Things are getting really fun over here!

Things are getting really fun over here... Mercedes, Matt, and I are getting along really well, and we're starting to make our own jokes, etc. Mostly concerning a few of the following things: our crazy apartment-mate who's always on the couch except when he's yelling at us, a pizza store across the street offering "pizza sin fin," La Cartuja, a person in the office between Matt and I and Mercedes and David, avocados, desk-foot warfare, the Oxford comma and our ever-expanding list of somewhat serious, somewhat stupid things to do in the city. Anyways, fun times we've had this week. The office has been quite uneventful

otherwise. I've been working on the "scupper" plan (deck drains and related piping) all week, which is also what I had done last Friday. It is, excitingly, the first time I've gotten to put my initials on a drawing, as I did it all start to finish. Of course, I didn't design anything per se (that'd be crazy for an intern!) but I took a pre-existing 3D model of the scuppers and cut sections of it and pasted them over plans of the deck. From there, I had to go into the larger 3D model of the entire boat with all the properties and tag each pipe on my drawing with the identification code given to it in the large model. See, if I was doing this as, say, an assignment for school, it would have taken me a day max. But here, I find often that the instructions are more confusing, there's less work done, and I am also intentionally taking longer with my work so that I don't run out of things to do before I get my next assignment. This is jumping ahead a little bit, but Matt and I were talking on the train from Granada back to Seville last night, and these people were Americans visiting their company's headquarters outside of Granada. They agreed with us—that just less happens in the Spanish offices than in the American ones. And I've heard from my friends back at home that American offices aren't thrilling either... at least for interns. I think the best credence for this is Mercedes's and David's experiences last week in the office. They had their first day last Monday, and it took until today for either of them to get work... So last week for Mercedes consisted of reading a 400 page book, and for David, taking naps in the office. He had everyone around him laughing, though, so I guess it gave us a fair bit of entertainment. Mercedes got her work today, which involves avocados, and none of us are really sure how that has to do with boats. So we're convinced that Ghenova is a cover for an avocado syndicate.

Thursday was quite the day, and definitely some good bonding time between Mercedes, Matt, and I. So, Thursday was Corpus Christi, a holiday dedicated to the body of Jesus. We got the day off, which was cool. There was a parade 8:30 in the morning, and we had read that it would continue for four hours. So, we slept in a bit and then headed downtown to see the parade. Unfortunately, it was only two hours, and we just missed it. Meanwhile, it was pouring rain. I'm talking like my pants and shoes were wet in minutes, and I got great use of my raincoat in the meantime. So we were soaked and already downtown, so we decided to keep on going around ignoring the rain. We went to the Archivo de las Indias (which I had visited on Wednesday but omitted for space), and walked down downtown for a bit. In the streets were religious monuments set up all over. It was certainly an interesting sight... saw lots of crucified Jesi throughout the day. We also made it to this market in the north of the city called Mercado Jueves, or the Thursday market. From whoever decided to come out and sell things in the rain, the selection was basically like a garage sale. Lots of old, and presumably used, glasses and cups, lots of books who have seen the test of time, and some jewelry that had certainly come from some grandma. There were also some old trumpets and knives. Really just a total random array of things. I considered buying a book about bulls, as well as a Spanish log table that had sine, secant, and logarithm values for most numbers, which I did find amusing, but definitely useless in this day and age.

Since we were already real far north, we decided to continue our way north to my favorite, La Cartuja (that is, if you don't remember, the abandoned site of the 1992 expo). They at least acted to enjoy it, until the rain came back in full force and we had to call an Uber. Our Uber driver was hilarious though. He spoke very good English, and we enjoyed having someone new to talk to. We got in the car, and he was asking us a little about us. He then got to the question I was expecting. He said "You were in La Cartuja. Why??" He took his hands off the steering wheel and put them up like the confused emoji 🤷🏻‍♂️. This same thing happened last time when I told someone that I went, and enjoyed, La Cartuja. It's not from a place of danger or concern—La Cartuja is, to my knowledge, not a dangerous place—it's rather just of genuine confusion. Of why anyone in Seville would actually choose to go visit La Cartuja, let alone on a rainy day that was also a holiday. We found it funny, then continued to talk to him about the city and our time here. He dropped us off at the mall by our house, where we got some Popeyes: something that Mercedes had wanted to try ever since she had seen it. Delicious, of course.

Friday was the start of my exploration outside of Seville, something that'll continue to become more prevalent as the summer moves on. I got on the metro at San Bernardo, right by us, and took it six miles away to San Juan de Aznalfarache. It's one of the larger neighborhoods of Seville, home to a much less wealthy and much more provincial crowd. I don't know really what I was expecting, to be honest, but it seemed natural that that is what it was like over there. It was refreshing to not be one of just a million tourists, and the only English I saw there was "Ice Cream" written below a singular Heladeria. I walked from the back of the neighborhood to the front, ending by the large church in the area. overlooking the city. The view was very pretty, and all in all, I'm glad I went, but I probably wouldn't go back. There's nothing really there that you can't already to in Seville proper, and it does take a metro ticket to go see. Friday night, Matt, Alex, and I went downtown to a sushi place. We decided that we'd had enough Spanish food for a while, and that it was about time for us to switch it up. We all said that, well, it's pathetic to say, but this may have been the best meal we'd had since coming to Spain. Sure tapas are fun, and often good, but this was filling, different, and we knew what we were getting, which is often not the case at a tapas bar.

My weekend is on the next post... since it was way too long otherwise