Classes have finally started and I am changing my address

Yes, I know some people will look at the title and think, hmm no one should be excited about classes and other people will look at it and think that that is right on. I enjoy classes and the stuff professors have for us to learn, I just don't always give the best attention I should. I will admit this.

Anyways last week I had a Spanish language course to prepare us for this university spanish grammar exam. The course did have some interesting aspects to it, but as for preparing us for the exam it really didn't do anything for us. Oh well, the exam does not really affect the courses we take anyways.

I want to put photos up, and they are coming soon, but I am not on my computer right now and I probably won't be until next week, so look for photos next week. As for now, let your imagination soar and read my story of events! ;-)

Last week my group went and saw the Royal Palace and the Cathedral here. The Royal Palace was complete with a Labyrinth (that was unfortunately easy to navigate, though I suppose it would be bad to let tourists into a complicated one...) and a beautiful garden. The architecture was interesting because the man who built it (sorry history buffs, my memory is not that great....) liked Arabic architechture so he hired some Arabs to design it. This brings the interesting mix of Christianity, Islam and Judaism into the building. Very cool! Photos to come....

The cathedral was also very neat. Christopher Columbus' tomb is there, or one of his tombs... I guess he is buried in 4 or 5 places. He just couldn't get enough of traveling even after he died! The cathedral here is built where the main mosque of the town was years ago and the tower, Giralda, is the same one from the mosque, with Christian adaptations though. There is a side chapel for the saint of lost things and there is a painting of this saint there too. Apparently one day or night someone cut the saint out of the painting and tried to sell him. So for a short time the Saint of lost things was lost, I find this to be ironic.

Just as a heads up, things have not been so great between my roommate and myself. She is very nice, but we will not be rooming together anymore as of this weekend. I will be moving to a resedencia. Ask me later this week or next week for the address and I will try to send an email out soon with my new information. If anyone happens to be getting ready to mail something, please hold off a few days or email me now!

I think the move to the resedencia will be good, there are spanish students living there too. This will provide me with the opportunity to meet some more spaniards that are my age.

This semester I will be taking a variety of courses. Political, historical, cultural and literary are some of the topics. My classes are probably going to be theses: Latin American Literature, historical projection of three culture - Muslim, Jewish and Christian, Political and democratic transition of contemporary Spain, Spanish cinema (looking at movies through the last decade and applying history and cultural lessons to them) and Anthropology of cultural Latin America. Some classes I am more excited about than others, but it is normally this way!

It is also going to work out to sing in choir here, which makes me very happy. Right now we are working on Mass by Beethoven. The semester is starting to get excited now that I am finally getting into it. Leaving the USA I was ready to dive into things, but I couldn't right away, so now it is much better!

Getting Settled

Now I have been in Sevilla since Thursday and I absolutely love it. Yesterday I went to the Royal Symphony of Sevilla and it was absolutely magnificent. A violinist and a soprano were the highlighted instruments/voices. There is another concert of theirs in October with the Bassoon, Oboe, Clarinet and Trumpet being highlighted. I am very excited about going and so I hope I can!

My hosts are really nice and I do get along with my roommate well. We are very different, so it just might be that we won´t ever do much together, but at least we get along. Our personalities are very different (yes, she would completely agree) but we are finding ways to get along anyways.

Right now I am looking into the possibility of singing in a choir and/or playing in a band during my stay. I guess I shall see how that goes. I reall hope something works out, because going an entire semester without a music group is not something I am ready to do!

The program coordinators here are also very nice and helpful. I like them a lot. I feel like I am going to be able to get things going soon and start really enjoying my time, especially once I get to know Spaniards. Hanging out with the people in my group is fine, except they always speak English, which forces me to speak English, which does not allow my Spanish ability to really grow... I don't like that at all, I want to be able to speak Spanish very well when I leave. Granted this is just the first week and things may change, but I just simply don't want to speak English much here and many of the others have a hard time with that concept... Oh well! They are a nice group though.

This week I have a language course to brush up on my skills before the semester starts next week. I am very excited for classes to start because I know that I will learn more Spanish once it starts. I have some very interesting classes set up and I cannot to wait to see which classes I will for sure be taking. It is all so exciting!

Getting used to the different schedule has been very easy thus far and I enjoy it here a lot. I already have a sense of feeling at home and this city is very beautiful!

Until next time!

Madrid Trip

Right now I am enjoying my last night in Madrid. Oh, being in Spain, what a joy!

To start with I would like ot say that all my flights went very smoothly and one of these times I simply have to have a scary plane trip. That is other than my mad rush in Toronto in July. Before I got onto the plane to Madrid I met a girl name Brenna who is going to a different city on my same program. So that was exciting, then I had one face I could recognize!

It is currently almost 9pm here and I still have yet to eat dinner! I thought this would be hard for me to adjust to, but at least thus far it has been fairly easy. I am hungry right now, but no more hungry than I am a 5 before a 6pm dinner time. They have been keeping us really busy, so we don't really have toime to think about being hungry.

The first day we had a lot of free time with one meeting in the evening with our respective coordinators/resident directors and then a group dinner. That was Monday. Tuesday we went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) which was really neat. I enjoy going through palaces and seeing all this neat art and decorations. Some rooms look very gaudi and others a very pretty.

That afternoon we went to El Museo Prado with some very famous artists there. Such as Goya, Velázquez and El Greco. Velásquez's famous painting of the royal family of the time is there (called Las Meninas). It is the one of the King in Queen in the reflection of the mirror as Velázquez paints them. Then there is the rest of the family and servants standing next to Velázquez in a group. It is also one of very few painting with perfect proportions. Here is a link to see it, let me know if it doesn't work. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/velazquez/velazquez.meninas.jpg

Then we had more free time. That evening a group of us went to find food together and we ended up going to La cafetería Iowa. That was odd. I wasn't personally excited to EAT there though I thought it was funny to see it. The food was alright there, but we definitely could have gotten better Spanish food for cheaper. There are a lot of Nebraskas here and they are resturaunts as well.... Odd huh?

This morning we went to El Escorial which is a monastary with a school. There is a very neat Basilica with four organs! How cool is that? I really enjoy organ music, unfortunately no one was playing them while we were in there... There are also the graves of past kings and queens in the basement behind the basilica. You go down a marble stairway (everything is marble, the stairs, the walls and the ceiling) into a marble room with contains marble caskets. There are two wooden doors before entering that room that are known as the decomposing rooms. There three (maybe only two though) decomposing in there right now with their marble caskets waiting for them in the other room.

In the afternoon a group of us decided to go to the Reina Sofía museum and find food on the way there. We found this truly hole in the wall cervecería that got our orders completely mixed up. It was a lot of fun though and it did taste good. Then we found the museum where they having a special Picasso exhibit. We were able to see Guernica by Picasso, which you can see at this link: http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c186/simonquilty/guernica.jpg This famous painting depicts the town of Guernica after Franco allowed Hitler to practice bomb it.

Right now I am sitting in a café next to my hotel. We had our Sevilla orientation meeting tonight and that went well. We all received maps about where the university, program office and our host families are located (each with only their own host family or resedencia marked on it though). I am really excited and I have been thinking about what activities I want the coordinators to help me find to do there. In order to meet more Spaniards I need to get involved and be active!

Classes won't start for another week for me. We have a week of language review and training before we go to classes. So this is all very excited and I cannot wait for things to finally get started. I have enjoyed my time in Madrid, but I am exciting to get things started!

Leaving the Country

As of today I am out the country! Woot Woot. Well for 3 months I am. I am very excited about this now and slowly I have gotten over the part that I am not home anymore and going to my normal school and seeing all my friends. Though I miss them dearly! So Spain, here I come! Soon I get to meet my roommate for the semester and my host family later this week! First of a time or orientation with my program and fellow participants. I will try to keep you posted on what is going on, but please be patient with me, I am not always very good at doing that.

My older brother Daniel is starting to get settled in his apartment! That is where I am now. Soon he should have some furniture, it just isn't here yet.... He's still sleeping on an air mattress, but I must say it is one nice air mattress... :-) Well, I have to repack a few things and pack a few things. So the next post you will read will be from the other side of the ocean.

Chicago and other updates

So this week I made my trek out to Chicago. It wasn't a trek I really wanted to make, but in order to go to Spain this fall I had to do it. So, off I went, with my Mom, on Tuesday to Minneapolis. We got a few errands done. I had the opportunity to chat with the Peace Corps (a possible idea for the future, but who really knows what I will do) and then we went to my brother's. He's got himself a job and apartment up there and the furnishing part of the apartment is going a little slow... So we had dinner somewhere and went to a furniture store, where he did buy the couch, love seat combo that he had thought about earlier. There were also tables that came with it as well, but I am a little bit outspoken.... I told the man helping him that I approve of my brother's decision except for the tables and he showed Daniel some different tables. A set of wood tables where the coffee table top lifts up and over. Daniel was glued to this set after that. He then bought that table instead and a matching end table, it cost him more money too.... Oops! At least he is satisfied with his purchase we hope. They should be delivered to his apartment next week.

In Chicago we arrived at the office shortly before the office opened and after standing just outside of the office for a few minutes they let us (me and another boy doing the same thing) to come in and then gave us our passports and I was on my way before 9, when it officially opens. That was a relief that it took no time, then we went and had some breakfast. We had flown out and had to wake up at 4am to get ready to catch our flight. We asked someone where to get a good breakfast and he directed us to a very good place. After that we took the trains out in the direction of River Forest. One of my friends from my school had transfered there and she turned out to be the only person I had an opportunity to see. Chicago is a lot closer to where I go to school than home, so I tried to see other, but it only worked with this girl. That's what happens when it is the first week of classes, so it was expected.

We had a really good visit, it was short but good. After Heidi (my friend) had to go back to school for choir practice, Mom and I took the trains back downtown, where we found some lunch. Then we wandered around for a while and found a Puerto Rican cultural festival. That was really neat. They had a lot of interesting stuff there and I talked to one of the ladies about her stand. Fun times in Chicago huh?

Then we found the trains again so we could return to the airport and go home. This was an interesting arrival. We get to the airport and my Mom had a message. She listened to it and it turned out that one of the exchange students that she will be watching over this year arrived in the US that day. She was also in the middle of a 7 hour layover, in the other terminal. We had kind of hoped that she was in our terminal, but that wasn't the case. So Mom and I drove to the other terminal and decided to see if we could pick her up instead of having her wait another 3 hours for her puddle jumper plane down to Iowa. We would have been successful, but the airline told us that if she didn't fly this last leg her return flight would be canceled... Mom and I decided not to play games with other people's money and let it be. As we were leaving the airport completely the exchange students Mom called from Germany, so I talked to her while mom was driving and helped assure her that things will work out just fine. Her biggest worry was that the host family didn't know when she was arriving, but they did, so I was able to assure her that they did and that her daughter will be taken care of.

Hopefully my flight to Spain will not be as eventful, but I guess I am kind of in for an eventful trip like that, as I haven't really had one yet...

Now I am back at camp, working my last few days, the end is near here. I really enjoy it here, and being here has diverted my excitement to go to Spain. I am really looking forward to it, but I am not really excited yet... It will come, I know that will come.