Nicholas Tanner Beck
ISA Sevilla
C/ San Isidoro 30
41004 Sevilla, Spain
This is the address of the office, not my personal address. I'll get it eventually. I really don't know how long it takes.
Also, if you would like to see any pictures from anything I talk about, feel free to add me on Facebook. There will be plenty there.
Okay, so I posted about Madrid. I posted about Toledo. I posted my initial post about Sevilla. Since then, I've been to Malaga and Italica. Okay, Malaga is a city, also in southern Spain, but on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It's a really nice city. I really enjoyed it there. They have a cathedral (just as every Spanish city does) that is absolutely gorgeous. They called it the "one armed lady" because one of the two towers isn't finished. Why? Because they built this cathedral in 1776. They ran out of money building it. Why? Because they gave the money to the STATES! They supported us in a revolution against the British. Soooo, they couldn't complete the second tower. We actually did return the money far into the future from that point, but they put it to use for streets connecting Málaga to surrounding cities. Pretty cool, I thought. Once I got into the cathedral, I was absolutely speechless. Surreal. The details in these European cathedrals is absolutely stunning. I don't have words to describe to you how beautifully the stained glass windows beam onto the baroque styled golden arches with the combination of the Jesus statues everywhere. It was a religious experience for me. I could have stood there for hours. But anyway, after touring the cathedral, we left and had free time. My free time was spent where else but the beach. I stood, for the second time in my life, in the Mediterranean Sea. It's pretty astonishing. The beaches are just...prettier. The town that juts out right onto the beach is something to behold. We waded, took pictures, and then ate the traditional seafood that comes from the Mediterranean while sitting on the beach overlooking the ocean. It was surreal. Some of the people I ate with had some...let's just say, weird things. I couldn't try it. I wanted to at first, but when I see a fish's eye staring at me, no. Just no. Okay, so then we left Málaga and went home. On the way home, my friend Tara and I had a conversation about everything that life has to offer. We are at such an interesting age where we are really learning about ourselves and the world around it. It's so interesting to hear another person's view of reality, another person's interpretation of the world. We got back, and basically went to bed because Julia, Tara, Becky, and I were arising early to go to Italica!
So, after much confusion over where the bus is, how to pay for the bus, and where exactly the bus was taking us, we got on a bus to Italica. It's only about a 20 minute bus drive. So you know how, in the last blog, I said it was about the little things in Spain that I love? Well, here's one for you. We're standing there, talking in English, as typical Americans do and a man comes up to us and says "Ah! English!" He is an elderly gentlemen, he and his wife, that are from Australia but just recently moved to England. They were staying in Seville for a week. It's not everyday that I meet someone from Australia, England, or really just an English speaker. So I basically spoke with him about travel the entire way to Italica. He and his wife moved to England to travel more. You heard me. They retired in Australia and moved to England because it was more central. That's pretty dadgum (southern raised word) cool. They had been to the States many times and he was shocked that so many Americans hadn't traveled within the country. Then he mentioned "I guess since you all only get a 2 week holiday, you can't do much traveling." and Tara said "Yeah, we just sleep on our days off." This made me think. Do we Americans value our time off? Do we take advantage of it? Just a thought. So we finally get to Italica after riding the bus through Santiponce. By the way, this entire Italica trip cost me 3 Euros. That's all. We paid for the bus. That's the entire expenses. We got to the gate and the super nice man asked us where we were from and we said the United States and he said "it's on the house" and let us in. Still not really sure about that one. Well, we got into Italica...and I was left speechless yet again. Surreal. We walked all over that hill side that city used to be on. Italica was used for 500 years, historians think, as a Roman city. It began in 206 b.c. Meaning, I touched things from before Jesus Christ had even come to the earth. Surreal. It makes one feel so small to stand beside something so unreal. Their ingenuity, intelligence, and inventions made us the population we are today, and to see how they lived their lives was...surreal. Being that we didn't have a tour guide, we were able to speak and create our own theories about the things we were seeing. I, the Political Science major, Becky, the legal minded student, and Tara and Julia, both with a psychology background were all able to bring our own areas of expertise to the table to almost rewrite the story of the Romans. It was something like I'd never seen before. Surreal. We walked around for hours, learning about Romans, learning about Americans, learning about each other, and learning about ourselves. It was wonderful. We then left, finally, and went back to Sevilla and had the most American meal I've had since I've been gone - a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a Budweiser. It was wonderful, once again. So, that was Italica. Surreal.
Fast forward to Sunday, (Malaga was on Friday and Italica was on Saturday). I explored with my friend Susana around Santa Cruz and El Centro and other places. But that wasn't the coolest part about Sunday, today. The coolest part was after we ate dinner at the table, as we always do, our host mom walks into our room with a cell phone to her hear and a twinkle in her eye. She says "habla con el" (talk to him), and hands me the phone. I begin to speak in Spanish to this person and then I realize I detect an American Spanish accent. It's one of the two guys she had last semester. I won't say his name, but she says it all the time. She loves to talk about her former students. She was so excited to tell us about him and all the rest of them. But for her to be excited for us to talk to him was so endearing. We looked up on the internet while she was on the phone and she said "OY! Muy guapo!" which means "AH! Very handsome!" Still, not the coolest part. As she's winding down the conversation, she begins to choke up. At the end she said "estás feliz, no?" which means "you're happy, right?" Then she says "No, escuche me. Estás feliz...con tu vida ahora, no?" (no, listen to me, you're happy...with your life now, right?" What she was really asking was if he was truly happy. Like, not just happy but content and satisfied and loving life. She cares so much about him. She finished the conversation by saying "yo te quiero. Yo te quiero mucho" which means "I love you. I love you very much". She hung the phone up and began to wipe the tears away. She couldn't stop talking about him. She cares so much. It made me feel so blessed to have Isabel as my host mother. I know she cares about me. I know that in just the week and a half I've been in Sevilla, I've made a lifelong friend. This is what this is all about. This is what is really surreal. The little things, once again. Seeing how much she cared for someone she's only known since August/September has changed me. I don't know how, but it did. This is what I'm here for. Surreal.
No comments:
Post a Comment