Today Kelsey and I have just been relaxing around the city. We brought our computers with us to a great outside café and we are enjoying the view. While I’ve got some down time I thought I would catch everybody up with what happened this weekend. I’ve got some great pictures to go along with this post and I hope you enjoy them.
After about 15 days in this country (it seems like we’ve been here longer than that) I’ve started to really miss something about America and especially my home: the feeling of being full. Big portions are definitely a foreign thing here in Spain and my body doesn’t like that too much. Kelsey and I find ourselves stopping for snacks or other small tapas every few hours. I will just have to learn to adapt to this new way of dieting, so we’ll see how that goes.
The third day that Kelsey and I were here in Seville we visited the Real Alcazar, which is a palace with beautiful gardens located in the city center near the cathedral. Kelsey heard of this way to take pictures so you can form your name with them after you line them up next to each other. I tried my hand at it while we toured the palace and gardens.
I recently finished reading “The Lost City of Z,” a book that I purchased in the Chicago airport before we got on our flight to Madrid. I have always thought of myself as an adventurous person but the protagonist in this story has me beat by a long shot. The story is about an explorer who is hired by the Brazilian government to navigate and chart the huge expanses of the Amazon rainforest. While he goes on these impossible missions he becomes obsessed with the theory that there is a forgotten city (similar to the stories of El Dorado) in the vastness of the jungle. He spends his whole life searching for this lost city but never returns from his last expedition. Now I’m not saying that I’m going to get lost in Spain and never come back, but I have discovered some similarities between myself and this explorer: I don’t know the area that I am living in, I have to deal with the native people (luckily they aren’t armed with spears and poison blow darts), and I have to learn a foreign language. I feel like I am here to fill in the blank spots of my mind and learn about the different cultures of the world, much like the navigator helped chart the blank spots in the Amazon. (Dad, you would love this book)
Yesterday we walked around the city with a few friends and got tapas at a big plaza and enjoyed ourselves talking about where we were from, why we chose to study in Seville and what we like best about the city. After our long lunch break we kept walking and found an amazing stucture known as Las Setas. This huge abstract piece is supposed to look like mushrooms and claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world. We paid the 1,20 euros and took the elevator up to the top where there is a very cool café and pathway that goes all around the outer part of the structure. Though not as tall as the Cathedral in Seville the view from Las Setas is one of the best we’ve seen so far.
Probably the biggest futbol game of the season for the city of Seville just took place last night. It featured the Seville team and Real Betis (another Sevillian team.) The rivalry between these two teams has always excited fans in Seville and futbol fans around the world. My friends and I went to the same bar that we watched last weeks big futbol game, but we made sure to get there early so we could get a table and some food. It was a great first half with each team scoring a goal but after halftime it was uneventful and the game ended in a tie. There were lots of local fans sporting either their green for Betis, or red for Seville. Kelsey decided she liked Seville better because their red uniforms looked better than the green ones that Betis had. I’d say that a pretty good way to pick which soccer team is better.
This morning Kelsey and I slept until 11 and decided to cook an American breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice and toast. Even though I burned a bit of the bacon we still enjoyed our nice breakfast while watching some Spanish news shows. We then packed some sandwiches and made our way to the Guadalquivir River for a nice lunch in the sun. We picked out a great spot in the grass and enjoyed our food while we discussed what we would do today.
As we were sitting there the Policia came in on two motorcycles and stopped in front of some people a little ways down. It looked like they were interrogating them for a while and we snapped a picture.
After lunch I headed back up the river and stopped at a great outside café to get out my computer and type out this blog.
Its been a great day with Kelsey but we still haven’t figured out what to do tonight. I guess that will be covered in my next blog post. Stay tuned. Adios
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