Rain, Rain, Go Away

It is seriously the most miserable day in Sevilla today. It's rainy, it's cold, it's windy. Que lastima. My first week of classes went well. I changed my schedule around so now I have 3 classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and only 1 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Courtney and I have 2 classes together. We got kind of antsy in Spanish for Business so towards the end I was drawing stick figure comics about our lives. Classes here are so different. Everything is in Spanish, and some classes you do absolutely nothing (like my Spanish for Business class) while others you have to do minimal reading, and others you have to read an entire book. Right now I'm taking..

MW Spanish for Business (3-5pm,  9-11am home time)
TR Intercultural Communication (11am-12:35pm, 5-6:35am home time)
      History of 3 Cultures in Spain: Christians, Jews, and Muslims (1-3pm, 7-9am home time)
      The History of the United States in Spain (5-6:35pm, 11am-12:35pm home time)

My 3 Cultures class is the one I have to read an entire book for. Oh and write a paper. In all my other classes my grades are based on two tests, a midterm and a final. I'm not too worried about that class though because we get to go to a lot of cool places outside of class and the professor is interesting.

I gave in the other day after class and went to M.A.S. (the grocery store here) to buy Principes. I went in and they were playing Eminem in the store. Unedited. I laughed because I knew that there was a good chance that not a single person had any idea what they were listening too. I thought a lot more people here would speak English. I've meet a few Spaniards who speak minimal English but none who are fluent.

Speaking of things being uncensored, the news here is very graphic. During the earthquake in Haiti, they were showing children being operated on without anesthesia. Another point in time they showed a man having a sex change operation. No one even blinks at things like this! I finally learned why. Before democracy came to Spain, the country was ruled by a dictator named Franco. Everything was very censored; women had to dress very conservatively and certain things on TV were edited out, for example. To Spainiards, democracy means total freedom, including no censorship. Even though America's government is deomocratic, to them we are not free because everything is censored. It was an interesting take on things.

On a lighter note, Courtney Marie Viehl is the love of my life. The other night I had the worst migraine. I couldn't eat a bite of dinner so I went to bed at 9:30. Courtney and I had class together the next day so when we got out around 6:30 we decided we were going to walk home rather than bike because it was a nice night out. This was the conversation we had:

Courtney: Marisa, I have to tell you something, but you might get mad at me.
Me: (Stops walking) What did you do?
Courtney: ....Dave and I are dating
Me: -_-
Courtney: No ok but seriously...while you were sleeping last night, I booked two plane tickets to Italy.

You can only imagine my reaction. There was a lot of screaming and jumping up and down. We're going for the first part of Semana Santa in March. Our itinerary looks something like this:

March 25: Bus from Sevilla to Madrid
March 26: 7am flight from Madrid to Venice
March 28: Train from Venice to Rome
March 31: Flight from Rome to Madrid, bus from Madrid to Sevilla

We're still working on hostels right now but I couldn't be more excited that we're really going to Italy!

La Carnaval in Cadiz is tomorrow and we're leaving around 8:00pm and getting back around 5:00am. We decided to bear the awful rain and go out to do a bit of costume shopping today. Hopefully the weather isn't this bad tomorrow but we'll see!