So I have been very busy this last week and I think the best approach is to sum up certain parts of my trip in each blog, rather than a day by day entry. A day by day entry might get boring anyways, as each day I have school, I don’t go out the night before or do something during the day because I am usually too tired. However, last week I did make myself go to a few places throughout Sevilla.
Well first, let me tell you about my typical day to day life. I wake up at 7:30 – 7:45 to take a quick, 5 minute shower. That’s about as long as I am allowed as they are big on conservation here. I then eat a full, balanced breakfast at around 8 a.m. This usually consists of cereal, toast with marmalade and butter, coffee, juice, and something sweet.
The cereal is the same good ole’ stuff as we have back home, with a different brand name. The milk is different. The milk comes in a cardboard crate and is dehydrated. When they want milk they put the water in the container, shake it up, and put it in the fridge upon request. Normally, the Spaniards would leave the milk out, and drink it room temperature. However, our host-mother has had kids from the US before so she knew we liked cold milk. The toast is toast and the marmalade is marmalade. The coffee is very strong. I couldn’t drink it black if I wanted to. Here they don’t put coffee and a little bit of creamer or milk, they put a little bit of coffee and a lot of heated milk. It’s very different. Then we usually have some kind of pastry or something with chocolate before we head out to school.
We get to the school about 5 minutes after leaving our house. For those who don’t know, I live on campus at Texas Tech back in Lubbock. Back home, it can take me up to 10 minutes to walk to my class. I got very lucky with my host family with the location and the members of the family.
We then learn Statics (Mecanics I) from 9 a.m. until 11:45 a.m. with a 5-10 minute break at around 10:30. Class usually flies by with ease, as I am very interested in this class. It is basically like an in depth Physics class, except there is no acceleration. We use vectors a lot, and it is very visual. That’s enough about that.
After that we come home to lunch at around 2 p.m. which is fairly later than we were used to. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, and also usually the best. After lunch is over, there is a break in the day where many shops close from around 2-5. I have mentioned this already, but it couldn’t hurt repeating. I usually nap during siesta, but I am unsure if Spaniards actually nap during siesta or if they just take a break. I like to think they all nap, I don’t know why; I just think it’s neat.
After siesta we basically just hang around until around 10 p.m. when we are served dinner. It is usually smaller than lunch, but still very big. The real Spaniards don’t eat dinner until 11 or sometimes later.
After dinner finishes, our host mom asks us if we will be going out tonight. Usually we say know, but when we do say yes, she gets excited for us. She is very sweet.
And here’s where I start with the fun stuff. La Catedral de Sevilla is the third largest cathedral in world, and the largest in land area. It is also the largest Gothic style cathedral. We walked and paid our expensive toll of 2 Euros, and entered the main entrance. There were many paintings, which I took the time to take pictures of. The paintings were 400-plus years old. I loved looking at the paintings. After that I didn’t know what to expect. There was a tiny entrance into the main part of the cathedral, which was like a small tunnel. There was quite a bit of cool air blowing at us as we went through it. Then we almost literally had our minds explode.
Okay, so not literally. But it was the most amazing sight I have ever seen. It was one giant room. The inside is the same color as the stone on the outside which is like a light-grey, but there is less light in the cathedral. The ceiling rises to an amazing 137.8 feet tall. It was the biggest room I have ever been in. I can’t even compare this to anything I have experienced before. The building seemed endless.
It was so moving to see that humans, hundreds of years ago, made this amazing structure. “Let us build a church so big that those who see it will think us mad,” was the quote used when they decided to build the structure over 600 years ago. I think that quote fits very well. The cathedral was the most amazing manmade structure I had ever seen.
As you would walk in, there would be what seemed exhibits throughout the perimeter of the inside of the cathedral. In each ‘exhibit,’ for lack of a better word, would be amazing paintings, sculptures, gold, or anything else that is so ridiculous with the amount of detail put into each piece of art. It was like being in a museum. There was gold everywhere. It was on statues, paintings, relics, everywhere.
Christopher Columbus is rested there and he has a monument which you can see in the photos I added the other day to my Facebook account.
Writing a paragraph for everything I saw would take at least 10 pages, so I will stop here. I will let the photos I posted do the talking. But to wrap it all up, it was the most breathtaking sight I had ever seen in my entire life. And I know I am fairly young, but I am not sure I will ever see something more breathtaking than that was. But please, look at the pictures I posted. But even those will not do it justice.
Did anyone without a Facebook see the pictures?
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