Mi Primer Día (My First Day)

La Plaza de Toros - The bullfighting arena

Today was the first day of school for me. I had to go to my university (la Universidad Pablo de Olavide) for the first time to take a placement exam (to determine what level of Spanish I am at, it's required for all international students) and to see a tour of the campus. I took the metro to school, and that went smoothly. I met some Americans on the metro (I knew they were internationals because they were speaking English), and I met a lot of other students at the placement exam.

I also had breakfast on campus: tostada de jamón, té, zumo de naranja (toast with ham, tea, orange juice). It was very good! La tostada de jamón is very popular here.

 After the placement exam, I went back to El Centro and went shopping, then in the evening I went on a tour that was put on by We Love Spain, which is an agency who my university hired to put on events for us. That was cool! I got to meet more students, who were mostly from America, but also met some from Finland (shout out to the Finterns!) and from Canada.

We started on el Río Guadalquivir (río = river), on the western side in La Plaza de Cuba. We then ventured back to the eastern side of the river and saw some cool stuff.

El Torre de Oro - The Tower of Gold. It was used when Sevilla was a walled city, and the tower was occupied to guard the city from attacks via the river.

Triana, which is a famous neighborhood in Sevilla. It's known as the place where flamenco dance was born. It also hosts many great festivals. 

El Río Guadalquivir. Near the right side of the photograph, you can see El Torre de Oro. The large tower (the largest spot in the photo) is la Giralda which is part of la catedral that I talked about a few posts ago. You can see how HUGE it is. The building to the right of la Giralda is la catedral.

'Virgin' - an effigy of the Virgin Mary, which is actually paraded around the city during Semana Santa, which is a major holy week right around Easter. It's located in Triana (the neighborhood on the western side of the rivier). Apart from Semana Santa, it sits in a church, and I think it has a lot of religious significance to the people here (a lot of people were praying around it).

After that, we went to an Arabian Tea House in Triana.

In the tea house.

Smoked my first hookah!

El Puente de Triana (puente = bridge)

Notice the lit tower. That's la Giralda again. So pretty at night!

La Giralda and la catedral

After tea/hookah, I went out with some of the students for drinks/tapas. Those are olives (aceitunas) and my drink is el tinto de verano, which is red wine mixed with lemon soda. Delicious!

 I had fun meeting lots of new people today, and I'm really looking forward to normal classes starting (on Wednesday) so life here can finally have some sort of schedule. I also got to explore new parts of the city today, and I feel that I love the city more and more.

For now, it's bed time for me. Talk to you soon.