Sweet Sevilla

---

Another week has flown by and I’ve been making the most of my free time... consuming plenty of ice cream and sunning myself basically! I’m already starting to get my bearings around the centre and not rely quite so heavily on my trusty little map!

Earlier in the week, Phil and I took a trip to Ikea to stock up on a few bits and bobs which would make our apartment a little more homely... we set ourselves a budget but obviously went over this... by almost double! But hey, our flat looks great now and we really love coming back to it after a day out... it’s normally quite peaceful around here but we live right next to a little church which rings its bells at ridiculously early times every morning!

We’ve been eating out quite a bit - got to support the local restaurants you know! There are some lovely places with delicious selections of tapas but I think our favourite restaurant is the Italian restaurant as they do the most scrumptious ravioli that I’ve ever tasted! I’ve developed a bit of a taste for churros... the typical breakfast here which is like strips of fried doughnut with chocolate sauce - horribly unhealthy but I sent Phil off this morning to go and get some and we were both on a bit of a sugar high for hours after that!

I’ve got my timetable sorted at work... I’m teaching Monday to Friday from around 4pm until 8pm most days - suits me perfectly as most other teachers around here work until 10pm and then it gets too late to eat a big meal at night. The change in schedule is definitely taking some getting used to. Mealtimes are pushed forward a few hours and shops, banks, supermarkets etc. close at 2pm and don’t open again until 5 or 6, which is so annoying if you just want to nip to the shop for some food! I’ve pretty much sorted out most of my paperwork in preparation for starting at the school, but the spanish level of customer service has been pretty dire - especially when compared to the ever efficient Japanese! They love their paperwork here and always want photocopies of everything... but they’ll never photocopy anything for you... you always have to find somewhere miles down the road to photocopy one form and then bring it all the way back - arrrrrrgh! But I’ve found that a smile and a ‘no hablo mucho espanol’ generally gets a smile back from them and a reasonable level of service!

We’re going out for a few drinks tonight with some other teachers and then having a chilled out weekend... taking in a few more tourist sights and preparing a few introduction lessons for our classes which start next week - yikes!

---

Photos

some kind of castle!
i'll go there this weekend and come back with some history about it!