Thursday, September 23, 2010

Semana Tres

My goodness, how fast this week has flown by. It seems like I've been here forever already..but I'm afraid that the time to leave.. will come too soon! I do miss home a lot, but I am also really enjoying living in Sevilla and learning about the culture and fine tuning my Spanish! The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know. Weird how that works. 

Where to begin... 
Last Friday, we went on a school excursion to Córdoba, España and got to visit the Muslim mosque (La Mezquita). It was very interesting. I have been learning about it in my art class, so it was awesome to be able to actually see it. The history of that mosque is very fascinating. The Muslims used to use it, but it is now occupied by the Catholics and they have built a cathedral in the center. 

The city of Córdoba with a good view of the Mezquita in the background. All of the pictures below are of the Mezquita
Part of the cathedral 

An organ inside the cathedral
El Mihrab: The holiest part of the mosque

Over the weekend, I didn't do a whole lot...mainly studied. However, I did visit a Baptist Church and got to attend both the youth group and the actual Sunday service. Youth groups are not very common in Europe, so I was lucky to have found one. I actually really enjoyed going there and it was awesome to sense the Holy Spirit and have fellowship with believers in a language other than my own. =) 

On Tuesday, I went with a group of students to the University of Sevilla to check out the campus. Every Tuesday we will be going there to hang out with Spaniards, build relationships and hope for a chance to share our testimony or just show them the love of Christ. I'm excited! The rest of the week was spent studying in order to prepare for my exams, which took place today. I'm so glad to be done with those! 

Tomorrow, I will be up bright and early to take a bus to Lagos, Portugal! I'm stoked! I never thought I'd ever go to Portugal... then again, I never thought I'd go to Spain either. :-) The bus ride should take about 6 hours. I am going with two other girls and we have rented an apartment for two nights (and it has kitchen and a pool!). Woo! More details to come in my next blog about that trip. 

By the way.. I love getting mail...or postcards or packages, just so you guys know. =) 
My address is:
Ashley VanMeter
Semester-in-Spain/Acento de Trinity
Paseo de Cristina 1-3
Entreplanta A-B
41001 Sevilla,
Spain




Hope to hear from y'all soon! 

This is our señora, Pepita. She is so cute. :-)

Friday, September 17, 2010

The Adventure Continues

¡Buenas Noches Todos!
Sorry I haven't written in a while. Things have been super crazy here as I have been trying acclimate into every day life. A lot has happened since I last wrote and I'm not quite sure where to begin. It's almost midnight here and I'm pretty tired.. so bear with me.

So my first weekend here, was good. We actually went to a bull fight the first Sunday, which was very interesting.  It's something that I have always learned about and wanted to go to. My background picture on this blog, is actually the arena it was held in. I didn't quite realize what I was getting myself into. There were a total of six bulls and three bull fighters. It's kind of complicated to explain the whole process (you can find info online if you want to learn more). Basically, the goal is to tire the bull to the point where it just topples over and dies. There are three rounds of each fight, in which they stab the bull repeatedly with spears. In the final stage, the matador kills the bull by sticking a sword down the middle of it's shoulder blades and the bull dies. It's pretty gruesome and traumatizing, but it's a very cultural thing for Spaniards. I was glad that I went, but will probably never go to one again. Interesting nonetheless.

El Matador and his bull

Can you see the two mean behind the barricade? They are hiding from the bull! Ha!


Monday we started classes and Tuesday we had a girl's night. It was a good time to reflect, get to know each other better, and of course have some fun! We rented some paddle boats and got to go for a ride on the river! It really made me miss the beautiful, Oregon and Washington scenery. Wednesday, we had our first chapel service, which is called 'Encuentro'. I really enjoyed the service and got to sing and play my guitar with the miniature worship team. =)

Girls night



This last weekend, a few of us decided to go to the beach. We rode a bus to Matalascañas and spend a total of 10 hours on the actual beach. I think that is the longest amount of time I've ever been in the sun. It was a beautiful beach! We arrived pretty early in the morning and there was virtually no one around. However by 11am or so, the beach was CROWDED. I've never seen so many people on a beach at one time. Wow! We went swimming a bunch in the warm Atlantic water and had a blast! There isn't really an under-toe, like there is on the Oregon coast, which was nice. Unfortunately, I got really sunburnt...probably because I didn't wear as much sunscreen as I should have. But I still looooooved the beach!!! We are hoping to visit Lagos, Portugal hopefully this next weekend and I've heard the beach there is beautiful! I'm excited!!
There were shells everywhere!

This rock is part of an old Medieval castle! 


Since then, we have had 2 local Spaniads take a group of us out for Tapas, which is a very popular thing to do in Spain. It's basically like going to a restaurant and eating a bunch of really delicious appetizers. I've also taken a Flamenco class and played Bingo with some old men at a hospital, which was super fun!

Eating tapas with the Spaniards

Fish and vegis!


One of the old men we played bingo with. He was hilarious! He loved to sport his sweet glasses. 


Finally, as you know, I just finished my second full week of classes. It's been good, but challenging as everything is in Spanish. We even signed an agreement that we would talk to our peers only in Spanish during school time. I am taking five classes (18 credits) including a grammar class, art history class, Theatre of the 20th Century, Three Cultures and a volunteer project class. I like my classes for the most part. My grammar class has been super intense. The first week of classes, I decided to take the most advanced grammar course in order to fine tune my Spanish. The professor however, is super intimidating and intense and I'm actually scared to speak in that class..because I don't want to say something wrong. =/

The other three classes are great. In my theatre class, we are reading a play called 'Bodas de Sangre'. It a very symbolic book, so it is sometimes hard to read between the lines. La clase de Tres Culturas is very interesting. We are currently learning about the Muslims and will eventually learn about the Jews and the Christians and take some class outings to see some history. Finally, I really like my art history clas. We are learning about many different buildings right now, all of which we will visit. In fact, tomorrow we will visit the city of Cordoba, Spain and see the Mezquita, which is a very old, ornate Muslim mosque which we have been studying.

A night view of the bridge we walk over daily. 


Well, I should wrap this up. I'm still really enjoying my time here. The city is beautiful and I've learned so much in the first couple of weeks. Our señora still loves to feed us food, but I think she is starting to learn that we really can't eat all that she gives us. I've been craving waffles, eggs, and bacon...but I don't think it's customary for them to cook that here. =) Also, we found out that Matt gets to come visit me for 10 days in the end of October! I am sooooo excited for him to come and see where I've been living and what I've experienced thus far.  Thank you all for your prayers and support! I will really try to update this more often!

Hope all is well for you in the states!

P.S. Here are some new phrases that I've learned..that you can learn too!!
* Estoy arta de comer - I'm full (from eating)
* ¡Que mono! (Kay-Moh-no) - How cute

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Los Primeros Días

Finally in Spain! What a relief! It took a while to get here, but after 24 hours of either flying or being in airport, it's really nice to be settled.

The morning of departure didn't start off so grand. We arrived at the airport right after 5am, waited in line to check my bags and discovered we were two minutes late to check in, which meant that I had 'missed' my flight and had to pay $75 dollars extra to get on the next available flight. Fortunately, the next flight arrived about an hour before our international flight departed in Chicago. Chicago was where the majority of the group met, so we had a total of 34 students on the international flight. So the first day consisted of flying from Portland to Chicago, Chicago to Madrid, and Madrid to Seville. Sadly, I wasn't able to really sleep on any of the flights, so I was pretty exhausted when we finally arrived. I did get to know a couple of the people on our international flight and learned to play Cribbage and got to read a Spanish newspaper.

Once we arrived in Seville, things went pretty fast. A few people didn't receive their luggage... which was unfortunate for them, but they got them back within 24 hours. Then we proceeded to be dropped off at our Señora's house. Somehow our Señora hadn't got the memo to pick us up, so her neighbor (who is hosting two other students) took us to the apartment where we will be living. It's a cute little apartment and our bedroom is really small, but almost perfect. =) When we finally got meet our Señora, she was delightful! Her name is Pepita and her husband's name is Enrique. They have been hosting students for some 15 years. The first thing that I learned about her.. is that boy, does she like to talk! I was actually surprised at how much I could understand, because I've heard that many times student's don't understand for a good couple of weeks (since the Spanish is so different from what we are used to). I also learned right off, that Pepi LOVES to cook. She feeds us SO much food and it's so delicious. However, I just can't eat all that she feeds me. Most of our meals are tons of carbs and they like to deep-fry things too. So we eat a lot of bread (Homemade toast at breakfast every day) and we've had things such as chicken, paella (traditional spanish meal), Pasta with melted cheese, and last night we ate tuna pizza, where she gave us one whole pizza each. That's a lot!!

                                           My roommate Courtney and I at Orientation

So far we've done many activities in the first few days--almost too many to talk about. Wednesday, we explored our close surroundings and found a park within a couple of blocks. This park has workout equipment in it--kind of like playground equipment, but there is like an elliptical and such. I even saw people using them! On Thursday we had orienation, where we learned about some of the spanish customs and also received our movíles (cell phones). We also took a listening test, to see how much we could understand and I got 100%!! Then in the evening, we met up with the other students and went on a tour around Sevilla to see some beautiful buildings and learn about the area we will be living in for the next four months.
                                      Our school building...it's on top of a McDonalds!

                                                            Our school entryway

Friday, we went to the school, which is about a 20-30 minute walk from our apartment. We met up with a couple of the professors to get our class schedule and then had another small orientation on Spanish culture. In the evening, we met up again to have pizza in the park with other students. Saturday morning,  7 of us went on a photo scavenger hunt through Sevilla. I cannot tell you how much we walked but at least 7-8 hours. Sadly, I now have a huge blister on the bottom of my foot about the size of a quarter. I can barely walk today. =) I actually have about 5 blisters total, but nothing as bad as the one on the bottom of my foot. Last night, we met up with the rest of the school to look at everyone's pictures. It was a competition.. and we won second place! So we got free movie tickets to a movie in Spanish that we will redeem sometime this semester.
       Cathedral close to the school. It is the biggest Gothic Cathedral in the 
             world, 3rd largest cathedral in the world, and biggest building in Sevilla. 

Plaza de España
Most expensive hotel in Sevilla. 
This is where Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz stayed
when they filmed for 'Knight and Day' in Sevilla. 

Woo! That was a lot to blog about. I'm sorry this entry is so long. Today is Sunday. We are about 9 hours ahead of everyone in Oregon, so right now it's actually 4:55am back home. I've learned so much already! You will be interested to know, that every day the whole city shuts down from 2-5 for siesta (nap) time..so nothing is open. Too bad they don't do that in the US. I love napping! Also, the meal times here are different. Breakfast is typically from 8-9, lunch from 2-3, and dinner from 9-10pm. So that has taken a little bit of getting used to. It's been super hot here as well. It was around 105 yesterday. I also love our host family. Our host dad loves to watch TV and actually signs Flamenco, which is a type of Spanish dancing. Pepi loves to talk as I said earlier and she's just funny.

Enrique y el perro 'Pitu'. Pitu is their daughter's dog

I'm excited for everything I will experience in the next few months. Spain is so exciting and is a place that I've always wanted to visit. I'm so thankful that Matt has been so encouraging and supportive throughout all of this. He's the best husband anyone could ask for! Hopefully he will get to come visit about half way. =)

Love you all and hope everything is well where you are! Please email me if you'd like. I'd love to hear from you! My main email is mountaindewfreak@gmail.com
You can also read about our journey at http://acentosis.blogspot.com/

¡Adios!