Classes

Classes started this morning, finally. I get the feeling they will be mostly as hard as I want to make them, which is to say that even with 15 hours it's probably going to be a cake semester schoolwork-wise. That's the whole point though. All three of my professors this morning talked about Sevilla and what we think and what we've been doing, and two of them told us to talk to them about traveling and how to do it cheaply and well. Our International relations teacher, who is scottish to the core and has the coolest sounding accent this side of Jason Statham, told us that if once or twice during the semester the ticket back was like a hundred euros cheaper on Monday morning rather than Sunday night....ehhhh. That's what we're here for too so as long as we didn't abuse it. Books are going to be like 40 euro for the enitre semester. So there's something they do better over here.

Here are the things that a very different:

• Food. I've eaten so much bread. Fresh bread. But so, so much of it. And today Eddie and I downed a bowl of cereal before heading to school, and we didn't eat again until 2:30 this afternoon with the family. Granted it was the largest meal of the day, but by that point I had progressed past the state of active painful hunger and on to passive, accepted hunger. My stomach must be adjusting and maybe even shrinking because I thought, "God I'm so hungry I'll definitely have seconds." I couldn't finish a second plate. Que raro no?
• Staying in the food category, the milk here isn't pasteurized, or if it is it's a different process. The milk is sweet, not even semi-sweet but noticeably sweet, and Reme keeps five or so containers in reserve in the pantry. The American mind immediately says "no way, they would go bad." Obviously not. I'm still trying to figure it out, maybe look it up on the internet or something because those things stay down there for days, then when an old one runs out we put them in the fridge and they're good to go once cold. Very strange.
• Everything--and I mean everything--is doused in olive oil. The bread is cooked in it, the hamburgers are cooked in it, the salads are swimming in it and on and on. It's actually very tasty and I think fairly healthy.
• Sleeping. I'm not really adjusted yet, but somehow the whole siesta thing makes perfect sense when you're out the night before. Eddie and I have trouble getting to sleep before 2 or 3 AM anyways, despite the workouts I'm putting us through. It's just too damn hot without AC to do much else from 2-5 in the afternoon.
• Driving and traffic are nightmarish. Scooters all over the sidewalks, tiny tiny cars and still not enough space, no speed limits on any of the small or medium size roads etc. etc.
• Walking is fantastic. A 30 minute walk into downtown sounds like a gross venture to any suburban dweller but the city is beautiful, and if you have new friends to talk to the time passes very quickly. 
• I don't think real Absinthe is legal or available in the states. Not so here. To quote the bartender, when asked for the strongest thing they've got, "try this. This shit will make you see leprechauns." I told Eddie this. He did not find it amusing, sputtering and cursing about seeing leprechauns. Hilarious. None for me thanks.
• In a large sense, the country has gone through a reversion or reaction maybe to being freed from dictatorship some thirty odd years ago. I saw many couples in the park yesterday while I was running, most of them sitting and talking or eating each other's faces whole. I also saw several going at it in broad daylight, and I was the only one staring or batting an eyelid. There were kids and families and ancianos (ancients, old folks) walking around and everything. Try doing that in broad daylight in a park in the states.

All in all I'm very glad to be "back in school", even if it is much less demanding than I'm probably used to. I could already tell today that December 16, seemingly far away, is actually breathing down my neck already, and that leaving a place so marvelous and novel to me to come back to an Ohio winter might just kill me.

P.S. This blogger allows me to modify existing blog posts so I may update some of them. I don't know if they will appear as such or have some sort of label saying they were edited. I won't do it very often.