Sierra del Norte

On Friday afternoon I left on a trip to a small town about two hours west of Sevilla. About 12 American students and 12 Spanish students went and it was all paid for by my program. We rented three houses for two nights and toured a local radio station on Saturday afternoon. It’s a communications group so we had to do something related to communications and the radio visit was our excuse for the trip. The person who runs the group, Esther, a 27 year-old Spanish woman who is a producer for a TV show, is really fun and hooks us up with cool things to do. So far this semester we’ve visited a big TV station in Sevilla and the University of Sevilla’s Communications school and she organized a get together with the Spanish students one night for tapas and drinks. In April we are going to Madrid to tour two of the national TV stations.

I stayed in a nice big room with three other guys in a bed and breakfast type place. We were on the second floor and had a little balcony and huge patio and garden in the back. There was a restaurant on the first floor where we ate all of our meals. The other people stayed in two houses nearby. Rural tourism is big in Spain so there are houses for rent all over. Throughout the whole weekend we spoke a lot of Spanish and all of the Spanish students were really friendly and fun. Every meal was multiple courses of typical rural Spanish food, some of which was new to me. We were served tons of food and pitcher after pitcher of beer and sangría. On Friday night we hung out at the other two houses and listened to music and talked all night long. It was a good group of people and we had a great time. We went to bed at 7 in the morning that night and did the same thing all over again the next night until 6 am.

So during the day Saturday and Sunday we slept a lot and relaxed and stuffed ourselves with huge lunches. Saturday afternoon we hiked up a hill to an old castle and walked through the countryside by farms full of sheep, goats and horses. On Sunday afternoon I went for a long run with a friend. It was about 80 degrees and the river and parks were filled with people out enjoyed the hot spring day. This week three students from last semester are visiting on their spring break. There are a lot of students visiting friends here and families on spring break. Its nice to be in a place where the weather is already warm and people are coming to you for spring break.