Ode to the Peculiarities of Spain

So, life continues to go well, I continue to be overfed by my host mother, and I just thought I would share a few of the interesting things I have come across this weekend:

-On the TV in a cafe: a pop/soul/half-spanish remix of killing me softly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwmj5nK3udU&feature=related

-The Dark Knight...IN Spanish (El Caballero Oscuro)

-A 8-9 month pregnant woman on the street wearing sweatpants and a bra. But it's ok, her back was covered by the wide-open vest she was wearing.

-A young, 5-6 year old British kid walking calmly down the street screaming "Mother of Pearl!"

-Man-prees...Everywhere!

So that has been this weekend's experience. I can't wait to see what future weeks have in store for me...

Abrazos y Besos y chilis con Quesos-
Marcus

First Day with the New Fam

So, my host mother is Loli Sanchez, and she is amazing! I am rooming with Matt Henry from Cornell. We were lucky enough to get a family with an air conditioner, wireless, hot water for showers, and a wonderful cook. Seriously, Loli knows how to cook. She also has one son that still lives with her, but we haven't seen him yet. We've seen the one that doesn't live here a couple of times, though...riddle me that.

I'm a little bit far away from campus, so I'll have to go out exploring later today to find out where the right roads are. But that will have to be after siesta (an amazing concept that Americans have yet to catch on to). Seriously, nothing is open during siesta.

PS, if anyone wants to mail me anything, the address is (and please don't write "underlined degree sign", just make a small superscript zero and underline it):

Marcus Berger
Centro Michigan-Cornell-Penn
Paseo de las Delicias 3, 2(underlined degree sign) derecha,
41001 Sevilla, Espana

Hasta luego-
Marcus

Playing Catch-up

So, I have been in Spain since Sunday the 24th, but I just now decided to start the blog. To catch up, my trip started out at the Detroit airport, where a woman completely biffed at the end of one ofthose moving walkways and was all distraught because she had no cluewhere she was going anyways, so I (and some others) helped her out.

Lufthansa is an amazing airline, on which I flew from Detroit to Frankfurt. Comfortable seats, more legroom than normal. Each seat has their own screen and you can watch like 20 movies, a few popular TV shows, check on the status of the flight, all in like 10 different languages, and the flight attendants speak fluent German and English.

In Frankfurt, I talked with a woman who was a high school Spanish teacher in Madrid and the person who was sitting next to her on the previous flight, a 20 year-old Danish kid who was just coming back from doing conservation work in Arizona. She didn't speak English. He did, but he didn't speak any Spanish. Very interesting.

My flight to Madrid was actually operated by Spanair...Yikes! But I made it. It took me a while to figure out in Madrid that my flight was leaving from a completely different terminal. But I still made it with 2 and a half hours to spare. They don't even announce what gate you're at until an hour before the flight.

So that was my amazing travel story. There are 32 other kids here from the Universities of Michigan, Penn, and Cornell. Only 9 guys total, though. We have been staying at the Hotel Becquer. It’s a nice place. It really is. My roommate here is Daniel Wong, who is actually Brazilian. Weird…yes!

We have cultural and grammar classes everyday. Juan Munoz teaches them both, but our cultural discussion is led by Ana, who is 26 and has a very strong accent. Pretty much everyone is Seville has quite the accent that leaves out a few letters or syllables every now and then.

The food here is pretty good. Tapas are good and cheap. We’ll see what the host family cooks though (it should be better than these restaurants).

We meet our host families tomorrow. Mine’s name is Loli Sanchez. Can’t wait to meet her!

Abrazos y besos-
Marcus