Updates from Andalucía

Around 4pm today I decided to out walking and explore Parque de Maria Luisa a bit more. Being there makes you forget that you're in Sevilla; it's so peaceful and tranquil. Your hear the sounds of the birds chirping, water flowing, and the laughter of children. Every now and then a horse drawn carriage wheels by. It is there that you forget anything bothering you, errands you have to run, or that you have no way of communicating with any of your friends since you ran out of saldo on your phone... A slight breeze lifts the fallen leafs off the ground and drops them gently down again. The ceramic work is astounding. Tile adorns everything: benches, pillars, handrails, paths...

Yesterday we went to Cádiz in the south of Spain. It was great! We spent about two hours on a tour of the city and then went to the beach for the afternoon. Of course, I got super sunburned, but hey, what's new?!

Thursday nights at Club Buddha are intercambio nights. CIEE was sponsoring the night, and it was a blast! There are many Americans hoping to meet Spaniards in order to practice speaking Spanish, and Spaniards hoping to meet Americans to practice their English. We ended up doing just that. My friends and I met a group of Spanish friends. One of them, who is my intercambio is really great; he corrects my Spanish when I make mistakes so that I can learn. We ended up spending the whole night with them, so I got a lot of practice. We exchanged phone numbers and will try to meet on a regular basis for bilingual conversations. This is going to be such a great opportunity for me! My señora told me this morning that she could tell that I am now speaking with more ease. Hurray!!

Other news:
I booked a trip to Morocco (or as they say in Spanish, Marruecos) for five days in December. I'm quite excited for it! The trip includes climbing sand dunes, a camel ride, a visit to the oldest leather tannery in the world, monkey seeing, and sleeping in an oasis in the middle of the desert!

I have finished week one of the intensive session, so now we have five more days of that and then the regular session begins. The professor is growing on me; at first I really did not like her. It's a bit odd for me to be studying grammar again, especially after not having done so since senior year of high school. It is frustrating sometimes as well, because I know how to use to concepts when I speak or write, but I do not always know the technical terms for what I am doing. (I still get confused between which is a direct object pronoun and which is an indirect orbject pronoun, but I do know how to use them!!)

This past week for class we went to El Museo de Bellas Artes. It was beautiful. I had been there before, so it was very familiar. After having lived here for two weeks already, I had a bit of a different appreciation for some of the works.

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Also, there is now a link on the right-hand side to my Flickr account, so you can see more photos than the couple that are on here. Hopefully I will be able to update that on a regular basis.