Professor Sharon

Sevilla is an interesting city! We’ve seen so much blending of old and new. This is a photo of a several thousand year old acqueduct that they have preserved right in the middle of the street.

The city streets in places are huge and wide and cars travel very quickly. The rest of the old city in particular is small and winding. Some of the streets are barely passable by a person – and they are streets with names! Bikes and scooters are everywhere and use all parts of the street!

They have this incredible system of bikes you can borrow. There’s a kiosk with up to 20 bikes – at some places more. You have to secure the bike with a credit card, but you can use a bike for up to half an hour for free and the cost after that is really minimal. There are many places where you ride in the streets, but there is a huge system of green painted trails just for the bikes that actually take up more of the sidewalk room than the walkers do.

We finally braved a tapas bar last night for supper. Our Spanish, without school!, is improving – at least when it comes to nouns! But it’s amazing how far you can get with nouns. Many of the service people here don’t speak a great deal of English, but seem to know the same nouns we know and you get along. Once in a while we’ve had confusion and had to pay for something, such as bread, that would be free at home because we misunderstood. But not so bad so far! The people here are very friendly; and on more than one occasion a complete stranger, with more English than the person we are trying to communicate with, will step in and help us out.

One woman, in the supermarket line behind us, even took the item that we couldn’t figure out the price of for the cashier, and went back into the aisles to find it out for us. In the US, most times the person behind you in line is just fuming that you dared come to the line with a unmarked item. But the Spanish language at least uses letters we recognize and you can guess quite a bit. In Israel, everything was in Hebrew and Arabic; and it was quite difficult at times to even buy a soda.

So when am I getting to the tap water, no hat and no helmet! Well, I know that many of my students are waiting for me to work hard and study! School starts next Monday and it would seem I’m just vacationing. But, I’m taking risks on this journey; and that’s a part of learning as well.

To make a long story short, I’ve had a weak stomach for water since I was a child and generally get ill on tap water. Well, I’ve been drinking tap water in two countries so far; and have days now and then when the stomach is a little uncomfortable, but I’m holding out! And, no hat? Here in Sevilla, the locals do not wear hats (nor did they in Israel – at least not beyond that required by their religion); and we don’t want to look like tourists; so we’re not wearing our sun hats. And no helmet – well when you borrow those bikes, they don’t come with helmets! (Kiwanis readers: please forgive me!)