So this is going to be a short post because I still have a lot of work to complete!  Plus, my friend David Koehler from NLR is coming in to Sevilla this weekend from London to be here for my Birthday weekend!  I’ll be turning 21!  Crazy!   So excited to see him!  Going to be a great break from work, work, work!

Anyways, last night around 7:30pm I went with four of my friends to my first official bullfight here in Sevilla.  I was both nervous, anxious, clueless, and excited at the same time!  It ended up being an amazing experience that I will honestly never forget!  It was a great way to finish off my time here in Sevilla. Such a SPANISH experience!

I am posting some photos.  I left the super bloody and graphic ones on my computer.  Don’t know if everyone wants to see those.  Some people are cool with it, other not so much.  I will admit the first bull that was fought and killed was a bit gruesome.  However, after the next couple bulls came out, my friend John and I started getting into it.  We began to judge the matadors on their form and style.  It wasn’t as hard to watch.  I have a lot of great videos as well but don’t have time to post them just yet!  Will do in the future though!

Love to all!

I’m going to get back to work!

ENJOY the PICTURES!

¡Te amo! ¡Hasta luego!

-RACHEL

However, I wanted to let you know what I’ve been up to. I promise to write more when I’m done with my paper…but here are some pictures to keep you up to date:

Me with Emma (UMich) and Katie (Conn College) at a pub in Valpo

My 'tia' Coka de Catolicos por el Derecho a Decidir

At the Licero for Girls in Valpo with ProSalud teaching about contraception

Teaching about the morning after pill...Macarena caught me off guard:)

Much much more to come.

Love and miss everyone

saludos

chau

Hillary

Benni and I at the final DS Sangria Party

Some of mis amigos here in Sevilla!

At Buddha with my DiscoverSevilla Spanish amigos! Love these guys!

All of us (minus Benni) at the DS Intern Dinner at my favorite restaurant–Los Coloniales! YUM!

More pics to come!  Love to all

-Rach

So I know I have not written recently and the time has come for a large update!

My life since my last post—-

School wise: I’ve been going to my university classes during the week.  I’ve also been conducting interviews with some pretty amazing people.  I’m working on my Especial Proyecto here and have to turn in my final paper on June 9th.  It’s very interesting and I’m really excited to see how it all pans out.  I have two more interviews to do, and then I’ll just be cracking away on Word til I’m done. WISH ME LUCK! Then, once I have my paper behind me–I’ll have a good week and a half to focus on my two finals.  I am excited because recently I made a good friend in my Intercultural Communications class.  She is from Granada.  Her name is Lucia.  She is a doll and sent me her typed notes from the entire semester yesterday!  A HUGE HELP!  I think I’m going to meet with her a study before I have to take the test….because I’m taking it earlier than the rest of the class.  I’m not extremely worried about it—I think I’ll do just fine.

Work wise: My time at DiscoverSevilla is technically over.  We had our intern dinner last week at one of my favorite restaurants here in Sevilla, called Los Coloniales.  I’m going to definitely be eating there on my last night here!  Tapas and patatas and vino!  Who could ask for anything more?!  Even though most of the other interns have gone, and now DS is preparing for all of the summer students, I’ve still been going in on Wednesdays to help with various things.  Plus, they are practically family and I find that if I don’t drop by to say hola at least twice a week….I have DS withdraws!  I can’t think about saying goodbye to Benni, Toba, Manu, and Jose Manuel just yet….definitely going to be hard.

Family wise: So, I am officially in love with my host mom Rosa!  She is the best!  My sister Alba is great too, just a lot less talkative.  It’s been so great living there.   ACTUALLY—Last night Rosa had a man over for a date at the house for the first time!  Alba was not home, she was with her boyfriend.  I ate dinner early and she told me about her new “novio” named Juan, who she has started to see.  I met him briefly when I left the house last night to go meet up with friends.  I opened the door to the living room and Rosa and Juan were sitting down to a candlelit dinner with soft spanish music playing!  I about died!  It was so Spanish soap opera!  He was a big man, with lots of a chest hair and a white shirt on.  HAHA….seemed nice.  I am definitely excited to talk to her tonight at dinner and see how the date went!

It’s funny, I sometimes find myself looking at old photos from my first few months here and I remember that I used to live with a different host family.  I honestly have forgotten about Marisa and life in Macarena…..not the good things….because there were good things about my time there, but I have definitely moved on.  Triana is my home and will always have a special place in my heart!  I have become so accustomed to riding my bike across the San Jacinto bridge everyday.  I watch the sunset over the river and reflect off of the water onto the buildings on Calle Betis—quite a site!  I am having a blast living in Triana.  I feel like Macarena was the winter of my Sevilla trip and Triana is the Spring and Summer!  Happy, Bright, and filled with lots of biking!

Just F.Y.I.–I am becoming a biking queen!  I think I’m going to have to find a bike to use next semester.  I’m not going to know what to do without my Sevici!!!

Other things: Besides work, school, and family time—I’ve been just making the most of my final weeks here in Spain.  I love my friends here and I think we are all starting to realize how few days we have left with one another….que triste!  This past Wednesday we had our final CIEE Advanced Liberal Arts Dinner.  It was so fun to see everyone all together again!  We ate tapas, Juli (our precious program director) gave out some cash prizes for people that wrote essays on their time here as year long students, and then we all went to Plaza Alfalfa—the local bar/hippie/hangout spot where you can kind of bar hop and carry your drinks outside, since the weather is so nice—-and had a great time!

I’m at Rodilla, my second home away from home next to Starbucks.  Trying to get some quality work done on my paper.  Going to really try and bust it out this week.  I have to turn in a first draft to my advisor on Friday, so I want to get as much of my ideas and information on paper as I possibly can.    On Friday morning I leave for Lagos, Portugal with friends.  We are going for the weekend.  It is going to be our last big hoorah before people start to take their finals and head back to the U.S. of A.  Should be a good time!

Welp, I have to go now.  Hillary is actually on Gmail and I think we are going to video chat for a bit!

Love you all! Te echo de menos!

-Rach

Update….

So since Tacna, Peru I’ve

1. Spent my final week with my family in Arica.  I will be going back to Arica the 1st week in June to present my project, and celebrate my 21st birthday the night before I leave for USA!! Thank you Familia Romero Montecinos for everything!

I’m going to miss: cooking with madre, grocery shopping with padre, watching ‘Two and a half men’ with Andres, playing HSM karaoke with Camila, and riding around in Daniel’s (aka Kung Fu Panda) mario kart car through the streets of Arica.  I also must mention my madre’s fantastic fruit salad and juices…shout out madre!

Familia Romero Montecinos

2. Travelled to Temuco, Chile  (southern Chile) for 10 days to learn about the Mapuche people and their intercultural take on traditional medicine.  Very interesting to see such a strong culture adapt to survive in a globalizing world.

Our classroom for 3 days...a traditional Mapuche Ruka. Inside there is a fire where food is cooked and a large table where all the meals are eaten. Every Mapuche family has one as well as a house for sleeping and bathing.

city life in Temuco..local ferria where you can buy almost anything

3. Travelled to Puerto Saavedra, Chile for 3 days to conduct my ‘village study’: groups of 3 girls were sent to study a village in the south with only money and a map for 3 days…we had to come back with a full guide-book on the village …very fun.  Pto. S. is mainly known as a tourist attraction in the summer months for camping and trips to Lago Budi by groups of Argentinians and other tourists. Very nice people…and damn good shrimp empanadas.

puerto saavedra (pacific ocean and bay)

steph and me at the playa en Pto. Saavedra

4. Travelled to Pucon, Chile to visit multiple landmarks (volcanoes, waterfalls, hots springs “termas”, and lakes) and to see ‘touristy’ Chile for once. (Def HAVE to come back here in the summer (jan and feb.) for beach time by the volcanoes and rafting, camping, etc. )

OJOS DEL CABURGUA

Villarrica Volcano

5. Moved to Valparaiso. I am living in an apartment with 3 other girls 20 min from the city.  For the next month I’ll be conducting interviews, shadowing multiple professionals, and compiling footage for my research paper/documentary on emergency contraception.

our view of Valpo and the Pacific

View from Pablo Neruda's House

arch in downtown

brilliantly colored houses of Valpo

Will write a more in-depth blog soon.. much researching to do before my interviews next week.

Love and Miss you all!

Saludos,

H

More pictures to come I promise!
Enjoy!

Rach

1. I moved into my new house—which I love! (Am working on internet and hope to have it by end of week in my room)

Sooooo as you can see I have been a busy girl.
Now that I am in Sevilla for the next couple of weeks, I have a feeling that my weeks will be consumed with:

• WORK
• CLASS
• More WORK
• READING at the Río
• Meeting up with friends periodically for breaks
• Getting Internet at my homestay
• Working on my Special Project
• WRTING papers
• Projects
• etc.

So, I will definitely not be bored. I’m excited though.  In these next couple of weeks, things are going to start coming to an end, well not exactly an END, but close to one.  My CIEE Grammar class ends in two weeks, then we have our CIEE dinner on the 19th of May.  That should be fun.  Then I have to type up my 20 page final paper, turn in a project for a Psycology of Communications class, and take my two finals on the 14th and 15th of June.

CRAZYYY!!!

I know that it is going to fly by and be here before I know it!  Really when I sit back and think about all that I have seen, done, and experienced since I first arrived here in January….I realize that it is QUITE A LOT!  I can’t believe that I still have about 7 weeks left!—-that’s not a short amount of time!

OH! I also found out today that HILLARY—aka the other author of this wonderful blog—-may be visiting me in Sevilla for the last couple of days that I am here!  I am super excited for her to meet all of my friends, my work people, and just have the chance to see where I have been living these past 5 months! Not sure if it is set in stone right now, but I will keep yall updated

I am going to go and work some more before my CIEE building closes.  Love to all and I miss yall so much!  Talk to you soon hopefully!

P.S. I’ll be adding pics from all trips in my next post….so look for them!

Rach

If you haven’t seen on facebook, a wonderfully nice chico named Alberto found my wallet and called CIEE yesterday. I got a call from my wonderful teacher Juli and he said he knew a guy had my ids and credit cards but not about the other stuff…..well, I called Alberto “the savior” at 8pm when I was told he would be available and through a somewhat spanglish conversation decided to meet him on Calle Betis, a street that is really close to my new homestay. I began to walk and got a little nervous as to how I was going to find this guy in a crowded bar that I didn’t know the name of. His directions were, “El bar que es muy cerca del rio a el fin de Calle Betis”—-AKA there are about 5 bars at the end of Calle Bettis, but I had hope!

So I kept a walkin’ and then all of a sudden I hear, “Raquel?”. I look up and a sharp dressed, J.Crew model of a Spanish man is walking towards me. I say “Si, encantada. ¡Muchas Gracias!” He was extremely nice and began speaking to me in broken English. He said he wanted to take me out for a drink sometime and practice his English….this should be interesante!

Anyways, the sun is shining and all of my possessions are in tow I am getting super excited to see my Mom and Dad tomorrow afternoon. I am going to meet them at their Hotel around 2pm!!! It’s going to be so weird/great to have them here in Sevilla! I can’t wait to show them where I have been living and studying the past couple of months!

So to conclude, I am adding pictures from my trip to Italia……for those that don’t have fb and havne’t seen the 500 that I added

ENJOY!

What an experience…I plan to write a lot of blogs about all of my experiences in Tacna, such as conducting house visits in rural Tacna with a nutritionist, taking part in a safe sex class with sex workers at a local ‘night club’, learning from a local grape grower how to make traditional ‘pisco sours’, and distributing vaccines from an ice chest to the poorest region of Tacna.  For now I’ve chosen to write about the latter. (Plus I have some pretty cool pictures)

So to begin, on Sunday morning we arrived at about 8:30am to a large public park where there were 40 or so volunteers and medical professionals setting up a make-shift clinic.  There was a 18-wheeler that had been converted into 5 rooms with stairs going down to the ground to serve as ‘specialty offices’ for the ginicologia, enfermera, pediatria, and other professionals.  There was also a large tent where volunteers were distributing clothes and giving free hair-cuts.

All 15 of us were paired with a different professional.  Some girls worked with dentists, examining patient’s teeth.  Some girls helped administer HIV tests, while others helped weigh, measure, and take the blood pressure of each patient.

I was paired with Libia, an enfermera who specialized in vaccines.  She, like all the other volunteers there, worked under the Ministry of Health in Peru.  Our job was to walk around the neighborhood to ask people about their vaccine history, and to promote the free clinic campaign.  We also distributed the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd dose of the Hep B vaccine to those who were lacking one.  It was surprizing that although most of the people lived in houses with dirt floors and only every other house had a roof, they all had their paperwork from their 1st visit to a health clinic.  (Everything is paper here, so if you lose it….no one knows what you’ve had or haven’t had).  We also checked to  make sure that children 5 and under had received their Hep B vaccine at school.  If not, we did it right there, no matter how hard the kids resisted.

Below is an array of pictures of me with the 2 enfermeras (Aurelia, the one with the long coat in training, and Libia, the veteran in the hat).  

Talking with the locals

no pain no gain

Pone la vacuna! (Take the vaccine)

smile...it doesn't hurt

cutest little girl!

Most of the people living in this area had been affected by the terremoto (earthquake) in 2002.  The Peruvian govt. basically said that they wouldn’t charge a land fee for those who needed a new place to live.  Therefore, most of the people had very little, although most had enough money to pay for electricity.  Their water was potable and usually was taken from spouts in the street.

As we walked around to all the houses, I found it highly ironic that most of the people we spoke with had not walked the 2 blocks from their house to the park where the free health campaign was taking place.

It is a little disheartening that even when you bring health to the backyards of a population, some people will still choose to not participate.  EVEN WHEN EVERYTHING IS FREE (GRATIS)….???I think most of them are a bit frightened of what may happen if they found out they did have a disease or needed some sort of operation.  Also, many people prefer traditional healing methods with herbs, etc. and it seems to work if you believe in it…whether it works purely because your mind believes it should, is another matter…

Anyways, besides some families, I was highly impressed with the general concern and willingness of the people to stay healthy and keep their kids healthy.  However, I did see one little boy running without any shoes through the streets with his drunken father who was carrying a six-pack back to their house.  These sorts of things are hard to absorb and make you frustrated.  You can’t just take those kids with you when you leave, no matter how much you wish you could.

In the end, though, the best thing to do is to educate.

Without education, nothing gets done and nothing will get better.

We passed out pamphlets on H1N1 , Hep B, and the common Flu, so hopefully someone learned something…..I know I sure did.

More to come about my experience on Friday with the nutritionist..

Miss you all!

Saludos,

Hillary

So I don’t know if I have seen too many black cats, walked under a ladder or two, or what? but I believe I have had a run of bad luck lately.
1. with my previous homestay, and then yesterday…..
2. lost my wallet while showing my dear friend from high school, Amanda Betts, around Sevilla.

Things happen and although they cause sadness/stress/regret/and a mixture of other emotions, I feel that I have definitely grown from these experiences as well as many others which I have had while studying abroad.

The homestay situation is fixed now and I could not be MORE HAPPY with my new family. I have a new Madre named Rosa who teaches 4th grade. She dresses like she walked out of Dina Ellen and is just the nicest, most laid-back gal around! I love her! Then, there is my new host sister, Alba, who is 18 years old. At first she was really quiet and reserved and I was afraid we weren’t going to have a good relationship. BUT THEN, one night Rosa didn’t come home til late so Alba made a pizza. I was in my room studying and didn’t know this, all of a sudden Alba said, “Raquel, Cena”—I walked into the living room and pizza was on the table with salad and juice for the two of us. I told her that the next time Rosa didn’t come home I would be happy to help her with dinner, I felt bad! She said no problem, and we ate our pizza and watched tv together. I found out all about her boyfriend Carlos who she has been dating for 5 years!! I asked Rosa about him and she said that they were pretty serious and she liked the boy. I’m interested to meet this Carlos…haha

My new room is great, I have a balcony, a bigger closet, a chest of drawers, a desk, and a nice big comfy bunk bed. I sleep on the bottom bunk and usually use the top one to throw clothes or other items up there.

But anyways, things are much better on that front!
Like I said, things tend to get worse before they get better and I can now say that I have seen the better side of what a homestay should be. Hopefully, after the wonderful TONI and DAVID get here on Thursday, I will be able to say that I have seen the better side of resolving a lost wallet.

None the less, I am SUPER EXCITED to see my folks soon, I know I am going to be a basket case of emotions when I do finally get to hug them in the train station. Just writing this right now, makes my nose burn. I have definitely realized how lucky I am to have such amazing parents while I’ve been abroad. So many kids here have great parents but NO ONE I have talked to seems to ENJOY spending time with their parents as much as I feel I do. I am so happy to have the kind of close relationship that we have and look forward to making some new memories here in Spain with them while they are here to visit!

I must go and get ready for lunch. Rosa and Alba will be home soon

Love to all and just know that I’m loving it here despite the minor mishaps that have come my way…

Rach

p.s. Italy was awesome and I will be putting up some pics soon!