Semana Santa

Before I begin and talk about what is going to happen this week during Semana Santa, I have to inform everyone that my beloved "Cafe y Ole" shut down this past week, and was taken over by a new owner. It is now called "Cafeteria" and is more focused on making meals, rather than "Cafe y Ole" who focused on coffee and other drinks. It is sad, and it is a little weird because within a week there was a new crowd and everything, it was pretty amazing how fast it changed. It went from mostly college students, to mostly families having full meals. It is sad, and like I told my professor Curtis, "Estoy haciendo un boycott". Thats right, I am boycotting the new "cafeteria".

Now, even though I am really sad about my cafe, I have to say that I am really excited about this coming week. This week is Semana Santa, or Holy Week, and what is going to happen in Spain is there will be floats and music and a celebration throughout the entire week celebrating Semana Santa. Also, this town of 800,000 is probably going to double this week with tourists, other spaniards, and so forth. The floats are really amazing, and most of them are of Mary and Jesus, and they are in different positions, decorated differently, and some are followed by bands playing very old traditional Semana Santa music. All of this starts on Sunday and goes until Friday.

In other news, school is going really well, I am preparing for this next semester and registering for classes. I also just talked to my advisor and actually only have 2 more Spanish classes left to complete my major. After the fall I will begin my Education classes and become certified to teach Spanish, so needless to say, I am really excited about school these next semesters.

Well, Spain has really flown by, the weather is changing, everything is blooming here, and it has become a really beautiful city. At the same time, I only have a month left, and I am a little excited to be heading back home. Hope everyone is doing well and until next time, hasta luego!

Spring Break in Madrid

I have been staying pretty busy for the past few weeks with trips to the beach, Portugal, and as I type I am taking the train to Sevilla from Madrid with the other students from Tech. I was really excited about Madrid for many reasons, and I guess I didn’t expect for it to be so different than how I thought it would be, but we had a great trip and I am really glad we got the chance to spend our Spring Break there.

One of the things I noticed is that Madrid seems like New York to me, not really in the sense of the tall buildings and commercialism, but rather the mezcla of culture in the city. I mean the city is HUGE, and it is like the center for all non-spaniards to live. It is so different to me because Sevilla is very Spanish in that they live off their Spanish traditions and thrive off of them. Also, Sevillanos love Spanish traditions and have this amazing pride not only for the Spanish language, but for Andalucian Spanish. Andalucia Spanish is very different than the Spanish up north and I found that the people in Madrid are very clear with their words and the people in Andalucia and Sevilla eat their letters. For example, to say “the guys” in Spanish is “los hombres”, but in Sevilla they would say it like “lo hombre”. Since I am learning in Sevilla, the Spanish in Madrid is very easy to hear for me and sometimes the waiters in restraunts this past week couldn’t understand me because I am so used to talking really fast and eating the letters too.

Another thing that I was excited about in Madrid is this Bar/Discoteca called Buddha Del Mar. It is actually a few miles outside of Madrid, but it is very classy, expensive, modern, unique, and did I mention expensive. It is one of the coolest set ups I have ever seen. It reminded me of the Baño Árabe because there are couches everywhere, and even beds that you can reserve and people are just relaxing and drinking 300 dollar bottles of wine. Some friends and I went and we ordered Coca Cola and what not, only because it was the cheapest thing, but I found out a lot of famous people come in and football players come there to relax and hangout. We actually saw 2 football players that play in Madrid, and we just had a really great time hanging out and meeting new Spaniards.

Other than that I have new classes going and I really enjoy them. One of them is a grammar class and I really like it because I feel like I am understanding the language, but there are a lot of little things that I still don’t understand and I am really excited to learn them. Also, Sevilla FC or Sevilla Football Club is doing really good in this tournament going on and I am really excited to see how far they are going to go, last year they actually won this tournament and hopefully they can do it again. Well, I have some homework I need to do, but now that I have about 2 months left I guess I am starting to think about the transition back to Lubbock and the United States and I have to say, that I am kinda excited to share and live out the things that I have learned and am learning over here.

I hope everyone is doing well and until next time, hasta luego.