Events of the Past Week

To the tune of the Life Alert commercial announcement -

ALL. AMERICAN. CITIZENS. SHOULD. LIVE. ABROAD.

No joke, this trip is the best thing ever. It just keeps getting better and better!!! I feel as if soon my face will simply fall off of my body from all of the amazing things that I have seen and experienced in just this past month. Wow, a month. When did that happen???

So, even though I just got back from Lagos and all I want to talk about is that trip, I will do as promised and back track from last Saturday until now, one week and a day later.

So, last Saturday after our night out on the town, the majority of our group headed out with our fearless leader, Diego, to the small city of Carmona about an hour northeast of Sevilla. All day long, we toured the incredibly old city (parts of which were built by the Arabs thousands upon thousands of years ago) and took about a billion photos, just like we normally do. Seriously, I think our group should look into pursuing professional photography. We sho nuff know how to use a camera. We had lunch overlooking the beautiful rolling countryside, and afterwards had yet another photo shoot before we headed to cool off with some much needed ice cream and slushies. And I had a BALLIN Piña Colada slushie fo reeeeal cheap, so I was a happy woman.

As we were getting ready to head out to catch the bus back to Sevilla, several very interesting things occurred. First, as I went to take a sketchy creeper picture of this dog laying in the doorway of this restaurant, this random Spanish man jumped out and forced me to take a mini photo shoot of him in the doorway with the dog. Random. Yet even more random was after I played photographer, a group of about 12 of us college students stood around a rock and watched an army of aunts carry a dead worm up the rock and into a hole for a precious, precious snacky poo. It sho don’t take much to entertain us. Give us a dead worm and an army of ants and we’re happy for hours. Oh, and to top it all off, the little Spanish not-so-model man came outside and made fun of our infatuation too. Everyone just loves Americans.

While Carmona was beautiful, it didn’t hold a candle, heck, not even a match, to our journey on Sunday. Bright and early Sunday morning, a group of 13 of us met at the bus station and headed out to Jerez, about 2 hours south of Sevilla, to visit the Tio Pepe Bodega – aka, vineyard. Tio Pepe is a very, very famous wine in Spain, whose advertisements I’m quite obsessed with, so I was VERY VERY excited to head to a place that was full of them. And then, of course, I took a photo with every one of their mascots in the bodega, just because I could. My sweet friends, always so willing to help me out and take photos of my random likings.

We weaved our way throughout the streets of Jerez and found our way to the winery and waited with people of about 32 other countries for our tour to start. And people, you’d be proud to know, that we stuck true to our academia and got our tour done in Spanish rather than English when they were both an option. We are dedicated individuals, that’s fo shizzle. We started our tour on foot and looked at all of the rooms where they store the MASSIVE barrels of wine for many, many years before they dish it out to us guzzling people. In these rooms, I felt straight up like Lindsay Lohan in the modern version of The Parent Trap when they are in the dad’s vineyard in California (don’t judge me for this description, I just want all of y’all to grasp the legit-ness of this place!). After a tour of this part of the bodega, we hopped on board the most precious little train/trolley thing and rode throughout the rest of it, stopping to look at the area of the winery where they make the brandy and to watch a mini movie over the history of Tio Pepe. One of the places we stopped was another room full of – you guessed it – barrels, but this one had been signed by all of the important people that had visited in the vineyard, ranging in guests from Chelsea Clinton to Manolete, a famous Spanish bullfighter. Yet best of all were the barrels there signed by 1) Steven Spielberg 2) Winston Churchill and 3) STINKING PICASSO!!! I even got my picture made by that talented little man’s handiwork. So legit. After our tour was over, we got to try two of good ol’ Tio Pepe’s wines, one of which was a dry one and one of which was a sweet one. From this experience, I can tell you what I learned – wine is not my favorite beverage of choice. Phew! It was so strong I think I could have had a gushing wound and it would have cleaned it up so nicely the skin would have healed instantaneously. It was some STROOONG junk.

Another bonus about the winery was the fact that, for once, not everyone was staring at the little Americans as we did all of our various activities. Why is this, you ask? Because this random group of older adults was walking around, dressed in outfits like the one the Tio Pepe mascot wears in all of those advertisements I love so much. Now, when I say a group of older people, I sincerely mean a GROUP. A big ol’ honkin group. Easily over 50 people. All wearing about the same outfit – black pants, white shirt, and a black vest with a red hat. Yeah, it was something else. And they thought they were too. At the wine tasting at the end of our tour, those folks put DOWN some of that wine. They are avid Tio Pepe supporters. Once they had gotten even more ‘loosened’ up, we asked where they were from, expecting some far away city that they admired Tio Pepe from and were just really excited for this trip that they had waited for forever to take. So, when we received our answer, we were quite shocked to find out that they were from JEREZ. For those of you not keeping track, that’s the poopin city we were in! Ridonkulous. How hilarious. A group of older people just chilling at home one day decided to put on ridiculous outfits, walk down the road, and cause a scene at the local winery. Hahaha. How awesome. I admire them greatly.

After our visit to the winery had sadly come to an end, the group headed to get some lunch at a restaurant where we found this ballin deal for bread, a beverage, two courses, and dessert for 10 euro. Folks, that can’t be beat in this country. We enjoyed some Coca Lites, paella, tortilla, and natilla for about 3 hours – meals take quite a while here – and just enjoyed spending time with one another. And the best part of spending time together is that with our group, being together always leads to hysterical laughter. We just rock like that.

Monday snapped us back to reality with class, but at least we got an exciting treat that afternoon with another salsa lesson with our favorite little rolly polly of a body Spanish man. After sweating profusely once again, we headed to Café de Indias, one of our favorite spots in the city to get great food and drinks, WiFi (they see Weee Feee over here, it’s so precious), and best of all, AIR CONDITIONING. We studied for our exams the next day (well, they studied, I uploaded pictures of Carmona and Jerez to Facebook – what else is new, me on Facebook). Since I didn’t exactly use my time wisely in the afternoon, the rest of the night I spent seriously brushing up on all of my Spanish history and pop culture for my weekly tests the next day – how fun.

Tuesday after class, a group of us went to the floating bar, a bar that, you guessed it, floats on the river. It was SO PRETTY. We just sat around, talked, and enjoyed the cool breeze (which is so stinking rare here). After our precious little afternoon out and about, a group of us girls went to get ice cream – a tradition over here these days – and then went into a few little shops in downtown to waste time before dinner. It was a wonderful, chill evening that just made me appreciate my city and my friends so much more! After dinner, Whit and I headed out to meet up with the group and we went out and about throughout the city for quite a few hours. I can’t believe we stayed up as late as we did, but we promised ourselves we would do it at least once. Folks over here don’t sleep, so we thought we’d give it a shot too. It all worked out and was well worth it, because in the end, it turned out to be one of the most fun nights of the whole trip. And that’s saying a LOT. The best part of it was, as Whitney and I were walking home delirious with exhaustion, she sees something blowing in the wind down the road. She takes off after it, catches it, and then squeals – it was a 10 euro bill! We couldn’t believe it! What luck she had! The sweet thing offered to split it with me too. So then, we are continuing to walk down the road, and next thing you know, now I see some moolah flying down the road in the wind. After trying to stomp on it several times unsuccessfully due to my lack of coordination, I finally caught a hold of it, assured it would be another 10 euro. Nope. What do you think it was? …… Ok. Ready for the answer? Hold your chair. IT WAS FIFTY FREAKING EUROS!!! How does that happen? Oh wait, I know, JESUS!!! And His absolute everlasting provision. So, between the two of us, we each got 30 euros just walking home on our night out. Halleluuuuuujer!!! Thank you, Sweet Lord!

Wednesday, yet again, was another great yet chill day. All afternoon Whitney and I worked on our essays until dinner and then after we headed out to meet the group at Cervecería 100 Montaditos, a chain tapas bar type-thing that has a special deal on Wednesday nights where everything they have is only 1 euro. We all know I’m not going to miss out on a bargain! I got a dessert montadito (which means little sandwich) with a chocolate bar melted inside of it and almonds sprinkled on top. Kinda like the Spanish version of a Hershey bar with almonds stuck inside a biscuit, more or less. After we scoured up our comida and received a shout out to the “Americanas” over the intercom in the bar, we headed to another place that our BALLIN professor recommended to us in class. We went to another local bar to try their fruit wines, the flavors of which were strawberry or orange. Both flavors were pretty good, but if you thought about either of them too much, they ended up tasting like cough syrup. But it was still nice, fun, and cultured, made us feel like swanky, swanky Europeans, and made our professor proud. If only it were that simple back in America to make a professor proud.

Thursday afternoon we had our dreaded Sevillana classes, the type of flamenco that is specific to Sevilla. These classes very well could be a lot of fun if our little instructor lady had a bit more of her wits about her, but each lesson is always an adventure. She will teach us a move to one set of counts and then count it differently each time we dance it with the music. Always provides for quite the bit of comic relief. This past lesson, I had the honor of being our teacher’s partner. Want to talk about some pressure? I was feeling the heat. And so was she. Heat from anger. Cause I just am not the natural at Sevillana. Maybe one day, maybe one day. After our joyous class, we went on an excursion with Diego to see this photography show about life in Nicaragua. It was breathtaking. That artist, whoever he was/is, is really gifted. Such beautiful yet sad photos about the way that life has been over there in the past 16 years. We took our time appreciating each photo before we left and then started meandering through the center. During our journey, we came across another art exhibition, but this time it was for jewelry. We perused through the place in a few minutes, and then were back on the street headed to get, you guessed it, ice cream. However, as we were walking in the middle of the road, Diego suddenly stops and just stares off into space. We are all thinking, oh man, he’s finally lost it. Ha. Chistes, D, if you are reading this. But finally he speaks, and he asks us if we want to go see the store where Manuel’s sister works (Manuel is the TA on the trip if you’ve forgotten). I’m pretty sure you are hearing the word ‘store’ and chalking it up as some little chick boutique or something, but no no. It was WAY more intense than that! The store was named Pedro Algaba, named after the precious yet slightly strange man that is the artist and owner. What is he the artist of, you wonder? No big deal. NBD at all. No, he’s simply just the only custom maker of torero – bull fighter – outfits in all of the world that has a shop that is open to the public. People, it was LEGIT. Manuel’s sister is probably one of the coolest and prettiest people ever, and she works in such a BALLIN shop. She’s even so sweet that she let us take pictures with the torero outfits that you aren’t even supposed to touch. She also gave us a first hand look at all of the weapons and capes that the toreros use to fight and kill the bulls during the bull fights. Neatest of all, as we were in the store being shell-shocked Americans, in walk two toreros. They stood in the store for about 20 minutes and picked out the best red capote for each of them to tease the poor precious bulls with. It was so awesome. We stood in the store for over forty minutes, simply enraptured by what Manuel’s sister and good ol Pedro had to tell us about the world of bull-fighting, and both of them have a wealth of knowledge for sure. Such a blessing!

After our little lesson in the world of animal killing (slight chiste), we continued on our journey to get ice cream and then killed time before we met up with some of our group to get tapas at a really well-known restaurant in the center of the city. As we were walking around the heart of Sevilla, very far away from our humble abode with our madre Lina, we look over and spy with our little eyes a MASSIVE and incredibly dark black cloud looming over the sky. A beast that comes in rare form over here in España during the summer. So, caught without an umbrella or anything, Whitney and I dashed from store to store hoping for the rain to pass before we met up with the group, which, thanks be to God, it eventually did and we were able to find our sweet people, each some great tapas of almond-glazed chicken and stuffed eggplant, and then head home for a night to prepare for our impending journey to Lagos!!

People, just wait til you hear about Lagos. It will blow your mind. I would like to go back… umm… RIGHT now. But alas, that will have to wait until at least tomorrow, because I am delirious with sleep exhaustion and I’m not really sure what I’m writing anymore at this point. But slowly and surely I am catching up to current dates of adventures in this little humble blog! Who’s proud!?!?

LAGOS TO COME SOON. Over and out my loves. Sweet dreams, peaches and cream, you’re my queen, sunshine beams.