dondealex

Spanish cities lack visible street signs for some reason. They also have seemingly shrinking alleys that are barely passable in a smart car. Regardless, we managed to find our host family for a two week Spanish program (after pushing in our rearview mirrors so we could fit through the streets).

It turned out that our host family wasn’t really a family, just a single woman who essentially let a few rooms to the program and cooked a meal every once in a while to meet it’s requirements. The rooms were tiny; the women didn’t try much to speak Spanish with us, and finally she had a dog. I like dogs (and this was great fun) but my dad’s allergic. Alas, we were tired and just passed out as soon as it was dark.

The next morning we all got up to go class for the first time, and I had a shower as usual. This greatly disturbed Carmen, and she stumbled out on my dad and sister and told them that is was too early to shower (en la noche es normal), pointed to some oranges to eat, and then stumbled back to bed. Ignoring our accommodations we set out for the school after breakfast.

The Alhambra Institute was amazing. The name was sort of like naming an English school in Kansas “The Washington Monument Institute” though. Whatever. Normally, the school sees ten to fifteen people at a time but since it was the beginning of the year my dad, my sister and me were the only people going to class there. We basically got two weeks of private Spanish tutoring for a reasonable rate the included a room (no matter how un-family like).

No puedo escribir bien, lo siento (puedo dicer mas bueno que este):

He apprendado mucho Espanol porque amos tenido dos profes. Ahora comprendo verbos reflexivo (solo en Espanol, mi gramatica Ingles es mas mal), y como dicer cosas en pasado y presente. Yo tambien he dicado mucho con mi profesadora en cosas como politicos del Estados Unitos (ella no se gusta Bush tambien).

En una dia tipical de la escuela el primera parte de la dia es de gramatica, y el segundo es de diceando(?) (no recuardo la palabra). Cuando esta diez o, once vas (con tus profes) comer deseuno (mas como desedos) y beber café. Hay esta mucho tiempo por café en Espana, y el café es siempre fuerte (menos en el escuela, es instentano).

I’m sure I made beyond a few mistakes, my written Spanish isn’t very eloquent and almost as cynical as my English. For those who don’t teach the second grade in a Spanish speaking country, I’ll translate:

I learned a lot of Spanish because we had two teachers. Now I understand reflexive verbs (but not in English, only Spanish) and past tense. I also talked a lot with my teacher about American politics (she shared my distaste for Bush).

In a normal school day the first part is spent with grammar, the second conversational Spanish. When it’s around 11ish you go (with your teachers) to eat second breakfast (bad Spanish pun is here) and drink coffee. There’s lots of time for coffee on Spain and it’s always strong (but the coffee back at the school suck because it’s instant).

Some really funny moments came out of the two weeks of classes. At some point my second period teacher asked about Wonder Bread™ after discussion about how the American primaries work (Cual es obama? Primera presidente?). I then superimposed pictures of rednecks over the republican side of the stuff on the board from the primaries, and a snooty fellow with a diploma on Obama/Clinton/Edward’s side. “Es dos tipos de Americanos steriotipico, ese y ese.” “Wonder Bread es por personas aqui.” I then pointed to the rednecks. “Vale, vale”.

I’m so worldly in the subtle ways of American living. And because of so I found the “family” we were housed with more and more unappealing every day that I couldn’t shower in the morning, and it became clearer that she was basically running a youth hostel and we were not her target clientele. She was a nice woman but it was bad fit for us, and the dog was starting to get to my dad. If she had had a kid it would have been a totally different story, but as it stood it sucked.
[PICTURE of us and Carmen, caption “Carmen, the dog, y el abuelo del perro (Carmen’s Dad)]

We successfully ended up staying in the apartment literally above the school, which was absolutely giant, and had wifi access. During the second week we had to share it with the one of other student (the horrors!) who came to the school during our two-week stay. She was very nice, and was strangely a Slovenian who spoke immaculate English (normal) and Spanish (weird to me, but I guess it’s Europe).

Seville is a very pretty, and one of the things that makes it so are it’s orange trees. Basically, Seville is a two-sided city and separated by a river, and every street that’s not adjacent to the river is lined with orange trees. The oranges are extremely bitter (legend has it they’re for making the queen’s marmalade) and splotch vivid color across an already awesome city. These bitter orange trees have more or less been in every Spanish city I’ve seen minus Madrid. But, Seville definitely has had the most orange trees some far (especially in el jardins publicos).

[PICTURE of garden – Photo to come if bandwidth permits]

The public gardens are these sprawling green expanses of mossy oak trees, orange trees and ivied fountains; I’ve never seen anything like them. In the center of the biggest park/garden in Seville there is the Reales Alcazares, which is a royal plaza type thing made for some worlds faire. The entire garden was accessible via bike (which were conveniently rentable at little automated kiosks).

Seville had two big cultural attractions, the first being the Catederal de Seville. The cathedral was decently adorned in the gaudy catholic style of the time and had some really cool carvings. The entire cathedral is roofed with giant vaulted ceilings and is quite the wonder considering the construction methods of the time. The big draw of it was access to La Giralde though. La Giralde was the central watchtower in Seville back in the times of feudalism and the like. It was oddly designed to allow a horse to climb up into the tower (which also allows a greater tourist throughput) and commands great view over all the whitewashed buildings and orange trees of Seville.

[PICTURE of Seville via tower – Photo to come if bandwidth permits]

The second big tourist destination in Seville is Maria Luisa. Maria Luisa is interesting combination of both ornately simple (oxymoronic, but it makes sense if you see it) Moorish architecture and gaudy Catholic stuff. Historically the Moors controlled the palace before the Spanish. Hence, when the Spanish built onto the fixtures it created a stark contrast. In one room the walls are inlaid Moorish tiles for about ten feet up and then suddenly become a gold leafed wood ceiling. It’s totally cool how two extremely different styles can coexist in the same space.

The last big draw of Seville (at least to me and my family) was the Riverside. Even though it was only one river, the urban environment. On the cosmopolitan side it was lined was modern sculpture and had the most amazing graffiti I’ve ever seen. I think it might have been a huge gentrification project in hindsight; it was simply on too large of a scale to be done without scaffolding.

[PICTURE of graffiti – Photo to come if bandwidth permits]

On the other end of the spectrum it was gypsy central. I know next to nothing about gypsy culture, so forgive me for being possibly insensitive. The biggest concentrations of them were in this campground above the awesome graffiti. They had spread blankets out across a good plot of land, and had enormous bottles of liquor in hand (and plenty of broken glass from the empties around them). I got out of there pretty quickly because it smelled bad.

Wow, word says this is 1,300 some words. Sorry guys, you should get a cookie if you’ve read all of this. I guess this is what happens when I procrastinate and don’t divvy up the blog to lots of little posts.