a broad education and take classes in many different areas of study. The Spanish system is basically all about professional education. So whereas an American university student might take a history class just because it interests her even though she’s an English major, a Spanish student takes a history class because she is studying to become a historian. The Spanish education system also focuses on the professor rather than on the student, and the relationship between the two is very formal. We’ve been told to expect long lectures rather than discussions, and exams are all-important for our grades. Here are two photos of the university and one of the CIEE study center door.

Following the academic session, we went to a different classroom and each got a single sheet of paper with the name and address of our host family. Most people were assigned to live with señoras – usually an older woman, often a widow, whose children have grown and left home and who has bedrooms available for students. In some cases, one of the señora’s adult children still lives at home. But not me. My family has a host mother and her three sons, ages 24, 19 and 14. Of all four of my host family members, only the middle brother speaks a little English. Very few host families include so many children who still live at home, because living space is really tight in Sevilla, and spare bedrooms are almost unheard of. And if you’re thinking a 24-year old should have moved out by now, then you must not be a Spaniard. Most sons here live at home until they get married. All three boys share one bedroom, but I have my own. It’s hard to not feel guilty about this set-up, but the family is very used to it because they’ve hosted more than 20 American students in the past – all girls. The family also includes two Yorkshire Terriers, Cura and Toti, and three little birds which constantly try to steer clear of the dogs – so there’s always a lot going on. I ate lunch (the biggest meal of the day) with my host family around 2:30 and tried really hard to understand all four of them - they tend to talk all at once. Then I unpacked my suitcases and went back into town for tapas with my CIEE group.

Wednesday January 9

This morning at breakfast I had my first taste of jamón cerrano, which is a specialty of this region, and it’s delicious. After breakfast all 32 of the students in the Advanced Liberal Arts program (12 of whom are from Georgetown) had an academic orientation before leaving the hotel to walk to the University of Seville, where we will all take classes this semester. The piropos started as soon as we left the hotel, especially for girls with blonde or red hair and light colored eyes.

The university is awesome – a 500 + year-old tobacco factory-turned-university, called the fábrica de tabacos or the tabalacera. It’s huge and sprawling and beautiful. It has a café, a school supply store, etc. plus lots of big plazas with fountains and open ceilings. It even had its own jail many years ago – the jail building is still right next to the main building, and now it serves as office space for the history department, if I remember right. After a tour of the university and a briefing about academic information and expectations, we went out for tapas for lunch. We ate at a place on la Calle Huelva called El refugio, where we ate tapas like shrimp and cucumber on a skewer, jamón cerrano with mushrooms, anchovies on toast (that one’s for you, mom) and bacalao (salty raw fish on bread). Writing that, they don’t sound very good, but they were delicious. We washed it all down with sangria and wine.

After lunch we walked to CIEE’s “palacio” (study center downtown), which is a beautiful old building with a courtyard and a fountain under an open sky, tile walls, and a very rustic overall look. We’ll use the palacio a lot – many of us will have a class there and we can all use its desktop computers, wifi internet and printing room. Later we had to take a quick speaking exam – nobody knows exactly why. After a safety briefing and dinner back at the hotel, we went to a traditional flamenco show.

There were about 50 or 60 audience members sitting around an open courtyard with a tiny wooden stage. The singer and guitar player did one or two songs before the dancer entered the courtyard. The music is really pretty, and the singing is REALLY loud and very sad. All three (singer, guitarist and dancer) dressed in black, and performed two or three songs together. Then the dancer changed into a polka dot dress and the show went on. In the photo, you can see the singer to the right of the dancer. He's WAILING. Also, check out the little video that I took of the dancer in action. Sorry, I can't figure out how to flip it so the video is upright.

Monday/Tuesday January 7/8

I'm exhausted after about 12 straight hours of traveling. Flew LA to DC, DC to Heathrow, Heathrow to Madrid, and then took a train from Madrid to Sevilla. The airport in Madrid (Barajas) was cool – REALLY big, not at all crowded and full of cool yellowish greenish bluish posts and funky architectural design. I took pictures, and it’s a miracle someone didn’t steal my camera given how disoriented I was.

At Barajas I met another girl who was also taking a train to Seville. We got our luggage and shared a cab to the train station, Atocha Renfe. Atocha was pretty strange – both of us were extremely sleep-deprived and wandered around aimlessly, not realizing we were on the wrong floor of the three-story building. We then waited over 30 minutes to buy tickets, all the while sweating due to the heat and humidity generated by the freaking greenhouse in the train station. It’s really odd – maybe 20% of the train station is devoted to a very healthy open-air mini-greenhouse, and the whole place is as humid as the Amazon. We just made it onto the 2 p.m. train, threw our luggage into the racks and both immediately fell asleep and snoozed all the way to Seville (2 hours, 20 minutes). We split a cab from the Seville train station (Santa Justa) to the hotel, and now here I am, struggling to stay awake.

All greetings by CIEE staff at the hotel were in Spanish, which is tough to use if you’re American and as exhausted as I am. I couldn’t answer even the simplest questions, such as “¿Qúe tal tu viaje?” (“How was your trip?”), for lack of sleep. I hope to sleep a lot tonight, which seems likely - our late-night horse drawn carriage ride was cancelled because the drivers are on strike, although apparently for them being on strike means standing with the carriages and actively soliciting passengers. Hopefully I’ll begin to soak up the culture tomorrow.

Hola

*A note: I'm posting these first few posts well after the fact because I haven't had regular internet access until now (Weds. Jan. 16).*

Hola

¡Hola a todos! I’m leaving on Sunday, January 6 for a semester studying abroad in Seville, Spain. I’m really excited – I’ve never been to Spain and I can’t wait to put eight years of Spanish to the test, plus the food, music and sights of Seville should be amazing!

I will be taking five direct-matriculation courses at the Universidad de Sevilla, and possibly some at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide. The program is administered by a company called the Council on International Educational Exchange, or CIEE. A total of 12 Georgetown students will take part in the program. For the first 2 nights we’ll stay together in a hotel, and then we’ll move into our homestays. I’ll be living with a family – I don’t know anything about them yet!

I hope to travel to other cities in Spain – Huelva, Cádiz, Granada, Málaga, Madrid and Barcelona to name a few. CIEE has a couple trips planned for us already, but I hope to see different parts of Spain on weekends and over holidays like Semana Santa and Fería. The program ends sometime during either the last week in June or the first week in July, and I plan to travel even more at that time.

In addition to blogging, I’ll be writing a monthly cultural piece for the Daily Pilot, where I interned and worked as a reporter for the past two summers. The first story is tentatively scheduled for February 3, and the plan is for the pieces to run the first Sunday of the month until July.

Feel free to email me (schultheis.heidi@gmail.com) and post comments by clicking on the word "comments" which appears to the bottom right of each entry. Anyone can leave a comment. Last semester I got some experience keeping a blog for one of my courses, and hopefully I’ll be more diligent about updating this one frequently…

Hasta luego,

Heidi