Buenas!

The past two days have been very interesting for me. Yesterday I decided to sit outside of a cafe and do homework after class in el centro. Of course I end up running into Courtney and later we met up with Renee. We sat outside just talking and out of nowhere comes a giant political protest down la Avenida de la Constitucion. Here's an article (it's all in Spanish) but you can see a little picture of what we encountered:

http://www.diariodesevilla.es/article/sevilla/640026/miles/trabajadores/protestan/contra/pensionazo/sevilla.html

The retirement age here is 65 years and the government wants to raise it to 67. The people want to leave it at 65 or lower it to 60, and rightfully so. I wish I had my camera for this! There were so many people. Did I mention the weather was gorgeous yesterday?

Today it poured and I forgot my umbrella. I was literally dripping wet when I walked into my Intercultural Communication class at 11:00. I really enjoy that class because we learn about intercultural communication but the class itself is all about it. Our professor speaks hardly any English and every class we teach her something new. Today, for instance, we taught her what the Pledge of Allegiance is and she taught us that putting your right hand over your heart is an American form of nonverbal communication.

My Image of the United States in Spain class was VERY interesting tonight, too. We're learning about when the US wanted to buy Cuba from Spain but instead of talking about that I got our professor off track and we talked about religion in Spain for the majority of class. He explained to us that being Catholic in the US is completely different from being Catholic in Spain. They think that we're Puritans because we incorporate religion into our private lives. For them, religion and personal life are kept completely separate. I was fascinated and asked him what the point was to even have a religion. It's like Spainards believe in God but they don't have faith because God hasn't helped them throughout history. So all their lives they pretty much do whatever they want. The Virgin Mary is far more important to them than God or Jesus, because she is their Mother. In their eyes, mothers always forgive so when you're on your death bed, you just ask for forgiveness and it is granted to you because mothers always forgive their children.

I'm learning a lot and I will be enjoying my time a lot more if it stops raining!!!!!!!!!!