Italica and Yesterday

Today was our first excursion, we all met at the train station to take a bus to Italica. We left at about 9 this morning and arrived about 20 minutes later. We entered through the gates and immediately saw the remnants of a roman empire. Now I am not a history buff by any means and I don't remember everything Dr. Ingles said about it but what I do know is that is was pretty amazing. I believe he said it was built in the 6th century and a lot of it is still standing. We walked around the coliseum, well what we were allowed to anyway, and that is what the first pictures in the facebook album show.

Then we walked out of the coliseum and headed to the village which appeared mostly flat and really just had the outlines of the housing on the ground. As we were walking through the village we were told that the statues there are not the originals but replicas, the originals are now archeological museums and a group is going there on Wednesday I think I might join them. Those are the pictures in the middle of the album on fb. Towards the end we walked to the amphitheater  which was really incredible!! This was my favorite probably because it was the easiest to visualize because most of it was still there.

Overall I think it was a good experience for a first excursion I am sure it probably won't be my favorite because there is a lot more to come. For example, the weekend of the February 4th we are going to Granada (which today we learned mean pomegranate) a couple of weeks after that we go to Lisbon Portugal ( I am really excited about that one because I have heard amazing things about Portugal). Then in March during Spring break we take a trip up to Madrid (I am really excited for this one because my mom will be here!!!!!!!!!). We arrived home about an hour earlier than expected and had lunch with our host family, followed by a siesta and I brought to you now by some down time since we felt we had done enough walking for today. Dinner should be ready here shortly and I plan to go out tonight with some friends. I am kind of disappointed because we have yet to meet any Spaniards to show us local spots not only for going out but things to also do during the day. Plus it would be nice to have someone to practice spanish with who might know more english than my host mom.

During my downtime I finally skyped my friend COLLEEN REEDHOLM for the first time that was exciting and she was lucky enough to be the first US friend my host mom has met haha. She had happened to come in while we were skyping to offer and then bring us some tea. I was like mama' es mi amiga, she exchange a few words in spanish of course and I pretty sure little to none was really understood but it was fun anyway!

Yesterday was just a normal day, we went to school, came home had lunch, took a siesta, had some down time and then ate dinner and went out with some friends. The only problem with that was our friend who was here last semester and picked the place we were going failed to tell us that it was like a 40 min walk! Well 40  mins without getting lost which we did because he got all turned around. We did make it eventually and it was fun. Before we went out though we booked our first trip outside of the program we have a 3- day weekend the weekend after next and so my roommmate and I and some of our friends from school have decided to go to Barcelona! I am excited because I heard that it is a really fun place! We will come back that Saturday night though because we told our mama' we wanted to go to her choir concert at her church that Sunday morning (remember the miscommunication I had talked about earlier in another blog, yeah that same concert).

So things seem to be slowing down a little more on the social side, which I think is leading to the whole reason why we are here, I think they call it school! So far though I do love my classes some of my classmates are really embracing the Spanish culture of going out every night and I pretty sure our teacher know exactly who they are. It was funny though last Tuesday on our first day of classes it was actually two kids birthdays in our group so we all went out Tuesday night. In class the following morning only about 14 out of the 25 in our class showed up......yeah least to say they didn't know that the attendance policy was so strict. We are allowed one free absence and then after that for each absence we drop a letter grade. Now I know most of you are thinking that is kind of harsh, but we have class for 3 hrs. a day and we will have 6 hrs. of spanish credit by the 25th of February and at Tech during a normal semester you have 3 hrs for a class a week, so you miss a day here you miss the equivalent to a week of class. Well on that note, I hope all of you are doing well and enjoying this! I love you all and miss you dearly!!!!

con amor,

Katie