I have no idea where to begin. We have been kept quite busy this last week or so, and I’m sure it will either stay this way or get even more hectic. I now have over a week of school under my belt. And yes. It’s official. All of my classes are in Spanish. It’s really not as bad as it sounds. The first couple of days were a bit rough, but it has been getting easier to understand each day. I am taking 3 classes: Spanish grammar, Spanish Art History, and Spanish History/Civilization. My favorite is History/Civilization...go figure. I usually hate history classes....but this one is basically storytime every day, and I LOVE stories. All of the professors are extremely nice. They all speak limited English, but they are very willing to slow down and repeat things as needed, which I am SO grateful for. It is getting easier and easier each day to understand this language...but as soon as someone asks me a question, I still freak out a little bit inside. It is definitely much harder to speak than it is to listen. After getting a bit frustrated at what seems to be NO improvement...I was quickly reminded that I haven’t even been here for that long yet! So I cut myself some slack.
After our first full week of school, we had our first activity. My group went to La Mezquita. This is what Córdoba is known for. It’s huge! If I understood the guide right, it is the 3rd largest mosque in the world. Which would make sense...when Spain was taken over by Islamic influence, Córdoba was its capital. Cool, huh? I had no idea either. The mosque is really unique in that it also has a cathedral inside of it. It indicates how crazy the history was as the Muslims and the Christians battled over Spain many years ago.
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| La Mezquita |
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| The red and white arches that I always use to describe the place... |
After our activity, my housemate Angela and I went to Ronda. Ronda is a little town a little bit south of Córdoba. It is home to Spain’s oldest bullring, as well as many other monuments and museums and stuff. It is absolutely gorgeous. The city is separated into two sections, old and new, and the older part is on this cliff type thing separated from the newer part by a giant ravine. You have to cross a bridge to get to the other side. There are 3 bridges and the newest one was built in the 1700s, I believe. The architecture is incredible. We spent the morning exploring the House of the Moorish King.
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| It was a pretty sweet house... |
After this, we were taking a few pictures by one of the older bridges, and this strange man comes up and starts talking to us. All of a sudden, he is gesturing like crazy, trying to get us to follow him, and telling us about Ronda, and just a bunch of other things I couldn’t understand/wasn’t paying attention too. Long story short...the reaction we usually get from telling this story is “What the HECK were you guys thinking!?!?” I have no idea. It sounds so sketchy. Part of me hates that I am automatically this skeptical about a person’s intentions...and the other part of me knows that I have to be. Two 20-ish year old girls traveling around without being fluent in the language....probably not the best idea to follow a random man. But at the end of the day, I had come to see the guy as a blessing. God was definitely looking out for his two daughters, that’s for sure. With no strings attached, the guy just wanted to show us his city that he was so proud of. We got into 5 or 6 museums or monuments for free because of him, and we got to see more of the city than we probably would have known about. It was a really fun day looking back on it, but dear Jesus, please don’t let me do it again!
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| In front of Puente Nuevo |
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| Plaza de Toros |
We came back on Saturday night so that we could go to church the next morning. What do you know, one of the few (if not THE one) evangelical church in Córdoba is right by my house. It was a looooooong sermon. But it was wonderful to be in that environment again, worshiping alongside people with the same heart, even if we couldn’t communicate that well. For the weekends that I’m in town, I definitely want to keep going to it!
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