Sigue Derecho

Ok, so I know it has been awhile since my last update, but I have a couple of good things to talk about that I don´t think anyone back home knows about really.

1. I played in a rugby game!!! It was interesting to say the least. The game started at 4 and I got there at three. Then there was the big identity crisis about how I was gonna get to play because I don´t have a national Id card nor an ID card for Autonoma Madrid. So being the real men of genious this Spanish Rugby team I played for are, decided that they just wouldn´t have me go into the team meeting where they meet the referees and show their ID. So I hid in the lockerroom and ended up being allowed to play. I´m not sure how it all worked out because I kind of stick out when I´m there, but for some reason I got in there.

So I was still a little confused about what exactly the rules are and the strategery of the game, so I just kind of ran around and when I saw a big pile of people ran and dived into the middle of it to make the pile go our way. That was good. But as for the rucks or the racks or whatever they call them, I´m not to fond of. I got absolutely dominated in them, but I think it´s because my support was the most unathletic kid they could´ve possible found in Spain. At least that´s the reason I´m going to tell myself that I didn´t do well in them.

But I played with my buddies I had met who are part of the school of information at Autonoma and we played against the med school team or whatever. We lost pretty handily but it was pretty fun. Although I couldn´t move my neck for the next few days. That was kind of rough.

2. For Thanksgiving our prof. had planned a trip down to Andalucia (Sevilla and Cordoba were the two places we went) and oh man, I love it there. I´m not sure if it´s because I made up my mind before even going there that I was gonna love it or if it was actually love at first visit. You can a lot of similiarities between Sevilla and Morocco. Better said, Sevilla is kind of like a civilized Morocco, although there is still a hefty language barrier because the accent there is roughhh.

Everywhere you went there you saw orange trees hanging around to. But first things first and that´s thanksgiving. We had that Thursday off for Thanksgiving and took the AVE, which is like a bullet train, to get there (it was like 3 hours). We got there and had a dinner planned with students from other various schools that were studying in Sevilla. I think there was like 4o or 50 of them. We ate at an Irish pub and the food was really quite good (although of course there wasn´t enough of it to be actually considered a thanksgiving meal for me) and I never realized how good sweet potatoe is. Oh man. It was fantastic! (keep that in mind mom)

After that we kind of had the afternoon free to walk around and explore and do stuff. I think I napped a lot. But anyways fast forward to the next day..............

I AM A STAR OF ANDALUCIAN TV! We took a tour with this guy who is also a TV host for some station based out of Sevilla and he asked our prof. if it would be ok if he could film us. So there was a camera guy with us all day following us around and they would stop randomly and ask us questions about what we thought about the city. And I was wearing my Hobart football shirt so he asked me about football and then about Soccer and who my favorite team was. Well, to be honest, I don´t care all that much about soccer still but if I had to pick a team it would be Sevilla, so I thought that would be a good answer. But he wasn´t pleased with that and made me say his favorite team, the other team based out of Sevilla, Real Betis. So I´m on Andalucian news saying, BETIS, MUCHO BETIS! (he told me to say that) and who knows what else. So that´s kind of cool.

Other than that, we saw a lot of cathedrals and mezquitas and what have you. I´m really over giant cathedrals. Going to 1 or maybe 2 is nice, but after 6 things get kind of repetitive. Although we did see Christopher Columbus´s tomb I think? So that´s cool?

But anyway, on to the other exciting news.....I met up with Miriam there! (foreign exchange student from Sevilla when I was in high school) So she took me and my buddy Harry out to a Discoteca there for one night and that was really cool. It was interesting to see the differences between discos there and the ones in Madrid. For one, the music they played in Sevilla was so much cooler. Flamenco is huge there, so in the clubs they played a lot of pop/techno/flamenco and that was really cool. Plus, all the girls there can dance flamenco. And dance in general. Like whoa.

Speaking of dancing, we were all going out to see a flamenco show the next night (flamenco is totally awesome by the way). So before leaving Miriam and her friends we told her that and her and all her friends just busted out dancing flamenco in the street it was so cool. They were dancing really good flamenco as well.

The show itself the next night was really awesome. It was in like a hotel lobby.....hard to explain I´ll have to steal some pictures and post them. But it was a really nice atmosphere and the dancing, singing, and guitar playing was absolutely fantastic.

So sorry that this post took so long to get posted, but I´ve had a crazy amount of work to do recently. There might be some things I´m missing so don´t be surprised if I post another update soon.

Crazy to think I´ll be leaving here in about 12 days. Seems like just yesterday I was walking into my host familys house and getting mauled by Brandy. I´m gonna miss a lot of stuff, and I´m gonna try to plan a Super Sunday Spanish fun day where I do as many typical things that one Madrileñan has to do, such as go to the Rastro one more time (if its open), go to Retiro, go to the Prado, eat some Spanish Tortilla or Paella, walk to the end of Metro Line 1, and then hop on the only metro line I haven´t been on yet.....the 11. The 11 is so going down.

Ok, hope all is well and Í´ll be seeing everyone soon!