This weekend seemed to fly by. Our class ended on Friday, and it was weird to take a final exam after only 3 weeks of class. The end of that class also means that as of Tuesday we will have been here for a whole month. I can not believe it at all. Time seems to be flying by, and I know it will just pick up even more once classes start up and we begin our travelling and such.

Our real classes start tomorrow, meaning that I won't be sleeping in until noon every day. I'm excited to go to the university, but keep your fingers crossed that I don't get shoved in a trash can or something. I'll be like that new kid in elementary school who has to eat lunch alone.

Friday night led to Maggie and I realizing for the four hundredth time that we should never underestimate our ability to get lost. We have been here almost exactly a month. In that month I would say there have been more days than not where we got lost at least once. And this isn't the fun kind of lost where you have nothing to do on a sunny day and meander around a city. It always happens when we're already running late to meet people and decide to take a "short cut." You'd think that we would know by now to just take the route we know and bypass the "short cuts" that we come up with that really add 45 minutes to our trip. Friday night was the worst it's been so far. To make matters bad to even begin with, it was freezing outside. Luckily we decided to ride our bikes or this story may have gone much differently. We were meeting people across town at the river, but we decided that we could find this great short cut and get there super fast. Instead we ended up in a part of Sevilla that two white girls on bikes with bells and baskets should probably never go to at night...or in the day. I still have no idea where we were, and I didn't take the time to figure it out because there won't (hopefully) be a return visit. I'm pretty sure at one point we were riding in the bike lane on a highway out of town...but who can really know. When we had almost made it back to civilization, we rounded a corner to find a group of probably 100 people all standing in the street with music blasting from their cars. I was 100% convinced at first that we had found some kind of hidden fight club or gang war, but it turned out to be a bunch of 15 years olds throwing some kind of street party.

The story ends happily. We finally made it to our destination and didn't lose any blood in the process. My map will now be coming with me everywhere I go; nerdy or not.

The waffle building

Saturday we decided to have an adventure and explore some new parts of the city. We met up with Molly, bag lunches in hand, and set out to cross some Sevilla must-dos off our bucket list. The first of these is what we call the Waffle Building. I'm not sure what the real name is...or why it even exists, but it looks like a giant waffle. It is a huge wooden structure that was created not too long ago, and you can go on top of it and get a great view of the town. There is also a random meat market inside of the waffle, but we skipped out on that part.

On top of the waffle building

After touring the waffle we wandered around that part of town and found some really cool little shops and cafes. Our teacher told us about a convent where the nuns sell candies, and you have to find them and then say a phrase to get in the door (or so she says). I think she probably just tells us to say the phrase so the nuns can get a good laugh. We've naturally been wanting to check this out since we heard about it, but I guess even nuns take a siesta in this country, because their doors were sealed shut at 2:15 when we got there, and I don't think a secret phrase was going to help. I'm sure we'll be back to the convent another time, because not much can stand in the way of me and homemade candy.

We ended up running into one of the tour guides from Discover Sevilla (a travel company that we're going to Morocco with) and he showed us his favorite restaurant to go get cake at. The cake was really awesome, and he gave us other tips were going to try later on. The rest of the day we just spent walking around and enjoying Sevilla. We had a little picnic in a plaza and stumbled upon a giant block party outside of a church that apparently happens every week. Everyone just stands in the plaza and eats and drinks and mingles. We wanted to mingle, but we looked extra foreign because it was very obvious that we didn't know anyone there. It's our goal to meet some people in our classes who go there and can help us join in.

We finalized our spring break plans and we have a full week planned out that takes us from Dublin to Amsterdam to Heidelberg Germany. I am so excited about all of the travelling that we have planned and I can't wait to get out and explore other cities! Although Heidelberg may seem a little random, it was recommended to us by a student who studied abroad in Germany and a German exchange student who used to go to Rachel's high school. He lives really close to Heidelberg now and has offered to show us around the town and let us hang out with him and his friends. It's going to be so fun to have a personal tour guide.

Hopefully I can find my classes tomorrow and even more importantly, make some friends who will send me their notes at the end of the semester. If that is too lofty of a goal, I can at least shoot for not being shoved in a trashcan for being the new kid.