Sevilla!

Here is your long-anticipated update!

Saturday morning we hopped on a bus to Sevilla. Usually for big trips our program has reserved two busses – we have 7 or so more people than can legally fit onto one bus. With two busses, therefore, almost everyone get´s their own double seat, and thus can take naps! So Saturday, both busses appear...and after some delay, our directors proceed to put us just one. They explained that the bus companies had just gotten word of the pending Trucker´s Strike, and weren´t sure whether or not it was going to affect their union as well, and so they had no guarantee they´d be able to drive us back on Sunday...thankfully, a few kids had decided to skip the trip, so we all (barely) fit.

When we arrived in Sevilla we drove around the city and looked at various famous places – the cigar factory, now university administrative office, where Carmen was set (I bought cheap castanets!), this gorgeous street of Latin and South American themed buildings Sevilla constructed before the 1929 World´s Fair...which was cancelled after the stock market crash...and other interesting things. After getting oriented at our hotel, some of my friends and I set out to find the Plaza de Espana, a huge, beautiful structure celebrating every city in Spain, construted in a Moorish style. (It succeeded in being so Moorish, in fact, that several movies have filmed scenes there instead of attempting to get into the Middle East. Lawrence of Arabia is perhaps the most famous).

After the Plaza, the rest of the group wanted to do silly things like shower and take naps...but Kristin and I decided to explore more and find a museum, where admission was only €1.50. We meandered over to Sevilla´s fine art museum, where they were having a free admission day, so we paid nothing!

Other typical events occured for the rest of the evening...we went to dinner, we ate ice cream, we wandered around the river...you don´t need a full report on all of that.

Most interestingly, I wandered into one of the hotel´s parlor areas and discovered a grand piano! The piano had a sign on it saying it was locked, and to use it you needed to ask for the key from the receptionist. I talked to my friends who encouraged me to go ask. So I did, and the receptionist asked if I –actually—knew how to play the piano well, to which I said yes. (Apparently, good music coming out of the piano from an american tourist is acceptable. Annoying Mary-had-a-little-lamb attempts are not). So I played for a little while, which some of my friends enjoyed (they danced a waltz to the minute waltz, for example), and some hotel patrons complimented me on. I wasn´t very good though. The longer I go without practicing the less I have memorized. Still, I made a happy discovery that one of the guys on my program is about as good as I am! He actually got accepted to study piano at a fairly good music school, before coming to exactly the same conclusion I did – that he didn´t want to practice 8 hours a day to make no money in a field he didn´t love more than all others. Anyway, he and I have decided now that we´re going to go find the University of Granada´s music center together and see if we can´t steal a practice room or something to play duets on. Yay!