Orientación...día numero uno

I lied when I said orientación started yesterday, it officially starts today. Right now I'm have a 3 hour break after breakfast until the Spanish-track people start orientation session stuff, so I'm not being unsociable by updating this bad boy. I'm hanging out in the lobby with other Spanish-track people.
Yesterday we were on our own to meet and greet and figure out the lay of the land and resist the urge to faceplant in the pillows of our hotel beds. When we all trekked to the hotel, we set out to check in with the hotel, check in with the program people and get all our goodies to start orientation, and lug our stuff into the tiniest elevators that ever existed up to our rooms. Oh, and let me tell you, the group of us migrating from the aeropuerto bus to the hotel looked reeeeeeally special lugging our 2 massive suitcases + 2 carryons into the lobby.

So far this is all very dèja vú for me after studying abroad in Firenze, Florence. There are some key differences, though, mainly the fact that this whole yay-let's-all-hold-hands-and-be-amigos is entirely shortlived, because we're all going to disperse in about a week and most of us will probably never see each other again. The people in my province of Córdoba are a different story, and I've been making more of an effort to seek them out and do the meet and greet thing. My roommate in the hotel will be living in Iznájar, a tiny town less than an hour from Cabra, where I'll be, and I plan on keeping in touch with her, for example. She's a lot of fun, I enjoy hanging out with her. She's way more outgoing and peppy than I am -- anyone who knows me probably wouldn't put "peppy" in the top 100 adjectives to describe me, but it's good for me to hang out with someone like that, I'd say.

Anyway, ¡España! Like I said before: dèja vú. I haven't even seen that much, but just walking down the streets of Sevilla has a very familiar feeling, except for the American restaurant stuff which I never ever saw in Florence. No Starbucks, for example, in all of Italy (ironic, too, seeing how all the size names and a bunch of the drink names are in Italian). In that regard, I guess they haven't succumbed to all the westernization crap that is rampant in many countries. I've been to other European countries, and they all share a little something in common, it seems. But yeah -- Sevilla. By the way, Sevilla is the Spanish spelling of "Seville," and here it's pronounced "Seh-vee-ah." It's gloomy and HUMID today, but there are a bunch of palm trees here and it's relatively warm, so hooray for that. Honestly, I don't have many cultural experiences to share yet - the food at breakfast this morning was pretty tasty, but there were some weird things -- I really hate the milk in Europe, from what I've drank so far. They don't refrigerate it and who even knows if it's 1% or 2% or whatever. The other food that was there, and there was a lot, included potato and spinach omelettes, a lot of bread stuff, cereals, weird grilled veggies, a cheese bar thing...other stuff.

About pictures ~ unfortunately, I don't have a photo card reader, so it'll be awhile before any pictures pop up on here. :-( Until then, distfruten mis observaciónes culturales (enjoy my cultural observations). Adiós.