so that´s the culture shock they´ve been talking about...

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so yeah, it´s been weird being in sevilla two weeks in a row and i kind of found myself missing a lot of stuff from home: friends, family, carpet, taco bell, movies, tv, video games, affordable anything, and stores that are open during siesta, sundays, on time, or late at night. and then last night i went to turn on my mp3 player and it says, in order to continue use, all contents must be cleared. so now i pretty much have zero of my music for the first time since i started actively listening to music in like 3rd grade. somehow that kind of sparked my realization that i was experiencing culture shock.

when ur at home and they talk about culture shock it´s pretty easy to be like, whatever, (insert destination here) is so sweet that it won´t even matter. and for the first couple of weeks it feels like a vacation since everything is so brand new and exciting. but when u start to fall into routines u realize that ur not just a tourist but ur living in this place for an extended period of time. i realized how i kept complaining about no taco bell, carpet, etc and how i started to get bored with hanging out with the same americans at american places speaking english. but yesterday my roommate who is kind of going through the same deal asked me, man, why are we here? the comment didn´t register at the time as profound but after i was in kind of disbelief when my zune clensed itself of all of my music and pictures that were one of my strong links to home i started to think about it. when i was fed up with the spanishness of everything, i would listen to my music because it was the comfortable thing to do.

this morning after going to the same discoteca with the same ppl last night for the 4th or 5th time, thursday nights we always tend to go to a place called buddha, i woke up and just went for a walk down the river the direction i dont normally walk and sat on a bench by the water and just started writing. i realized that when i was planning this whole semester in spain i wanted to come here to try and improve my hability to speak the language and learn about the culture of this place too. i´ve been doing that a little bit, but lots of time i´ve been resisting it too. i speak too much english and i´m simply not doing what i came here to do. i decided that starting today i´m going to start imersing myself more than i have been. i got back to the room and would only talk to my roommates in spanish as i tried to explain to them the stuff that was on my mind.

i´m really excited to play frisbee today with the spaniards because that means at least 2-3 hours of only spanish plus going out for tapas with them after for a while. the andalucian accent is pretty darn thick. there´s a guy on the team from barcelona and he has trouble with it sometimes. there´s one guy, rafa, who´s accent is sooooo dense i have to ask him to repeat himself 2 or 3 times whenever he talks. sometimes i just let myself get lost in it and then try to jump back in after a few minutes. everyone is super nice though. numerous times different people told me that if i had any questions about what they were saying that i should stop them and ask. a couple of times one person would just give me the recap of what was going on too. talking one on one with a sevillano is ten times easier than trying to be in a group discussion where they are throwing out all types of slang, vocab, and sayings that you have never heard. but my comprehension is getting better and better.

also, i had some trouble trying to email today but i got a valentine´s day card from my mom on valentine´s which was very nice and if anyone (mom or dad) talks to grandma martha or mama b thank them for their cards as well. i´m going to try and write some post cards next weekend, i have 4 exams this week upcoming and i have a lot of studying to do. each exam is worth 30% of the semester grade in each different class. which is a pretty daunting statistic the more i think about it.

whew, long blog, sorry for the rant but i´ll talk to u all soon!

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