Sevilla so far.

I've been in Spain almost a week (one week tomorrow), and in Sevilla for like 3 and a half days. Seems like its been longer than that because of all the tiredness and exploring. But I'm sure 4 months from now, I'll say it seems like it was just yesterday that I arrived! This week has been full of activities through the school (CIEE). We had a Spanish student guide (Rocio) assigned to our little group, and we loved her! But now she left us :( So we have to find things on our own! So far we haven't gotten (too) lost.

My little teaching development is pretty amazing. There are only 6 of us in the entire group. The liberal arts group, the main group at CIEE, has like over 100 students. So it's great that we are so small. One benefit of that is that they kind of cater to us. The other benefit is that we got like built-in friends. We all stick together since we have all the same meetings, etc. They even have all 6 of us living in the same building. That's a lie, 5 of us live here, the other one lives in the "residencia" (dorm). Anyway, it's pretty fantastic and we have a ton of fun together!

We had all kinds of meetings about things we can do while we're here, about academics and the city, etc. And Rocio took us out for tapas a couple times (some delicious tapas, some I hope I never have to eat again...). Last night a bunch of the students from CIEE (our little group of 6 plus about 1000 students from the other groups. I exaggerate. A little.), went out after dinner. First of all, they don't eat dinner here til like 9. So it was 11 before we were even done with dinner. Then we went out to some bar. Where there were a whole lot of people. I had a couple beers and laughed at all the other students while they drank a whole lot more than that. And then we got home at like 2:30am. Yikes. I'm an old woman, I can't handle this every night like these youngsters can. ;)

Today we met with our Professional Teaching Development professor. He is pretty fun and explained a little more about how the teaching/observation part of our time here will go. We will be observing in a class for 4 or 5 weeks, then will actually be teaching groups from the class on our own for 4 or 5 weeks. Sounds kind of intimidating, but suuuuuuch a good experience. Hopefully my English is good enough to be able to teach it to someone...

My señora is pretty great. We moved in to our residences yesterday. I was super nervous for some reason to meet my señora. But she's really cute. She's a modern lady, dresses all cute and has short, highlighted hair, with a makeup bag full of Sephora makeup (I peeked since it was sitting in the bathroom...)! I also met her sister, brother-in-law and niece (she's 21), who all live in the same building. They are all fun people! They speak pretty fast but I'm doing alright, just have to ask every once in a while for them to repeat things. The more I speak here though, the more I realize how s-l-o-w-l-y I speak! Gotta get up to Spaniard-quickness! Or at least a little quicker...

Angeles is a pretty good cook. Yesterday for lunch we had chicken (yummy breaded chicken), a green salad and some gazpacho. For breakfast today she just made me some toast and cereal. And for lunch today there was kind of a marinated salad with hard boiled egg, roasted red peppers and tuna, along with a calamari/potato soup. It was all good, except I didn't eat the calamari. I tried it, but just couldn't do it! Can't wait to see what else is in store... :)

Well, I think its time for a siesta :) little nap before we meet up and head out to do some more adventuring! Ciao!

hahahah I just remembered, I brought my host a few little goodies from Oregon. Some Oregon jam, toffee with hazelnuts, and a magnet. I gave her all that, then went and took a nap. When I came out after my nap, she showed me the package that the toffee was in and said "I ate it all already!" haaaahahah apparently she liked it! :)