The Trip

It was a bit stressful getting out of Chicago, but it always works out in the end! I was proud that I only had one checked bag and my big backpack. Seeing how much I come back with will be the interesting thing. My first flight was from Chicago to Madrid and it was an 8 hour flight. As I boarded the plane it was clear that probably close to half the passengers were study abroad students. I really didn't feel nervous at all, just the normal sadness mixed with excitement that comes with moving and traveling. 4 months really doesn't seem like that long to me though. On the plane I sat next to a girl, Julie, who was moving to Seville to work for a company (VIPSeville) that puts on events specifically for the study abroad students. They do excursions to Morocco, Portugal, the beach and events in the city. We talked for several hours before I slept for the last 4 or 5.

When we got to Madrid the airport was very open and modern looking and yet surprisingly empty for such a big city. Julie and I wandered around to find food and drinks while we waited for our connecting flight to Seville. As the time for boarding neared, more and more study abroad students showed up and I overheard that a few of them were from my program though many were from others as well. My roommate, Sara, actually recognized me and ran over to introduce herself. We had been in contact so I knew she was arriving at the same time in Seville but I wasn't sure if she was on the same flight. Turns out she was as was most of our group. She was traveling with a large group of other students from Cal Poly in SoCal. That group actually makes up well over half of the Fall CEA Seville program this year (about 45 of us total).

The flight from Madrid to Seville was only an hour and before we knew it we had landed and collected our bags. Customs was kind of a joke and I don't think they even checked on person's bag. A couple CEA employees picked us up in a big bus where we got checked in, our welcome packets and got our first opportunity to really start introducing ourselves. There were 3 housing options: The home-stays, the Casas- 4-8 people in apartments with a Señora that cooks and does laundry and lives nearby and the apartments which is completely independent. Most people opted for the casas, but I think there are 4-5 of us in home-stays. As we pulled up to our drop off point we saw our host parents, Juan and Esperanza (Pechi), for the first time. Pechi was all dressed up in a bright red dress and pumps and Juan is a short little man with a great smile and large glasses. They are probably in their upper 50s. They greeted us with the double kisses and began asking us about ourselves and the trip. Sara actually knows several of the girls that have stayed with them in the past so we chatted some about them too. I helped translate a bit since Sara doesn't speak much Spanish yet.

They showed us around the house which is an apartment on the 4th floor. There are 3 bedrooms with 5 beds total. They have a dining room, kitchen, sewing room for Pechi, sitting room for Juan, living room and terrace. It's decorated kind of eclectically with big old paintings and pictures, platters, glasses, rugs etc throughout. Pechi makes fancy hats for ladies for weddings and special occasions (which are also all over the house) while Juan is retired, but used to own his own newspaper company I believe. He showed us pictures of him riding horses and also said he loves to hunt. His sitting room has many of his hunting trophies. They have 4 children, 3 sons and one daughter. The oldest is 34 and the daughter is the youngest. She has a 2 year old daughter herself and they'll be staying here for a month starting in the next couple days. Their youngest son, Bruno also lives here currently. He has been really nice and told us that if we ever had any problems while we were out we could call him and he'd come get us.

They fed us and gave us water before we passed out for several hours. That night we met up with some of the other students and went out exploring a little. We were out in the main road, Avenida Constitución, where we first walked by Catedral Giralda. We went to a couple bars, and I had my first glass of sangria there, but it was a pretty relaxed atmosphere. We weren't out too late since we had orientation the next morning. It was a long first day, but I seemed to skip the jet lag due to siesta time so that was lucky!