Day 4: Home Sweet Home

          Well, what a week it has been! It feels like I’ve been here longer than that, I already am getting quite comfortable with my host family and feel oriented when I walk around the city. Last Saturday my lovely friend (and tour guide, and translator, and amazing person) Sara and her friend picked me up at Kelsey and Trevor’s apartment to drive me over to the home-stay where I will be living until May. The drive was quick and a learning experience of it’s own. The drivers here have to be a little crazy to maneuver around the city efficiently and I found myself picking up on a few new colloquial phrases to use in times of stress.....in the end we made it safely and I was left to move in and to become acquainted with my hosts and roommate.

Map of Sevilla. Sticking with the saying....home is where the heart is: Los Remedios

One of the bigger roads near my house

          The apartment is on a small road in the neighborhood called Los Remedios; a (relatively) quiet family neighborhood. It is a prime location: just far enough away to avoid all of the traffic noise, but still close enough to the center that I can walk just about anywhere. I was definitely nervous before arriving to this strange new place, something that was made worse by the fact that I was greeted by my host father Paco. Paco is in his upper-sixties, short (about 5’5”), speaks only spanish, and is fairly deaf despite having hearing aids. The fact that he is partially deaf (and that I didn’t realize this until day 2) made my welcome less than ideal, he seemed to interrupt whatever I was saying and used lots of hand gestures while shouting cryptic Andalusian spanish at me during my brisk tour around the apartment. Thank goodness my roommate Jenna was there and just as confused as I was, it’s comforting to not be alone during culture exchanges like that one. After the tour Paco left Jenna and I to unpack our things and to get settled into our room.

          Jenna McAuliffe is a junior English major at Richmond University in Virginia and hails from a town near Boston, MA, she’s been here for a few weeks taking an intensive spanish course. I anticipate that this semester we’ll not only be sharing a room, but also other interesting experiences that come with moving to a foreign country. While unpacking we realized that Paco had made us both worried; we hoped that the arrival of our host mother would quell any nerves that our host father had instilled in us, otherwise this could turn out to be a looong semester.

          When Gumersinda arrived my nerves were not only quelled, but completely vanquished. Gumersinda is about 60 years old, she has a warm smile, laughs a lot, and loves this city. She’s from a smaller town near Sevilla and, along with Paco, has raised 6 children and has 2 grandchildren. Oh and did I mention that she can cook? Part of our home-stay contract includes 3 meals a day, something that could have made the semester rough if I were paired with someone who didn’t serve palatable meals. Fortunately for me she’s got cooking skills (but while they may be good, my mom (Jinni) still gets the award for being best cook ever). The eating schedule here is a bit different than that at home, we eat breakfast at around 9am and it’s very light (usually toast and coffee), then lunch at 3pm which is the largest meal of the day, and dinner at 9pm or sometimes later which is usually the amount of a typical american lunch portion. I tend to keep busy so I don’t get too hungry during the day, and if I do I just see it as the perfect excuse to try out a new tapas bar. At some point I’m going to do an entire blog post dedicated to the food system here.....

          Since I get up fairly early in the morning I’ve had the opportunity to sit and chat with Gumer over breakfast. I’m getting accustomed to her accent and she’s very good about helping to explain anything that I don’t understand. The other night I came to the conclusion that it is some kind of fate that has brought us together. Jenna and I were with Gumer on Facebook looking at pictures of her family when a photo of her in a blonde wig and bright clothes came up. We asked her who she was dressed as and, with a big grin, she explained that she dressed up as Lady Gaga for New Years Eve! Her family had had a big party that night and so she surprised them by dressing up. She had her son blast Gaga while shining a spotlight on her for her grand entrance, she said the entire family was in stitches, as was Jenna and I while she told us about it. This woman loves life and making people happy, that night we all danced around to Alejandro (her favorite Lady Gaga song) before Jenna and I got ready to go out. 

          There are two other people living with us right now, her daughter Mercedes who is about 30ish, as well as a student from Tokyo, Japan. Azusa is 18, speaks english and a little spanish, and is here for two weeks at a private college taking intensive language courses.  She’s pretty brave to come all this way by herself without knowing the language, she’s been working very hard since she arrived and her spanish has already improved by leaps and bounds.

          The apartment isn’t lush but it isn’t terrible either. Aside from it being dark and cold it’s starting to feel like home. It’s currently ‘winter’ here which means it’s about 55º to 65º during the days and upper 30‘s at night, conditions that don’t warrant having heat in the house since the season only lasts for 2 months, but ones that make showering miserable and my feet very cold. Because of this I’ve caught a cold since my arrival and I’m hoping that’ll go away soon, I’m doing my best to rest up and keep warm. 

          No one in the house speaks English (well okay, Jenna, Azusa, and I do but we try not to....), I can tell that my comprehension is improving and my spoken spanish a little too. I now comprehend about 90% of the spanish on television, 85% of what Gumer says, however I still find myself getting lost when it comes to communicating with Paco. Jenna and I have taken it upon ourselves to win Paco over during our stay; we’ve already made good progress since we’ve learned to speak up when we talk with him. While he still can be grumpy on occasion, he now cracks jokes around us and we’ve had success in making him smile and laugh, he can be quite the character sometimes. He cooks us lunch on the week days when Gumer is at work, his meals are pretty good but usually include lots of french fries, I’ll be needing to find some salad here soon. 

If Gumersinda leaves earlier in the morning she sets our our breakfast for us, she even labels our thermos' and this particular morning she left us little chocolates :-)

          Overall I’m getting settled in, classes are going well and I’m meeting lots of new people. I walk a lot everyday and like to go get lost in the city during my free time, there is something new to be discovered around every corner. I’m looking forward to the warmer days that will come with spring, but for now I’ll be keeping my wool socks on 24/7. 

I have finally received the mailing address for my casa and will post it on my facebook, if you would like it just email me and I’ll get it to you, I love writing and receiving letters!