Giving thanks and Sevilla sightseeing of sorts

The days have really begun to speed up as I am nearing the end of my time in Sevilla, and I’m not sure if it’s due to my new living situation or the fact that I have been here 3 months, but I am finally comfortable here and I’m not exactly going to be ready to leave in 16 days. I don’t really want to deal with re-entry again, I’ve been there, and it’s not fun, for the first few days, when you get your favorite home cooked meal and the first time you see your family and friends its great, but then you start to miss things, for me I’m sure its going to be speaking Spanish and walking across the bridge and all of my new friends that I have made on this program that happen to all go to schools spread across the country.

But I don’t want to think about all that yet.

Last week Jill’s mom came to visit so we went and did all of the touristy Sevilla stuff like the cathedral, where Christopher Columbus is buried, climbing the Giralda, the archivo de los indias, eating tapas at our favorite tapas place, shopping, and the real alcazar. I am in love with the alcazar, it is made up all different types of architecture, but the most beautiful parts, at least in my opinion, are the Islamic rooms which are decorated from ceiling to floor in intricate designs. There are fountains everywhere, and then there are the gardens. It was raining the first day we went and it looked like a rainforest, and the outside wall of one of the sides looked like it belonged in the jungle in India, I momentarily forgot that I was in Sevilla. I can get into the alcazar free with my student ID card (thanks Westmont) so I went again on Thanksgiving and saw peacocks running through the gardens. Fun fact- the word for peacock is pavo real; which translated directly is royal turkey. Turkey, Thanksgiving, see the connection?

On Thanksgiving we also went to see Italica, Roman ruins outside of the city. It was cool to see how the Roman Empire manifested itself in Spain. There were remains of a coliseum and the mosaic floors of the houses were still intact. My favorite mosaic was one that included over 20 types of birds. That night we had Thanksgiving dinner at a Cuban restaurant. It was an interesting Thanksgiving for a lot of reasons, starting with the fact that I was in Spain, which was definitely not where I saw myself for Thanksgiving 2010. Second, the majority of my good friends from the program had decided to spend the holiday elsewhere (Jill and her mom went to Switzerland). So I ended up at a table with a group of students that I normally wouldn’t hang out with; but it actually turned out to be pretty okay and we all got along well and chatted and ate and chatted and ate some more. The only thing missing was pumpkin pie and um, Turkey (we are convinced that they really served us chicken, but it still tasted good). I missed my family a lot, but got to skype with them in the afternoon. All in all it was a fairly decent Thanksgiving for being in country that doesn’t celebrate the holiday.

Things are still going great in my new casa, I am getting to know my senora and her family well and I feel so included. We watched Espanoles por el Mundo together the other night and a few nights before that my senora and I watched Los Increibles. I like her a lot, and she makes me coffee.

“En todas las familias hay un garbanzo negro” – un dicho que he encontrado en Fuera del Juego, un cuento de Ignacio Aldecoa