Coffee and Orange Trees...

Sevilla is GORGEOUS this time of the year! All of the streets are lined with orange trees full of fruit that you just want to reach up, grab, and eat fresh off the branch! The city is starting to even smell like oranges because so many have fallen to the ground and broken open. The girls and I have been walking around the historical center and going to these cute little coffee shops to start making our travel plans, which are going to be so much fun and very adventurous.

Caroline, Betsy, Sam and I have something booked for almost every weekend for the next two months and plans are being made for the rest of the semester. I feel like I'm on vacation and just making pit stops at class along the way. But my trips to London, Barcelona and Morocco are all in place and I don't think that I could be anymore excited. We went to this travel agency that was established by study abroad students a number of years ago to plan our trip to Morocco yesterday, and Ruben was showing us all the pictures of former trips. All of us got goosebumps just thinking about this trip that isn't until March 14th!!!

This Saturday, me and the girls are going to Carnaval in Cádiz, which is on the southern coast of Spain. Basically it's a combination of Mardi Gras and Halloween where everyone gets dressed up in crazy costumes and parties for two weeks straight! We can even get the train ride for free if we wear our costumes! We haven't decided what we want for our costumes to be yet, but it's going to be a lot of fun!

My first full week of classes is officially completed! UPO (Universidad Pablo de Olavide) is an interesting campus because it's being completely renovated, but at least it's a campus unlike the rest of the Spanish Universities. Classes are good, three in Spanish and two in English. It's the perfect mix so that I can work on my Spanish conversation and comprehension and still keep my sanity...lol. All of my professor's seem kinda crazy, but lots of fun. I don't have any favorite classes yet, but I'm sure that by the end of the semester I will have decided one was a lot more informative for me than the rest.

Hopefully by the beginning of next week I will have another post up with some pictures and a description of my adventures in Cádiz this weekend. I miss you all!!!! Muchos abrazos y besos!

Spain is AMAZING!!!!

I am having such a blast here in Spain! I know that I' ve only been here for a week and a half, but I feel like I've been gone for forever already and miss you all sooo much.

This is a picture of our little click here in Spain that we made basically right away. From the left it's me, Betsy (my roommate), Sam, and Caroline.
It's kinda crazy how we got so close so quickly but we're having a blast and basically doing everything together.

So far I haven't had any classes, I know that you're all jealous, but they start tomorrow. I'm kinda excited to see what class is going to be like here.

My host family here is pretty low key. Sandra, my host mom works for the Puerto Rican Consulate, but she's always home. It's a little weird though because we have a maid, Loli, who makes all of our meals in the morning and we can eat whenever we want to instead of as a family like we had originally thought that we would be.

Sandra's house is absolutely beautiful! I can't believe how much I lucked out. There are seven bedrooms in this apartment so I get my own room, which is this other picture. It's basically the size of a dorm room but just for one person. There's even a piano in my room, so if I ever get the urge to play again I can. She also has internet in her house, it took me until today to figure out how to log onto it, but it's all set and ready to go now. (I expect to be getting a lot of skype calls in the the future.)

Life in Sevilla has been very relaxed so far. The girls and I have been exploring the local night life this past weekend. We ended up, through my program, being set up with locals to show us what it's like to go out here. Jesus was our guide last Thursday and he gave us his number if we wanted to ask him anymore questions. Saturday night we got in touch with him and he took us out to a flamenco bar in Triana, which is one of the barrios of Sevilla, and it was sooo much fun because we were the only Americans in the place. All of the women there were teaching us how to dance and we had so much fun that we didn't even realize that we stayed out til 5 in the morning! But it was sooo much fun.

So that's really all I have to update you all on right now! I love and miss you all!

So much to do...so little time

I can't believe that I'm going to be leaving next Thursday!!!!! I'm kind of starting to freak out just a little bit because I am definitely not ready to leave yet. I still have to pack up my entire life which is going to be a pain and I really don't want to say goodbye to everyone...it was hard enough to say goodbye to everyone at school and now I have to say goodbye to everyone here at home too!!!

But on a better note, I am very excited to be heading to España and having the time of my life! I just wish that I could bring you all with me and then it would be even better! But I get to see Michelle in Madrid finally...which I can't wait to do. I miss that girl so much. Then it's off to Sevilla for orientations and classes.

I'm going to miss you all soooooooo much, but I'm going to have this blog set up so that all of you can keep updated on my adventures and leave me notes about how much you miss me...lol. I'll see you all in a few months!!!!

Lots of Love,
Caitlin