La edad del pavo

Sorry for taking so long to update! I know some of you (ahem, Kim), have no life and read this religiously so my bad for the delay. For explanation of the title, you´ll have to read the last few paragraphs.

Sevilla is still beautiful, we haven't had rain in like two weeks and it has been absolutely cloudless and sunny, with temperatures around 70-75 degrees. I heard you guys just got some more snow...can't say I'm missing it! Just a couple degrees warmer and it will be perfect weather here and I won't even need a jacket. But before you know it I will be complaining about the heat! I love it though because it smells like spring.....mmm.

There isn't too much to inform about right now, just getting into the grind again with school. It is less work but it is still more work than I would like to do when i'm trying to experience the world hah. I am really enjoying most of my classes though, especially Contemporary Literature and my Film class. I think analyzing literature and film is so interesting and you can see all the symbols and foreshadowing, etc that the author put into their work. I also really love my teacher for my lit class, she seems like a total feminist, which those who know me well, know that I love :)

Going on a bit of a feminist tangent, I want to write about something here that has really affected me, which is gender roles, but more specifically, violence to women. A few weeks ago a 16 year old girl went missing and since then they found out that her ex-boyfriend killed her and threw her in the river, and they are continuing to look for her body. The reason he did it was because they were dating and he had another girlfriend besides her so she started dating someone else. Which according to him, and many like him, was okay for him to do but not her. This case is getting tonnns of media attention in Spain right now, her parents just talked to president Zapatero to try and change the laws because the boy that helped her ex-boyfriend kill her is only going to go to jail for 6 months. I'm not sure how long the ex-boyfriend will be in jail but my teacher said that because he's young and a boy it won't be that long, especially if they can't find her body. Aside from the Marta case, literally every single day on the news there is another woman who was killed by her husband or boyfriend. Yesterday there were two within 24 hours. Sorry for the downer paragraph but it is just something that has really bothered me since I've been here and a huge part of Spain that I hate and I'll never understand. It has also given me ideas about maybe someday coming back and working at a women's center here..who knows. Also, it has made me all the more hesitant about finding a spanish lover :)

Back to good stuff!! This last weekend we went to Cadiz, which is on the south coast of Spain and its where a lot of people go for the beach. However, we went for the infamous and internationally known party, Carnavales, which is, from what I could tell, a lot like Halloween in the states. In fact, it was pretty much exactly Madison Halloween, with more public urination. And yes, of course I wore sandals that were completely soaked by the end of the night. I will continue to tell myself it was water. Before we left for Cadiz, my friend Amber and I chilled on top of her apartment building and enjoyed my first of the wonderful Spanish tradition of the “botellon”, which is a huge bottle of Spanish beer that costs like fifty cents. Aside from the beer, it was really cool on top of the roof and we could see the whole city. We were up there until sunset and took a bus to Cadiz at 8 pm and got back at 6am. It was a looong night. Which ended in me taking my first bite of red meat in over 8 years...from a Burger King hamburger. A bad choice for my first taste of “cow” in awhile. I don't think I'll have a problem staying away from that anymore. In my defense I was starving and they don't have magical places like Ian's or Toppers in Spain...oh the days of late night mac and cheese pizza...I long for you. So we didn't get back to Sevilla until like 6 am which meant that I spent the whole next day making a route around my house from my bed, to the bathroom, to the kitchen, and back to bed. On one of the trips to the bathroom I did make it into the shower, and brought my shoes with me, so they are clean...pretty clean anyway...

EXCITING NEWS!!! I booked a ticket to Paris for next weekend!!! It was a huge pain in the ass that I don't even want to get into but I am actually going to Paris. I can't believe it. We also just got a hostel that is apparently 10 minutes walking from the Eiffel Tower and 23 euros a night. I'm going with the three girls that I spent the weekend in Granada with, so I'm really excited. Now I just need to pray that everything goes according to plan because I've heard so many traveling horror stories. No matter what I'm sure I'll have lots of things to say for my next blog.

Last night was really fun because I met up with my Spanish friend Carlos who I've met a few times but always at a club when you can't hear anything, so it was nice to actually talk to him. And me and my friends talked almost the whole night in Spanish!! Once I start talking I can feel it coming easier and easier, I just really need to speak in Spanish to my American friends too. We also met two guys from PARIS last night, who of course after only one year of Spanish, were completely fluent. And fluent in English as well. God damn Europe worldly-ness.

Tomorrow is Pepita's birthday so all her sons and daughter and their husbands and wives and grandkids are here...and her house is not that big so right now it is chuck full of crazy Spanish family. The two grandaughters are precious. The older one, Maria, is thirteen and her sister Ana is almost three. Ana is sooooooo cute! Ah! And she is enrolled in a bilingual school where she learns equal amounts of English and Spanish. We sang Happy Birthday in English together haha. Pepita told me she knows more English than Spanish. She is two years old! She is going to have such an advantage when she gets older. It's crazy here how knowing a second language is basically expected in Europe, and it isn't unusual for someone to know three or four. I'm so jealous, especially when I've spent the better part of my life trying to master just a second language. Ayyy madre mia! After I get back from Cordoba tomorrow I'm probably going to be thrown into a pit of Spanish Birthday celebrations. I think I'll resort to talking to the bilingual two year old.

Now it is Sunday and I'm recuperating from a weekend of ninos. Yesterday we went to Cordoba and saw the famous Catedral-Mesquita. It is really interesting and strange at the same time. It was made in many parts and depending on who was in charge at the time (the Muslims or the Christians), they would add certain things and take others away and such. There is a HUGE cathedral right in the middle of the mosque, it was crazy! I have never gone to church regularly or considered myself a religious person, but whenever I have gone into a big religious monument, I feel myself on the verge of tears for no apparent reason. Its really weird.

After the Mesquita, we rode the bus to a town about 45 minutes outside of Cordoba to one of the oldest and finest wineries in Spain for a tour and tasting!! Whoo! We stepped into the warehouse where a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnn of wine is stored in big wooden barrels and all I could think about was how much my mom would love it, and my aunt too :) The smell alone was intoxicating....a mix of aging wine and cedar. I never wanted to stop inhaling!! After the tour we got to try three types of wine; a dry appetizer wine, a semi sweet wine, and a very sweet dessert wine. The first one was pretty strong, I liked the second the best even though it was still pretty sweet, and the third one was really weird. It literally tasted like liquid raisins, and looked like it too. It was dark and almost thick...I wasn't a huge fan. I really like Cordoba but it was nothing compared to Granada, and it was of course raining for the first time in two weeks, but I still had fun.

Now today I had probably the most authentic Spanish experience since I've been here, even more than the soccer game. Alllll of Pepita's daughters and sons and their wives and kids were at the house celebrating her birthday and it was just a huge fiesta of food and laughing and music and dancing. It reminded me SO much of our Thanksgivings or big family birthdays or Christmas dinners at home. Except for the fact that they all can play the guitar so well and dance Flamenco and sing Flamenco cantes...it was so amazing to be a part of. And one of her sons, Anival, was so much like Uncle Tim, it was hilarious. Drinking and making jokes about everything, it was so funny. And two of her sons reminded me of me and Lucy because even though they are old (30s or 40s), they were wrestling and just cracking up at everything each other said. Now that I think of it, Jesus was more like my mom because he still has, as they say “la edad del pavo” which literally means the age of the turkey, ie. An adolescent pest. And seeing how Pepita interacted with her kids and grandkids was like a spitting image of my grandmas at home. I literally had to hold back tears at some points, sometimes because I was laughing so much, and sometimes because I wished so badly it was my own family sitting around the table. Even though I couldn't understand everything, I still felt like I was a part of it. They even asked me about the word “cheesehead” hahah. And little Ana fell in love with me too. We played all weekend together and she made me promise to come to visit her in Medida (about 200 km from Sevilla). I took pictures and a video of her singing “Happy Birthday” in English. What a peach. Well my friends, as always, I'm thinking of you all every minute of the day, and hope that everything is good even without my face around :) I should have pictures up from the weekend very soon, and it won't be long until the next blog because I'm going to PARIS next weekend!!! AH! La vida la vida la vida!