No te olvides tu pasaporte

I have so much to write about but I've had so little time!  I feel like many people use these first three days of orientation to settle in, write home and maybe meet some people.  Orientation is busy, but I have already made lots of friends and am looking forward to meeting more.  Each night we have gone out to the local bars (and last night to a more club-ish bar), had several drinks and socialized.  In the hotel my roommate was a girl named Sahar from outside of San Francisco in Palo Alto.  She is a junior at the University of Oregon.  We instantly hit it off and were even in the same orientation group (con Victor!) so we have been spending a lot of time together.  Turns out we have a lot in common and we will probably become good friends.



Scott is obviously on the program too so we have gotten to hang out a lot too.  We are in different groups but we always meet up after to go out together.  None of us have phones yet so its still a struggle to contact each other.  We were told we wouldn't have internet in our homestays but so far Sahar and I have gotten really lucky and we both have WiFi here (pronounced wee-fee).  I moved into my homestay about an hour ago, and mi madre is extremely nice.  I think we will get along well.  She has had many girls before and some of them have even left their notes, grammar books, dictionaries and guide books here.  Nice!

I'm living on the fifth floor of a building in an area called Los Remedios.  I'm on the south west side of the river (el río Guadalquiver) but I'm not too far from most of the people I have met so far.  There is also supposedly good night life on this side of the river not too far away.

Anyway, last night we went to a flamenco show with the entire group.  I was surprised at what the show ended up being as I hadn't really had any idea what flamenco was about.  I just assumed it was similar to salsa in that people actually dance it rather than simply putting on shows about it which seems to be the norm.  The beginning of the show reminded me of the times I have spent observing Muslim prayers, the woman singing had a deep throaty voice that resonated throughout the entire theater.  It was definitely an experience.

Afterwards we ended up going out with a group of about 10 people to a club that we found on Calle Betis.  It was a Morrocan bar/hookah bar with a two for one drink special on mojitos.  I'm not a big fan of mojitos but I'm a big fan of saving money so we each got two mojitos and then afterwards I tried the drink that I had heard about - la agua de sevilla.  This is the drink that I think is the most bang for your buck - served in it are whiskey, cognac, cava (fizzy wine) and pineapple juice.  On top of mine was whipped cream also which when mixed into the drink took a little bit of the kick off of it.  It was delicious!

This afternoon I tried to go buy a phone (second try) and after waiting 30 minutes the lady said I couldn't buy one without my passport.  So now I have to go back yet again and figure this all out.  There is a Vodafone store right down the street though so I will be able to go back after siesta to try again - this time with my passport!