I just finished reading the 4th Harry Potter book...literally just finished it like 10 minutes ago. I lost all self control...like I lost it last week with the Nutella, I lost it today with Harry. But don't think I'm just a ridiculous American kid reading Harry Potter when I should be immersing myself in Spanish culture...I was reading it in Spanish! So I've now read the first 4 of 7 Harry Potter books in Spanish. And I have every intention of going to the bookstore down the street tomorrow or Tuesday to buy the next. How can I be expected to take planes to and trains through Italy for 11 days without Harry? I certainly can't just study for the finals that will be awaiting me 2 days after I return!
This weekend was the first weekend that I stayed in Sevilla...well since the beginning of the program. It was a much needed break from travelling, and really turned out to be a fun and relaxing weekend. When I woke up on Thursday, I made the mistake of checking my facebook. Why was that a mistake? Because EVERYONE is posting something on facebook about going home for Thanksgiving, spending Thanksgiving with family, or cooking something delicious for Thanksgiving. And no one cares about Thanksgiving in Spain. So I was a bit sad at first. But then I met Maddie for a run down the Guadalquivir (the river in Sevilla), and it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL outside...70 degrees and sunny...and I was so happy and thankful to be in Sevilla! I returned home to make OREO BALLS with Meital! For those of you who are not familiar with oreo balls (aka bombas en espanol), they are little balls of HEAVEN: crushed oreos mixed with cream cheese (queso filadelfia), covered with white chocolate, and put in the fridge. So simple, so good. So Meital and I brought my laptop into the kitchen, turned some music on, and went to town making them. We had so much fun making them while talking to our host sister Pechi, and they were SO GOOD. Pechi and her Irish boyfriend had life changing experiences when eating my oreo balls.
After that, Meital and I headed over to Nervion, a neighborhood in Sevilla, to eat a Thanksgiving feast with some members of the program! It was delicious! Everyone contributed something (oreo balls for us), and we really succeeded in having a good American-ish Thanksgiving meal, with turkey, gravey, cranberry (it was really just jelly), green bean casserole, pumpkin bread, stuffing, apple crisp, oreo balls, and brownies. There are probably more things that I've just forgotten, but we had a ton of food. We also had sangria, so it wasn't completely American. :)
And later that night, Meital, Maddie, and I went out flamenco dancing with our flamenco teacher Carmen! It was so fun! She took us to a small flamenco bar that had one flamenco guitarist and 2 women singing. Trying it in the typical Spanish setting of this tiny flamenco bar was really cool. They enjoyed having 3 Americans in there trying to dance, but it definitely wasn't the norm. So we succeeded in finding a really typical un-touristy flamenco spot!
When we arrived, they shifted into a small room lined with benches and seats, and started playing various "Sevillanas" songs and an occasional Rumba. Sevillanas is the type of flamenco done in Sevilla, and literally everyone has some understanding of how it goes. There are 4 different dances that you learn, but then you can basically go with your own flow after that. That is, you can go with your own flow if you're a native Sevillana who has that strange rhythm in her blood. So I pretty much stick to the rules. Also, the room was so small! In class, we basically have as much room as we want to dance, but that was not the case in this tiny room. So running into people occasionally was just part of it. It added a challenge to my already-nervous-about-dancing-Sevillanas-in-front-of-so-many-spaniards-self. It was still fun though! I definitely wasn't very good (although the Spanish man 15 years my senior who kept dancing with me insisted that I was). One other thing to add about that night, is that in Spain, age difference really doesn't matter. It is not weird for a 20 year old girl (or 3) to spend their night out dancing away with men 10-20 years older than they are. And it's also not completely inappropriate for those men to hit on the young girls. They didn't mean to be creepy, but hey, things like that just aren't really okay in the good ole Estados Unidos.
In any case, like a typical Spaniard, I returned home at 5 am and slept til my host dad knocked on my door for lunch time (2:30) the next day. And that was how my un-American Thanksgiving happened: oreo balls, big meal, and flamenco dancing.
On Saturday, I had un dia muy tranquilo. Somehow the word tranquilo just seems to express it better than any English word! (Oh the dilemmas of a study abroad student trying to learn a new language...). I went for another morning run with Spencer, then did some touristy things that I hadn't yet done in Sevilla. I went with Stef, Courtney, and Megan to La Casa de los Pilatos and Las Setas. La Casa de los Pilatos is the palace of the famous, old, ugly, and recently-married Duchess. Her house is beautiful though, and although the audio guide would NOT shut up, it was still cool to see it. Afterwards, we went to Las Setas, a recently opened structure that fills up La Plaza de la Encarnacion and basically looks like a big waffle-like thing. You can ride up in an elevator to the top and see some beautiful views of Sevilla. I believe one will be appearing in the Lanners family Christmas card...me with la Catedral in the background. After walking around on the top for a while, I went down to the bottom and checked out the roman ruins. Apparently when they went to build Las Setas, they found a little roman ruin village down there, so they managed to make it a cool display. I've heard that roman ruins are another reason (along with la crisis) that it's taking so long to build the next subway line. Ohhhh, the construction problems Europeans have!
On the way home from Las Setas, I decided to not bike, but to stroll through Sevilla, and it was so nice! I wandered in an out of stores, meandering through the streets, and I really enjoyed it. I found a store right next to the cathedral that sells really cool old posters too. The store has a bunch of original posters from bullfights and the Feria (a HUGE festival/fair of Spanish culture that Sevilla is famous for) from years ago. Those are expensive, but I bought a cool copy of a feria poster from sometime in the 1920s, I think. It'll be a nice addition to my dorm room or room at home!
And today has been another dia tranquilo! I went for a run, got some work done, read far too much of Harry Potter, and wrote this entry! All in all, a really nice, fun way to spend my last weekend in Sevilla. Why is it my last weekend in Sevilla? Because I'm headed out on Thursday for my 11 day trip through Italy with Meital, Joan, and Mori! Very excited, but a bit sad to be leaving Sevilla for so long with such little time left here. I'm definitely going to be excited to get home, see friends, family, etc., and to head back to my Davidson life. But I'm gonna miss it here in Sevilla! Alot!
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