Class

On Saturday night I went out to one of my favorite places in the city. I went to Plaza Alfalfa, which is a little square near the center of the city. Its not much of a plaza; the attraction is all the narrow streets and alleys around the plaza that are lined with tiny bars. Its packed with people everynight and the crowds spill out onto the streets. Its also a good place to go because lots of locals go there. It was a very international crowd too, I first meet some young guys from Bristol, England who were traveling around Spain. They had hilarious accents. Then I meet a bunch of German students who are studying in Sevilla for the semester. Their english was very good, their spanish not so good. Then I meet some guys from Quebec, so they had French accents. At 5 am we went to the only restaurant open that late, a Mexican place near my apartment. I napped for four hours Sunday afternoon.

Today we had our first day of the intensive course, a three hour class that we have Monday - Friday for the next three weeks. I really like the professor, Magdalena, or Madeline. Her mother is Gallega (Gaelic) and her father is American and she has dual citizenship. I expected a three hour spanish grammar class to be really boring but we talked a lot and mostly learned idiomatic expressions and words in order to become better speakers of the Andaluz dialect of Spanish that is spoken in Sevilla. We also wrote a script about a funny experience we've had in Sevilla and acted it out for the class. The class is nothing like the typical spanish university class, which are all long, formal lectures. We learned some really helpful things and were directed to learn more on our own. Our final exam is not written, its an open project on anything spanish, I think I'm going to do it on gazpacho. Its nice to have the class in the main University of Sevilla building. There's air conditioning and we mix with spanairds. My classes the rest of the semester will be in another building, an old palace in the old part of the city so I think it will be a nice place, I haven't seen the inside of it yet.

I went to a bookstore after class to buy a workbook for class and a map of Europe to trace my travels this year. I have looked in several stores but have not found a notebook with lined paper. They only sell notebooks with graph paper or blank paper. I'm still looking for skim milk too, its almost all whole milk here (as far as I can tell), and no luck with US newspapers or Chinese food either.