Well hello there! Thanks for stopping by…
It’s been quite an adventure here in Seville (say it like the Sevillanos do: Say-vee-ah). I guess the journey begins with the flight though, right? And I’m sure you want to know all about my 7 hour flight from JFK to Madrid. Oh, really? Okay, well I sat next to a man from New York, who grew up in Portugal, and speaks English, Portuguese, AND Spanish. Cool, yes? Since our (the 15-20 kids going to study with CCCS who left from JFK) flight from JFK was delayed, we missed our connection to Seville. But! No worries, we were all given tickets for the next flight, which was in an hour (and even with our extra tickets on the flight, each of us still got our own ROW).
But, to the exciting part: Seville. We stayed at this fantastic hotel. Lots of good food there. We explored a bit and had some information meetings for the semester. Then we finally got to go to our houses and meet the families. The CCCS people called a bunch of taxis, we each got in a taxi, and off we were! Okay, it wasn’t that easy; it was really intimidating going out into the city on my own like that. People are really nice though: my taxi driver helped me carry my luggage up to the apartment building, and when I got to the front door, this random guy came running up and not only helped me get all my luggage into the elevator, but met me on my floor and introduced me to the lady I’m living with.
When I walked back to the Center later, I only got lost once and still made it there early! We had a bus tour of the city and got to see lots of cool places that I hope to actually go see and learn about. Our bus driver stopped to let a kitten cross the road (I kid you not – see, they are nice here!).
On Saturday we explored the city on our own though. A couple of us walked around Triana (a neighborhood in Seville) in the morning, and found a great park called Parque de Principles. Yesterday it rained pretty hard (which is unusual for Seville at this time of the year). I hung out at the apartment and chatted with my senora and her daughter (the two people I’m living with). Since they drop the letter “s” in Seville, they pronounce my name as “Chritine”. The apartment is about a 30 minute walk from school (and the internet…), but the walk is pretty; I get to cross a bridge and walk along the river and see all the old buildings.
It’s quite the change from a suburb in Pennsylvania, but I like it a lot. Seville has a thing for the colors yellow and white; so many of the buildings are old-fashioned and painted those two colors. I’ll try to upload some pictures next time.
I think I’ve probably told you more than you wanted to know. :) I’ll try to update again soon. ¡Hasta luego!
Oh, P.S.
I love hearing from you too! My email is cmurrison@yahoo.com and my Skype name is christine.murrison.
