No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

I haven't had much time for the Internet this week -- my intensive history course is more time-consuming than I expected. The actual class is kind of boring and dense, but every day we meet at a different historical site in the city and tour it for an hour or two. So far we've visited ruins from the original Sevilla (mostly Roman columns and pieces of the muralla, the ancient city wall), as well as the Alcázar, the old Jewish quarters and the Tower of Gold, which was part of the original city fortifications but is now a naval museum (not as exciting).

My professor knows where to find the most bizarre city treasures. Yesterday he took us to an underground parking lot that was once a 13th-century Jewish cemetery and still houses a tomb in a glass display, right next to where people park their cars. He also told us that the Triana Market, which I pass through every day to get to the bridge, sits on top of ruins of a castle used for the Inquisition. Awesome.

For a change of pace, yesterday we went to the Tabacalera for a lecture by Rosa Díez, a Basque woman formerly part of the Socialist party (PSOE), who left to form her own party because she disagreed with their stance on Basque nationalism. She was idealistic to the extreme and I didn't agree with everything she had to say -- specifically her política lingüística, which, from what I understood, removes regional languages from the classroom -- but the lecture was very interesting.

I've been trying to decide what trips I want to make while I'm here. I'm set on going to Italy and Morocco, at least. There are really cheap weekend travel packages to Morocco from here. The first weekend of February, right before classes begin, a bunch of us are planning on going to the Carnaval de Cádiz, which is one of the most famous parties in Spain ("It doesn't really interest me... but you have to go." - Carmen).

Anyway, I've been leading kind of a nerdy existence. I've been too tired to go out every night, and I don't know how some of the other students do it. I'm also working on my first language/culture column for next Friday's issue of The Hoya (on that note, check out savethehoya.com and sign the petition).

Hope it's all wonderful. I changed the blog settings, so anyone can leave comments now. Adios.