Long Time No See?

So, it's been awhile since I've last posted here. A few weeks ago, some things changed in my life, and honestly, I was a little depressed (to say the least.) Basically, I didn't want to be writing a blog with all this depressing stuff in it! So I didn't, and it was a good choice, because now I'm back to my old self! :)

I should explain where I'm at now: I'm in Sevilla, a town in the southwestern part of Spain, in Andalucia, to be specific. Internet was a little hard to come by, but I was able to snag some to post this!

Oh, I should do a quick recap over the last few weeks before I explain Sevilla. Let's see... three weeks ago, I was busy finishing up some things for school. I found out I have to take my engineering classes for a grade, so yikes! I had to start studying really hard for those. Circuits is going okay, and so is Thermodynamics, but of course, they're harder in Spanish. The week after that, I went to visit my friend Jesus in Valencia for the festival Las Fallas.

Actually, holy cow, Las Fallas, where do I even begin?! It was amazing!!! I'm talking fireworks at ALL hours of the day, and not the little wimpy baby kinds, they were like the kinds that are so loud, they sound like bombs going off!! Actually, the streets did sort of look like a warzone with the firework remnants littered everywhere and the booming sounds in the background.

I was there for Thursday night, which apparently was the most insane night of them all. There were at least 100,000 people out on the street at 3 am. Jesus said this was definitely the craziest he'd seen it all month. We bought some fireworks and lit them off in the street (and off the balcony) too, so that was really cool. I don't know if I'd do that in the USA though, haha. Here the cops really didn't care if you were lighting off fireworks or drinking in the street; it was the most bizarre thing. At one point I saw a group of people sitting on cop cars, drinking, and the cops were just chilling nearby.

They had a street that was decorated entirely in lights. Every street had a few light decorations, but Calle Sueca was the most decorated of them all! I took about a million pictures of it; here's one of them. You can kind of see how far back it goes. It was definitely really awe-inspiring. And it sort of reminded me of Disney World or something.

Friday is when all the neighborhoods light off las Mascletas, or their own sets of extremely loud fireworks. Jesus and I went and watched the fireworks for the biggest falla. By the way, a falla is a GIANT paper/cardboard sculpture (but trust me, they don't look like paper or cardboard!) I'm putting a picture here to show you guys...

That's one of the smaller ones, too. Every neighborhood has a falla, and a ninot, or a little falla. Some of these fallas can take up to a year to make and cost hundreds of thousands of euros. And, at the end of the festival...


They burn them!!!!! I watched 3 burn and they were all really impressive. It was a pyromaniac's dream. They also had a huge falla of the Virgin Mary, consecrated with row upon row of roses.


A lot more happened at Las Fallas, but I'd better stop for now since this blog is getting kind of long. The week after, my aunt and uncle came to visit and I took them around Madrid! Finally, this week we're in Sevilla for Semana Santa, or Holy Week. More to come on that, later.

Luego!
Ariel

Cookies!

Hi everyone! I figured I'd update everyone on how things are going since I have a little time.

School has been going great, except last week on Thursday, they announced that my Thermodynamics class has changed hours...again. It's like they have ESP about when my other classes are, because both times this class has moved, it's been conflicting with another class. So, I just have to drop my fun Spanish History Through Cinema class and start taking Spanish Culture Postmodernity, which is equally cool, but I haven't attended class at all because I wasn't supposed to be taking it. Even worse, if I miss a certain number of classes, I can't sit for the final exam, so I have to go talk to some more people because this whole thing isn't my fault. This may sound really stressful, and it was at first, but I think my stress tolerance is increasing or something just by being in Spain. Yay?

The good news is, that's the worst thing that's happened recently :) I visited the Prado again this Sunday with Kruse, who has infinite wisdom over the subjects of the religious paintings because he's studying Theology and knows all these different languages. It's really cool! Both of us talked about how awkward church is here. Both in Germany and the United States, people sing in Catholic masses, but here, it's like a CD playing music for one song, and people just kind of mumble along to the mass. So at least I know I'm not weird for thinking Spanish church is weird.

On Sunday morning, I visited El Rastro (fleat market) again and bought a leather schoolbag! Now I really look like a European...just kidding 8) It's real leather, though, so it actually smells like leather, and lemme tell you, it's a REALLY strong scent. Right now it's airing out on the porch because my room was starting to smell like a tannery, yuck.

Oh yeah, I bought chocolate chip cookies today!! This may not sound that exciting, but cookies aren't really that big here, and I was kinda starting to miss them. (I'm not a big cookie fan in the first place so that's saying a lot.) And I bought different types of tea so now hopefully I can stay awake for my 8 am's. One of these days, I'm going to find somewhere that sells brownies. I miss those too.

Lately, there's been a lot of protests going on in Madrid. Parliament recently approved a law allowing abortion, which is somewhat unusual given the number of Catholics in Spain (it's like 76%.) I've seen a few protests from far away and MAN they're scary!! It's like 20x the GEO protests at U of I; there's so many people, it almost sounds like you're at a football game or something. It's just weird because I haven't seen many protests in my life.

One more thing: it's c-c-c-cold here this week!! The weather was great for the last couple of weeks, but it dipped down again for this week. This morning it was 34F when I was walking to school :S It stinks because I have a lot of early classes, so I have to walk to school when it's really cold. I end up wearing like 4 sweaters and a jacket and looking like a weirdo. Hopefully it gets warmer soon! I'm ready to start wearing dresses!!

I'm gonna make some Manzanilla (Chamomile) tea con anise and get to studying! :) Hasta luego, amigos!

Really? Cool! :)

The other day, the club for exchange students here organized a party at a bar, and I decided to go. It was a lot fun because I got to talk to so many other exchange students. I met people from France, China, Singapore, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, and I can't even remember the rest, there were so many countries!

Every exchange student that wants a "buddy" is partnered with one, or a Spaniard that they can talk to for fun. I have a buddy, and we never actually found each other that night (it was REALLY crowded!!) But, in the process of trying to find him, I talked to a lot of other Spaniards.

The cool part was, they all said something at one point about how good my Spanish was! I couldn't believe it; at first I thought they were talking about someone else. I asked, "me??" and they were like "yep!" I guess that means I'm not nearly as terrible at Spanish as I think I am! :) I still have to work on rolling my R's, though. That always gets me.

Overall it was just a nice boost of confidence. Also, it's the weekend, woooooo!! I have a job interview today through Skype. Wish me luck!!

Luego!

Going for a Walk, and El Rastro

Today, I was going to try to go shopping to catch some of the sales as they start lowering prices ridiculously, but I found out I had to be back for dinner at 7:30. So, I decided to walk around my neighborhood instead, and it was definitely a good decision.

I walked up and down a few streets, made zig-zags across the blocks, and did a whole lot of window shopping. I found out there's lots of cool restaurants right around the corner, some cute little boutiques, a flower shop, and a whole lot of old-lady-clothing stores! (At least I know I won't be shopping around here very much.) And for some reason, walking around for an hour and a half gave me this really cool feeling of inner peace. Haha...not to sound like a hippie or anything, it was just very nice.

Up until now, I've been really nervous walking around, even if I have no reason to be on my guard. Our neighborhood is relatively safe; ie, you won't find a lot of pickpockets here, or so I've heard. But I just could not get myself to relax and stop to smell the roses. Finally today I got to, and it was the best feeling ever!

In other news, I went to Starbucks today because I was really craving coffee. It was like being in America for 2 minutes, except for when I was ordering. Oh yeah, and their Starbucks is HUGE!! It still manages to be packed every time I walk past it, though. I went early in the morning so almost nobody was there, but at any given time during the day, there's gotta be at least 40-50 students crowded around the tiny tables.

Oh, and I went to El Rastro on Sunday! El Rastro is a gigantic flea market that happens on Sundays. It was packed! There were so many people, it was hard to get to the booths sometimes. There were a few tourist-trap-like booths, but there were so many more cool ones. I didn't buy anything this week, but I'll definitely be returning next week to go on the hunt for a leather schoolbag! There were some antiques sections too, and they were selling a lot of cool stuff.

As a side note, almost every furniture salesman had a pocket trumpet for sale. They like to leave them out on tables for decoration, I think, although that is definitely not my type of decoration since I would most likely want to pick it up and play it instead of leaving it out. I think I saw at least 4 that day.

Today I started my Circuits Theory class and started talking to this Spanish girl named Maria. I told her I was from the United States, and she went, "oh! I lived in Kansas for awhile. It sucks..."I lol'd for real. Morris, Illinois probably isn't that different from Kansas, so I would have to agree with her observation.

We're having dinner soon, so that's all for now! I always seem to write these before meals, hmmm.

Tata for now!