Well here I am, Sevilla at last! By the time I arrived I was still in denial about the fact that I'll be spending over three months living an ocean away from home. It still hasn't quite sunk in; I'm in a vacation mindset, like I'll be home in a couple of weeks.
Let me start off by saying that jet lag is a nasty little bugger. Seville is seven hours ahead of my hometown, and that combined with the fact that normal meal times here are 9am, 2pm, and 9pm is really throwing me for a loop. I'm currently sitting in the most uncomfortable position possible because if I get too cozy, I'll just fall asleep, which will seriously throw off my adjusting process.
Today is day 2 of orientation, so I have a little more free time than I generally would on a weekday. The school took us on a tour of the neighbood (called El Centro) this morning, so my friends and I thought we'd take the afternoon to go explore the nearby cathedral and María Luisa Park, since we only got to walk past them this morning.
The cathedral is a very interesting building. The style is very gothic, but there's definitely some Moorish influence, most notable in the 8-sided dome that's central to Islamic architecture. It was built by the Moors then redesigned and added to by the Spaish when they reconquered Andalucia. When the cathedral was first made into a cathedral, the king had such a hard time keeping merchants from the newly-discovered West Indies from setting up shop inside that he built a whole sperate building right next to the cathedral just for trade, complete with a chest-high chain barrier to keep people from bringing their horses inside.
Classes start tomorrow, which is bound to be an adventure all its own, but for now, I'm off to grab some gelato (which is surprisingly popular and very widely sold here) and try not to nap!