Silliness

Woke up at 10:30am on Thursday morning to my alarm. I had scheduled my closing interview with Eva for noon that day, which at the time seemed like a good idea. I stumbled out of bed...still drunk. Quickly dressed and ate some breakfast and experienced a pretty surreal walk through los Remedios. Being drunk on a hot Sevilla morning is pretty interesting. I was kind of in a haze and inching up on my hangover. As I began to cross the los Remedios bridge I heard somebody yelling my name...it was Luisa (one of my program directors). Oy vey. I had a hard time focusing on our conversation, but somehow I was able to spew out some pretty coherent Spanish. Actually, it was one of the most coherent conversations that I've ever had with Luisa (she's the only one of our director's who's originally from Andalucia, so she's got a thick accent...therefore she's the hardest to understand). I take that as a sign of the improvement of my Spanish skills. Before heading up to the center I stopped at OpenCor to buy a big-ass bottle of water. Then I headed up for my interview which actually went pretty smoothly and well. Despite my altered state I was able to go into great detail about my classes and host family and my travel/coming home plans. It was a pretty basic interview to give information about when I would leave, if I was traveling, how my host family situation was, when I would have exams, if I had any papers or projects, and details about all of my classes (to help the next group choose courses wisely). I was very honest and thorough and overall had great things to say. She asked if I had any suggestions for the program's improvement, and I couldn't think of any. The best part about the interview was the Universidad de Sevilla 2005-2006 mosaic plaque I got. Woohoo! After the interview I walked straight home thinking of nothing but my bed. I however found the whole interview pretty silly and absurd due to it ocurring amidsdt my transition from drunk to hungover. Yeah, the walk home was pretty brutal: being hungover for a half an hour walk in hot weather is not fun. I got back home and went straight to bed until lunch. However, because it was so hot I barely slept. I mostly rested for a good hour and a half. Lunch was pretty silly: half good, half not so good. The first course was yummy: lentil soup (which I hadn't eaten in so long...one of my favorite Maruja meals!) with chorizo (I also, surprisingly have not had chorizo in a long time. So good!). Then the second course was not so good: meaty, fatty spare ribs that were swimming in this garlic oil sauce. It made our hands all greasy and the fattiness/meatiness was just a bit overwhelming. For dessert we had oranges. After lunch I had some major getting ready to do. I had tutoria from 4-6, then Pepe had gotten us tickets to this event called "Idn Jaldun" at the Alcazar at 8. None of us really knew anything about it except that it related to Arab artistic influence and architecture in Sevilla...maybe. Stacey and I thought that it was a performance so we told Maruja that we wouldn't eat at home. I also assumed that since it was a show it wouldn't finish until around 10, and since I planned to go out that night I wouldn't have time to come home before going out. So I had to make this whole elaborate plan: I got ready in some going out clothes, packed my little green purse with my books in my big orange book bag which I planned to just leave at the center overnight and take the green bag with me, and in the green bag I packed my birthday flask (finally bringing it out!) with some cheap vodka. So yeah, I'd be walking around all day with a flask in my bag. Wow. I then headed over to the center for my last tutoria with Bartolome where we discussed a crapload of Iconografia. He told me that if I wanted to meet again before the exam just let him know. Cool. I love Bartolome, what a huge help he's been, for real. After tutoria I hung around the center on the internet until it closed at 7. Then Stacey and I bought soft serve cones from McDonalds and sat outside and ate them; Leah, Sarah, and Maggie ran into us and we all sat outside together. Maggie had just gotten back from the States...she went home for a family reunion. How weird! I asked her what it was like because the whole idea of going back to the States is mind-boggling. It feels like we're in some fantasyland over here and the U.S. is the outside world...reality, if you will. I was very curious to hear about how it was! Haha, it's just so weird, I can't explain it. Then Sarah told us about how she's leaving June 7. June 7?? That's so soon! She's got less than two weeks, just about! I can't even imagine. I'm excited to go back to the U.S., but I don't know if I'm ready to face the 'real' world. Oy. Then we all walked together over to the Alcazar. We met Luisa's family (husband and two daughters). Her daughters are 4 and 6 and are absolutely adorable...little blonde curls, oh my! She had them speak English to us which was cute (they only knew "Hello. How are you?"). Then we walked in. Well, turns out that this whole Idn Jaldun thing is some exhibit in the indoor area of the Alcazar about the architecture of this dude, Idn Jaldun, who did a lot of stuff in Andalucia during the 1300's. So it's mujedar art, which is Arab art infused with Christian architecture. I mean, kinda cool because I learned about this stuff in Historia del Arte, but I was really just not in the mood for this. It was also pretty crowded and impossible to read any of the captions. It was a pretty poorly put together exhibit. All of us there were so baffled by all of this; we were all just restless and not in the mood. It's funny, I felt an uncultured A.D.D. kid at the art museum...but then again, everyone was acting the same way. So nobody really paid attention and we ended up being a big group of obnoxious Americans wandering around the Alcazar. It was actually pretty funny. We ended up spending a lot of time just sitting in random areas of the Alcazar and chatting. Ya know, no big deal, just chilling in a historical palace. Haha, that just shows how spoiled we've been here. How absurd. We met up with Jessica there and left at around 9 without really seeing anything. We were just sick of it and wanted out. Pepe, what did you get us into? We walked over to Cien Montaditos for dinner...so exciting, it's been ages since I've had me some Cien Montaditos! We hung out there for awhile. It was ten by this time and we had nothing to do. Stacey planned on staying in, but Jessica and I wanted to go out. But we had two hours to kill. She just decided to go back home and then we'd meet up later. I decided to do the same, especially since I forgot to drop my book bag off in the center. So Stacey and I walked home, I settled a bit, freshened up, and headed over to Vips to meet up with Melissa. We walked to the Cathedral then to meet up with Courtney and crew once again. Turns out Jessica decided not to go out at the last minute, so it was the same group from the night before going out. We pregamed on the steps of the Cathedral which is always very ironic, almost got attacked by a huge cockroack which the guy closing Starbucks across the street ran over and killed for us. Pre-gaming with my new flask was actually kind of fun. Yup, simple joys. Thanks, Nicole and Amanda! Then we went to Carboneria. We got there at about 12:30, so we didn't get to see any flamenco, but Carboneria had just opened up its patio which I had never seen before. It was really nice, pretty, and open. Despite my hesitance, we all got a pitcher of Agua de Sevilla...so I held back and made sure I didn't drink too much of that since it's a hangover in a pitcher. We were sitting next to this group of "newbies" from Texas Tech who just epitomized the obnoxious Texan stereotype. They were all drunk and thinking that they were all cool using their broken, terrible Spanish with this one really obnoxious Spaniard who was bothering us earlier. They had only been in Sevilla a day, and they're on some 6-week program where they get a private tutor to teach them Spanish who comes with them from Texas. Weird. Yeah, we found this out from one girl with which we conversed. They made us feel like mature adults, needless to say. They were loud and all like "Omigod, we're so crazy in Spain!" This one girl sitting near Courtney was so drunk she could not hold onto her cigarette and ended up dropping it a bunch of times, one of which right on Courtney's leg which burned her. Courtney yelped, the girl gave a very insincere apology and Courtney didn't even respond. Fucking newbies (yeah, we're Spanish snobs now). After a good two hours or so at Carboneria we did the standard migration over to Alfalfa. We ran into some newbies who looked lost, they asked where Alfalfa was and we told them to just follow us. Haha, I feel like a high school senior and they're all freshmen. We spent a good couple hours at Alfalfa, mostly just chatting and such, nothing too special (cuz Alfalfa just ain't the same no mo'). Then at around 4 we all walked home. I got back at around 4:45 and went to sleep.