Wow I have been slacking in my blog lately! I apologize to you, my 11 faithful followers! I guess it just means that I have been busier so that’s a good thing. I just finished my first full week of classes and it went pretty smoothly for the most part. All four of my classes are conducted in Spanish so more often than not my brain is very tired from trying to comprehend the lesson and the Spanish simultaneously. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay afloat in all of my classes. Sometimes I feel like I’m in over my head but I think everyone else is more or less in the same boat. I don’t have class on Friday, which I’m very ecstatic about since this gives me 3-day weekends to travel. The school assigned each of us exchange students with what is called an intercambio. It’s basically just a native Spaniard that wants to better his or her English while also helping his/her assigned partner better his Spanish skills. My intercambio’s name is Pablo and we met up for coffee on Wednesday after my classes. He was very nice and down to earth and has studied English in England for a while. His English is about as good as my Spanish so we decided that he would speak in English and I would speak in Spanish and that we would correct each other when necessary. We decided to try to meet at least once a week to just chat and learn. I’m trying to submerge myself in any way that I can.

As for this weekend, Jennifer and I decided not to travel anywhere so that we could explore and get to know our city better. On Thursday, we managed to find the best shopping area in the city, which could be a very good or very bad thing depending on how you look at it. I’m going to choose to look at it as a good thing for now while my bank account is still in its upper digits. There’s nothing like a little retail therapy every now and then!

Yesterday we walked around the cathedral grounds and stood out as tourists as we took our numerous pictures. We also visited the Real Alcazar, which is the old palace of the Spanish Royalty. The royal family used to live in Sevilla years ago and this was their home. It originally served as a Moorish fort so it was very interesting to see the combination of the Spanish and Moorish architecture. A little fact for fun is that Marie Antoinette was born there. The palace itself wasn’t even as amazing as the grounds were. There was garden after garden and fountain after fountain. As beautiful as it was, I wish I could visit in the spring-time when all the flowers are in bloom. It really blows my mind how people back then put so much time detail into these huge, magnificent palaces and cathedrals, and that they’ve managed to stand for all these years- and they didn’t even have cranes and big trucks to build them!!! We spent at least 2 hours just walking around the grounds being mesmerized by everything. The weather has cooled down quite a bit so it was actually very pleasant yesterday. Hopefully it will stay this way because I’m not sure I can keep sweating it out day after day. I’m going to take a walk on the wild side and say that I think fall is finally here! Until next time, Adios! Xoxo.