Soaking Up Sevilla

I'm back from my weekend in Seville, and I'd have to call it a success. Our arrival was a bit bumpy because Courtney hadn't gotten the message that we had to bring our passports to the hostel and they wouldn't let her stay, even though she had her ID. Luckily another hostel right down the street was fine with it, but it was a bummer leaving her alone.

After having lunch and checking in, we decided to go on a free walking tour. We didn't really realize that it was a tour about legends and whatnots so it ended up being kind of random. When we first began we all sat down in this little square area and had to introduce ourselves. The group was big, so the five of us ended up sitting a bit further away where a group of wine drinking artist kids were also hanging out and one of them randomly sat in front of me and started to draw me, which was kind of embarrassing but he seemed really sweet. After a moment he passed the paper to his friend, saying that he was a better artist. When they were done they even gave me the drawing! The tour guide was really grumpy about it and the artist guys kept telling us he was an idiot and that we should just hang out with them if we wanted to get to know Seville. A few of us were kinda down (since it was still daylight and there was a good number of us), especially after we realized the tour just consisted of him telling us rando stories that didn't have to do with anything, and after a little while we decided to take a peek and see if they were still there and actually had nifty shit to show us, but they'd left, so we continued with the tour for a little longer, but eventually left early anyway.

 Orange shirt guy started drawing me, but passed the task onto the guy on the left.

A pretty bad photo of the drawing they gave me. It says: "Tu alma escribe todas las celdas del munda, pero aun no erres capaz de abrirlas."

Anyway, that was basically the first day. That night we went to a botellón type spot with a group of Australians which was mellow fun. Not too eventful; we were all pretty pooped.

In the morning we got a really late start but at least managed to go look at the Cathedral, which wasn't as nice as the one in Granada but had a really awesome tower view. Interestingly, there was a group of teachers striking inside. They'd been there for quite a while, like 20-something days if I remember correctly, protesting something to do with their lack of jobs/job security, etc.

 

Afterwards we headed to the Plaza de España, but on the way we stumbled upon an international festival type thing, which had a bunch of different food stands representing different countries. It was amusing to see the USA stand cooking up a shit ton of meat, although no one was interested in eating there. Instead we had some super yummy Indian food. The sauce we got was even kinda spicy, which was grrreat.

 Strangely enough, despite the fact that these guys look extremely stoked on this photo, there was another guy yelling at me while I took this. Very angry. Very confusing.

On our way out, again attempting to get to Plaza de España, we noticed a big ass march, which was really awesome. It was funny to see that a lot of the signs were almost exact translations of the signs I've seen in photos of Occupy Wall Street and whatnot. Is this actually an international movement? Will this actually affect any kind of tangible change? I'm cautiously excited, I think.

After a bit we finally made our way to the Plaza, and the timing definitely worked in favor of the lighting. It was beautiful, really and truly beautiful and definitely has a lot of potential to be super romantic-- little row boats in the moat thing, paddling around this lovely old structure, under pretty little bridges, as the sun sinks down lazily...

At this point we were pretty delirious, so we headed back to the hostel for free sangria (from 8:30-9:30, awesome). We had a little pregame session and eventually went out to Calle Betis, which is known for having a lot of bars and whatnots. The first club we went to was literally full of old people, which was hilarious and weird. And when I say old I'm not joking around about there being some thirty year old guys sleazin around, I'm literally talking about fifty-sixty year old women and bald guys. Apparently it's full of old people at first but by the end of the night is one of the better clubs in the area, but by the time the old people leave they start charging like 10 euros at the door, so we just floated around a few other places, had some drinks and got our dance on. We ended up back at the hostel around 6am, and Leah and I made pasta and chatted with the nighttime desk guy until like 7:30am. He was really nice and we even talked books a bit, so I wrote down one of his suggestions. Hopefully I'll have time to look for it this week.

The next morning we also slept in, because the nighttime desk guy was new and "guessed" that check out time was noon, when really it was 11am. Oops. We were all fucking deliriously tired and a bit hung over, but we remembered seeing a "tex mex" restaurant the day before, so we hunted it down and NOMED some fucking Mexican food like never before. Delicious. Once we were painfully full we decided to find the Alcázar, another well known tourist spot, and it was also AMAZING. I wish we'd had more time and more energy, because it would have been the first perfect place to bring a good book, my journal and some picnic materials... It looked like something you'd stumble upon accidentally if you were stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash in a dramatic movie. I want to come back and spend a few good hours wandering around there.

Unfortunately, we really didn't have much time, so we scuttled back to grab our shit from the hostel, bought some fat ice creams and then crashed hard on the bus ride home. It's funny to say home, isn't it? But really, being in Seville made it clear just how home-like Granada has become for us. Doing touristy things felt awkward and silly and we kept ended up bragging to fellow hostel-goers about how lovely Granada is and how much they really, really need to check it out. There were even a few moments (chiefly moments in which we were lost, because Seville is way harder to navigate than Granada) when we were a little homesick for Granada!

Anyway, today was back to the grind. I turned in my first paper for a class, which is pretty scary. But on the bright side there is a really sweet girl in my Methodology class that I've been talking to and befriending. She's a pretty Betty Paige artsy type, super funny but also a teensy bit shy, especially when it comes to speaking English.

OH, and, I finally went and got my (hideous) student card from Inma, and also got the extension forms, so I'm pretty surriously considering staying for the year...

And to close with a big of frustrating hilarity:

This is what happens when you wash your clothes without realizing that your housemate, who left unexpectedly for England, has the drying rack locked in his room.