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Published: October 3rd 2008
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I missed yesterday, so here's a recap of Thursday:
Woke up on TIME for once! Went down for beakfast and then went back to my room to get ready. Orientation in the morning was pretty boring and not really useful. WE had 3 sessions and then Cecilia and I went to the grocery store and got some empanadas and fruit for lunch. We had one more session from a past participant on how to make extra money while living in spain. her ideas were giving private english classes or perhpas working as a nanny. I will look into those in the future.
After our last session Cecilia, Rachel and I walked into the city and visited the Cathedral and Plaza Espana. i dont know if it was cuz I was tired or what, but I really wasn't impressed with either. Maybe Cathedrals just don't impress me, I don't know. But we walked around for a few hours and got gelato and then went back to the hotel to rest and get ready for our farewell dinner. We walked to a restaurant for the dinner, which could hardly be considered "dinner." We were hearded into a big room with perhaps 40 chairs
SEVILLE (10)
a tree in the park around the sides (there were 200 participants in the program) and tables on each wall. We were brought beer, wine and sodas. A few courses of tapas were brought out, but most of them didnt make it past the first group of people in the room. It was very disappointing and a poor excuse for a "farewell dinner." After dessert which was chocolate mousse, cream puffs and some white cream stuff, we went back to the hotel to pack and go to sleep. It was an exhausting day.
FRIDAY
we woke up and had breakfast and got all of our belongings together. I met the girls from my city for breakfast and then we took all of our luggage outside to wait for a bus to take us from our hotel to the bus station. I was worried that I had a lot of luggage (2 50lb suitcases, a backpack, purse, and laptop bag), but I looked meager compared to some of the other girls. The bus took us to the bus station where we were dropped off on the side of the road and had to try to drag all of our suitcases and belonging to the station.
It was really strenuous and hard, we basically had to do it in 2 groups so people could help eachother because it was hard to carry such heavy luggage across a plaza and street to the station. We already had our tickets so we just had to find our bus. The trip from Seville to Cordoba was about an hour and a half... i fell asleep. When we got to Cordoba, we bought tickets for our bus to Priego and we had about 30 minutes to wait for the bus, which was a good amount of time. The trip from Cordoba to Priego was about 2 hours, but thats only because we stopped in lots of little pueblos to let people out. The cities that we drove through were all very rural and tiny. When we finally arrived to Priego it was siesta (basically nap time when everything is closed from 2-5) and struggled once again to take all of our stuff off of the bus into the station. Thankfully the woman working at the station stayed to answer a question for us since we were the only strange people, before she left for siesta. We found out that the
hotel that our program booked for us was not even located in the city, it is about 11km outside of it. There were of course no taxis to be found. We were the only people in the bus station, beside the bartender and a few police men from the next door police station (connected to the train station, haha). We found some numbers for taxis and called one, but got disconnected in the middle of the conversation. So we called anohter cab and he said he would come get the 3 of us in 15 minutes.
Well, he did come to get us, but so did the first man we tried to call. So they both insisted in taking us and all of our belongings to the hotel. We finally got to the hotel and had to pay both men (although they were very nice) and we checked into our hotel. IT IS BEAUTIFUL! It only has 33 rooms and its a 4 star hotel. There are beautiful balconies and fountains everywhere. I somehow got my own room and its huge! I have a balcony and a fountain right out side my door. There is also a pool and an
excercise room. After resting for a moment and taking the time to voice our complaints with our program directors, we made a few calls to people to look at apartments. The same cab driver came back and picked us up and we met a teacher from Cecilia's school who has a 3 bedroom apartment for rent. He drove us to it and it was very cute! There is seafoam green paint in the foyer and its sparkly HAHA. but over all it was a nice apartment with a big kitchen with all the necessary appliances and a large living room. the furntature in the bedrooms was all antique and he finished remodeling the bathroom today. we liked this one.
We then walked around our city, found where our schools are (Ceci is at one, Rachel and I are at another) and met a couple to see another apartment for rent. It was big, 3 bedrooms with lots of closet space and it was basically downtown in a busy part. It was on the very top floor (no elevator) but gorgeous balconies with great views. It had 1.5 bathrooms as well. The kitchen was small and it didnt have an oven...
so we will keep that one in mind.
After that we walked to the hostel where Jessica and Christine are staying. They are from our program as well, but just teaching at other schools. We walked to a restaurant for dinner and had delicious authentic pizza. After that we had to call another cab to come and get us (the same man, he is Rafael) and he brought us back here. I have done a lot of traveling, walking, and stressing today. I AM READY FOR BED!!
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Megan
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hi again
your pictures are great. It sounds like quite an adventure already. I love you so much