Behind the Times - Lo siento! Alcazar, Jerez, and Plaza de Espana

And once again I fail to keep up with my original goal. But finally I have set aside some time to catch you all up on what is occurring in my life. So here it goes.

Ok, so the weekend after Morocco I had a trip to the Alcazar de Sevilla on Friday with the William and Mary group. Apparently it is the oldest still in use palace in Spain (and in Europe??) which I think means that the king/queen of Spain still sleep there when they visit Sevilla. It was pretty cool. The gardens were very nice and there were a lot of fountains and ducks everywhere. There was also a room with a bunch of giant tapestries on the walls of different historical scenes. It was a nice outing. The first two pictures are from the Real Alcazar.

Then that Saturday, a small group of us went to the city of Jerez de la Frontera. It's about an hour train ride from Sevilla and is a really nice smaller city. It was nice to just walk around without really having a plan and explore the area. We got to see the Alcazar there (which I really liked!) with its olive oil mill, mezquita, and gardens (fourth picture - sorry out of order!). We actually got to go in for free because it was Dia de Andalucia (Feb. 28th) which is the holiday of the southern region of Spain. Then we went and got to see the Cathedral (third picture) and thought we stumbled upon a wedding, but it was just a celebration for the holiday. We then proceeded to walk around a little more and then ate our lunch in a really nice gazebo (in picture).

We then went on a wine tour since Jerez is part of the sherry triangle or something like that. After the tour we walked around a bit more and then took an Arab bath! It was so relaxing!! We had to put on these crazy blue plastic footie things to protect our feet or something. There were three pools of water - warm, hot, and cold - and you were supposed to cycle through them in that order at a leisurely pace. The cold pool was terrible, especially after the hot pool, but we went in for the experience. We were also served hot, sweet, mint tea and just relaxed listening to the music for an hour and a half - it was amazing!! We were so tired and relaxed when we got out that we decided to grab a bite to eat (i had a crepe with ice cream and chocolate syrup) and head home a little early so we could sleep, ha! It was a really fun trip.

Hmm...let's see what else happened - it was a while ago! Philip got sick with food poisoning (from Morocco perhaps?) and had to get checked at the hospital, but he's back to normal now. I had two weeks of midterms which, for the most part, went well. I did really well on a few and decently on the others, so I was pleased, but am very glad that they are over! I misjudged the 'study' part of 'study abroad!' But classes are still going really well. My Global Econ one is really tough and the History of Sevilla is a lot of work, but it's all manageable. I got to meet with my intercambio (the spanish student the university assigns you to) twice so far and she's cool. Her name is Rocio and we got to talk about Spain and traveling and languages (she speaks English and Spanish and is learning German and Italian - insanity) and movies. Oh speaking of movies I got to see Slumdog Millionaire in English with Spanish subtitles - I highly recommend it! The music is amazing! It did test our Spanish language skills because there were parts where the kids aren't speaking English and we were forced to read the subtitles to understand what was going on!

This past weekend was a nice stay at home weekend. I did make it out on Saturday for a very nice day of visiting the Plaza de Espana and then I got to sit in the park next to the Plaza and just lounge and do some homework - it was really nice! The Plaza de Espana is realllllly cool (next picture). It has a whole bunch of 'exhibits' about all the different regions of Spain and also about the different time periods of Sevilla. It's all outdoors and there's a fountain in the middle. I also got to see a ton of images of the historical people we learned about in my Sevilla class which was cool. The park next to it was also really nice with a whole bunch of different sections. I got to walk around and explore a little (didn't get to see all of it - it's giant!). Then I just picked a tree and sat down and did some work in the Spanish shade listening to the Spanish birds - awesome! And then to complete the whole experience, I walked back past the Catedral and got to see it all lit up. The last picture is of the Giralda (the tower of the Catedral.)

And I think that brings it up to the present. Everything is still going really well. I can't believe it will be two months on this Wednesday - it doesn't seem like I've been here that long and it's just flying by!