Beinvenidas a Sevilla!

5/17 - 5/21


It´s Friday! The Anas first week in Sevilla has been amazing and full of activities. We arrived on Sunday evening and met our host family, Familia Pedros-Belanga. Our mom´s name is Maripaz but she likes for us to call her Pacita. Her husband´s name is Jesus Manuel and they have three kids: Chus, Reyes, y Jesus Manuel Jr. They are great!!! Cocinan estupendamente (Pacita loves using that word). We have had dishes like tortilla española, gaspacho, all kinds of verduras, and tonight we are having fish and they want us to eat caracoles... ahhh! We are nervous but we are trying EVERYTHING! They serve bread with every meal... we haven´t eaten so much bread in our whole lives... not so good for digestion =/

We have a really great group of friends and we have done a lot of fun things this week. Here are a few of the things we did...

1. Tour of Sevilla: we went around Sevilla on Monday and saw La Giralda - an ancient arab tower, part of a fort, La Catedral - the third largest one in the world!! It even had 50 individual chapels inside, was the burial place of Cristobal Colon, and you could, technically, fit Notre Dame inside it. We hope to attend a Sunday mass there one of these days. We also saw a very beautiful palace, with the most beautiful gardens... El Alcazar. We will be spending lots of time there studying.






2. First day of school: We had our first classes on Tuesday, starting with cultura española contemporánea in the morning, then we walk back home for almuerzo with our family and possible siesta, then back to school in the afternoon for our Latin American Film class. We walk A LOT! It is especially brutal walking back to school in the afternoon, the hottest time of the day. It's a good thing we both brought so many wipes with us.




3. On Wednesday one of Sevilla's fútbol teams played for the championship against Madrid's Atletico. WE WON! Salimos con unos españoles a ver el partido y después fuimos a la puerta de jerez en el centro de la cuidad para celebrar. Fue una experiencia muy divertida.
(photos and videos to come...)

4. On Thursday we did piragüismo (kayaking) in El Río. Our guide was Santi and he took a bunch of pictures and video of the group. It was a lot of fun. The Anas kayaked in a double and after a little circling and splashing we got really good at it... Here is a link to the pictures and video.

www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=24258&id=112954242051729&ref=mf



5. On Friday we took a dance class and learned how to dance Sevillana. It is really difficult to learn but it was still very fun.

On Saturday we are going to the bodega in Jerez for a wine tasting and then to the beach in Cádiz! So exciting...

-Las Anas (as we are known here)