Day 2

Day 2 we woke up around 8:30 to get ready and eat breakfast before meeting our CEA group. Breakfast here is basically just toast, coffee and maybe some "crispies" (cereal). I have been working on finding something with a little more protein that I can snack on before lunch because I am always starving a couple hours after breakfast. Lunch is a bigger meal around 2:30 and dinner is lighter around 9 traditionally. But then you go out for tapas and drinks until the wee hours of the morning!

 It is a short 15 min walk to Torre de Oro which is a kind of central meeting point for everyone since it is right by the river that divides the city and is very easy to identify. CEA staff told us that the tower used to be a defense tower just outside the city walls and that it was also used as a custom point for imports. They say there was a tunnel that used to run from the river to the tower so they could bring goods in and avoid the prying eyes of pirates. The river that we see now is man made, though I'm not sure how recently it was created. A bunch of us live on one side of it in the Triana or Los Remedios neighborhoods while the other side has the city center. We met with the group at Torre and made our first walk to the CEA campus. It's probably gonna take me a good 20 mins to walk to school, but it is really easy to find. There are about 45 student in our group and most of the people from SoCal know each other at least a little bit, but it was cool to start chatting with everyone. The CEA staff seem really cool and the orientation was a loooot of information, but very helpful as well. The first day was all about health, safety, transportation, housing etc. We had a welcome lunch at a nearby hotel that was served tapas style. The food was amazingggg! Lots of chickpeas, pork, cheese, and potatoes. Lunch was delicious and also a good opportunity to socialize with both our fellow students as well as the CEA staff.

After lunch we had siesta, of course. Sara and I have been sleeping like rocks every time we close our eyes, but we managed to wake up in time for the city bike tour scheduled for the afternoon. The bikes were a little treacherous since they were well-used and had small wheels. My breaks barely worked, so that was fun. We rode around for almost 3 hours and got to see many different neighborhoods and landmarks such as the Plaza de España, Torre de Oro, the bull fighting stadium, and several other cool parks and structures that I don't quite know all the names of yet. The tour was a good way to orient ourselves around the city and cover a lot of ground that would have taken twice as long on a walking tour. The city is also super bike friendly with bike docks everywhere where you can rent them and ride from dock to dock and bike lanes everywhere that are really quite well laid out.

That night we went out to a club, but it was a welcome party for international students so that's basically all who was there. I saw a few people from the airport which was cool, but the drinks were overpriced and it was just all very American.