Spain, Day Thirteen

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to keep this post short today because I am posting from my phone but I will do my best to include everything. I began with a short class from 10-11:30, where we discussed the Spanish civil war that occurred right before World War 2 broke out across Europe. This is why Spain didn't play an active role in WW2; they were too busy cleaning up their own mess. We looked at lots of pictures though and saw how Madrid handled all of the bombings and warfare.

Then, what is even cooler is that we went and walked around Madrid to see the locations of these bombings and how they are holding up today. Pretty neat stuff. As a fun side trip, our professor took us to her favorite market where they have all kinds of crazy ingredients (in addition to the normal ones). All of the meat stands had literally every part of the body that came with the animal, ear to hoof. I could barely stomach it. Instead of a palabra del dia today, I'm offering you this awesome chart I found instead at a smoothie stand. So if you need to brush up on your fruits, this is the way to do it:

After our market tour, my roommate and I headed back home for a quick lunch and then to pack for our Seville trip. We decided to use what is called a "rideshare " company to get to Seville, which is kind of like uber or lyft but instead of using it for local transportation, it is only used from city to city. You also have to look online to see which drivers have posted that they are going to your city of interest and they post what time they want to leave, so you pick the driver with the time that works best for you. I'll admit, I was a little nervous about this method of transpiration but apparently it's super popular in Europe and our friends' host family said they use it all the time, so we decided to give it a try. It actually turned out great! Our driver showed up five minutes early, picked us up from our own flat which was really nice, and took us exactly where we needed to go in Sevilla. The car was also clean and very comfy, and we also had the fortune of being the only occupants of his car so it was smooth sailing for five hours. 

This is also my first experience with a hostel. I'm going to be frank with you—I really don't mind it! It's much cheaper than staying in a hotel room. While we do have to share a shower and toilet with the other five rooms on our floor and had to pay an extra €20 for air conditioning, it's really not that bad! It's very centrally located and was so cheap. America really needs to get with the hostel program. 

This is part of our hostel room as seen from the bed, which was tucked into the corner of the room. Not much walking space.

After we got all settled in, we took a brief walk around the city to get acclamated to where we are and also figure out where a tour we are taking tomorrow begins. We also had a mini dinner which consisted of salad and paella and I had some really nasty apple wine—never again! But I am already in love with this city. It has stolen my heart just within a few hours and I can't wait to discover more about it tomorrow.

I can't handle this beautiful Seville skyline.

I'm going to do my best to keep posting while I am in Seville but I don't want to spend time typing a post on my phone when I could be out exploring, so it may just have to happen that I take notes each day and then get everything posted when I get back to my laptop, which is in Madrid, on Sunday. Thanks for understanding!