"Leaving on a jet plane" for upcoming travels

Volunteering with Miriam yesterday was particularly fun. Last time Miriam and I talked, she played flute for me, so we agreed that I would play guitar for her and sing when my voice got better. Yesterday was the first day I fully had my voice, so when we finished our hour of English conversation, we went into the room with the electric guitar and I played her some music. I have really missed playing guitar since coming to Spain. Miriam liked the guitar playing, so I'm going to try to teach her how to play "Leaving on a Jet Plane," since it has only three chords. During the middle of one of the songs I was playing, the door opened. It was Natalia (the woman who teaches English while I'm there) and one of her students, Nacho. (Yes, his name is really Nacho.) They listened for the rest of the song, and Natalia really seemed to enjoy the music. She asked me to sing more when I was done. Mercedes later told Angel that she had heard me sing at the school and that I have been hiding a very good voice. It was a good day.

This Saturday the Geranios group is taking an excursion to Granada. We'll see the Alhambra, which is supposed to be beautiful. Hillary (another Geranios student) and I are spending the night in a hostel so we can have some extra time there. Our hostel is called the Funky Backpackers Hostel, and they offer some really cool activities. One thing they do is a "tapas tour." I think that means they take you around the different tapas bars and you eat lots of tapas. I like the sound of it. I'll post an update after that happens.

There's a program here called DiscoverSevilla that takes American students on trips. They're doing a beach weekend in Lagos, Portugal, and I think I'm going to sign up. Hillary is already signed up, so we'll be able to share a room and spend the weekend in Portugal together. This should be a really amazing trip, and will probably be my biggest one before I leave Sevilla.

The plans for my two weeks in Europe with Marc at the end of the semester are solidifying. We now have almost all our transportation set up, and my dad has helped us find some hotels. We'll be visiting Madrid, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome. This will be our first time in most of the cities we're going to. I'm very excited about the trip, I think it'll be a great end to the semester.

Pictures:
Almost all of these were taken at the Plaza de España and the Parque de María Louisa. It was a gorgeous day, so I took a walk. This place is about 20 minutes from my house. The last picture is in a little playground by my house where the family walks the dogs. All the walls are completely covered in graffitti. I took more pictures, but this one was my favorite.

Loving those allergies

I had a second visit with a doctor. My sore throat came back, and this time I had lots of sneezing to go with it. The doctor said it was allergies and prescribed me an antihistamine. Marc is sending me a care package (yay!), and over-the-counter medication will be included. I won't be able to get more meds here without a prescription, which requires a $47 consultation, so the care package will be very welcome. The allergy pills I got after my last doctor visit helped a lot, and I'm feeling much better. I hear the pollen in Sevilla is pretty bad during the spring, so I'll brace myself.

We did an interesting exercise in Semantics, matching occupations with how people of those occupations might define love, using contextual clues. It's like one of those forwarded email jokes describing how different famous people answer "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Somewhere along those lines. It'd take me too long to type the entire thing in both Spanish and English, so I'll just put my English translation in here. I thought it was funny.

Profession - Definition of Love

Nun: It's something celestial, because it arrives until the soul. [Didn't quite get the translation of this one...]
Military man: It's the best way to combat an enemy of the opposite sex.
Teacher: It's something instructive, because it teaches all and learns a lot. It's a very educational relationship.
Electrician: It's a phenomenon because, with time, it is able to "dar la luz" [meaning both give light and/or give birth].
Mathematician: It's an operation in which you look for the complementary number. The pair is the sum of two people.
Engineer: It's the most important scientific project that you can design in your life.
Doctor: It's a sickness, then it always ends in bed.
Economist: It's an inversion: some times you can win, other times lose.
Chef: It's a marvel to find the most adequate ingredients for each dish, to cook to a slow fire and avoid burning.
Photographer: It's an art, because in its poses is the quality.

In dog news, Mercedes says Lisa's not pregnant yet. I don't know if she can really tell or not, but she doesn't think I'll get to see the puppies before I leave. I hope she's wrong, but we'll see what happens. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Raining cats and dogs

Our cold, rainy weather has returned. This week is going to be spent indoors. I think everyone I know here has been sick at some point during the semester. Sounds like I wasn't alone.

Lisa and Iago, my two host dogs, are going to make puppies! My host family wants a litter of puppies, so this is the first time Lisa and Iago have not been separated during her fertile period. As a result, there has been a lot of dog love around the house. A dog gestation period is 9 weeks, so if Lisa gets pregnant now, I'll get to see adorable little puppies two weeks before I leave. Puppies get really cute around 3 weeks when their eyes open and they can start to see and hear, but I'd still like to see them before I go. I promise to take lots of pictures if the puppies arrive before May 16th.

This last weekend, Brittney and I took a walk around the city. We crossed the bridge over to the Triana neighborhood, it was the first time I'd been on the other side of the river. We took some pictures.
1) one of many tiny little alleyways in the Barrio de Santa Cruz
2) a sculpture next to the Cathedral
3) ...and another one
4) leftover jamón legs in the dumpster next to a restaurant
5) apparently striped shirts are popular
6) view of the river from the bridge
7) the Torre del Oro next to the river

Food, poetry, and resumes

What a week. I am exhausted and will probably be ready for bed once my stomach calms down. Marit and I went shopping, then spent some time in my kitchen making puppy chow (http://www.chex.com/Recipes/RecipeView.aspx?RecipeId=19919&CategoryId=342). It's cereal, chocolate, peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar (we skipped the vanilla). We couldn't find Chex cereal in Spain, so we used "fit way" instead, very delicious. Our cooking involved making a mess, serendaing each other with Sweeney Todd songs, and dancing around with our messy hands.

The puppy chow turned out delicious. We ate about half the bowl while watching Firefly. It was a very large bowl, and I probably shouldn't have eaten quite so much, but it was delicious! I had host mama Mercedes try some of our concoction. She was skeptical, she said she doesn't like peanut butter, but she LOVED it. I'm going to trade recipes with her soon. I plan on forcing Alex to try some tomorrow when he recovers from his first day of paintball.

Today in seminar, we read a very pretty poem. It stood out to me, so I'll put it here and translate it.

Al perderte yo a ti tú y yo hemos perdido:
yo porque tú eras lo que yo más amaba
y tú porque yo era el que te amaba más.
Pero de nosotros dos tú pierdes más que yo:
porque yo podré amar a otras como te amaba a ti
pero a ti no te amarán como te amaba yo.
- Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua)

For me to lose you, you and I have both lost:
me because you were the one I loved most
and you because I was the one who loved you most.
But between the two of us you lose more than I:
because I will be able to love another like I loved you
but no one will ever love you like I loved you.

Lovely, isn't it?

In non-Spain news, Marc accepted a summer internship at Stanford! This means that I will actually be able to see Marc this summer without either of us needing to buy plane tickets, which is wonderful. He'll be about a 30-minute drive away, and very close to my wonderful grandparents. (Hi, wonderful Grandparents!) I'm very excited. We've already started planning excursions with our Bay Area friends. This also means that Marc will have a fabulous new job to add to his already-impressive resume.

Speaking of resumes, I just added my English language instruction to my resume draft. Anybody remember the 11-year-old girl, Miriam? I saw her again this week (skipped last week due to lack of voice) and had a wonderful time. She is very fun to talk to, and her English is very good. It's better than my Spanish. We talk about travel, we talk about food, we talk about jobs and music and our families, it's fun. She's a shy girl, overall, but I think she came out of her shell very quickly. It's nice that we can both relate to speaking a new language in a new country. There may be a 9-year age difference, but we have a lot of shared experiences. She also offers to help me with my Spanish homework, which is sweet.

No new pictures this week, I'm finally caught up!

Apparently two musicals are better than one

When Alex and I picked up Sweeney Todd yesterday where we left off, we were surprised to find that the songs suddenly had subtitles. We probably ended up looking at a different version (he's downloading it online). That relieved me of my translating duties.
So to make up for that, I got to translate some subtleties in West Side Story that night. Angel (my host dad) adores West Side Story and thinks the music is beautiful. I agree, and I told him so. It was interesting to see how an all-Spanish version of West Side Story incorporated the language differences from the mostly-English version. In the original movie in one of the first scenes when Lieutenant Shrank lectures the boys, the Puerto Ricans ask him to repeat himself in Spanish. In the Spanish version, they ask him to say it more slowly. There are a couple of other differences later in the movie, but that one stood out the most. I pointed it out to my host family, of course, to their amusement.

My health continues to improve, I'm feeling almost normal today. I don't really have much more to say about that.

The real reason why I wanted to write a new blog post was to put up more pictures, I admit. These are all from Córdoba.
1) This is the synagogue in Córdoba. It's very tiny, especially when compared with the churches. Seeing the Hebrew writing on the wall make me miss other Jews again. I mentioned to our guide that there weren't many Jews in Spain, and she said there were, they'd just mostly converted to Christianity. Somehow it's not the same.
2) we found a pretty fountain...
3) ... and an adorable courtyard with a well
4) the sign next to the train station points us in the direction of important places in the city, such as Burger King and McDonalds
5) translated, this bar is called "House of the Bad Face"
6) some people left not only beer bottles, but shot glasses sitting on a wall at the side of the road
7) Here's a castle, and there's me at the top. Looks cute, but we found used condoms and feces up on the second level. I didn't stay on top of the castle for very long.
8) We also passed an adorable little torture gallery that deserved to be remembered. They give tours for a discounted price if you bring a coupon.

A musical a day keeps the doctor away

Health update: I'm doing a lot better.
I can talk again, and my throat is almost feeling normal. I think I'll be back to normal in a couple of days, which makes me happy.

Alex (my host brother) and I have been watching Sweeney Todd over the last couple of days. It's interesting, because the movie is dubbed in Spanish, but the songs are the original actors singing in English, and there are no subtitles. I've been translating the songs into Spanish for Alex when the characters sing. It's been tough, but it's worked so far. However, we're coming up to the song "A Little Priest," which is not only fast, but filled with English puns. The beginning of the song is hinting and metaphors, and the rest of the song is filled with occupational puns. This will be fun to try and translate.

All my pictures today are from inside the church in Córdoba.

Flamenco doctors

Flamenco last night was pretty amazing. They performed about ten different styles of flamenco, each with intense dancers and incredible costumes. This flamenco show was very different than the last one I saw. I'm pretty sure I was at a touristy venue last night, and the show was choreographed. The last one I went to looked completely improvised. They're both fun, in their own way. In the tango flamenco style, the dancers performed to music from the opera "Carmen," which was very exciting. I still have pictures from Córdoba to post, but they can wait. Today I post pictures of the flamenco show.

For those of you who don't know, my health has not been perfect for the last week. Eight days ago I woke up with a sore throat, and it's been bothering me ever since. Today I spoke for the first time since Monday, and it was to tell my program director I needed to go to a doctor. One of our Geranios program ladies (Maria Luca) escorted me to a nearby clinic and I saw my first Spanish doctor. I was able to describe my symptoms to her pretty well, I think. I didn't catch the majority of what she said (good thing Maria Luca was there), but it sounds like I have a cold with a mild ear infection. My ears are plugged up as though I'm in an airplane. I feel fine otherwise, I just have some issues with keeping my upper respiratory tract healthy for long.

The doctor gave me a prescription for three different medicines. I get an antibiotic, something I take that dissolves in water, and normal cold medicine. Hospitals don't sell drugs, you can only get them in pharmacies. Maria Luca and I found the last two medicines at the first pharmacy we went to, but we had to go through 4 more before finding the antibiotic. Luckily, there's practically a pharmacy on every block, so we didn't have to look for long. Spanish pharmacies are interesting. They sell things like fish oils and herbal supplements, but you need a doctor's prescription for anything stronger than cough drops. Even common barrier methods for birth control (which we have sitting out in several jars at Health Education Outreach at school for the students to take free) are behind the counter and require more human interaction than the average American is used to when purchasing such things. I'm also not used to smelling smoke near medical facilities, so I was shocked to walk into one pharmacy and smell a very strong odor from cigarette smoke. It's ironic to see someone coughing their lungs up, then soothing themselves with a cigarette. Or with a baby in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Ironic and sad.

Anyway, I've seen a doctor, I have medicine that I'll start taking today, and hopefully I'll get better soon. The miming was fun, though. I can communicate surprisingly well without words when my voice doesn't work. Bring me back to my choir plague days in high school.

Pictures!