A rather long update on what I have been doing with my life…

Two weekends ago (Feb. 13/14) Laura flew all the way from London to come visit me for her long weekend. She was supposed to fly in on Thursday night but the people at Heathrow managed to screw things up badly enough that even though she arrived at the airport hours before her flight, she didn’t make it through security on time to board her flight. Needless to say, she is incredible and went through the whole ordeal of dealing with tube rides, airport security hang-ups, waiting in lines and riding busses the next day and we were able to spend Friday night and Saturday together. It was so good to see her; I wasn’t quite prepared for how emotional it would be to see a familiar face. I could write an entire post all about our weekend, but seeing as she is an English major and can describe it far more eloquently than I, I’ll direct anyone who is interested to her wonderful blog:http://londonflorenceandlaura.blogspot.com/2010/02/slow-day-long-blog-post.html

A great perk of my program is that they sponsor free day/weekend trips to nearby cities. So far I have been to Córdoba and Aracena, and am signed up to spend a weekend in Granada and a day on the coast in Cádiz in March. It’s awesome to be able to travel a bit and see other cities in southern Spain to get a better feel for the area.

I left Laura on Sunday morning and rode a CIEE bus with my roommate Justyna, and the two other Beloit girls Jenn and Lori to Aracena, a small town about an hour and a half away. We weren’t there with any particular itinerary, just to enjoy the day and take in the town. Aracena is adorable. The town is tiny, which is great for a day trip because you can pretty much see all of the sights in a few hours. White houses with clay tile roofs line the narrow cobblestone streets. There is a huge hill directly behind the city, and at the top are the beautiful ruins of an old castle. I really wanted to climb up and look around but I wasn’t exactly wearing the appropriate shoes and nobody else was that interested so I guess I’ll just have to go back. Instead of hiking up to the castle we walked the streets and hung out in the tiny town center. María, our program guide, told us that Aracena is known for two things: great jamón y a famous pastelería (bakery/sweets shop). The vegetarians in the group weren’t super excited about the ham so we passed up el museo de jamón, but everyone was up for finding this pastelería. We asked a few people on the street and found our way just fine. The bakery was packed with people picking up Valentine’s Day cakes and treats. Because all of us were spending our Valentine’s Days alone, we bought ourselves some treats to make up for it. I got a small mousse cake in the shape of a heart and a piece of layer cake. Phenomenal. They were definitely some of the most delicious things I have ever eaten, though I’m sure the location helped it taste even better. We walked around some more and after a quick tapa/coffee break we met up with the rest of the group to take a tour of the Aracena “caves of marvels." I wasn’t expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised. The caves were very cool, much bigger and more beautiful than I had expected. It’s pretty incredible that things like that happen naturally.

After a fun weekend it has been a pretty sad week at my Spanish house. I woke up Monday morning with a sore throat and the weather was terrible. It poured rain all week, making the 20-minute walk to class significantly less enjoyable. I didn’t bring my rain boots and really don’t want to buy them here so instead I just rotated shoes and tried to avoid large puddles. All of the streets here are cobblestone and plazas are paved so there isn’t much grass to be found. Water just kind of sits on the sidewalk or runs into gigantic puddles so after a few minutes most people give up on avoiding it and make peace with having wet shoes and socks. I’m sure this didn’t help my state of health, and I kept getting worse. When I woke up on Wednesday I had a terribly sore throat, crusty eyes, and lots of sinus pain. I stayed home from class, called and woke my parents up at 4am to see what I should do, and decided to go to the doctor. My host mom was really great about helping me out. She called CIEE to get the name of a good clinic that I could go to, walked me there and helped me communicate with the doctor. Diagnosis was a throat/sinus infection, and he gave me prescriptions for two medicines that I could pick up at any of the hundreds of pharmacies lining the streets of Sevilla. I was more than a little nervous about how I was going to pay for all of this but after the appointment and prescriptions my total was 45 euros – thank goodness for Spain’s public healthcare! After taking the first rounds of medication I felt better and finished out the week of classes.

On Friday morning Justyna woke me up (at 11:30) and we went out for churros. According to my host mother the churros near my house are terrible “malísimo” although they taste pretty great to me, but she gave us directions to what is supposed to be the best churro place in Sevilla. According to her, when the king of Spain comes to Sevilla this is where he gets his churros. When we got there, they gave us cold churros with sugar and directed us to a bar around the corner where we could get a cup of chocolate to dunk the churros. I’m partial to hot churros so I wasn’t very excited about the cold ones but the chocolate was fantastic so overall I was pleased with the churro experience. When we got back to the house we told our señora that the churros were good, but that we like hot ones better. Apparently we got served the cold churros because we’re clearly foreigners, but if we ask for hot churros they will make fresh ones for us. We’re going to have to try it again sometime. Last weekend Justyna and I also tried out an Italian restaurant close to our house, and had some great pizza and lasagna. I swear I could just eat all the time and a happy camper for the entire semester. All types of food I have had here have been amazing; I’ve even eaten fish and shrimp (I know mom and dad, hard to believe).

This weekend was the first time that all four of my household members have eaten lunch together (usually my señora eats out with her sister or eats after we do). We sat around the lunch table for a good 2.5 hours talking about anything and everything. We started discussing healthcare systems and the current issues with healthcare in the USA. This led to María telling us more about her husband. We knew that he got sick and died about 10 years ago but didn’t have that many details and didn’t know how to ask. It turns out that he died from throat cancer; he was a smoker all his life. The general doctor he went to when his throat had been hurting for a while didn’t think it was a big deal, he gave him a 2-week prescription for amoxicillin. When that didn’t work he went back and was told to go see a specialist. When he finally got an appointment, it was too late and his very aggressive form of cancer had taken over. He died a year later. María brought out photo albums and showed us pictures of she and her husband when her daughter was just a baby. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be for her to look at those pictures. She had a whole different life envisioned for herself. She married her husband when she was 21 years old. He was 15 years older and already had 2 kids from a previous marriage. They had María when my señora was 30 years old, and seven years later her husband passed away. She has spent the past 10 years cooking and cleaning every day for exchange students living in her house. I know that this isn’t the life she wanted to lead but I admire her so much for how positive she is, and am so appreciative that she is an incredibly supportive host mother.

On top of this sad story, the sister of María’s husband also has cancer and has been in the hospital for the past several months, on the same floor of the hospital where María’s husband died. It has been really difficult for her to go through another loved one’s battle with cancer and relive everything she went through with her husband. Yesterday morning, the sister-in-law passed away. The funeral was this morning. It was an expected death and came as a relief to the family who has watched this woman suffer through the past few months of her losing battle, but it was still a very sad occasion.

Sorry for the depressing post, I assure you that despite all of that things are still going well over here. I’m liking all of my classes, (hopefully) getting better at Spanish, and loving living in this beautiful city. I miss everyone at home and abroad; let me know how you guys are doing!

Much LOVE, Hannah