It’s Friday, Friday, Friday!

This week went by so quickly!  But, I’m definitely excited it’s the weekend!  Yesterday, we had our first exam in our culture class, if you can even call it that.  Our professor, Fernando, gave us four themes that we covered throughout the past two weeks.  We then had the class period to pick two of the four themes and write as much about them as we could in an essay or bullet point format.  So, it was very easy!  Of course, I was the last one done…I guess some things never change 😉

Since I don’t want to bore you to death by describing what I did every day this week, I’ll just share some highlights:

• La Copa de Sevilla: Throughout the entire week, there has been a really big professional tennis tournament going on in Sevilla.  So, on Tuesday, a couple of my friends and I went to go watch one of the men’s doubles matches.  It was cool to see!  Although, let’s be honest, given my lack of tennis knowledge, I had absolutely no idea what was going on.

• Sevici: We FINALLY got our Sevici bike passes yesterday!  Sevici is a public bike system that allows you to rent bikes from small bike stations throughout the city.  In order to use a bike, all you have to do is swipe your Sevici card and one of the bikes in the station is unlocked for you.  You have thirty minutes to ride the bike around until you have to lock it back up at any of the Sevici stations located throughout the city.  It’s super convenient and really cuts down on the amount of time it takes to get from one part of the city to the next.  It was SO much fun riding through the city last night on our Sevici bikes and I can’t wait to use them more often in the future.  The bikes are very heavy duty, so it’s sometimes hard to navigate through all the people in the city.  Hopefully, I don’t run anyone over…

• Meeting Spaniards: Last night, I got to meet some Spanish friends at a local bar with Maggie and Elisabeth.  It was really neat to talk in Spanish with them and not be surrounded by ALL Americans.  I spent a lot of time talking to Augustina, a senior from Uruguay who will also be studying abroad this semester at the University of Sevilla.  She was very easy to talk to as we are both in a similar situation being in Sevilla and not knowing many people.  We are going to try to meet up next week, which will be fun!  We also met some international students last night while we were out, which was interesting to say the least.  We were at a bar with a group of Mexican study abroad students, who were LOCOS (CRAZY!).  They proceeded to run through the streets taking pictures (selfies, of course) and chanting CHUPITAS CHUPITAS CHUPITAS (SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS)!

• Crema de Cacahuete: My señora knows me too well already.  For the past two weeks, I’ve been talking about how much I love crema de cacahuete (peanut butter).  Spaniards and Europeans in general are grossed out by peanut butter, so it’s very hard to come across.  But, Cristina has been looking for some for me for the past couple weeks and surprised me today with a jar of crunchy peanut butter! YUM!  She also bought me ice cream and chocolate because she realizes I have a sweet tooth 😉

• Booking trips: I’ve spent a little bit of time this week planning and organizing where I will be traveling while I’m here.  I will be gone most weekends and taking full advantage of the opportunity to visit a bunch of different countries in Europe:

-Córdoba, España (day trip)

-Cadiz, España (day trip)

-Valencia (weekend trip)

-Granada, España (weekend trip)

-Lagos, Portugal (weekend trip)

-Barcelona, España (weekend trip)

-Morocco? (weekend trip)

-London, England (weekend trip)

-Paris, France (weekend trip)

-Madrid, España (weekend trip)

-Rome/Florence, Italy (weekend trip)

-Brussels, Belgium? (weekend trip)

It will be super busy, but I am so excited!  Off to go see  the movie “Las adventuras de Tadeo Jones” with Reyes, Lola y Maria!  🙂 Have a good Friday, everyone!