Hola Carly: First Weekend!

[Fair warning: this is going to be a very long blog post]

¡Hola todos!

I thought maybe I had escaped it, but I've definitely come down with the inevitable new-country-cold. Sore throat and runny nose, hooray! It could be worse though, so I'm not going to complain anymore...

So on Thursday we hit up a couple of the Cádiz clubs for the first time. Partying starts much later here so when we rolled in around midnight it was pretty empty, and by the time we left around 2am there was a line to get in. I feel like "Thirsty Thursday" isn't really a thing here, so next time we'll probably be going out on the weekend. Overall, definitely a fun night though!

First night out! (The men are displaying the beer of choice here in Andalucía, 'Cruzcampo')

After a late night, most of us made it to class the next morning, although some were in better states than others. We're still doing 'orientation' this week, and next week we get to try out all the classes then choose which five we want to take. Right now it's looking like I'll be taking Lengua IV, Translation, Spanish Art History, History of Spain in the Americas, and Contemporary Spanish Literature.

It's been unusually stormy here, which meant that our scheduled trip up the 'Torre Tavira' (Cádiz's lookout tower) was cancelled, and the weekend was completely free. So eight of us packed our backpacks and hopped on the train up to Sevilla on saturday morning. It took a little over an hour and a half and was a 24 euro round-trip.

View from the train, just outside of Cádiz.

Read up on Sevilla on the train ride there. Shout-out to Rick Steves for all the 'handy tips.'

Pretty typical view, rolling hills of Andalucía.

As soon as we got off the train, it was easy to tell that Sevilla was a much bigger, much more cosmopolitan city than Cádiz--the streets actually had two lanes! After a quick ride on the tram and a decent amount of walking we arrived at a hostel.

Just some lost Americans...

The hostel

A typical street in Sevilla

Saturday consisted mostly of walking, then we did some walking, and to top it all off we walked some more. There is a lot to do and see in Sevilla, and I know it deserves more than the day and a half we spent there, but I'm sure I'll be coming back because my good friend Becca will be studying there this semester as well. There's a ton of really beautiful architecture and monuments, but the most impressive was Sevilla's Catedral. It's the largest cathedral in Spain and the largest gothic cathedral in the world, really beyond belief in so many ways. Pictures don't even begin to do it justice.

'Torre Giralda' - The bell tower, originally a Muslim minaret.

The exit to the cathedral

The very top of the entrance

Torre Giralda again

Las chicas in front of the tower

It was really difficult to capture the size, especially since I only brought one lens, but you get the idea.

Photo by Merry Chris

Without student ID, entrance to the cathedral cost 8 euro, so we skipped it the first day. Then on Sunday we ducked in a door that was open for mass. The scale is just so enormous and impressive, it's beyond description, and I didn't even try to take photos. I couldn't even start to wrap my mind around the kind of work it would take to build this cathedral, no wonder it took 120 years.

After about five minutes of standing there with my jaw halfway to the ground, they started playing the organ--at which point my mandible hit the floor. The sound was so rich and full, I just leaned against a column and stared at the ancient pipes as the goosebumps formed all over my body. It was absolutely incredible. Another girl summed it up nicely when we left, "Well, that was probably one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me."

Some sort of important building...

Sevillian architecture

On Sunday, we ran into some strangely dressed people sitting on beds on one of the streets, yelling at passerby and asking for help (in both spanish and english.) A few of us had been swindled by some old ladies outside the cathedral so we all tried to pass without making eye contact. There were probably about eight beds with two people each, and when we finally made it pass the last one, a man came up to us and asked if we could help. We asked what was going on, if it was some kind of race, and he said, "Yeah, the Amazing Race."

WHAT.

Being the fan that I am, I was like, "Pshh, yeah I'm down. Let's do it guys!" Five of us girls attempted to carry a bed with two grown men on it...we made it about five feet. But hey, we were probably on TV! I think it was the European version of Amazing Race, but I was pretty stoked about it anyway.