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Published: November 17th 2011
Calle Sacramento
This is my street and this is the direction I go to get to school.Hi everyone!
Sorry it’s been so long since I have written anything, not much as really gone on since I wrote about the apartment situation last week. Unfortunately again there aren’t really any photos to go along with this blog, so I’m putting in some random photos of Cádiz that I pass by almost every day! 😊
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMORROW BRET!!! 😊 (just incase I don’t blog tomorrow! )
This week has been all about school really. For my Romance Linguistics class I have to write my final paper already and my topic is “The Use of French in Normandy England,” which is not really anything I know much about, but it has been interesting to learn about! Thankfully for me, because it is a French/English topic pretty much all of the literature is either in French or English. Obviously the French resources don’t really help me much, but the English ones are very awesome. Apparently the Spanish aren't really too concerned with the Norman Conquest.
In my Hispanic Literature of Oral Tradition class, we have done virtually nothing all semester, then just this week she assigned two long papers! One isn’t due until the end of
Fruit Stand
This little fruit stand is on Calle Sacramento on my way to school. I like to stop here sometimes and get a banana on my way to class! the course, which for most students isn’t until February, but for us it is due in just under one month. I also am trying to keep up with Pragmatics, which is always a struggle and my friend Meghan and I have to learn the material for Mythology and Roman Religion that we are going to miss after we leave so that we can take our final. Therefore, most of my time has been dedicated to forcing me to stay off of websites that cause me to waste time (aka Facebook, e-mail, and websites that let me watch “The Office” for free).
I really shouldn’t complain though, most of the semester has had absolutely no homework to it, so I’ve had plenty of time to hangout around Cádiz travel and “waste time” doing stuff. Now with this last month of classes I suppose it’s time I started cracking down on the books.
The last few weeks have been sort of tough. It might be a combination of being a little stressed about finals, or getting Christmas packages ready to send home, or the other API kids talking about getting ready to go back to the States, but I’ve been
La Plaza de Falla
This is the plaza I walk through to get to school sometimes. The building is El Gran Teatro Falla (The Grand Falla Theater). It still has shows that go on, in fact Alba and Selu went to one a few weeks ago! feeling a little homesick. It’s odd because I’ve been here for just about 3 months already, so you would think that that has all passed by now, but it still crops up every now and again. I think it’s finally starting to hit me that I actually won’t be home for Christmas this year, and I’m very excited to go to Germany because it will be like being with family, but it will be the first year that I will miss Christmas at home, which is very odd for me to think about.
Also, when I think about how long I have been here, 3 months seems both short and long. Part of me can’t believe that we are half-way through November already, and the other part of me feels like I have been living in Cádiz for a year, not just 3 months. Then thinking about how it will be about 7 ½ to 8
months before I even see my parents seems like such a long time!
Yesterday I was talking to one of the girls in my Romance Linguistics presentation group and she asked how long I would be staying. When I told her I would
Parque Genoves
This is the park across the street from school...still green leaves. be here for the rest of the year she was so surprised! She asked if I missed home at all, and that it must be hard to be away for so long because we can’t just hop on a plane and go home for the weekend like she can. Mena is from Napoli, Italy which is in Southern Italy, but it is only 3 hours from Rome, so this weekend she is going to Rome to meet up with her boyfriend. It’s weird to think how the Erasmus kids aren’t far from home at all; some of them are even closer to their homes in another country than I am to Nebraska when I am at Clemson!
I told her I did miss home, and its hard being so far away sometimes, but that in the grand span of my life, 8 more months really isn’t very much when I think about it. After these 8 months are over, I can spend the rest of my life in the States, so I am really trying to cherish the time I have here. Sometimes though, you catch yourself thinking about the most random things that you can do at home,
The University
The building on the left is the University! but not here (most of mine involve things that I can do while I am driving around town). I miss driving a lot. The public transit system here is pretty good, but it’s getting from the train/bus stop to your actual destination that can be tricky.
My talk with Mena evolved into talking about school and what we wanted to do after we graduated; it was nice to get to sit down and talk with someone new for a while, it made me feel a lot better when I had been having sort of a tough day. Often it is those little things that make me feel better.
Like my “intercambio” with Maricarmen. One of the girls from my 3-week intensive Spanish class introduced me to her roommate Maricarmen who wanted to do a language exchange, or an “intercambio” as we say in Spanish, with Spanish and English. Maricarmen and I have been meeting every week now for about 4 or 5 weeks I would say. She is really, really nice. She is working on her residency in general medicine and is going to take an exam December 10th so that she can go and work in English speaking
Parking rules?
yeah, there aren't any. Haha! countries. My Spanish is better than her English, so we spend most of our time talking in English, also because she really needs to pass her exam, so the more practice she gets, the better. With her exam coming up so quickly we are going to start meeting more times a week before I leave for Italy and then while I am gone, Natalie is going to fill in for me.
I like talking with Maricarmen because she helps me fix and tweak the problems I have with pronunciation and such. Our family helps us to though; the other day Natalie and I spent a good 30 to 45 minutes with Selu working on the pronunciation of the letter ‘d’ because a lot of times when I say ‘d’ as if I am spelling my name or something, they think I am saying ‘t.’ So, it turns out that you pronounce ‘d’ as ‘they.’ That’s literally how you day ‘d’; ‘they.’
On top of my Spanish learning, I’ve also got my German classes with Anna-lu and now I have also added Stephanie. Stephanie I met through the university and she actually gives German classes, so she and I have
been meeting once a week as well and she has helped me a lot with speaking. I still can only say really, really basic things, but it is fun to learn. I like practicing in the room with Natalie because she took some German when she was younger. “Hey Natalie, du hast eine schwester?” (Do you have a sister?)
“Ummm…ich habe klavier.”
“Does that mean ‘twin’?”
“No, I think it means piano.”
Hahahaha! O gosh we laughed for a good five minutes. When we told Julianna and Annalu they laughed for a while as well. I think Spanish has tarnished some of Natalie’s German knowledge. 😊
One of the other fun things Natalie and I started doing a few months ago so that we could get to know each other better was tell bedtime stories. We give each other 3 or 4 topics and then we tell a story (or 2 if the stories are short) based on one (or more) of those topics. It’s been kind of a fun way to get to know each other. Sometimes we substitute a bedtime story for a Bible passage because Natalie really likes having Bible study, but she can’t find a good one here, so I told her if she ever wants to we can do a Bible thing, so she likes doing that sometimes. Our favorite day of the week though, is Wednesday nights, because we get to watch the show “New Girl.” It’s an American show that I think I wrote about before, because the pilot episode was free on iTunes, but curiosity got the best of me so I started getting it on iTunes every week and now Natalie and I are addicted. We can’t wait for Wednesdays. It’s no Moesmeetingmodernfamilymensday (Moes-meeting-Modern Family-Mensday, Mensday is just Wednesday with an ‘M’), but I still look forward to Wednesdays.
By the way, Kate and Leigh your package arrived the other day! It really made my day getting to read your letters! 😊 You will have letters coming soon! 😊
So yes, being here gets hard sometimes, and I really miss home, but there are lots of little things that always make me feel better. With regards to my essays and tests, I know I will get them done, because somehow I always seem to, and in less than a month I will be all done with my exams and I will be able to get ready for Germany!! Very exciting!
Love you all and missing you dearly,
Love always,
Devin 😊
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Bret
non-member comment
Feliz cumpleanos a mi!
Thanks for the birthday cardS! I never thought I would get 2 from one person. Then again, I am pretty awesome. Me and the lady will be sending you a card sometime soon. Just gotta find a good one.