story time...

our first real misunderstanding
so, before kayla and i left for the beach last saturday, we told our host family we would be back at night and assumed that meant after dinner. aparrently not. we walked in at like 11pm after a long train ride back to sevilla and our host mom, maria, seemed to be flustered/upset with us. we weren't home for dinner and we hadn't made it clear that we weren't going to be. whoops! we thought she was legit upset with us so we went to our room and we conjured up a plan. we knew we had to do something, so we got out a piece of paper and drew a lovely picture of us (as stick figures) on the beach holding a banner that said "NOS SENTAMOS" (we're sorry) and wrote a nice little note saying we were sorry for not being home for dinner and such. and we left it by her door. then she came into our room like 10 minutes later and gave us hugs and kisses and we laughed about it. we felt really bad, but we definitely turned it into something we could laugh about. and maria appearred to enjoy it. :)

placement exam & juan
so we had our placement exam on tuesday to see what level of spanish we needed to take. we were all pretty nervous about it because we just didn't know what format it was going to be and yadda yadda. we made a big deal out of nothing because it was super facil (easy) and we all did great. but after our test, we went for a tour of campus. i must say Pablo de Olavide is not the prettiest campus i have ever seen. it is actually quite ugly. there is lots of brown and dead things, where you would think would be lush, greenery. there is an abundance of palm trees, however, which makes up for the uglyness :) so we went around and saw the library, and the sport courts (which leave little to be desired) and the ping-pong center. that was the greatest. our tour guide, david, was hilarious. it was his first time doing the tour and his english wasn't super great and he doesn't even go to the school. haha. so he told us when we were in the table tennis center "here is the place, there are the tables. put the tables in the place and play." it was amazing. he was hilarious. we loved him. AND then we had seen this dog trotting around campus and got excited like it was the campus dog. so we were sitting on a bench and this dog came and sat on my feet. it was precious. i named him juan, for lack of a better name. and all was good. then we left, and he stayed there. but i haven't seen him again. he must be around somewhere.

first day of class....
oh wow. i must say it was quite the first day of school. i woke up and got ready this morning with no problems and walked to the bus stop and hopped on the bus and was on my way. i thought i had figured out where all my classes were, in which buildings and room numbers, but oh was i wrong. you see, when i had gone through everything, i had not checked to see that the same class that was on monday and wednesdays's were in different places for the different days. i found that out the hard way. i went to the room i thought i was supposed to be in and there were a bunch of kids from my group in that class so i was like oh this is great. no. i checked my schedule because this class was the history of spain, not the history of spanish art (where i was supposed to be). so i looked at the schedule and it was then i had the lightbulb moment of the m & w classes are in different rooms. so i went to the classroom i thought was mine and walked in and the room had about 8 students in it and they were all writing (by this time it was 15 minutes after class started). so i thought this was my class and the teacher looked at me and simply said "no." so i left that room and found a bench to sit on to rearrange my life and try to really figure where i was supposed to be. so i found out that i needed to be in building 16, room 3....not building 13, room 6 where i had just been. so i walked into class about 20 minutes late, luckily the professor was just taking roll and having the kids introduce themselves. i didn't miss much. and the class is in english too, so that made it good as well. the rest of the day was really good. my civilizacion y cultura class is going to be hard to follow because the professor talks really fast in spanish, but will be interesting. and my international marketing professor. wow. that's all i can say. he is quite the guy. he told us his life story and then he gave us rules for the class, yes he had a list of 17 rules/suggestions for us. wow. he is incredibly funny though and very knowledgeable about where to go out at night and he is taking us all out one night at some point for a field trip to a bar. great. he is funny though. it will be a good class. i am excited.

overall, i am very excited for school and such. i have two classes tomorrow, both in spanish. they should be okay though. i am getting more confident every day speaking to people and such, although i still hestitate a lot sometimes. i like taking the bus to school every day. even when i have to walk home in the rain storm with no umbrella, like today. :) anyway, pictures are coming after this.... LOVE TO ALL!