Hola! Yesterday we met our new house mother, Mercedes, and got settled into our actual room for the next six weeks. The view from her balcony is so nice! Her home, like amelia's apartment is very very small, but its nice. She fed us lunch when we arrived, which was chicken and mashed potatoes. The food so far has not been very exotic, just Very very salty, and everything has ham in it. Mercedes has a daughter who just got married ten days ago. However, I think that being our house mother is her primary and only job. She loves watching tv and wakes up normally around 9-10am each day.

The view from our balcony!

The living room... and yes, that beautiful bride on the wall is Mercedes!
Our room...very tiny,... and bright yellow!

Mercedes is friends with another house mother of girls in our same program at the University Pablo de Olavide. They are from Texas and are pretty much just here to party instead of learning spanish.

Here we are with Avery and Nicki, who go to Ole Miss University

We went out with them last night to la Calle Betiz, which is basically a bunch of Americanized spanish bars. We went to a little cafe first to have wine. And in Spain, if they want to close the restaurant or bar, they turn out the light and then everyone yells...no! no! a little longer!! and then they turn them back on. But when they get to three times, they are closed for good. Here, no one takes shots in bars, so only these kind of bars have euro shots and more American-like traditions. It was kind of annoying to be there because everyone was speaking english, but Natalie and I found the few people that were Spaniards and talked to them so we could practice more.

Spanish friends :)

Here is a view of some of the river.. we couldnt get that close because this restaurant was closed..

One other crazy thing, was that we were sitting outside at the cafe, and out of no where, I saw a girl I had spanish class with my freshman year at PSU! She has apparently been studying here through ciee all spring semester, but has decided to extend her stay by doing an internship here for the summer! I hope I like it that much when I leave.. Also, she told us a lot of good places to go and how to do weekend trips, etc. I am kind of wishing we did ciee because of all the organized trips bc we are car-less and it is hard to organize it yourself.

We took a taxi back to our house at around 4:30am and then finally went to sleep. It seems like we waste the whole day here because we wake up at like 12pm or later, but then we don't waste the night. It is 90 degrees here right now so we really don't even want to be outside. Just taking a walk through the town to buy bus passes was almost unbearable. I just wished someone would just come along and throw water on me. Where is the pool here!?!? And no AC!! ahh!! We were going to go running today so we got all dressed and then went outside and almost dropped dead from the scorching heat. So much for that..

We have plans to go out later with Amelia when it cools down.. that's all for now.. Adios!