Making Friends

I’ve wrapped up my first week of classes at the University of Sevilla and I already can’t believe how fast the time is going by. I really like all my classes and I think it will definitely be challenging, but not terribly hard. My history class is really interesting but very hard to follow at times because the professor doesn’t use the chalkboard much and speaks the non-dumbed down version of spanish. I think it was a little overwhelming for some because Monday the class had about 30 students and Wednesday we were down to 18. My writing class is great and the professor pretty much just wants us to learn conversational spanish and eliminate the repetitive mistakes that he sees in our writing. We start every day with a riddle.

Example: Every day when Manuelito comes home from school, he takes the elevator up to the fourth floor of his apartment building, where he gets off and takes the stairs up to the eighth floor, where he lives. That is, unless it’s raining. If it’s raining he always takes the elevator straight up all the way. Why? Answer in the next post…

I have no idea what to expect from my literature class because my professor literally writes out every word of our notes on the blackboard, and speaks very clearly. However our reading list is made up of 5 books of plays, stories, and two novels. This was a little daunting for me when I’ve never completed an entire book in spanish.

My anthropology class is my favorite because the professor finds a way to help us understand the big concepts that are often lost in the language barrier…and he uses powerpoint. Trivia: Did you know Ferdinand and Isabel were first cousins who decided to marry at a time when all royal marriages had to be given the Pope’s consent. Thus, they forged his signature on their marriage document.

Even though I’m pleased with my classes, it’s a great feeling to walk out of class on a Thursday at 1pm knowing you won’t be back in class until 11am Monday morning. And I’m not the only person who was in a great mood because as I was walking around taking pictures of the sunset there were hundreds of people just enjoying the day. I went to a little park where I randomly found my Mizzou friends, who were surprised to see me. (You can see it from the picture I snapped.)

And here are some sunset pictures that I think look great over the river. I think I’ll go to that spot many more times this semester.

Thursday night was spent down by the river hanging out, and I decided that although it was good to get to know some Americans over here, my friend Mark and I had an opportunity to cement a friendship with Spaniards. We met four guys studying engineering last week and they seemed really cool, and I got the vibe that our presence wasn’t terribly unbearable for them. Despite the initial awkwardness of asking a guy for his number, I got Carlos’ phone number and told him I’d give him a call soon.

The initial thrill of meeting these guys eventually brought the realization that I needed to follow up on it and see if they might actually allow us to hang out with them again. So Thursday night I texted Carlos, and was very happy when he 1) responded, and 2) invited our group to join theirs.

We walk everywhere here and by the time we corralled the troops and headed for Bar Alfalfa, Carlos, Alex, and Danny had gone to a plaza area called Alameda de Hercules. It ended up getting later in the night and after trying to convince some friends to go find these guys with me (I had and still have no idea where Alameda is), I started to worry that I had missed out on rare opportunity to make friends. And then the unthinkable happened: Carlos called me and asked if we were close. I told him we were still at Alfalfa and didn’t know how to get there, and we reached that key point in time where most people would give it the “Okay well let’s meet up another time”, which really means, “I’ve got a lot of friends so you’ve gotta make the effort here, buddy”. But, Carlos asked where we were, and then 15 minutes later found us. They stayed for about an hour and then left because they had class at 9am the next morning. This means that when they could have just gone home and slept for about 5 hours before class, they went out of their way to find us.

It sounds weird typing this, and I’m sure some of you are wondering where this is going, but it was so awesome to see those guys walking up the street because it means that they actually want to hang out with us, which in my book makes them my friends. They told me to call them Saturday night in Cadiz (a beachtown), when we go to the festival Carnival. I wanted to jump up and down because I’ve got my first spanish friends.

I should add that the night did take a bit of an unexpected and downward turn when we wandered into what became clear to be a gay/lesbian bar, but it was nothing that a little churros couldn’t cure.

Mark loves Churros too.