january 30th

oh man. the weekend was really a complete failure. i tried to do things. i tried i really tried. ok, so it wasn't a failure. it was just a let down for being in spain. i went out with my intercambio partner José on saturday night. he was super nice and helped me learn a lot of new words and frases that will help me not sound like such a formal spanish speaker. but then...he started talking about how he has so much sex all the time with all these girls...and about the american girls that he's known in that way...over and over, almost every other comment was directed toward how many girls, yadda, yadda... i began to wonder what my obligation was:

do i just laugh along with him and pretend like that's fine so as to not seem like an ignorant and offended american? i know the culture is much more open and active with such things. and i don't want to disrespect the culture, that would be a mistake. but how do i tell him that i don't think that's the greatest thing ever without losing that friendship. i don't know.

so that night i went over to bobby's who was planning on partying with some of her spanish friends. we ended up sitting around in her appartment for almost 5 hours until about 2:30 AM when we finally got up and decided to go somewhere. bad thing is it was raining and really cold. probably 40 degrees. all i had was a t-shirt and my jacket. so we set off to find this guy's house, but there were no taxis at all! there are usually dozens of them. so we walked...for about 45 minutes...across sevilla to find this guys place and eventually got there completely drenched just as everyone was heading home. sigh...so we took a cab back to her place and fell asleep on the couches. what a terrible attempt at being social! our inertia was so strong that it kept us on those couches watching "casino" in spanish until 2:30 and then we didn't even get to the party we had planned to go to. oh well, at least that gave me somthing to post on here.

sorry i didn't take any photos. peace.

saturday

today's been pretty boring so far. no homework to do yet, so i'm just hanging out at the dorm. i'm hanging out with my intercambio partner in a few hours at 5. the university pairs every american student up with a student from spain and then we hang out with them and get integrated into the culture here that way. so josé is coming to pick me up today at 5 and we're gonna go get some coffee or something. fabrício and the rest of my friends here have left for granada because they don't have school on monday or tuesday. so i'm here all alone this weekend. it's kinda nice, but kinda boring too. here's what my dormroom looks like.



i don't know what else to say.

school

school. it started yesterday here. there's some things i found out about it that i wasn't aware of. we don't have classes on fridays. ok, just in case you missed that: we...don't...have...classes...on...fridays...!! i go to three classes monday/wednesday and two on tuesday/thursday. most of the classes are going to be good. i'm especially excited about my women and literature class, my contemporary spanish lit class, and my andalucían history class. those are the ones in spanish. the others are in english - international marketing, and global economics. i'm not too sure how i feel about those. i really don't like that they're in english. but whatever.

yesterday was fun. i went into the city and hung out with my friend bobby from DC. she's pretty cool. we had some tapas and some wines. then when i got back it was party time on the balcony.





so that was fun. just hanging out. being goofy, saying spanish cuss words cause they don't seem bad to any of us (funny how that works). all in all, they all drank too much and were really loud. some of our dorm neighbors came out on their balcony to tell us to be quieter. we didn't get quieter, we just moved the party inside...and got louder. which probably didn't do anything. it really doesn't feel like i'm in school right now, and it probably won't until i start taking tests and giving presentations. oh well, i'll leave you with this. it's a type of tree i've never seen. i was trying to do my most emo pose ever.

i'll make this easier for you...

that's the first picture i posted last time...

this is the second one...

this is the third one...

and i'll throw in a fourth because i'm so generous tonight!... it's a picture of the university of Sevilla main building.

happenings...

well, here's what's been going on lately. i spent friday night out at bars and clubs in the city. it was pretty fun, but i just had arrived that afternoon so i was pretty tired and left everyone at 5 am. that's actually kind of early to quit partying here. the rest stayed out til 8. but i got up at 9:30 on saturday and went with Cláudia (the Brazilian girl down the hall) around the city to see all the sites. well, we didn't quite see all of them. but we saw a few. the cathedral, the alcázar, and the main park area were all really nice.

this is the south side of the cathedral. it's hard to fit any part of it into one picture because it's the 3rd largest cathedral in the world. so... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/underboy777/DSC00459.jpg

this is the alcázar. it's the oldest palace still used as a royal residence in europe (if i remember right). i haven't been inside it, but i will go in soon... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/underboy777/DSC00462.jpg

this was my travelling companion Cláudia. we're at the plaza de españa here in the park... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/underboy777/DSC00430.jpg

so tonight i went grocery shopping with my roommate Fabrício and Cláudia. we sat on the bus in traffic for about an hour on the way home. it was ridiculous. it should have been a 5 minute drive. there was some accident or something, but the streets were filled with cars pointed every which way. i was surprised we got through it in our big bus. ok, so i guess that's all i'm going to write tonight.

aaron

well i made it

i'm here in my dorm room with my roommate Fabrício from Brazil. he's been very good to me, showing me around the place and stuff. right now we're plugging away at our laptops. the trip here was long and very tiring but i'm glad that i can actually settle down in a place and not have to pack up my bags again the next day to go somewhere else.

paris was really nice. here's some pictures of it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/underboy777/fa7834a5.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/underboy777/DSCF0004.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/underboy777/DSCF0011.jpg

the first one is me in front of the notre dame cathedral in paris. the second one is the louvre museum. the third one is some tower (maybe a telephone tower or something), but it looked really cool. so then i proceeded to fly out of paris to madrid where i stayed last night. then i took a train today to sevilla.

i had a little trouble finding the right bus to my university, but a helpful man showed me the way. thank you, man! then there was some trouble with my room and my class schedule, but everything should work itself out on monday. i made friends with the lady that monitors the desk downstairs because i sat with her for about 2 hours while things got sorted out. we talked about all kinds of things. she was really nice and helpful.

anyway, i think that's all for tonight. count on updates as often as i can type them.

everybody!

i am in madrid tonight at Los Amigos hostel. i stayed at this place in 2004 for a few days but tonight i´m just passing through. Paris was great, are you surprised? i spent one whole day sight seeing. i saw the louvre, the seine, eiffel tower, the notre dame, the arch de triomphe, roland garros, and lots of lovely french girls. seriously, they were everywhere.

marie´s grandparents were very good to me during my stay. i had more food than i could eat. plenty of cheese and wine. too much sometimes... tomorrow i´m taking a train to Sevilla where i will spend the semester. i would appreciate any comments. i don´t know who is reading this otherwise.

bye bye.

First entry 2006

K, so i leave for Spain monday and i'm not really sure what to think. i'm just going to another part of the world. i'm going a long ways away from all of my friends, but i'm not leaving the world. i'm still in the world. this is to tell myself and all you that it isn't a big deal. i just won't see you for a while.

i'll be back.