crazy art and more!

first of all, let me just say I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to write and update you on everything that's been going on. The course is winding down now and we're just a few days away from all going our own directions. This has definately been a whirlwind of an experience and I look back to the first day I got here. I have definately come a long way, and I can honestly say that I will be sad to leave. I know that another journey is right around the corner though, and this time I am armed with knowledge. I may pass on some of my new found knowledge but not til later. (so you have to keep reading the boring stuff to find out!!) HA! :P wait a sec...boring?! I'm never boring!! :P Anyway, let me fill you in on the latest. After feria it was back to the old wind and grind. Lessons to teach, things to learn, papers to write until 4:30 in the morning and coffee to buy at 9 in the morning. The usual. But this last weekend/week has been quite refreshing. Casto invited my roomies and i and another mate Hairy Josh from the course (he's brittish, hence "mate") to his house to cook with him (because I've been begging him to teach me how to make a Potato Omelette a.k.a. tortilla de patata) anyway, it was so much fun! We ended up being goofs and playing silly games and truth or dare half the night. Then the other day Hairy Josh and I went to check out this art museum in an old monestary and you will never guess what one of the exhibits was! Cadillac Ranch in Texas! It even features that foto in the brochure! Anyway that was pretty cool. Over-all the experience was a bit disturbing 'cuz when we first walked in the lady working there held up a piece of paper with writing in English and said "is okay"? the paper said basically that the exhibit had graphic content and to be aware before entering. I thought it was strange, and come on, we're in Spain.. nothing is too graphic in spain. Or so I thought when I figured the paintings must be sexually explicit. Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw....

feria, continued

So we were sat at feria with casto's brother and his friends, and before you know it, all this food kept getting put on the table. I mean amazing delicious food! One tray after the next! And all of casto's aunts kept coming by to check on us to make sure we didn't need any more food/drink. They brought us this drink called rebujito. Which is a particular type of white wine that is kinda strong, but then mixed with sprite to water it down. To tell you the truth i didn't like it a whole lot, but when in rome. It was a new experience and it was an amazing night. After filling our bellies with loads of food, we went to find another of casto's aunts casetas. We wondered around for quite some time and finally after one of casto's brothers friends bought all of the ladies little roses (they were plastic/fabric) then we finally settle down in one of the caseta's with lots of music. They actually had a live band and we danced and goofed off and it was so much fun!! I also learned a trick to dancing flamenco... pick the apple, put it in your pocket... or screw in the light bulb, squash the bug. HA! anyways, great fun!! Then when it was time to walk home we stopped at the "sweets tent" and got candy apples and carmelized nuts! Best candy apple I've ever eaten!!! It was one of the best nights in Sevilla EVER!!!

Feria de abril! (feria de abRA!!! :P )

I'm positive i wont be able to finish writing all of this right now, but I'll give it a shot... and i'll finish it up later. Anyway, Feria was absolutely awesome... i loved it so much!! the first couple days it was raining really hard, and when i went to the first night with a big group from my school, it was a pretty frustrating experience. It rained and everyone got soaked, and to make matters worse, as soon as we got there two people got their purses stolen!! and one of them was my roommate!!! i actually didn't know what had happened until after she had left for the police station. but when we found out many of us decided to turn around and head home. For the next couple of days it rained pretty hard and although casto kept inviting to go with him, I just couldn't convince myself that it would be worth it. Finally on Friday the weather cleared up a bit, and I decided to give the feria another shot. This time I went with Casto instead of other students. Charlotte (a friend from the golf team at bsu from canada) was also in town for the week, so casto, Charlotte, and I all went to the feria together with casto's family. The feria is basically a fair, with tons of tents all set up right next to each other that families can basically buy the space. The family then hires someone to cook, sets up tables for their close friends or family, and and eats and drinks the night away. These tents are called casetas and there are hundreds of them. They are all numbered, and unless you know the number of your family's caseta, you will never find your tent!! some of them are mostly for dining, and some are centered around dancing... flamenco being the most common dance of the feria. All of the women dress up in these gorgeous traditional spanish dresses... probably typically flamenco style. Most of the dresses have polka dots as apparently polka dots is the high fashion of feria week!! Anyway, so when we got to casto's family's caseta, we were greeted by all of casto's aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends. Of course with the traditional spanish kisses!! (one on each cheek). The kissing is fine with your close friends, but a little awkward as a form of meeting someone for the first time. I'm getting used to it though. Then we were all ushered to the back where the kitchen was and sat at a table with casto's brother who normally lives in madrid, and some friends that came to sevilla with him for the week. to be continued...

Auntie ABBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to be an aunt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sooooooooo excited!!!!!! i hope i didn't ruin the surprise for anyone... but oh well... DAWN AND DEVIN ARE GONNA HAVE A BABY!!!!!!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEY!!!!!!!!!! congratulations guys!!! that just about made my day on friday! i found out just after i left my other post... so that night everyone here celebrated the news! :) then saturday morning casto drove me and emma and lindsay (my roomies) to his beach house and we hung out at the beach saturday and sunday and drove back sunday evening. turns out his beach house is only 18km from portugal..but none of us brought our passports.. so next time we'll have to make a detour! Poor emma is burnt to a crisp... BRIGHT red! poor girl. Lindsay put on sunscreen and only got a bit golden-er. haha more golden. me... my usual, i got burnt on my face and chest and i'm still completely white everywhere else! i don't know why that always happens!! but that ALWAYS seems to happen... oh well. Tonight is monday and at midnight is the start of the feria de abril... so we're having some of the other "teachers" over for dinner, and then we'll head over for the festivities. i'm not sure if we'll see much though, cuz i've heard that the first night is pretty exclusive... oh well, we'll give it a go. Tomorrow i think we're heading off to granada another town a little ways away from sevilla, aparently it's beautiful. So we'll be there tuesday through thursday, and then enjoy the rest of the week of feria until we start class again. Not sure when the next time i'll be able to update this will be...so in the meantime...take care! miss ya'll!! and love ya!!!!!!!! :) k, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

oh... PS... there was a comment from someone named tyler on the last post... um... i'm not sure who that was cuz it was in pura espanol... so if that was tj let me know! cool. that really threw me off...hahaha k, bye!!!!!!!

LAST DAY BEFORE BREAK!!!!!

Oh man, some crazy stuff has been happening here!!! So I've been doing okay with my teaching... not as good as i could be doing but with running on such a lack of sleep i don't think it's been so bad. Why the lack of sleep you ask??? Well... first of all we have like a billion things to do every night and NO time to do it!! Second of all, even if we are diligient and stay after school trying to work hard making copies and printing documents from the computer, there are several other people with the same idea so it's basically like a huge cluster fuck trying to get to the copy machine. Not only that but then you're got some crazies breaking the printer, so we've learned to improvise very well. To make matters MUCH worse, for some reason our bathroom keeps FLOODING!!! at first we thought it was a problem with the toilet... but now we've turned the water off that goes to the toilet, and we discovered that even if we use the sink, or take a shower... ten minutes later our bathroom is under an inch of water. Poor Emma's room is right across from the bathroom so the water runs right into her room as well. Luckily we have tile flooring so it definately could be worse. But this morning was the 6th time our bathroom flooded this week!! and the 3rd time in 24 hours. Last night around 11pm it flooded. We mopped it up. The landlady came out for the second time this week to very casually (as is the spanish way) dismissed the problem and said she would TRY to get a plumber... but it would be difficult as today is Friday, and it is hard to find a plumber on Friday, and then there is the weekend, and then feria week, and then another weekend. Then at 3:30am it flooded again. We mopped it up. This morning at 8:30am. this morning we had had enough, and were running late to class so we just left the house with an inch of water covering the floor. Hopefully they will fix the problem (although i have a feeling it is something with the pipes and may be difficult to repair) or we can be moved to a different apartment. Which is also hard to do during feria. So why am i so tired?? yeah. so anyway, despite that it's been really fun! All the people I've met are really cool, and my roomies are the best! It's nice because we all can ask each other advice and we're all cool about helping each other out. and a second point of view is always helpful! All of our students are so nice and fun to teach... so I'm loving the teaching aspect of the course. The observation side.. not so much. but it's a learning experience and i'm sure i'll have to be observed some time in the future, so now i wont be so nervous for that. anyways, it's really hard to think about what i'm writing right now cuz there are a bunch o people talking behind me. so i guess i'll go... k love ya, byeeeeeeeeeee!!