Friday January 25/Saturday January 26

The view from our seats...at least you can see how full the stadium was.
The Osasuna fans right next to us lit a red smoke bomb, the inhalation of which will probably take about 2 years off my life.
Me and one of the Beths at the game.

Before class on Friday I went to the post office and sent in the paperwork to get a SEVici card – a little card that will let me use the public bike system here in Seville. The name stands for Sevilla bici (bici being the word for bike) and you can either pay 5 Euro for a week or 10 Euro for a year – so I went for the better deal, the yearlong subscription. I can’t wait to get the card and start taking the bikes all over the city – if you use one for less than 30 minutes then it’s free; 30-90 minutes is 50 cents and anything over that is 1 Euro per hour or something like that. There’s a station on a street pretty close to where my host family lives. It should save me A LOT of time walking…

On Saturday I went to a market in la Cartuja (northwestern part of the city) with Jillian and Lauren. I didn’t buy anything but they have everything from shoes and belts and bags to bootleg DVDs, sunglasses and puppies for sale. Later I got dinner with Beth, Beth (yes, both Beths) and Sarah at a place on Constitución called Cervecería 100 Montaditos. A montadito is a little sandwich (very tiny), and this place has 100 to choose from! You can have chicken, turkey, tuna, lamb, shrimp, veggies, cheese and there are even chocolate sandwiches. So tasty. Then a bunch of us (about ten in all) went to a Sevilla vs. Osasuna fútbol game! We had pretty bad seats (all of ten rows from the very top of the stadium) considering the tickets were 35 Euro each, and we sat right next to a bunch of Osasuna fans but it was still really fun. I’ve never seen a crowd so decked out in their red scarves, but they’re not like US sports fans – no face or body paint, not belligerent, not even drunk (they only sell non-alcoholic beer at the games). Sevilla won, of course.