A DAY IN THE PARQUE

By Whitney Strong and Roddy Moye
5.30.2008

At 11:00 AM we all met at Starbucks in La Puerta de Jerez. We walked a bit and then took the bus to the Torre de los Perdigones. We got a wonderful view of Seville. The city was reflected on a disc inside the tower via a mirror (a camera obscura). We could see EVERYTHING. We went out side the tower onto a balcony and could see all of Seville spread out before us.

Then we walked a really long way to the park. We walked across the Barqueta Bridge which spans the Guadalquivir River. We arrived at the Parque del Alamillo and had lunch. We brought lots of drinks and snacks and also the “pic-nic”s our families made for us. The day was so beautiful and after spending lots of time in the park, we took the bus home. We took a short stop at the Plaza de Nueva. We had free time after that but all the stores were closed due to the holiday.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach in Cadiz! Adios!

P.S. from Traña and Gooding - sorry there are no videos but we are in Cadiz/Puerto de Santa Maria and the internet services are intermittent. We cant seem to stay on line long enough for a video to upload. We´ll keep trying and will attach more later.

¡OLÉ!

¡OLE!

5.29.2008

Jack Hannon and David Wieand

Today, Thursday, everyone went to classes at 9:30 this morning thinking about not having classes on Friday. We went over vocab for earlier in the week and past tense. Some of us played a vocab game but we all got a crash course on bullfighting and it's illustrious history.

In bullfighting, there are six bulls and three matadors, two bulls to each matador. The matadors use either a two-handed cape or one-handed, and have a back-up team to distract the bull if the head matador gets in trouble. There are three types of bullfighting; fighting the bull from a horse, slicing it (but not killing it) standing up, or stabbing its neck and trying to kill it.

There was a change of plans this afternoon. Instead of going out on the Guadalquivir River in paddleboats, we went to the Plaza de Toros. We had a tour guide who repeated her Spanish speeches in English, a welcome change for some of us. We saw the ceramic human heads that were whacked with lances from horseback in an attempt to phase out bullfighting. The heads of several famous bulls were mounted on the walls inside the building. We saw the plaza, which is still in use by bullfighters. it looked like a gladiatorial ring. We saw the entrances from which the bulls and matadors entered, and the tunnel leading to the small hospital.

Pretty much everyone is doing well, apart from the expected difficulties of travelling. Seville is a beautiful city and there are tons of places to see and things to do. We are all looking forward to Friday and the day-long festival in honor of San Fernando, patron saint of Seville. Can't wait to see what we do. And no one can wait for this weekend in Cadiz and the beach!

LA SEVILLA ROMANTICA

28.5.08

por Kelly McNamara and Tiffany Petrisko

¡Hola Padres!

You should know that we are learning by talking to many people and by talking in class. I don't know about your children, but we (Tiffany and I) are having to be extra careful not to throw Spanish words into this blog. We can't stop thinking in Spanish and now we are told to write in English!

In our classes today we reviewed past tense verbs and learned vocabulary for the movies. We also learned about Arab culture in Spain. After the classes, most of us headed home to our Spanish family for lunch and a siesta. We know you are jealous that you cannot take one!

Before our next activity, many of us headed to the commercial center of the city for some shopping! We somehow managed to meet up and hang out before heading over to Starbucks, one of the 10 million they have here. Once everyone arrived, we headed to the Plaza de España. It is very beautiful and is where one of the scenes from Star Wars was filmed! The architecture there is also amazing!

After finishing our tour of la Plaza de Espana, we went over to the Park of Maria Luisa for a very competitive (well, for some at least...) scavenger hunt. Some teams took off running all over the park and completed the five tasks in 20 some minutes of the given hour, while others took off to a slow "go with the flow" start. Congrats to Tiffany (not that I'm helping to write this or anything), Kelsey, Grace, and Chris on winning the scavenger hunt!

After that, most of us headed home, while some wandered around the streets of Sevilla, before going home to dinner (if they ever found their way home, we only get lost a few times a day - but don't freak out. We can speak Spanish, ask for help, and we have the life saving tool called a map!

We hope you enjoyed reading this journal entry! We miss everyone so much, but we are having

an amazing time.

In case you are wondering, we had way too much fun writing this journal.

May 25th-May 27th

By Kelsey Lee and Alex Hammer

We left Raleigh-Durham airport at 3:45pm and arrived in Philadelphia at around 5:00pm. From the gate we got out of, we had to hurry through the Philadelphia airport to get to our connection flight to Madrid. We boarded our second plane at 6:00pm and left at 6:10pm. We landed in Madrid, Spain at about 8:00am the next morning. Next, we went through customs, collected our luggage and boarded our buses and began our 8 hour journey to Seville. After two hours on the bus, we made a 30 minute stop for snacks, bathroom, and 1.5 liter water jugs. Back on the road for 2 hours and then another stop for an hour long sit down lunch. The food was... interesting, but the dessert was great! Then we had 2 more hours on the bus before reaching our destination, SEVILLA!!

Our families were in central Seville waiting to greet us with two kisses on the cheeks. We met our families and then each group parted our separate ways to settle into our homes. We unpacked, got situated and conversed with our families, including giving them our gifts from America. Some students went out to explore the city while others stayed and bonded with their family. Between 8:30 and 9:30 we had dinner with our families. After dinner some students did more exploring, and others went to bed. The next day we woke up around 8:00, got ready for the day, and ate breakfast. As opposed to the normal breakfast in America, our breakfast consisted of 3 small pieces of toast. Then, our families walked us to school.

At school, our schedule was 1.5 hours of studying Spanish language, a 30 minute break, and 2 hours of cultural learning, including 1 hour of exploring the city. At 1:30pm, school let out and we all walked home for the biggest meal of the day, lunch. Usually lunch is a multi-course meal and is very delicious. After lunch, some groups took a short siesta before returning to school for the day's excursion. For our excursion, we explored the religious part of central Seville. The major attraction was the "Palacio de Alcázar". This was a humongous palace with beautiful architecture and mosaic tiles and is where Christian kings lived almost 1000 years ago. Afterwards, we had a little time for exploration before returning home for dinner. Following dinner, many people went out into the city. The past few days have been wonderful, full of adventure and surprises. We feel our Spanish getting better and our vocabulary expanding with every conversation.