BJ Dworak

So after almost a month here, all of my classes began last Tuesday. (At the time of this writing, I have been here just over a month). The first month was just an intensive Spanish language and culture class with other students from Carolina. I now have two classes at EUSA/CINECU, where UNC in Sevilla is housed with only other program participants. One of these is called Spain Today and the other is called Spain and Islam. The professors that UNC has hired for the program here are absolutely fabulous. Fernando, Rafa, and Angeles all rank among the top professors I’ve had since beginning college–and that’s saying something when all they can speak is Spanish! Their ability to communicate effectively to us and their knowledge is incredible. They also served as our tour guides when we went on excursions as a group. It was completely normal to attract a large following of tourists behind our group listening to them. Hats off to them.

The real adventure, however, has been my two classes at the University of Sevilla. I am taking one called Human Geography and one called Universal History of the 20th Century. Thankfully, I’m already fairly well versed in the latter material. Once again, all of the professors are very nice and willing to help, but I’ve had to seek that out. The first couple of days, I’ll admit, I was confused out of my mind. The university system is very different here and it is somewhat difficult to integrate foreign students into it. We are not yet officially registered in our classes nor do we have network credentials from the University, making it impossible to access their virtual learning environment where one of my professors posts a lot of texts and resources. Thankfully, she’s been accommodating and printed things out or emailed them to me.

The first day was, well, interesting. One classroom was nearly impossible to find. Who knew you’d put a Geography and History classroom by the Language ones. Not me, at least. Nevertheless, I was able to find both eventually and both professors gave me permission to take me final exam early because the Spanish semester doesn’t actually finish up until January, after Christmas break. Not exactly feasible to come back to take exams… In my history class, I’m not sure I understood anything either professor (they are splitting the semester) said. Talked too quickly, too quietly. I now sit closer and have been fine.

Books. Well those are another story here. The professor gives you a list of about 50 books that comprise the bibliography. These are supposed to be resources you can consult throughout the semester to clarify doubts you may have. But then they also sort of suggest you buy a “manual” or two to help you throughout the semester. Still a bit confused because I am used to a professor telling me what to read, not to have to seek out the supporting material on my own. I did buy a text book for my geography class today and even read a chapter. Hopefully it helps out. I’m sort of banking on going to all of the classes (not typical for Spanish students) and knowing most of the content I need to know. I can hope, right? And in the end, basically everything comes down to your final exams anyway.

But all in all, I think I understand my classes now. Really impressed with the quality of professors here. By and large, I’d say it is higher than what I’ve seen at Carolina, and I think that’s saying something when you think about the quality of instruction at UNC. Today in the hall, the director of the Human Geography department who I met on the first day and had to get permission from to take my exam early and then emailed with some other questions recognized me and even remembered my name. We had a nice chat. Definitely a much more relaxed and intimate academic environment than what we’ve grown used to, at least in my opinion.

The professors are nice, I know what I need to do for each of them, I have a syllabus for all of them. What can go wrong now?

Went to Paris last weekend, I might put up a blog post about that, we’ll see if I have time. Definitely a fun weekend though. Barcelona next weekend. It looks like I’m never going to stop.

This past weekend, about half of our program went to Lagos, Portugal, a small town in the south of the country in Algarve. It’s basically a beach/vacation town renowned for its beaches and its pristine water. It was a great weekend. Four friends and I decided to rent a car to go at the recommendation of our senora, Flori. Ended up being a great choice as the Sunday bus back to Sevilla filled up and 9 people from Carolina got stuck there for an extra day. It was a bit of an adventure, but the driver did a great job. Outside of Sevilla, it really wasn’t much different than driving in America. Got lost a bit on the way there when we couldn’t get over a lane, but I played Prince Henry the Navigator and all was well.

We stayed at the Gold Coast Hostel which was great. Nice place and the gentlemen that ran it were incredibly helpful with directions, what to do in Lagos, and where to eat.  Pretty much everyone we encountered spoke fluent English–lots of Australian expats. Ate at a great place on Friday night called la Casa Rosa. A brochure called it a “backpacker’s culinary mecca” and that couldn’t be closer to the truth. Good food, good drinks, and great employees. One of the guys that works there sat down by us for a few minutes just to chat and recommended places to go later. Tipping might not be customary in Europe, but they certainly got one.

It was mostly Australians at our hostel. Apparently, it’s a coming of age sort of thing there to, after University, to take 4 months-1 year and just travel around the world. All really nice and cool, even if they did make fun of American football when we were watching UNC beat UVA on the roof of the hostel Saturday night. Apparently wearing helmets isn’t very manly…

The weather was perfect even if the water was a bit cold. Refreshing, really. It was a welcome break from the extreme heat and lack of air conditioning in Sevilla.

On Sunday morning, we wanted to go on a kayak trip, but they ended up being canceled because the ocean was too rough. Not that we got up in time anyway… Instead, we went to Cafe Odeon. Another American we met at our hostel from the DC area told us about it. It’s owned by a guy from Alexandria, VA who retired in Lagos. Good breakfast food–not real European.

We left Lagos around 1:30 and drove to the West Coast of Portugal. It was beautiful countryside. We made it to the most western point of continental Europe, what the Portuguese originally thought was the end of the world. There were cliffs hundreds of feet tall above the relatively rough water. (That’s where I am in the picture at the top of the post.) Really windy but it was incredibly neat. Nice to have a car just to be able to explore on our own bit.

I put a few pictures in the post below of the beaches in Lagos and the cliffs at the most Western point and the lighthouse there. Really neat place. If you want to see some other, albeit non-edited pictures, click to see a public link to my Lagos Facebook album.

I haven’t been good with keeping on top of editing photos and uploading them, but I’m going to try to get a gallery up ASAP with some shots from Cordoba, a city about an hour and a half from Sevilla, los Reales Alcazares which is the royal palace in Sevilla, and the Cathedral of Sevilla which is the 3rd largest church in the world. Soon. I promise. We are going to Granada this weekend, and I will try to do that post right away!

Here’s a quick preview (and my current desktop background) of el Torre de la Mezquita de Cordoba.

On Sunday night, a few of us went to a bull fight at the famous Plaza de Toros in Sevilla (at least I am told it is famous). I wasn’t sure how I felt about bull fights going into it, and I’m still quite not sure how I feel. When asked if I liked it, I can really only say “I think so.”

After somewhat unsuccessfully haggling with some Spaniards outside of the stadium to buy the cheaper high up tickets we wanted, we were able to attend the bull fight. This was the first time I’ve wanted to have a longer lens for my camera. I only brought one lens but was definitely wishing I had my 70-200 when we were there. Such is traveling light…

The bull fights in fall in Sevilla are not nearly as big of a deal as the bull fights during La Feria de Abril and Semana Santa in the spring. Not only are the bulls (toros) smaller now, the torreos and matadors are also less experienced and not actually professionals. Nonetheless, I was impressed by their guts. I definitely could run towards a massive animal that was barreling towards me and then try to stab it in the back. Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think so.

My basic take on the whole experience is that once you get past the fact that you just watched an animal die after the first couple of bulls (there were a total of six), and look at it as an art form, it’s a pretty neat thing. The Spaniards certainly view it is an art over a sport. They are fighting and killing bulls not for sport but it is simply part of their culture. Certainly an experience I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on, so I’m glad we went before the season wraps up in the next couple of weeks.

It turned out to be a beautiful night, as you can see in the photo at the top of the post as the sun set over the Plaza.

There is a photo gallery below. Enjoy!

On Tuesday (I meant to post this earlier but was having trouble with pictures from my Blackberry…), we went to check out this huge department store that we had been hearing about. It’s called the Corte Ingles and basically has everything you could ever imagine and/or need. It is also wrought with confusing product placement. School supplies scattered throughout four different floors, men’s suits next to electronics and then a whole other section of suits. Just sort of odd. But they do have clever product pairing/packaging as you can see in these pictures:

There were also a lot of things we ran into that just didn’t make sense if you actually speak English/are an American. Like this folder:

And then there are things like this where you need the speed limit on Route 66 isn’t 23 like this shirt seems to assert:

And there is always Beiber. Beiber en todos partes.

And apparently Browning exports. Yes, they also sell guns and ammo at El Corte Ingles. Not sure what you’d hunt in Sevilla, but yeah…

So that’s El Corte Ingles (or at least some of the most amusing parts). There isn’t any one store quite like it that I’ve seen before. Cheap food, high end designer clothing, and off brand toothpaste.

A few quick updates on what I’ve been up to and a preview of what’s coming next.

Life has been pretty good, I have a bit of a cold but I bought some medicine for that. It was interesting because Kartik (who is also sick) and I went to una farmacia to buy some cold medicine and they don’t have anything on the shelves–you have to ask for everything. We attempted to explain what we wanted in Spanish and ended up walking out with what we assume are pills for the flu and colds, but we still aren’t 100% sure. It’s made by Merck though, so how bad can it be, right? Very different though in that you don’t get to pick from a myriad of medicine like you do in the US.

This past Saturday, all of the UNC folks went to Italica, these Roman ruins right outside of Sevilla. It was pretty interesting. I’ll include some pictures of that in an upcoming post when I get around to a little bit of post processing. In the meantime, you can check Facebook for those if you are that interested. The most interesting thing to me that we learned is that Sevilla is actually built atop an ancient Roman city as well and in some areas if you go down as little as 4 meters, you would be able to see remnants of these ancient buildings. I think I might need a shovel.

On Sunday, about half of the people in our program went to the beach with this company called Discover Sevilla. They told us they were taking us to Cadiz which is supposed to be beautiful and the trip sounded like a good deal since it was only 20 Euros. So we got on a bus Saturday morning and they drove us to the beach. Well, when we got there, they decided to tell us that we actually weren’t in Cadiz and we were actually in Matalascanas which is almost 2 hours from the beach–they claim it was because the current was too strong in Cadiz, but we’re pretty sure they just wanted to save gas and make more on us. Either way, it was a fun day at the beach, but sort of a questionable decision on behalf of the company. Some pictures of the beach:

On the way there, the bus stopped in this little town called Rocio for us to get water, ice, etc. They told us there was this old church there and we could get out and take pictures and stuff. Well, it actually turned out to be an incredibly weird experience. I certainly had no idea what was going on. There was a field of wild horses on one side, feral dogs running loose, children riding ponies, gypsies trying to sell us little bundles of grass, a parade, a religious ceremony beginning, and bottle rockets being launched all at once. I’ve never really been so confused about an event in my life. This video provides only a small look at the event:

Look for new posts about El Corte Ingles, this crazy department/grocery/liquor store crammed into eight floors and a photo post with some nicely edited photos that are up to my expectations (not like what I put on Facebook earlier today!) very soon.

So I’m mostly settled in Seville, or as settled as you can be after a day and a half in a new country after an overnight transatlantic flight. I just thought I’d share a few highlights and interesting things I’ve noticed so far.

• First of all, passport control in Madrid was a bit of a joke. Once I managed to find it, I walked up to the guy and said “Hola.” He said “Hables espanol?” and I said, “Do you speak English?” We decided that at this point, English was probably the way to go. He asked me what my destination was, I said Sevilla, he stamped my passport and handed me my passport and embarkation form. At that point, I pointed out that I had a student visa. He seemed to disregard this. In Sevilla, there was no customs to take our checked luggage through. Surprisingly easy entry, hopefully the exit in December is just as easy and painless.
• There are Spanish versions of both Cash Cab and Wheel of Fortune. Yes, Cash Cab. In Spain.
• Spanish Coke tastes slightly different. I think it might be better. Either way, as much as it pains me to say this, the taste of American Coke was starting to bore me, so it’s nice to spice up my caffeine addiction from time to time.
• Everything, and I mean everything, revolves around meal time here. This is the complete opposite of the United States where I often seem to have to find time to eat. For those of you not familiar with the Spanish meal system, there’s breakfast at a normalish time, basically anytime before 10 am. Lunch is at 2 and dinner is at 9. Lunch is actually the big meal of the day. Literally everyone leaves work and comes home for lunch and then the ever important siesta.
• That leads me into the fact that almost all stores are closed between 2 and 5-6 pm for said siesta. This takes some getting used to because I see this downtime as a primetime to get stuff down. Apparently I’m just a silly American.

So those are just some of my initial thoughts on arriving in Spain. My host family situation seems pretty good. My senora’s name is Flori and she seems super nice and definitely interested in talking to us but will still give us all of the freedom we need. She lives with her 30ish year old son, named Borja, who also sometimes goes by BJ, coincidentally. He is an attorney so that is interesting to me. Their apartment is relatively small, but our room is totally sufficient for what we need for this semester and considering we don’t have that much with us. It’s also in a great location in a part of Sevilla that feels very much like a college town and is only about a five or six minute walk to EUSA, the building where the UNC program is housed. There are several buildings, or facultades, of la Universidad de Sevilla, close by as well. Once the semester actually starts in late September, I might have classes at some of those. I’ll learn more about that tomorrow.

Welcome to my new website. Please take a look at my photography portfolio under the “Photography” tab on the navigation bar above. I’ve uploaded sports and editorial photos that I’ve taken since I started college, mostly for The Daily Tar Heel. Enjoy!

I will also be blogging here while studying abroad in Seville, Spain this coming semester.

-BJ