La Gripe Estomacal

No trips for me this weekend other than countless trips to toss my cookies because I have the flu!! I did get to go out with some friends Thursday to see a Flamenco show at this bar, T for Triana, on calle Betis, which was great. We were talking about how it is so cool to see how Sevillanos and Españoles in general view beauty. Where as in the US, a polka-doted, ruffly dress would be a costume and would be seen as silly, men and women see it as beauty here. Lena, Dani, and I shared many laughs telling stories about our home stays that we didn't quite realize were so funny until we told each other. It was so nice finding out that other people are going through similar awkward moments like me.

Once again, my weeks have been filled with so many new sites, bites, and there is nothing else that rhymes with that. My Tolerance and Fanaticism class takes visits to different places in Sevilla once a week. We’ve been to Santa Cruz (the old Jewish Quarter), el museo arceología (museum of archeology), el Torre de Oro (Tower of Gold), and el Castillo de San Jorge (Castle of St. George). The last two visits were very interesting because we learned about what Sevilla used to be. The bridge in Triana that I use everyday was the original bridge that connected the city center to other land and used to be “una Puente de barcos” or a bridge of ships so that they could disconnect and defend themselves at any time. El Torre de Oro was a lookout tower over el Guadalquivir, and now it looks out over the expanse of Sevilla, a gorgeous view. El Castillo de San Jorge is just 10 minutes from my house, right by the Triana bridge. It was the home of some of the higher ups during the Spanish inquisition, and was where they held prisoners. It was interesting to read about all of the stories of individual prisoners. I always believed the inquisition to be of mass murder, but the death toll in comparison to most other genocides is extremely low, in the thousands, for a period that lasted a century. Most of the Inquisition was based off of ‘el auto de fe’ which was a publically held court that reminds me of the scarlet letter. If witches, Jews…basically all non-Catholics would repent and conform to Catholicism, they were spared death. 

Saludos,

Kelsey