Adios a espana

My two weeks in Sevilla just flew by.  I did learn a little more Spanish and if I go to school for two weeks every year for the next fifty years, I might get fluent.  Nah!  I am resigned to the fact that I will never master this language.  Every time I get put in a higher level, I realize how much subtlety and complexity I have yet to learn.  This week we learned several Spanish idioms.  The good news is that I can manage pretty well in Spanish for ordinary transactions.  The bad news is, I don't have enough vocabulary or range of expression to rant and rave in Spanish.  Think how tame your speech has to be if you can't rant and rave.

The students in my school were much more diverse than my classes in Central America, and were here for longer periods.  My class had two Japanese, one Korean, one French girl, an Albanian, a Russian, and four Americans.  We had to speak in Spanish among ourselves because that was our common language.  There are a few college students and a few people my age, but the average student is single and 30.  For the most part, they are ready for a change in their lives, so they quit their jobs, and go to Spanish school for half a year or more.  The Asians tend to come for up to a year.  For them, Spanish is much more difficult than Americans; a whole new alphabet with no common vocabulary.  If you speak English, you already know twenty percent or more of Spanish vocabulary.

I did two of the cultural activities this week:  a tour of the Museum of Bellas Artes, and a flamenco show in a chapel of the Museum of Contemporary Arts.  I didn't quite understand why the latter museum had a former monastery with a beautiful chapel, but really, there are churches on every block here.  The Museum of Bellas Artes also had a beautiful chapel in it, as well as centuries of church art.  Not until the nineteenth century is there anything besides Jesus, the Virgin, and the martyrdom of every saint I have never heard of.

Okay.  There are two futbol professional football teams in Sevilla.  The first two questions that you ask a Sevillano when you meet them are:  Which futbol team do you root for?  Which Virgin do you support?  Turns out there are two famous Virgins in Sevilla, and people choose sides.  You gotta know what team you are on.

I kept walking around different neighborhoods and even made it to the Cathedral one day.  It is impressive, and still has a courtyard of orange trees in it from when it was a mosque.



But the two most interesting things at the Cathedral:  One, the tomb of Christopher Columbus who traveled more after he died than in life.  They kept moving his body from Spain to the New World and back again.  The Sevilla Cathedral is his final resting place.



Two, there is a famous tower, the Giralda Tower, next to the cathedral.  Why?  It was the minaret for the mosque that the Christians tore down to build the cathedral.  People climb up it for a great view of the city, and I was able to go up even though there is no elevator.  No stairs either.  Ramps that go up on the four sides.  Since the muezzin had to climb the minaret five times a day to announce prayers, they build it with ramps so he could ride up on his donkey.  Those Moors were pretty smart builders.




It took me a week before I noticed that my apartment building was the prettiest on the block.  I was always on my side of the street, but one day I was across the street and saw it.

And that was Sevilla.  I am in Madrid overnight and will fly to Fez tomorrow and go stay with Kasey, John, and their new baby, Ruby.