Week Nine

Monday

                I didn’t do much before work other than walk around a bit and try to use the internet in various places. I was successful to an extent in Plaza Nueva, however, with the sun so bright it was nearly impossible to make out the screen, and so I eventually went to the school like usual.

 Work at the hotel was with David, the first person I had worked with. Fortunately it was a lot busier this Monday versus last Monday, so I had plenty of things to do to keep me occupied for the four hours. However, I don’t know if it was just because it was Monday or what, but we had a lot of unhappy clients over relatively little things. The majority of the unhappy people were American; the one exception was a Canadian. They certainly didn’t make us Americans look very good, with their complaints and bad attitudes and over things that neither David nor I could help, such as the situation of parking or room change availability. Well, I guess that is the life of a hotel receptionist.

Tuesday

I met for the first time with Carlos, the person that I’m doing intercambio with, which basically is to meet with someone outside of class/work in order for me to practice my Spanish and for him to practice English. I signed up a while back, but the first person who I was supposed to meet with wasn’t free the same hours as me, since I was still doing classes then.  My first meeting with Carlos went well; we walked to the river and just sat in the warm sun for an hour and a half chatting about random things like politics and bullfights. Carlos is strongly against bullfighting due to the killing of the bulls and although I kind of would like to see a bullfight because it is such a huge part of Spanish culture, I don’t think I’d like to watch an animal get slaughtered very much.

Work was pretty uneventful and I worked with David again. I began doing a new task that was a little tedious. I went onto a website for rating hotels and responded to the English and Spanish comments over Hotel Murillo. It wasn’t very difficult; however David had to do some correcting on my Spanish replies since I don’t always use the correct tenses, especially when it comes to using perfect tenses. There are just too many tenses to keep track of in Spanish.

Wednesday

I met with Carlos at the river again and this time we walked to Maria Luisa Park near Plaza de España. We had a nice two hour visit and I think it is definitely helping me improve my speaking skills by spending time talking in Spanish outside of just a work environment. Aside from that I didn’t do much else until work. This time I worked with Javier in the apartments instead of the hotel and it wasn’t bad, but overall there wasn’t really much for me to do but observe the majority of the time.

Supper was one of my favorite dishes, macaroni. This macaroni is similar to spaghetti and consists of tricolored noodles with tomato sauce and shredded cheese and it is delicious. I would be totally fine with having it every night, but so far we’ve only had it twice.  

Thursday

                Before work I went to Mass, sat in the Plaza Nueva for a little while, and talked with Concepción. I also am proud to report that I turned on the hot water myself for the shower for the first time. For the last few days Concepción has been gone when I get up, so I’ve had to have rather cold showers, which are not very pleasant. So she showed me on Wednesday the process of turning certain buttons and lighting up the furnace with a lighter and I was able to achieve warmer water Thursday as a result. It wasn’t very warm, but it was an improvement at least.

I worked with Jorge for the second time since I’ve begun. It wasn’t a bad day and I was able to help a lot with the check-ins. I’m already nearing the half-way point of working at the hotel. I’m excited to be done hotel work, but it will be sad saying goodbye to Spain.

Friday

                It’s finally Friday!  Thank goodness for weekends, that’s all I have to say. It has been raining on and off all day which is only the second time since I first got here two months ago. I met up with Carlos again and this time we had our visit at the University of Sevilla so that we wouldn’t get drenched from the rain. We had a pleasant visit, however the rain had picked up when we left so I was rather soaked by the time I reached the apartment. As long as the rain comes now instead of during Semana Santa, it’s okay with me. I don’t know if I’ll be doing anything special this weekend or not, maybe going to Cadiz. I do know that whatever I do, it won’t involve getting up very early, since this week I’ve been getting up before nine each day and I wouldn’t mind a chance to sleep in a little later.