It's Just Different

I didn't blog yesterday because I felt like I didn't have much to say. Since we were so tired, we all slept between 12 to 14 hours to catch up from the jet lag. When we woke up, we went and searched for medicine for my friend suffering from food poisoning. After giving him medicine, we ate lunch at the hotel which had the BEST burger ever. Burgers are my favorite, and it made my heart happy to have a decent one. After siesta (nap), we met with other Texas Tech students and went to el Museo del Prado.

El Museo del Prado is a huge art museum in the heart of Madrid. We had to go through a security check with all of our stuff, and we weren't supposed to take pictures of the art which means I secretly took like two. They had people patrolling the museum to make sure we didn't take pictures, and I was caught one of the times. The lady would not get off by back after that which I get because I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing. After she followed me around for a few minutes, I silently begged her to chill out. I wasn't about to try again, haha. Also, I saw Las Meninas in person which is one of my most favorite paintings ever. It was truly a sight to hold. We went and ate at a fancy restaurant for dinner which included golden cod, ham with cheese, and white asparagus. Since we met up with people who had just arrived to Madrid, we showed them Plaza Mayor, el Mercado de San Miguel, and the tapas bars we had gone to the night before. It was basically a repeat of the night before just with new people.

I woke up at 6 am and couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to stay awake. After finishing packing and waking up my travel buddies, we all rode on a taxi to the train station to head to Seville. Getting my ticket at the train station proved to be a little difficult. I had come to Spain with the expectation that most people would speak English, but I was poorly mistaken. Despite that, we got our tickets and hopped on the train. Just like that we were off! I have never been on a train ride, so this was a new experience for me. I had a window seat and was ready to see the Spanish country-side.

Words cannot describe everything I saw, but I tried to commit it to memory as much as possible for you all. Picture lush green groves of olive trees and farm lands with large mountains in the background. The land is separated by maybe hip high stone fences, very Princess Bride-esque. The houses all had a courtyard surrounded by walls, and the house would go on one or two sides of the courtyard. Some of the houses were short and white with reddish-orange roofs. Some of the houses were made of stones. Some were falling apart. I even saw a little stone castle. If walls could talk, I would have listened to them for hours.

The train ride to Seville lasted two hours and thirty minutes, but it felt way shorter than that. I knew as soon as I stepped outside of the train station that I already liked it more than Madrid. Seville seems older and more home-like, and the buildings are even more beautiful. The only thing that kind of threw me off is that the people in Seville have an accent that is so thick and hard to understand. One of my favorite parts of Madrid was talking to taxi drivers, but I could barely understand the ones here. Anyway, the streets are so narrow that they only fit one car going in one direction, and the buildings are really tall. They are built this way, so the streets are shaded because the summers can get up to 132 degrees Fahrenheit. We checked into our hotel and met up with more people to go get lunch. We went to this nice little restaurant, and the waiter there was my source of happiness today. He kept calling me this name that I couldn't understand, so I eventually had to ask him to explain it. Broken down, the name is Maria del Pilar, but he just said Maripili (pronounced Mary-peely) to me. It was so funny, and we couldn't stop laughing about it for some reason. She is apparently a Colombian actress after doing some research.

After lunch, I took a short nap before orientation which lasted forever. We walked to the TTU Center and went through all of the ins and outs of our new life in Spain. The man in charge, Dr. Douglas Inglis, told us, "Spain isn't better than the United States. It isn't worst either. It's just different." I think that the best way to describe it. It's just so different from what we are used to. We walked back to the hotel after orientation and had dinner. My mom asked, "What're y'all having?" I honestly had NO answer. I was just kind of eating and tried not to think about what it was. Later on, I found out it was asparagus soup, pork and gravy with like four slices of potatoes, and a vanilla pudding with cinnamon and strawberry jam on the bottom. The dessert was to die for. Now, I'm just hanging out with my traveling group and typing away. I am tired since I woke up so early, so I will probably go to sleep soon.

xoxo,
Caroline