"Sevilla es maravilla"

Buenos!
(Short form of Buenos Dias, because as I´ve mentioned before, everything verbal is shortened here!)
Disregard the time of posting at the end of this entry, because it's Monday late afternoon in Spain. I met students of Erasmus today, which is an exchange program throughout Europe. There are many of students, from all sorts of countries, here at the university to study, many for the whole year. One girl is named Marion, from Germany, and I particularly enjoyed talking to her in Spanish as the group toured the old part of Cáceres and ate a light lunch. She isn't Spanish, but I'm always glad to make a new friend!


This weekend I went to Sevilla. As you can see on the map, it's south from Cáceres, in the region of Andalucía. I traveled by bus with two other Iowans, Karen and Chris, on Friday. We proceeded to look for our hostel. And look...and look... Finally we figured out we'd walked the wrong way, corrected our mistake by buying a map and arrived, tired of carrying our weekend backpacks and sweaty from the hot afternoon sun. So we took the rest of the day easy, checking into the hostel and chilling out. Later, when it had cooled off, we struck out to explore our area a bit. Turns the hostel was located near several famous places of interest, including La Catedral, an incredibly elaborate Gothic-style church (the largest in Spain!), and the Alcazares Reales, a Arabic fort-turned-Spanish palace. We ended up going into both on Sunday, when entrance was free. :-)


The hostel is 4 stories tall but pretty narrow. While resting and cooling off, we hung out on the roof patio, which provided a great view of the neighborhood and church towers. Among the youths I met at the hostel were Tom the Australian with his fascinating accent, and Syril and Theresa the Germans, who plan to live in Sevilla for awhile. I slept in a mixed gender room of 3 bunk beds, Karen slept in another, and Chris in yet another. The whole hostel way of doing things is new to me, but I didn't mind it.

Saturday was cloudy and much cooler. Basically we walked most of the day to see the sights. Karen and I met a Sevillan who rents rowing boats to the public (she was excited about that because she rows in the States). We ascended the Torre de Oro (Tower of Gold) that overlooks the river. The streets are full of little bars and boutiques, especially fancy dress boutiques with cool window displays, which I liked discovering. We also stumbled upon a Fair of Nations in a park, a month-long fair featuring booths of food and goods from various world countries--U.S. not included! I bought a scarf to match my turquoise dress for only 3 Euros, something I'd been wanting to do, so I was glad about that. We also tried a cup of sangria without the fruit: sweet and not overly-alcoholic tasting. That was a neat place too because the locals seemed to be there, a good change from the quite-touristy air of the rest of the city.
It sprinkled a little that day, which we hadn't expected. It doesn't rain a lot in southern Spain, so it's good for them, though. My host sister told me there's a phrase useful for practicing the "ll" sound (like a Y) in Spanish: "La lluvia en Sevilla es maravilla." Well, I didn't think the "lluvia" (rain) was so "maravilla" (marvelous) but it was fitting enough!
The other sight of note is the Plaza de España, which is actually a building shaped like a C. Wow. Absolutely incredible. You should look up a picture of this, or see it in my Sevilla album here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034001&id=1079670010&l=97ac65b611
Cool fact: It was featured, albeit digitally altered, in Star Wars II as the palace of Naboo. Anyway, the blue and white tiles on the building makes it so colorful. Americans don't know how to decorate their buildings!
In the picture, Karen and I are sitting at the tiled bench dedicated to the region of Caceres, so of course we had to take a picture there! :-)

Saturday night Karen and I had hoped to see a flamenco dance show, which the hostel arranges to take a group to, but that didn't happen that night, so she stayed in to recuperate from our active day while Chris and I went to another hostel to drink sangria and then to go with a group of young people on a pub crawl. Our German and Australian friends came too. The night time is very active and the weather was very pleasant. We ended up at a night club with decent music, but didn't stay long before going home, since it was 3am by that time!

Sunday was more walking and seeing, clear skies (better for pictures!). The Alcazares Reales are HUGE and it could have taken all day to see it all, especially if you count the many gardens. Really neat! Also browsed an outdoor art market--only set up on Sundays--which made me think of Salida's art shows. Ate tapas for a restful lunch, trying different typical dishes (quite a cheap way to do it if you find a non-touristy place), and generally rested until we boarded our afternoon bus. So a good weekend, and it felt long, since we left on Friday. I was kinda bummed about not seeing flamenco, but so it goes. I'm really glad my last minute plans worked out so well, and I had several new experiences.
Where to next? Toledo? Portugal? We'll see...

A correction...

So, I realized I never corrected myself after I first described my host family, and my first understanding was quite off.

Host mother: Isabel. Other residents of the house: Her mother, the abuelita who's 96. Olga, a 25 year old family friend who works in Caceres. Residents of the lower apartment: 2 of Isabel's three grown children: Javier (30s, but looks far older with gray hair) and Rosa (40). Isabel's other son lives in Madrid, Jorje (30ish). He is a photographer and is definitely more stylishly "urban" than the others. He's been in Caceres for the past week for a job.
Anyway, that's all I'm posting for now. I need to catch the bus to class, but I really wanted to fix my errors!
~LN

Trujillo, Mass, and more

Greetings again, followers of my foreign blog!
I write this entry from the central library of the university campus, so the keyboard is Spanish: it´s actually not as different as I thought it might be, but there are a few extra letters and punctuation is in a different place. It´s been a week since I´ve blogged, and it feels like a month. I learn so much with every new thing I do! For example, I´m a pro at sending postcards and letters via the local post office now, so don´t be surprised if one shows up in the mail for you! As usual, picking out the highlights to share with you all isn´t easy...
This weekend was a long one, considering I don´t have class Thursday afternoon until Monday morning. The Iowa group tried to meet up with a group of Spaniards Thursday night to go out, but we got separated and never caught up again, so I was bummed that I just ended up speaking English all evening again. I do enjoy hanging out in the town in the evenings though, because the weather is so pleasant, and that´s when the people really get together. I tried "cerveza sin alcohol" (beer without alcohol) which was bubbly, slightly bitter and basically pointless. Ah well. We did learn that one bar holds free salsa lessons on Thursday nights starting in October, so I am very excited about that!

Saturday morning, 5 girls and I found the bus station and bought tickets to Trujillo, a small town about 45 minutes away. Only 3,19 Euros one way, so it was definitely worth it! First thing to do in an unfamiliar town is to find a map, which we did. Then we explored the quaint old streets, shops and enjoyed the views, taking pictures, not ambitious to accomplish much. We did tour the Museum of Wine and Cheese, something for which Trujillo is famous, complete with a tasting at the end (red wine not so great, various cheeses quite good, I thought. A goat cheese was our favorite). It´s also famous as the birthplace of Pizarro, a conquistador. We ate the lunches our host mothers had packed for us (my bocadillo, or sandwich, was a baguette with ham and an egg omelette on it) and caught the bus back. I felt proud that we had figured out the bus system without problems, and gone on a sort of "practice trip" that we enjoyed.

On Sunday Autumn and I walked to the university to figure out a good route in case we ever want to walk. Later that day I walked for a good hour by myself, just to see more of Caceres, needing a little time alone. (I´ve also been running a few days a week in a nearby park, which is quite necessary, considering how my host mother cooks!) That evening, my host mother and I went to Catholic mass at one of the local churches. Isabel got very dressed up, and I liked going out with her. (She does a lot of sewing, and is quite interested in fashion, actually, so she´ll point out things she likes in the shop windows as we pass.) No matter that I didn´t understand the service at all, besides crossing yourself and "Nuestra Señor" (Our Lord). It was a fine experience.

Now for our second week of school, more normal than the first. This evening I also start giving English conversation lessons to the kids of one of the professors, so I´m nervous about that! I finally have my first homework assignment, about Spanish poetry.
As usual, check out the link to my Facebook album of photos (the link is in an older post). I´ve got to get to class now. Take care, and ¡´Ta Luego! (how Hasta Luego is pronounced here)
*Ellen*

Classes and buses

Hello all!

It's Monday night in Spain (only 3 in the afternoon for Iowans--that's still crazy to think about) and I'm chilling in my room. Today our group of 10 went with Toni, the director of our program, to the university (UEX) campus. We have bus cards but it's not free like at ISU. We toured around our "facultad" of education, which is the department where we'll have our Spanish classes. Each facultad is in its own set of buildings, and students take all their classes there. So we'll get to know the students in that major (in fact, we exchanged emails with a few today! Yay!) when we go for classes, or study in the library, or eat something in the cafe, etc. Toni is a professor in this Facultad also.
So even though I'm not taking conversation class, we all sat in the first hour and met the professor and talked about what we've seen of Caceres so far. Then Alfonso came to lecture. Alfonso is Toni's helper for this group, a 22 yr guy who is student teaching English. He is also our city guide/friend/cultural teacher/flamenco guitarist, so we hang out with him alot and it's very informal with him. Unfortunately, we all agree that his accent is the hardest to understand since he hardly ever uses consonants... After class, he rode with us back to the center of town (UEX is about a 20 bus ride from town), to "ir de can~as" (I can't make spanish n's on this laptop), which is going out for a light beer and appetizers, not to be confused with tapas. Alfonso could probably go out for can~as until tapas begin.... you get my drift. :-D
I start my actual classes tomorrow, and I have a light schedule Mon through Thurs, especially until I figure out how my internship works at the School of Languages elsewhere in Caceres. I must call my internship director tomorrow, but calling a Spaniard on the phone will be tough...

Getting lost today was fun! My roomie and I needed some supplies, so we experimented with catching the bus after siesta today. Um... let's just say we took the wrong route and ended up in the bad part of town... haha, so we just stayed on longer until we thought we could walk to our destination (which wasn't really that far from our apartment). The whole experience wasn't stressful, but kind of funny, because when I asked for directions from another lady on the bus, she looked at us like we were crazy and I could hardly understand. She was helpful in the end though. And I'm a pro with the euro money now.

Ah, I know there's way too much to tell but things are good. Except, perhaps, that I don't sleep well, since it's hot (no AC) and noisy (garbage trucks collect at night!). I am wondering if i'll ever feel culture shock, because i still feel pretty secluded with my American roommate, classmates and nightlife-mates. I'll give that some time though. I'll make friends eventually.
One suggestion to Americans: try wine with lemon, ice and lemon Fanta. It's good, refreshing, and here a cheap drink. It's called "calimocho."
Anyway, I should go to bed, especially since I was getting lost while I should have been taking my "siesta" this afternoon. Ah well! Hasta luego, Ellen

A few photos of Caceres

Hello again all,
I am starting to upload pictures now, but I haven't taken many yet, surprising as that may be. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032413&id=1079670010&l=662fab12c3 Check out the link to my album of photos on Facebook.. More to come.

From my new home in Caceres!

I am writing from my host family's house in Caceres--here, safe and sound! I had no problems getting thru security anywhere, although i didn't have much time to spare during my layover in Philadelphia. I landed in Madrid at 8AM this morning (thurs), an only 6.5 hr airtime flight. the sunrise was beautiful over the clouds before we landed! I waitied with another girl at the planned waiting place in Madrid airport, and our group trickled in. One girl got lost in the airport so we thought she hadn't even landed, but we found her. Another girl lost her luggage--hopefully it gets sent to Caceres soon.

We met Toni, our director who reminds me of Maggie Falconi is several good ways, and her 22yr old helper Alfonso. We rode the bus 4 hours to Caceres, stopping to eat halfway, but no one was hungry, we all just wanted to sleep. We stepped off the bus and met our host mothers and went home with them. We reunite as a student group in a couple hours, so i'm writing this quickly. I live with the other ISU student Autumn in our apartment, we share a room. Isabel and Javier are the couple we live with, but there are others in their multiple flats: a tiny, super old abuelita (grandmother), a maid/houselady? Rosa, and a young person I haven't met yet.It's hot here, but it's beautiful, and I'm doing quite well in understanding my host parents. :-) ANd i've caught on already to the Two Kiss european greeting.
What else can I tell? I'm feeling okay, stuffy nose still but not totally overwhelmed and tired (yet) even though i didn't sleep a wink on the flight to Madrid :-( I did sleep on the bus to Caceres. I hope Dad's conference went well, and that you got back fine. I think you'll find i forgot my sunglasses...ah well. I am using Autumn's laptop, which works via wireless internet in our apartment.This weekend, we will tour the city with Toni, perhaps hear Alfonso play classical guitar :-D and spend time with our families. I think roomie and I will give our host gifts on Sunday, when we have more time to just chill out.
All the students seem pretty upbeat and willing to do things, but not like they'll get out of control with drinking, etc.I don't know if i'll get a phone card, or when, but Autumn has Skype, and the public library is just down the street.I'm stoked to be hear, and thank God everytime things go right. Which has been this entire trip....