As my time in Sevilla wraps up, I've been forced to do a little reflection on everything. And at various
points during our time abroad, people have asked
me some serious thinking questions. Here’s some answers to those questions:
The first thing I’m going to eat when I get back in the
states:
This answer changes depending on my mood, but what has been
my most consistent answer is good barbeque.
Fall of the bone ribs, barbeque sauce that doesn’t taste like it’s made with
sugar, and fried okra. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
I’ve also been looking forward to bottomless food. Queso
with chips that just keep coming, endless salad and breadsticks, and most importantly, the neverending trail of Cheddar Bay
Biscuits at Red Lobster.
The foods I’m going to miss from Spain the most:
1) Choco Boms. I discovered them in the vending machine at
school the first day of classes. They are just nothing-special chocolate chip
cookies covered in nothing-special white chocolate, but I would pay 85 cents
for them every day for the rest of my life.
2) Jamon Iberico. A type of thinly sliced ham that comes
from a special breed of pig that is only in Spain and has a diet of strictly a
special type of acorn. There has to be a way to find it on the black market.
3) The mojitos at El Robotico. I’ve never even liked mojitos
before…
4) Tinto de Verano and Sangria. You can find one of these at
any restaurant you go to, regardless if the food is Spanish or Japanese.
Things I wont miss:
The inevitable hunt for toilet paper in bathrooms
The lack of air-conditioning and heating
The constant
The ever-present smokers and their lingering cigarette smell
Birds in buildings
Flavors of chips that shouldn’t exist. Throughout our
travels, we encountered shrimp flavor, jamon flavor, and even steak and
potatoes.
Being charged for the bread that waiters put on your table.
If there’s food there, I assume it’s a gift and I’m going to eat it. And then
the bill comes and they charged me 70 euro cents for that stale roll and some
crackers.
Things I will miss:
While the apartment that we ended up with wasn’t quite the
romantic Spanish apartment on a small windy cobblestone street lined with
flower plots and friendly neighbors, we still ended up in a great place in a
great area. Living in a real apartment building has its ups and downs. We had a
great location, in the middle of the city, walking distance to pretty much
everything except for school, which was easily connected by metro. It was nice
having our grocery store be on the same block as our building, and everything
else that we could need within a 5 minute walk. We found some great restaurants
(Depi Kofino and La Chaparitta, just to name a few) and became regulars at
several stores and coffee shops nearby. By the end, our little apartment really
did feel like home and I know that I will miss it dearly.
We spent our last few weeks in
Sevilla doing all the things that we put off until the last minute, like
souvenir shopping and scouting out and trying to replicate the pictures that
are in a little coffee table book that we bought from the Museo de Bellas Artes. We went back to our favorite places, found
some new favorite places and spent a lot of time in the city just trying to
soak up as much Sevilla as we could before embarking on our trip to Italy. We
finally crossed off something off our list that we had been putting off the
entire semester due to it “never being the right time”: going out and staying
up all night and eating eating churros with
the sunrise. After going to several different places and forcing ourselves to
stay out until 7:00, we were disappointed to find out that the place that we
had heard was infamous for early morning/late night churros closed before the sunrise. So we bought some to save for
the walk home as we started to see the sky start get bluer and bluer. By the
time we got to our apartment, Chuck, David, Trevor and I (the final four, as we
like to be called) it was 7:30 am and completely light outside. I’d call that a
successful night out.
After we finished finals and
wrapped up our semester, the international office at UPO held a farewell
reception for the students and staff at a theme park in Sevilla called Isla Magica. Of course, it’s nothing
compared to Universal or Disney, but it had a few good rides and a lot of
really strange half-thought-through concepts for rides. It’s randomness was
definitely entertaining. After we were given free reign of the park for a few
hours, they held an outdoor reception with free food and drinks. While there
weren’t montaditos and jugs of Fanta as we’ve come to love and expect
from the events hosted by the international office, it was a really good time.
The majority of our classmates and professors were there, and it was a great
chance to get some closure and say our final goodbyes. Of course, it was sad,
but we left with the promise to return again as soon as we got the chance. Esperanza,
Lucia, Miriam, Pierdro: If you all are reading this, we will make it back to Sevilla!! Hopefully that chance for me will be
to come back and get a Perro de Agua,
the breed of dog exclusive to Spain that I developed an obsession for over the
past few months. Our last night was spent watching Anchorman for Chuck’s 21st birthday. Then the next
morning, everyone (Chuck, Jodi, Ally, Josie, Josie’s friend Rebecca) came over
for a traditional American breakfast. We made the works; pancakes with syrup,
scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, mimosas. What could be a better send off
for our Italian vacation?
For the concerned parents, here’s
how our schedule will look over the next few weeks: We will leave Sevilla on
the 19th of May and will be traveling until the 31st,
when we get on a plane in Rome to come home! We will go from Sevilla to Madrid
to Rome, stay there until the 21st, stay in Florence until the 23rd
and will be in Venice until the 25th, then in Milan until the 27th,
then we will be in Amalfi until the 30th, then back to Rome just to
stay the night to get up early the next day to catch our flight from FCO to PHL
to MCO. We’ll be arriving at about 9pm on the 31st, hopefully just
in time to eat some dinner and fall asleep to hopefully wake up at a normal
hour the next day. Trying to fight jet lag takes some serious planning.
Sevilla, Adios para ahora pero no
para siempre! Hasta luego :)
…Adelante por Italia!
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| We got to go to Isla Magica, Sevilla's premiere theme park, for our end of the semester celebration with all of the international students at UPO! |
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| Our last meal in our apartment |
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| Saying goodbye to Jodi and Chuck and Ally :( |
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