Today I finally decided to start my blog. I cannot promise everything will be fascinating, but I know some interesting stories will definitely come with time. Its now Monday, October 3and I have been in Sevilla for two weeks now. There have already some ups and downs: some illnesses, four full days of orientation, grueling heat (with no air conditioning or a/c that smells like sewage). But I’ve met a ton of great people and I’m Sevilla, back in Spain, which you should know I love.
Although it’s been a while now, I’ll try to recount my time here thus far. My journey started in New York, actually New Jersey to be exact, at Newark airport. There I embarked on this scary, exciting, and unique adventure. In the airport, there were a few setbacks with my ticket and my baggage but TAP airlines figured it all out in the end. While I was straightening out some issues with customer service, my mom and sister were creeping on everyone who was checking in for my flight to see if anyone looked like they might also be coming to Spain to teach English. Of course, mom found one who she introduced me to. It was comforting to be waiting with someone else at the gate. And also when we got to Portugal and had to navigate Portuguese customs, it was nice to be with another American. Turns out on our flight was also another CIEE participant and another former participant who loved her year here so much that she was been living here ever since (five years now). So what could have been a miserable transatlantic journey (like what happens when one chooses to fly with American Airlines) turned into quite a pleasant experience. When we arrived in Sevilla we got a shuttle to the hotel, and got to meet a bunch of other ‘auxiliares’ as they call us here in Spain.
Once we all dragged our 3-4 pieces of luggage into the hotel in 95 degree heat, we were tired, exhausted actually from flying through the night and “sleeping” in an airplane seat. However, hunger trumped sleepiness so we got some food at a nearby café and then went back to the hotel and passed out until our CIEE welcome cocktails/dinner. At the cocktail party we played lots of awkward getting to know you games, but as it turns out, it helped me get to know people.
I will not bore anyone with the details of the next four days of orientation. I will just mention that they were filled with important but boring lectures about what to expect over the next year, and instructions on how to get cell phones, bank accounts, and apartments.
Since the apartment hunt was the most entertaining of all these mundane tasks, I will try to explain the experience, but it will probably be impossible to put down in words. At first I really wanted to find a Spanish roommate so that I would be forced to practice my Spanish on a day-to-day basis, but as it turns out that is easier said than done. I spent the entire day Friday, the day after orientation in my bed, so that was a day of apartment hunting gone to waste. But between jetlag and jam packed days from Monday-Thursday, my body didn’t really give me another choice.
Saturday we got up bright and early (at 10AM) went down for the hotel breakfast, where we were left with only the Teach in Spain Sevilla participants, the other auxiliares had left for their destinations earlier that morning. My assigned hotel roommate, Chelsea, and I decided we would search for apartments together. At breakfast we decided to join forces with two other participants, Amy and her boyfriend Alex, who already had a few ideas about where they wanted to look for apartments (called pisos in Spain).
So our search began in a city we barely knew our way around, where the sun was beating from 10am until 10 at night and our Spanish skills proved not to be as competent as we thought they were. We saw one piso where the landlord told us we would have to pay for overnight guests and had to do laundry on an assigned day of the week. It was a beautiful, old Sevillana building, but it was not going to work as our home for the next nine months. Our next move was to literally traverse the entire city, ripping off “se alquila” signs at bus stops, on lampposts and building walls. We split the numbers up and between the three of us called a whole bunch of landlords. Just a word of encouragement for all those of you looking for a place to live in the United States: appreciate the fact that you are talking to English speaking landlord, and you understand what you are agreeing to see and do and when and where.
After a day of delirium of calling every “se alquila” sign in sight, we reached a point where we could no longer search. At the end of the day, we could not hardly walk, so we went straight back to the hotel and passed out. Little did we know that this was the end of our apartment search, as two of the four searchers woke up really sick with some Spanish stomach bug, no fun. So we decided we would all live together in one of the three bedroom pisos we found in Triana. It is a cute little duplex, three bedrooms, two bath, no air conditioning/dishwasher/or clothing dryer. I suppose this is fairly typical of Spanish apartments but now that I am actually cooking for myself and washing my own clothes, I am more distressed than I’ve been in the past by this lack of amenities.
No comments:
Post a Comment