monday

I think that title basically sums it up.  Just another day.  Nothing too exciting.  Fortunately I did feel a little bit better today.  I still don't know if I am 100% and I'm kind of afraid of eating too much or eating anything too weird in case my stomach just can't handle it.

Woke up without too much trouble today.  It actually felt warm in the room which was different.  Same old cold in the bathroom though.  Apparently monday is cleaning day so I had to get the clothes I wanted washed together and set them by my door for R to pick up.  Hopefully it won't take too long to get them back but just in case I didn't put the essentials like my sweatshirt, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks in there.  I don't think I could go even one night without them.

This morning in the grammar class we started working on the subjunctive but just the boring basics.  I know how to conjugate the verbs in the subjunctive tense, I need be reminded when to use it.  In the communication class we played a board game where each space had a sentence where you had to use por or para correctly or else you had to go back to the beginning.  And then we learned some spanish sayings and tried to practice using them in conversation.  In the afternoon class there was a new girl from brazil and we spent our class time practicing using the different past tenses to talk about our childhood, specifically our experiences in elementary school.  It's still pretty difficult to remember all the grammar rule while you're talking...but I guess that's how you learn.  Just practice practice practice.  But it's kind of awkward because you know the teacher is sitting there listening to you and writing down your mistakes.  So you just have to keep in mind that she's doing that to bring it to your attention and help you correct it and make sure you know what's wrong and what's right.

After class we sat in the patio for awhile and used the internet there.  Then we went to the store again to get a few more things.  I needed some kleenex and some napkins and wanted to get some sprite and some crackers for in case my stomach acts up again.  And after that we had a lot to carry with us so we decided to part ways.  I spent the rest of the afternoon perusing the internet and listening to R and J have a very loud conversation somewhere downstairs.  Then it was dinner time and it's so much more lively with the other girls here.  I mean I have to take some jokes about still needing to learn more grammar and vocabulary but I'll take it.  It's kind of frustrating because I feel like most of the time these girls aren't using vocabulary that is much more advanced than mine and it's not like they use all of their verbs and tenses correctly...they can just say it all faster and with more confidence than I can so it doesn't matter that it's not exactly right because they can be understood and they don't make the person listening to them wait forever for an answer.  But anyway.

Dinner was actually pretty good.  We had a small bowl of soup and I think I heard the word vegetable associated with it but there wasn't like whole vegetables in there and it was a much smaller bowl since we also had pasta so that was nice.  I would have probably finished the soup if there hadn't been a huge plate of some kind of pasta to eat as well.  I don't really know how to describe it but it seemed normal and tasted good.  There was also so kind of meat, two kinds of meat, or maybe it was just prepared two different ways, but after the pasta and soup I was so full that I couldn't even think of eating any of it.  I couldn't even finish my orange because I was so full.  And I'm still not very good at peeling it and cutting it apart with my knife.  Oh and J made us try this tuna that had even the brave H making faces.  He cut up bits of it and we all, even K, tried a tiny tiny bite, with bread at the suggestion of R, and it wasn't terrible.  But I just can't get past the fishiness and the chewiness of it.  Needless to say one to tiny bite was more than enough tuna for us.

Well one more monday down.  And now some of those pictures from the cathedral that I promised you.  But I did say that my camera died before I got to the giralda right?  Next time I know to bring spare batteries and I promise I will go back and get pictures from the top of the tower before I leave seville.  But there are still some pretty good ones from inside the cathedral so I hope for now you'll be satisfied with those.

cool statue of JPII when you enter the cathedral

one of many beautiful side chapels

trying to capture how huge the place is

another side chapel that I really liked

the tomb of Christopher Columbus

the choir stalls

another view of how big the church is, also you can kind of see the silver altar

the high altar, the central part of the cathedral

so many beautiful side chapels!

and there are other rooms in the cathedral that hold paintings like these

and treasures like these, this is a relic of the crown of thorns

and this is one of the crowns used to crown Mary

me taking a picture of me and the ceiling that you could see really well in this angled mirror on the floor of the cathedral

the silver altar I mentioned before

 
**when I posted this a few minutes ago I forgot to mention how I shocked the girls from Brazil and Holland in our class today when we were sharing some cultural information and I said that most people in the united states start having kids before they are thirty... Like seriously, based on their responses, I thought I had misunderstood the question.  You would have thought I said it was normal to have twenty kids instead of saying it's normal to have your first kid when you're twenty something.  It was kind of funny actually.