The Art of Bargaining...

Well, I officially failed at updating this weekly, like I had intended. So now I have a lot to catch you up on! School is school is school, so the week flies by with classes and such. Friday, the 5th, I decided to be ambitious and try to run. It felt so good to go running again in the sense of being able to run, but MAN am I out of shape! How quickly you lose all athletic ability :-) And I was definitely feeling it the next day! Hahaha! The next day, Saturday the 6th, I traveled with my program to Granada, Spain. We left super early on Saturday so we could have a lot of time to sight see in Granada. When we arrived at the hotel, we gorged ourselves on all of the delicious food at the buffet there! It's really amazing how great plain salad seems when you are used to it being drenched in oil and vinegar here to the point of ridiculousness. Needless to say, it was delicious! The rest of the day, we spent touring the Alhambra, which, according to Wikipedia, is a Christian palace and fortress complex used for a residence for the royals. It is pretty massive, so it took us the good part of the afternoon to tour it. It's really awesome because our program provides guides for our tours that are specifically for us, so they speak slowly and clearly so we can understand. I am really amazed to see how much more Spanish I can comprehend then before. After that, we went to a Teteria for tea and cookies, which were delicious!!! And after we had some free time to wander the city and buy souvenirs.


Sunday we had to wake up early to start the day off with more sightseeing in the neighborhood of Albaicin. Unfortunately, it rained on us during most of the day, but at least not hard and it wasn't cold. It was really cool because we were able to see the tombs of Isabella and Ferdinand, Los Reyes Catolicos, who were VERY important rulers in Spain. I am learning about them in like 3 of my classes, so to actually see what you are learning about makes it WAY cooler. Normally, I find history pretty boring, but I was so intrigued by what I was seeing and hearing from our guide. After a little more free time, we had to board the bus again to head back to Sevilla. It was an awesome weekend!


Last week, during the week, I had more class. My weeks here usually consist of class, lots of walking, getting cafe (coffee) with my friends, reading for class, and going to bible study on Tuesdays. Pretty much the same each week. One thing I realized that week was how frustrated I was at myself for my lack of confidence in my Spanish. I have this fear of speaking Spanish with native speakers because I don't want to look stupid in front of them. It's like this wall that I just can't seem to get over and it's so frustrating!!! Especially because all of the Spaniards I have ever talked to are so nice and patient when you are trying to talk to them and they know that you are learning. So, really, I have nothing to worry about...but I still do. Ughh!!!!! So, from now on, I am really trying to get over that hurdle because it's the only way that I'm going to learn.


Moving on, this past weekend (12th-14th) I went to Morocco with a student travel agency. We even got to take a ferry to get there!! That was really sweet. It was really cool, also,to travel with this group because we had the opportunity to meet and talk with other international students who are studying Spanish too. And what makes it even more unique is that we communicated in Spanish, which was the only common language of all 15 nationalities represented on the trip. It was kind of a long ride to get there, but it was worth it. This was the first trip that I had to cross a country border (because we entered Africa through Ceuta, which is on the continent of Africa, but is part of Spain), so that was pretty exciting to see how that system works. We immediately started sightseeing, but mainly on the bus. That would be one of my complaints about the trip was that we spent a LOT of time on the coach buses, but I guess that's to be expected because we visited 3 cities (Chefchaouen, Tetuan, and Tangier) in Morocco in about 3 days. It was really interesting though to see a lot of the Moroccan countryside in between the cities. Morocco is an absolutely beautiful country, that's for sure, but I couldn't live there. The style of life there is completely different from what I am accustomed to, so it would take a long time for me to adjust. And I kept forgetting that we were in Africa, so of course things are going to be different! We were able to wander around in the cities to shop and let me tell you, how different of a shopping atmosphere it is there! This is where the name of the blog post comes in. All prices of souvenirs are negotiated. This means that the seller tells you some ridiculous starting price (What?! I'm not paying 20 euro for that scarf!), you tell him no thanks, he lowers the price, again you try to walk away, he asks you how much you have, you lie and tell him something low like 5 or 10, he thinks it over...and accepts! Pretty much this is how it's done. It's a little annoying though because you can't even look without them hounding you to buy something. So then, before you have even decided you really want the item, the seller bargains with you and before you know it, you have bought something you didn't even really want in the first place! Also, if you end up declining an offer, the salesman WILL FOLLOW YOU!!! Out of the store, down the street, at another store, wherever. It's a little annoying. Anyway, I did purchase some cool gifts while in Morocco and I got a Henna tattoo while I was there too! It's pretty cool, but it's fading fast due to the INSANE amount of times that I wash my hands during the day. Another cool thing we had the chance to do was...pause...ride CAMELS!!! I was so excited! Even though we basically rode them in a circle for like 5 minutes in a parking lot, it was sweet. I felt kind of bad for the poor camels though because they have to spend all day getting up and down and walking in a circle. They were pretty cute though :-)


On Sunday we headed back to Sevilla. When I got back home, my Senora's oldest daughter, her 2 granddaughters (ages 3 and 7), and her son's girlfriend were all over at my house. It was a little overwhelming to come home to a full house after a weekend away, but whatever. Right when I get inside my Senora introduces her granddaughters to me. At first they were shy, but soon they wanted to be with me 24/7. They were awfully cute! They showed me their sticker collection (which included Hannah Montana, Winnie the Pooh, High School Musical, and others), I let them listen to Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers on my I-pod, they put stickers on the back of my phone to decorate it (I let them...my phone is ugly anyway), and the oldest gave me her autograph to keep (it's precious...especially since she spelled my name Eren :-)). I'm definitely not used to being around kids so young for such a long time, because I was going a little crazy with everyone in our apartment. I still don't know where everyone slept on Monday night! On another topic, the weather this week has been absolutely FANTASTIC! It's been sunny and warm. Today it even reached about 72 F, but you would never guess because the Sevillan people still are wearing sweaters and warm jackets. I, however, was rocking a short-sleeved shirt :-) Unfortunately though, today was day 1 of my mid-term exams. Booooooo. So not fun, but I guess it's a fact of life. More exams to come next week too. Well, I think that's all for now (which is quite a lot of information to read). Because this is already so long, I am going to post another entry with the lessons :-)