A Week without Classes: The Saga

This week has been one interesting week. I have a saga about this week for you: "The Lost Bag," "The Almost Dead Guy," "Grandpa in the Park," "The Other Side," "The Almost Stupid Field Trip," and last but not least, "Losing my Churro Virginity." Enjoy.

"The Lost Bag"

I rolled out of my piso at 8:40am to get to the colegio at 9am -- I actually got there at 8:57am, but that's not the point. When I got there, my class wasn't there, which was unusual. I just stood around for a few minutes, waiting...as usual. Then kids came around the corner, and I was like, "Oh okay here's my class." So I just blindly walked in behind them, stood around for a minute, and then realized I didn't recognize anyone in there. How did I manage to get the wrong classroom on one of my last days?? Well, luckily, I spotted my friends' host brother, so I went over to him and asked him why he was in there, and he was just like, "uh...this is my class?" I just dumbly responded, "No it's not...???" Then the lightbulb went off for him and he told me they had switched classes, and that my class was somewhere else. As usual, no one told me anything. So I wandered around the school until I ran into my teacher, who showed me where the class was. We ended up just watching a movie -- nothing worth the confusion and stress of not knowing what was going on. Ugh.

Then, after that class I went to help Genisis and Isis in a class of 4 year olds with their host mom. That was an interesting experience. Those kids are crazy, and they're definitely the type who when you tell them not to do something, they look you right in the eye and do it anyway...such as drawing on things they shouldn't be drawing on, tipping their chairs back, and then purposely falling out of their chairs. I have so much respect for those teachers. I wouldn't be able to handle those children on a daily basis.

So finally after a couple of hours, Isis and Genisis and I took a break and went to a café. We spent about 30 minutes chatting and munching (well they munched -- lil' ol' vegan Kari sat around and just enjoyed being in a place with heat), and then we went back to the colegio to finish helping Marga (their host mom). When we got back to the school, the kids were in the auditorium...and something felt wrong. I felt really light. At first I couldn't quite figure it out, so I tried to ignore it. But then it dawned on me: I had left my bag at the café. My eyes turned the size of the moon and I got an extreme adrenaline rush as I grabbed on to Genisis' arm (probably way too tightly) and said, "I LEFT MY BAG IN THE CAFÉ!" Genisis' response was something like, "WTF R U KIDDING?!?!"

My response was to suddenly book it out of the auditorium. But of course I can't just have an easy escape from the school without obstacles. I turned a corner to run down some stairs (it was only like 4 or 5 steps, not like an entire staircase), and of course, this random kid had somehow managed to fall down on the stairs and was just laying there -- taking up the whole entire lil' stair thing (don't worry, he wasn't hurt...he was just a lazy 4 year old who had managed to escape from the rest of his class and probably didn't want to go back). My thought process went something like this: "Kid on ground? No time! MUST SAVE BAG! MUST JUMP OVER SMALL CHILD!" So I yelled "¡PERDÓN! and jumped over the kid, leaving Genisis to help the kid up (#sorrynotsorry #noregrets). I didn't stop running until I got to the café. Let me tell you -- I am not a runner. I am not even a fast walker, but I was straight bookin' it like I was being chased by the devil himself. I didn't even know I could run that fast or that far (#plantpower and a little bit of an #adrenalinerush). I finally got to the café, and thank god that the place was practically empty and that Spaniards are super slow...because they hadn't even cleared our table and my bag was exactly where I had left it. I tried to walk in as casually as possible, grab my bag, and waltz out. No problems whatsoever. Genisis had trailed behind me, and I could see her about halfway down the street. I gave her a giant thumbs up and jogged back to her. Success.

"The Almost Dead Guy"

This all starts out at Veganitessan, the yummy vegan bakery that we go to basically every week. We decided to go on Wednesday morning before heading over to the colegio for our internship. It was a normal trip, we got our coffee and pastry of choice, we chatted, etc. Everything was normal, and we left when it was time for me to get to my class at the colegio at 11:30. We were walking along el Paseo de Cristobal Colón, when we notice this guy laying in the grass face down. Now, it's not uncommon to see random homeless folk laying in the grass taking a nap; however, the way this man was laying was unusual, he was wearing nice clothes, and his face was literally in the grass. We stopped to try to see if he was breathing...and honestly, we thought he was dead until he kinda moved one of his arms. At this point, we were like, "Okay, he's good...and we're going to be late if we keep just standing here." So we kept walking, but we were walking slowly and looking over our shoulders because something just didn't feel right. As I looked over my shoulder for the last time, I noticed someone else crouching down to check on the guy, and then he looked up at me and waved us over. So we went back to the guy, and it turns out the guy actually had something wrong with him. The guy who stopped to check on the dude in the grass asked us to call an ambulance, so Genisis pulls out her phone and gets ready to dial the number...when she realizes she doesn't know the number for an ambulance. Neither did Isis or I. So, we asked the guy what the number was and he told us, and Genisis dials it. She talked to the person for a good 10 seconds before she started getting confused with what to say...finally, she handed over her phone to the dude who actually spoke fluent Spanish, and he handled all of that. Meanwhile, we've attracted a small crowd of two tourists from Australia, and an old lady. The tourists were trying to get us to move the guy, but we were like, "Uh, no...he could be hurt and by us moving him it could make it worse." So he just kinda stood there staring at him for a few minutes and then he left. Then the old lady bombarded us with questions like, "Who is he? What happened? Do you know him? Is he hurt?" and finally she excitedly asked, "IS THERE BLOOD???" and when we told her no, she looked at me and kinda whispered, "Por dios...." and looked disappointed and just kinda walked away. Weird. Well, the ambulance arrived really quickly, and the guys from the ambulance talk to the guy, manage to help him up, sit him down on a bench, and then try to talk to him. He looked pretty out of it, and he was moving pretty slowly. We never figured out what happened because we left after he got seated on the bench, but he didn't seem to really be talking when we left. We walked away feeling glad that we didn't walk away for good, but then we felt bad because we totally were just about to leave him laying in the grass. Eh, hopefully he's okay now!

"Grandpa in the Park"

Here you'll find Genisis, Isis, and me walking back to our houses for lunch after a long eventful day of finding an almost dead guy and surviving the madness at the colegio. We had just bought our bus tickets to Malaga so that we can get to the airport there in January for our trip to Dublin, and our tickets were only 12€ instead of 23€, so we were in a pretty good mood. As we were walking, we passed by a park and Isis whispered, "I wonder if there are swings over there..." So, we decided to go check it out. There were no swings, but there were exercise equipment...and an old man sitting on a bench. So we decided to waste some time being stupid and playing around on the exercise equipment.

So after about 15 minutes of messing around, the old grandpa man gets up and comes over to ask us if we speak Spanish/if we are American/IF WE ARE SINGLE. This old guy had the guts to come over to us and be like, "Oh heyyy, are you American? You speak Spanish? Well, I'm single...*points down the street* and I live over there...are you single????" I looked over at Isis and Genisis and Isis goes, "Oohhh I have a boyfriend and we're thinking about getting married!" then he looked at Genisis and she was like, "Yep, boyfriend!!" and then he looked at me all hopeful and I shot his hopes and dreams down by saying, "I have a boyfriend too!" He then proceeds to tell us that we can have two boyfriends, one in America and one here, and then he goes on with his sob story about how his wife left him for some Latino guy. I just wanted to tell him that I don't care about him or his sob stories, but we suffered through his sob story...until he started talking crap about latinos. Well, newsflash to this guy, Isis & Genisis are latina, sooo Isis was like, "HAA, WELL, I am latina and I am not like that!" and then Genisis pulled the ol' "look at the clock and say we have to meet up with someone" trick and we rolled right on outta there. Lesson from this story? Avoid old guys chillin' in parks.

"The Other Side"

Sevilla adventures! Still on the same day as the almost dead guy, we decided to spend our afternoon exploring our neighborhood, Triana. We walked in a direction none of us had ever walked, and we ended up on the edge of Triana.

Looking over to "the other side"

So obviously we decide to cross the high way and go to the other side to see what's over there. Nothing too special at first, just some piles of horse poop, mud, and a soccer field. Then we found grass and pretty trees, so we decided to take some selfies.

 After our selfie photoshoot, we headed back over to Triana and kept exploring. We then made a plan to try to find some church, but that fell through because we had no idea where we were. Then we stumbled upon a park that had swings and Isis almost cried tears of joy. We played at the park for a little while (no creepy old guys this time!) reliving our childhoods.

Isis finally got her swings!

Genisis was impressed with the lil' house

Balancing on this was harder than it looks

After the park, we found out that we were actually really close to the Parque de los Principios, which is basically on Isis' and Genisis' street, which connects to my street. It was quite the nice discovery to know we were never really very far from home. We ended our day with going to la Calle de San Jacinto to get a batata (sweet potato) to share because we were a little hungry after our adventure, and those sweet potatoes are the best!

"The Almost Stupid Field Trip"

On Thursday, I went on a field trip with a few of my classes to the Catedral. We were supposed to leave the school at 9am, but of course on the Spanish schedule, we didn't actually leave the school until around 9:30am, and got to the Catedral shortly after that because it's not too far from the colegio. When we got there, the teachers were just like, "Okay guys meet you back here in an hour!" and then they walked away. I was like, "Oh great what the heck am I supposed to do for an hour?" The teachers left me, most of the students all went their separate ways, and I was just kinda left standing there like, "Seriously? Now what??" However, after a few minutes the teacher I work with, Ana, came back for me like she had forgotten me and took me with her and the other teachers to some café where I sat around and listened to them banter back and forth about teaching and other random things. Finally, it was time for us to go meet the students and go into the Catedral.

Soo, I thought I was going into the cathedral with Ana and her class, but then she told me to go with this other teacher, Mercedes, and her class because there were three teachers plus me (making 4 "teachers" in total) and there needed to be two adults with each class, and Ana and the other teacher were gonna go together because apparently they had the "unruly" students. I don't like being thrown into situations that I am unprepared for, so when I found out I was going with this teacher I was like, "Ughhh I don't know this lady or her students; this is dumb. She's not even an English teacher!" So for the first half of the trip, we didn't really say anything to each other, but we had this good unspoken group management system going on, so that was good. After awhile, I remembered that she was studying English because Ana made me switch seats with her in the café so I could sit next to her so she could practice her English with me (even though we didn't practice her English at all because she only spoke a few words to me in Spanish). So I asked her about her English studies, and that broke the ice, and we ended up talking to each other for the rest of the field trip. We talked about so many different things, and we actually had a lot of stuff in common. After the students were done in the Cathedral, we had like 30 minutes of free time before we all had to meet up again, so we just walked around el centro and kept talking, and eventually we exchanged numbers to keep in contact.

After that, I was pretty glad that Ana just stuck me with Mercedes because I would have never met her or talked to her otherwise. I'm excited that I have someone that I can practice Spanish with, who's also a teacher, and who I can help teach English to as well.

Lesson from this experience? Things that look stupid at first can suddenly take a turn for the better...so even if I encounter something that I don't want to do because I think it'll be dumb, I should do it anyway because it might turn out way better than I could have planned! That's something I especially should remember while I'm here in Spain...

And finally, for the last story:

"Losing my Churro Virginity"

Okay, so I found out on Thursday that churros are actually vegan. They're made with olive oil, flour, salt and water. Everyone always says how amazing they are, and they definitely smell good. So, finally last night I got around to trying churros for the first time. I was pretty excited to be able to try something so Spanish, and I had some pretty high expectations. So when I finally got my hands on my first churro and bit into it, I was expecting some kind of magicalness to happen....however, my first thought was something more like this: "Wtf am I eating?" I was unimpressed. My friends told me it was probably because I wasn't eating it with the chocolate...but I'm vegan and the chocolate has milk, BUT, since who knows if I'll ever return to Sevilla and get the chance to eat authentic churros con chocolate ever again, I dipped my churros in a teeny tiny bit of my friend's chocolate, expecting everything to turn around and for me to be able to taste the magic everyone's always talking about. I hesitantly took a bite out of my now chocolate covered piece of churro...and I was even MORE unimpressed with the chocolate. It was disgusting! It tasted like stale cheapy Easter chocolate. I think by saying that I basically committed some kind of Spanish sin, but I don't care. I think my taste buds are spoiled by vegan chocolate, which is about 93028432 times better. I used to love milk chocolate, but after being vegan for over a year, that crap is disgusting. So, final consensus, churros con chocolate are pretty gross and would only be worth it if you were starving or just really wanted some salty-ish fried bread.

So yeah, this was my week in a nutshell. I actually had a ton of other things happen, too. It was quite the eventful week; definitely the opposite of what I was expecting. Tomorrow I head out to a new country, Belgium! I'm super excited to see what Brussels has in store for me!

Until next week...¡adiós!