Relaxation and Getting to Know My Senora

  So second week of classes went well, and I finally have a routine so that was wonderful!  My busiest days are Mondays.  I'm at the school from 8:30am to 9pm.  I have a few hour long break in between classes, but not enough time to go home. We also found out this week that intramurals don't start until the first week of March, so still a few more weeks to wait.  Other than Mondays, I go to school in the morning and then have the afternoons/nights free and no class on Friday. So this week with my free time, I have done a lot of relaxing and have gotten to know my Senora a little better. 

Facts about Senora Perez Pirez
  1) She has 3 children.  Two girls and a boy.  Apparently my roommate Kelsi looks like one of them, because when the oldest daughter comes to visit that's what she always tells us.
  2) We had a conversation about what I study in school.  I told her math and that I want to be a math teacher.  She then went on a rant about how she doesn't like math and that it's hard, so that must mean I have a big hard head. 
 3) She asked us at lunch the other day which of us spoke more Spanish, Kelsi or I.  I said Kelsi probably does.  Then she went on about how we don't understand anything or talk much.  This is not true.  I really understand a lot, it just takes me awhile to think of how to respond in Spanish, and the lady does not like to stop talking so there is very little time to respond.  She thinks I don't know, but I do. :)
4)  Two days ago at supper I heard a noise and so I started to look around the kitchen.  Above the sink I spotted a bird in a cage!! A bird!  This is a new addtiton to our house!  So the next day we were going to ask her about it, because she wasn't in the house at the moment.  So the next day at lunch I'm looking to see where the bird is, and it's not there!  Who gets a bird for just one day!  So we asked her where it went.  First off, she was really excited that we knew the word for bird.  Why?  I don't know, because it's a simple word, but that's okay.  So she told us, that she put it the extra bedroom we have (that no one uses) so it could see people on the street and then maybe it would start singing.  Because she's had it for one day and it hasn't sang yet.  She said that it was expensive and that if it didn't start singing soon, she was going to take it back. This made me laugh because it sounded so familiar to me :)  So yes, now we have a bird that is locked up in a room no one goes into. 
5) She is diabetic.
6) She asked me again what I studied, again I replied math, and we had the exact same conversation.  She doesn't listen very well.  But that's alright because then we have things to talk about all the time.

   On Thursday night we went wine tasting for school. We have Granada Seminars like three times a week, and this week's was on wine tasting.  It was a lot of fun and really interesting.  A lady taught us how to properly hold a wine glass.  We learned about the different types of wines and how to tell how old or how much alcohol is in it just by looking at it.  We got to do the whole, twirling, smelling, tasting thing too which was fun.  However, I learned that I do not like wine.  It was not good.  But it was a really fun experience!

  Not much happened this week, but it was really nice to just hangout and get to know Senora Perez Pirez a little better. 

First Week of Classes

  Classes started this week and they seem to be going pretty well. All of my classes are in Spainsh, so I am learning about other things, but the teachers lecture in Spanish.  It's pretty easy to understand them, because they know that we are hear learning the language as well.  They slow down a lot and try to use words we are more familiar with, or at least lots of hand gestures.  It's much easier than understanding my Senora.  However, it is easy to stop paying attention because you have to constantly translate what they are saying.  It's kind of a good and bad thing.  It forces me to concentrate so I know what they are saying, but sometimes I have no idea so I start to daydream.  I should work on not doing that.  But so far, they're all going well!

   I am taking a Spanish Literature class, Islamic Culture, History of Art in Spain, a Grammer class, and an oral and writing class.  Plus, through our program we have to take phonetics, tutorials, and Granada Seminar.  We only have those one day a week though. I think Islamic Culture is going to be my favorite class.  It's really interesting and the teacher is funny so it makes the time go by faster.  My least favorite class already is Literature.  No me gusta!  It's very boring, hard, and it's at 8am.  Not a good combination.  I found out on Thursday that I didn't go to my Tutorials class which is on Mondays.  Oops!  I didn't even know I was taking that class!  Apparently, there were a lot of people that didn't go to theirs either.

  The best news about classes here, is I don't have any on Friday!  It's fantastic!  And today we registered the classes we are taking here so we can get credit at Central.  My class load here is equivalent to 19 credits there!  It's crazy because it doesn't seem like that many.  I guess that's a good thing.

    Well I don't know much more, expect we are trying to plan a trip for next weekend.  We don't really know where we want to go though.  Suggestions are welcome! :)

When in Rome…

             So I got back from Morocco on Tuesday night and less than 12 hours later I was headed on a plane to Rome, Italy!  All we had were our plane tickets too so we weren’t quite sure where we were staying or what we were really planning on doing.  When we got to the airport there were like 5 bus drivers flocking towards us to take us to our hotel.  The problem with this was we didn’t have a hotel.  So we went to find some internet at the airport and found a hostel.  We ended up going with 5 other people in a van to get there.  This ride was a lot of fun and very interesting because there were 8 of us and only 7 seats so we were all jammed in.  There was a couple with us from Australia and they kept making jokes about the whole thing.  It was entertaining.  We were the first to be dropped off, and we get to the hostel and they say that they don’t have any rooms for tonight.  So now we are walking around Rome at about 9pm trying to find internet again so we can find a hostel.  We ended up finding a place with internet, which was much cheaper than the internet in the airport, and booked a hostel but just for one night because it was pretty expensive.  We find the hostel and get a room, but it’s actually not a hostel it’s a hotel so it was pretty expensive.  It’s all right though we got it all figured out and ended up booking a different place for the next two nights. 

We went out and experience our first Italian food, pizza.  It was delicious!  We asked the waiter if they were personal sized and he said yes.  Definitely not personal sized, so we all had a medium pizza to ourselves.  It was very good though, the best meal we had their except for the gelato of course.  The food was one of the best parts about the trip.  Pizza, pasta, gelato, my three favorite things! 

Our first day there we pretty much backpacked across all of Rome.  Our new hostel was on the other side of town, so we took our bags and walked there sightseeing along the way.  We saw to the Castle Sant’ Angelo, the Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain.  They were all very cool!  The second day we went to The Vatican and saw the Spanish Steps.  We also walked through Heart Park.  This isn’t what the park is actually called, but it’s shaped like a heart so we just called it that.  The third day we went to the Coliseum and the Roman Forum.  The Coliseum was my favorite, it’s so big! Then we had a lot of time to kill because we had to catch a 9pm bus so we could get to the airport. Our flight was for 6am the next day, but the last bus left at 9.  So before we left we went back to the Trevi Fountain and hung out for awhile.  Also, experiencing a night at the airport was pretty interesting too.

 In Rome, we also met a lot of people at our hostel.  The first night we met a guy from California who is friends with a girl from Central!  It’s such a small world!  So we talked to him for awhile and he told us about some famous Gelatarias, which were very good.  We also met a Canadian, a few Australians, and a Brazilian.  It was fun to meet and hang out with people from all over, and here about all the places everyone had been.  It was a great trip and I really want to go back to Italy some day!

            

Morocco’s Modern Life

Within our abroad program we went on a group trip to Morocco.  We went through the Morocco Exchange Program, so we were able to stay with host families there and had a chance to talk to lots of different people.  We talked with a few college students at Darna a women’s center in Tanger.  Then we made our way to Rabat, but on the way we got to stop on a beach and ride camels!!  Yes, I got to ride a camel in Africa!  It was very cool, but I don’t think I could ride a camel for very long, it was not comfortable.

 Then we got to Rabat and met our host families.  They were so nice.  They didn’t know a lot of English, but enough so we could communicate.  Every time we would say simple words like yes or thank you they would say what it was in Arabic, so I learned a few new words.  The houses were very nice and felt very fancy.  They lived in the Medina, or older part of town, but also one of the wealthier areas.  The food was delicious, very flavorful and kind of spicey.  The best and most interesting part about eating though was the technique.  They use their fingers and pull apart bread and use that as the utensil.  But you are only supposed to use your right hand, because they use their left hand for hygienic purposes.  It was interesting but a lot of fun.  After supper the first night our host mom dressed us up in traditional cloths and took our pictures.  It was really neat and I felt very welcome in her home.  The whole family was so nice.

In Rabat we were able to see both the wealthier families and a few shanty towns, so we could see how much difference there is between people.  We also were able to talk to a few people from an organization that helps out children who can’t afford school or don’t have a place to live.  We also talked to them about stereotypes that the US has about Muslims and stereotypes that Arabs have about us.  It was really interesting and really nice to hear what people think, rather than only hear what media tells us.  We got to talk with a few other people too: a family who lives in a small village in the mountains and a couple of students who are studying English at the University.  That was my favorite part of the trip.  It was really fun to just hang out with people our age and talk and laugh.  I can now say that I have some Moroccan friends.  They were all so nice.

We finished the trip in Chefchaouen, a village in the mountains.  It was so pretty.  It’s called the blue and white city because all of the buildings are painted blue and white.  It was really neat.  I am so glad that I was able to go to Morocco and get to experience lots of things that tourists wouldn’t be able to experience.  I never would have gone to Morocco on my own, so I am very thankful that we were able to go through the program.  On this trip I learned that people are all people wherever you go.  We may look a little different or speak a different language but we all are humans and have families and stories to share with the world.