meg_the_expat: Último día de orientación (last day of orientation)

We have reached the end, my friend. Well, almost -- tomorrow morning we all disperse from Sevilla to our respective cities, pueblos and pueblititos. Pueblo = town. And pueblito or pueblitito is a ridiculously small town. I mean, one girl told me her town has 2500 people in it. Seriously, that's a town? My high school had more people than that. Then again, my grandma lives in Cambridge, Illinois, and the sign when you enter that town has said "pop 2100" for as long as I can remember.

My pueblo, by the way, has 21K people. I'd say that's a pretty cozy little town, but at least it has stop lights. It has more than double the people that Sarah Palin's town, Wasilla, has where she was mayor before she was elected as governor, so what does that say? I'm glad I get along with the other girls who will be living in Cabra and they seem completely chill and not catty, crazed chicas who drive me up the wall. Mi opinión is obviously subject to change, but that's my first impresión.

Orientación has been fun. Well, the orientation sessions themselves are sometimes a bit on the boring or tedious side with all the paperwork and such, but I've had a lot of fun meeting people in the program. Also, last night while on the town, I ran into an Australian guy. One of the girls in a group I was hanging out with walked up to him and asked a question in Spanish and he responded "eh, sawry, awy dawnt spake Spaahnish." So after that was over, I was curious why he was there and I really just wanted to hear the accent some more, too, because like all of my double-x chromosed peers, I swoon over a cute accent. And I'm nosy by nature, that's why I studied journalism. :-) He hung out with our group. He was a lot of fun and he gave me book and movie suggestions, which I'm always on the lookout for. Never gonna see Richie again, but whatever! Fun stuff.

Also, yesterday, we broke off into groups before the orientation sessions started to do some field trip like things. My group was off to the cathedral, and let me tell you, it's massive. It's second only to the Vatican in size, I believe. I'm a bit blah about religion, sometimes, but I had a lot of fun taking pictures and walking up to the bell tower to see the incredible view of Seville. Not to mention it gave me ample time to practice my Spanish with our tour guide, Alejandro. Before this trip I hadn't really practiced speaking Spanish with many people other than my Habitat for Humanity trip to El Salvador or the Mexican grooms where I rode horses. Oh and I practiced speaking with professors, which hardly counts. Alejandro speaks Andaluz, a dialect of Spanish, but he was speaking Castellano with us because it's easier to understand for Americans. Castellano, or Castilian Spanish, really isn't that difficult to understand even though it's portrayed to be a different language entirely. It's not. The main difference is the "theta" sound -- they lisp basically everything. Another diferencia is the use of "vosotros," which is the second person informal plural. That's a bit difficult to explain, but basically it just means it's another way to conjugate verbs that isn't used in many Spanish-speaking countries other than Spain. Spain is obviously the mother nation for all Spanish speaking places, so they've retained some of the original elementos while other places have adopted new language rules.

OK I'm off, but before I go, more fotos: