Week 5

Monday

                Well I didn’t do anything cultural or super exciting on Monday; however I was able to have some Skype conversations although I didn’t always have the greatest connection with the internet. My third class of the day actually officially changed to Business class, which was kind of a disappointment because the professor, Alberto, is a lot more intense about memorizing terms and taking tests and such. It isn’t terrible or anything, but it will be a lot of learning business terms in Spanish which is fine, except that I feel like a lot of the vocab will never be used by us and so will be quickly forgotten. On the positive side it is only three or maybe four weeks long. I’m not exactly sure when my internship starts but I should be done with classes once I begin, so sometime at the beginning of March I’ll be done.

Tuesday

                I saved the lives of two animals today. I feel like that is quite an accomplishment. The first incident was in the morning when I came out of my room and found a bird inside the living room/dining room throwing itself against the balcony door. Concepción usually leaves the door cracked a little bit at night, I’m not sure why, and somehow the bird had flown in and could not figure out how to get back out. So I opened the door wider and in a matter of seconds the bird was enjoying its freedom in the wide open spaces. The second animal-saving incident was at Paige’s house as I was about to leave in the evening. I had opened the door to head out and Paige’s Spanish family’s cat, Lola, snuck past me and went running out into the street. Thankfully I managed to catch her before she was able to get too far away. Did she appreciate me saving her?  No, on the contrary, she hissed like no other cat I’ve ever heard and tried to claw me viciously. It was a major struggle getting her into the house, but thanks to my experience taking cats to the vet, I was able to succeed. I think I’ve saved my share of animals for a while now.

                Aside from the animal occurrences, finding travel to Barcelona was the other main happening of the day. It was super difficult to find affordable options to Barcelona for this weekend, but it is definitely a city that Paige and I have to visit since it has Gaudi’s famous Sagrada Familia Cathedral. After a lot of futile searches we ended up purchasing train tickets to Barcelona that cost only 66€ but take eleven hours to get there and for the way back plane tickets that cost around 80€. Transportation is certainly a killer when it comes to planning affordable trips. Also, because we are taking an eleven hour train ride to Barcelona, we have to skip Thursday classes as well as Friday, just to get to Barcelona by Thursday evening rather than Friday evening. Just a pain all around, but since we haven’t skipped a full day of classes yet, I think our professors should be okay with it. 

Wednesday

             I met with Audrey (who is in charge of setting me up with an internship) today and she told me that I will be working with a tourist agency called Discover Sevilla. My job will basically be to put information into their database, which seems like it has the potential to be a little boring, but I will be working with other interns and should get some good experience with my Spanish. The best part about my internship is that it is from 1:45 to 4:30 Monday through Friday so I will be able to sleep in everyday  and still be done fairly early. Sounds fantastic to me! Another great thing about it is that it is right next to Plaza Nueva and CLIC is also right next to the plaza so I don't have very far to go to get to work. Overall, I'm pretty excited about it, and on Monday I'm going to meet with Audrey in order to set a day to go and visit the company. 

           I had to do this blog entry early because I'm leaving for Barcelona tomorrow morning and won't be able to access the internet until Monday. So be prepared for a lengthy blog post on Monday!