Registration

Yesterday we registered for our fall classes. I’m going to take a spanish grammar and writing course for three weeks, three hours each day everyday, starting Monday. Then the regular schedule begins, with four classes: spanish phonetics, spanish syntax, contemporary spanish cinema, and politics and society in the modern arab world. I also want to do an exchange program where we are paired with a spanish peer for different social activities, volunteer, take a cooking class, play basketball, volleyball and soccer with americans and spanairds (all this is organized through my program) in order to meet more sevillanos (locals). There is also a program where students in my program teach a english class twice a week for local companies that want to educate their employees and their employees kids in english. It's competitive to get in to it, maybe I'll try to do it second semester because I'm on the long waiting list for this semester.

The flooding of New Orleans is a big news here, we saw a lot of it on TV after lunch yesterday. Then I went out around town, the group of american students slowly grew and grew, we all found each other. I also went for a run with a friend along the river, the boardwalk is a great place to stroll or run during the evening. After dinner, we all went out again, I meet two spanish guys, a british tourist, a few american tourists, and students in other programs, but otherwise it was mostly us.

I’ve picked up a lot of interesting tidbits from the spaniards. I learned from Pedro (21 year old host brother) that the kids in my family only pay 1 Euro a year to attend college. Its about 800 Euros for most people, but because they have 10 kids, it’s a lot cheaper for them. They also pay 50% of the ticket price for the city buses. They are all finishing up their exams over the next few days.