Vamos a la playa & the sounds of FIESTA!

It's been a week since my last post since I have been sooo busy!  With class, group excursions, our own trips, going out almost every night, and way too much homework there is almost no time to do anything including sleep.  My two classes aren't too hard there is just more work than I expected.  I have a literature class that has a lot of reading and writing assignments every day and since I don't like reading and writing in English I obviously don't like it in Spanish.  I actually like my other class called "Spain Today" because we are learning a lot about Spain's history and what is actually going on around us in this country today.  It also has less assignments and the professor is much more organized.  My literature class is at 12:30 and my Spain today class is at 5 so I eat lunch and catch up on homework in between during siesta.  We have started to figure out where to go to each nights and are starting to become friends which some of the locals which is cool.  Speaking Spanish with them is more fun because they speak some English so can help us when we don't know a word unlike my family I'm living with that doesn't speak any English and looks at me like I'm crazy if I say an English word.

colosseum

Saturday we went on a group excursion to Itálica and then they took us to Matalascañas afterwards (the beach I went to a few days after I got here).  Usually for group excursions they divide us into two groups based on our level of spanish but this one we got to do as a whole group which was fun.  Itálica has a lot of Roman ruins that have been preserved which was kind of cool.  It was hard to picture what it was like though.  The coolest part was the colosseum where they used to fight lions.  It was huge and we got to see where the people came to pray before a fight and where the lions were kept.  The beach was fun and I didn't burn too badly except for a couple streaks I missed.

Saturday night we had a learning experience through trial and error.  First we met a huge group of people from the program at a bar to pre-game and since we were sitting outside some people brought there own bottles of wine.  There is technically an open container law in Sevilla but usually they don't enforce it.  All of the sudden I turned around and a police van was facing us perpendicular to the street.  Around 5 cops got out and since we had bought drinks from the bar we walked away.  Apparently the people who did just had to poor there wine out and didn't get in trouble.  However we learned not to botellón at Coffee & Tea.  After this we went to a club we had gone to the first Friday we had in Sevilla that was a lot of fun.  Eventually we started noticing groups of guys taking pictures together, holding hands, and dancing together and we realized it must be gay night.  So our second lesson was not to go to Abril on Saturday nights.








Sunday a bunch of people from the program and I went to Cádiz.  We took a train and got there around 11am.  The city is really old so it had a lot of really cool buildings and was overall a really cute city.  The beach was gorgeous too.  It had old castles surrounding it and one was completely in the water.  After we decided we should start heading back to the train station we stopped at an American restaurant so people could get their American food fix including french fries, ketchup, ranch, burgers, etc.  I wasn't hungry so I didn't get anything.  Anytime we are not going to be in Sevilla for lunch our señora makes us a bagged lunch to take with us which is nice.  We got back to Sevilla around 8 which left plenty of time to do homework before Monday.

That is about all I have time for now.  We are about to go to a bar that has free sangria until 1am!