Alternate titles for this blog post include: ¨All Who Wander Are In Fact Lost (Duh, it´s Sevilla),¨ ¨Always Choose Misadventure,¨ and ¨Things I Did Yesterday When I Should Have Been Working on My Ethnography (oops).¨
Yesterday started out great. Our Spainish class had a new energy that wasn´t there before, and we had a lot of fun. I think it´s usually easier to translate into our first languages to each other under our breaths when we don´t understand (all the Chinese students sit together, and all the American students sit together). But yesterday, we were all mixed together, speaking Spanish, teasing each other and having a good time.
After lunch, I decided to use part of siesta time to figure out where the convent that sells dulces is located, so I could know where it was for later. The nun at the convent that sells rosaries had told me from behind the wall (it´s really cool, you put your money on a little door thing, ring a bell, tell them what you want, the door spins, and your thing comes to you) that they did not sell dulces, but the Dominican nuns on Calle San Jose had some really delicious ones. So I set off to find Calle San Jose.
This picture is of the convent by La Giralda, they sell rosaries and such. Look at the little revolving door!
Upon arriving in Sevilla, MJ had said, ¨There is a 100 percent chance you will get lost. You will get lost.¨ I believed her… for a while. Then Marissa and I discovered that we could just look in the sky and see La Giralda and follow it home. I had not gotten lost yet. Until yesterday. Despite what we learned in class about gender communication, I was too proud to ask for directions (as a side note, I have had 4 people now ask me for directions in Sevilla, none robbed me, and 3 were men. One actually had a wife who didn´t want him to ask directions. SO THERE, I say to gender communication theories.) Eventually, I found a bridge I recognized, and was able to go home from there. I never did find Calle San Jose.
There´s a reason people don´t go out during siesta. Too hot. When I bought horchata on my way home, the man working said, ¨hasta mañana¨ as I left. I hadn´t realized how many horchatas I had been buying until the man working there expected to see me every day. Oops.
Later that evening, I needed to go to the supermarket, so I took a shortcut I remembered taking with Mama Carmen. Before long, I ran into a procession. In my head I was thinking, oh look, another procession, and squeezed past. Then I realized what I had just thought, turned around, and enjoyed the procession. This city never ceases to enchant me.
I realized that I have never been out of the Texas Hill Country for this long. I can´t remember being anywhere outside of San Antonio, Austin, or New Braunfels for more than 3 weeks. I had no idea my world was so small until I put it into that percpective. I think of all the other countries or places I´ve been to, and how they hold my heart, and I can´t begin to imagine how much of a hold on my heart Sevilla will have, knowing that I hadn´t even been to any of the other places for that long. Crazy.
Misadventures have been some of the best times. Buying 3 kilos of plums instead of three plums (hey – I ended up with 3 kilos of plums, no complaints!) or thinking that Carmencita´s refridgerator food cover was the same as the microwave food cover (it´s not. They just look identical. It was the most embarassing thing. But she knew it was an accident and fawned over the ¨art¨ I had made, and how beautiful it was, and how now her food can breathe. Yes, my host mom is perfect) or finding a new area of town because you got lost (I found some new places to research for my ethnography too!), that´s all part of the excitement.
This city is wonderful. And there are so many more wonders to explore. More than likely though, they will find me when I least expect them.