Doin' it the Sevilla way

OK, so I think that I have a sleeping problem; no matter how much of it I get, I always crave more. You see, Wednesday I went to sleep at 1:30am. And I woke up Thursday morning at 11:30am...despite incessant hammers pounding and phones ringing. I just can't get enough of sleeping, I guess. I'm pathetic at times. So I got ready and walked to the center to meet Stacey for lunch at 1ish. We had planned to eat outside, but it started raining a bit (the damn rain in Spain) so we ate in the center. Maruja packed us both 2 bocadillos because there was leftover tortilla from the night before, so she made us each one tortilla sandwich (a typical meal here, actually) and one salchichon (some sort of blood salami thinly sliced thing...can't really describe it) bocadillo with a tangerine. I ate my tortilla sandwich and tangerine and Stacey went to town on her salchichon. After lunching for a bit we walked over to the University for our Comedia theatre class. It was not bad, we talked a bit about Lope de Vega, got some short sonnets to read that night, talked logistics of the class. I missed some of it, but it's no biggy because we didn't really talk about anything of much importance. Then we had an hour break, we ran into Sarah and Amanda so we sat with them and ate (well, they ate, I just sat and talked). It's nice to be in classes right now because it forces me to spend time with people in my program who I haven't really seen since we started (since we've all separated into little cliques already). So it was nice to chill with them. Then we had Teatre Hispanoamericano 4-5. Lecture was awesome, I really love the professor and his teaching style...as does everyone else. This could turn out to be one of my favorite classes. I actually follow practically everything in it! He discussed theatre as an artform and what theatre is and means. It was a fascinating conversation, very heavily based in the avant-garde theatre movement, which I, of course, appreciate greatly. I'm definitely very excited about this course. Then I had another hour break before my next class, Iconografia, but nobody else is in that class with me, so we all went our separate ways. I sat outside of my next classroom and ate my other bocadillo. Was still hungry, as always, so I walked to McDonalds, bought an apple, and went to the upstairs seating area and ate it while looking out one of their big picture windows at the Sevilla streets and river. It was very peaceful despite the cloudy weather. I was so happy and present that I picked up my notebook, which has a blank paper section, and started to sketch what I saw out the window. It was so nice, I'm going to begin sketching here because everything is just so wonderful...and I have so much downtime! I may as well. I didn't get to finish my sketch because I had to dash off to my first day of iconografia (iconography--the study of symbols). The class is small, I'm one of the few Americans in it. Many adults. My professor is good, he speaks kind of mumbley, but then all of his sudden he'll raise his voice to a fortissimo (that's for all you music folk) tone, then suddenly retreat back to a mumbley piannissimo. It's very strange, and funny. I like him, even though he has a thick accent and is sometimes hard to hear, I get a lot of what he says. We mostly went over the syllabus, which only took a half an hour...and the class is scheduled to be 2 hours long. So we got out early, niiiiice. The class looks really awesome. As much as it sucks to have class on Thursdays and Fridays from 6-8, it looks like it's going to be extremely interesting. I then walked home, exercised, and messed around online until dinner at 9:30. Dinner was very good, meatballs in a thin sauce (the meat was quite rare, mmmmmmm!) and a side of grilled zuchinni (YES!). Then, we actually got a real dessert that she had made! It was a thin lemon pudding/yogurt thing with chunks of fruit in it. It was delicious! And healthy, at that. During dinner we watched the news (of course) and there was a report about the release of the movie version of The Da Vinci Code and how Catholics are pissed off over here. Then Maruja and Maria del Mar got into a heated discussion about what an outrage the movie is, how everything about it (and the book) is lies and propaganda, yadda yadda yadda. I sometimes forget how Catholic my homestay is! I also had forgotten how threatening that book is to Catholocism. Oh man. It was tough, because I have an opinion, but it would A, be disrespectful to address it in a heavily Catholic household, and B, it would be difficult to express it with my limited vocab. Ah well. After dinner we came back in the room. I got ready to go out and Stacey started her hw (she is very overwhelmed with classes and hw so she decided to stay in. I was not pleased, hehe). I walked to la Plaza de Cuba at 10:45 to meet up with Melissa and Katie. On the way I passed Cadillac, which was empty, and Diego the bartender was in there watching Olympic figure skating. LOL. Love the Cadillac. BTW, I have concluded that Diego is gay, my radar has been going off with him. Hehe. More of a reason to love him, y'all know me! So I met up with M&K, they brought bottles of vodka mixed with diet fanta and diet coke. So we had a mini botellon and then grabbed a cab to take to the barrio Santa Cruz (Jewish/Gypsy quarter, woo woo) to meet up with Jessica and Courtney and Carboneria, a cute bar that has live flamenco music and dancing every night. When we got there, J&C had already gone through a pitcher of beer. We all then decided to go in on a pitcher of Agua de Sevilla, the signature drink of Sevilla (obviously) which we had not tried yet (a great injustice). We got the pitcher, a yellow liquid topped with lots of whipped cream and cinnamon. Looked quite good so far! We were excited. We each got about 1.5 glasses each, which was def. plenty! I guess that there's about 5 different types of liquor in it mixed with juices and spices. I'm not sure, but it tasted kind of appley...SO GOOD! The flamenco was great, not as good as the show that we saw weeks earlier, but good nonetheless. I freaking love flamenco. We were there for about and hour and a half, we had a great time doin' it all the Sevilla way...we got our Sevillano culture and Sevillano drinks. By the time we left we were all drunk already. Jessica was wasted, supposedly she had drunk some wine before Carboneria. We all then found our way to Alfalfa (always a standby) for more drinks. We ran into a good majority of our program, including all of the academic year people. It was a lot of fun! Melissa, Katie, and I all took a couple chupitos of tequila. Jessica didn't drink anymore do to her extreme innebriation, and Courtney got one of those monster-sized beers. Jessica was playing with her umbrella that pops out (but doesn't open) when you push a button. She accidentally, and drunkenly, hit the button and the umbrella socked Courtney right in the lip. Courtney was kind of angry, but kind of laughing. She kept saying, "I can't believe you hit me with your fucking paraguas!" (paraguas=umbrella). It was hilarious. So Alfalfa was really fun, not too crowded, and it was great to hang out with a lot of our program peeps. Soon Courtney and Jessica disappeared with what looked like Sevillanos (but we found out the next day that they were sketchy Morroccans), and everyone else decided to go to a reggae club. We decided to then just walk home. I got back around 3:30 and was passed out by 4 with a developing headache from the sugariness of that Agua de Sevilla. Whatevs, I had a good night filled with Sevillano culture, so it was all in all a great night.