omygatos. I have officially set my feet on the soil of the Spanish lands. I have been here for a Month now and this is my first post. Seville is beautiful, actually everywhere we have traveled has been. There is so much more history here than I am used to in my daily life and more than I attempted to prepare myself for. There are ancient mosques that have roman marble cherubs sculpted into their walls years later in Cadiz, there are oil paintings of royal families in Madrid that I remember from my Art History textbook, and ancient castles in Segovia. And all these bits of history, ruins, columns, mosaics retain their place within these great cities and small winding calles.
I am living in a part of the city called Triana which is across the river from my school. I get to cross el puente de Isobell everyday at least twice a day. My family lives in a small apartment on the second floor on calle Evangelista. My host brother is turning 29 today and lives with us as well. He has a shaved head with a beard and fat sliver hoop earring in one of his ears. He is also in a boy band and asked to use my computer one day to show me his youtube music video. My mother ‘senorita’ is a small Spanish woman born and raised in Triana who has lived on the same street her entire life. She is an amazing chef and is constantly stuffing my face making sure to give me the same portions as Sergio my 29 year old man brother. She has this tiny corner in the kitchen where she chiefs her cigarettes before doing the dishes after lunch each day. Her husband passed away and she is now dating an Argentinian named Rolando. I recently figured this out however. My first day in Seville I actually ate dinner alone with Rolando. In Seville everyone’s living room is also their dining room and their tables are directly in front of the television. It’s pretty ironic because my entire life I never had a tv, that’s a lie, we actually had one but we never had cable and my mom always put silk scarves over it and I’m pretty sure we only used it to watch Gilmore Girls when I was in 5th grade and the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade. Well I sat there that first night in the living/dining room with this mystery man Rolando. Even though we had been in Spain for a week my Spanish was approximately at a 5th grade level and the one thing Rolando made crystal clear is that he didn’t know a single word in English. I sat there completely unsure of who he was and he sat there equally skeptical of me and we watched the futbol game. We have since then developed a very interesting relationship of which involves me acting out a lot of things in Spanish and making sounds most of the time, laughter, and of course futbol. One night he got out an Atlas book and flipped through the pages of the Unites States and I pointed to the Blue Ridge mountains explaining why they are blue and showing him where the blizzard hit in New York. He in turn showed me Argentina, where he is originally from, and told me about his uncle who worked for a company that drove giant trucks. It is simple but it’s almost natural the things you understand without language.