There is a line from Grey’s Anatomy that’s been in my mind a lot lately, as I’ve been running around a bit like a mad woman:

Time takes pleasure in kicking our asses.

As of Thursday, my first semester in Sevilla is over. Although I did no traveling in the last month and a half, the time has still flown. I’m struggling to pin down exactly what I did with all that time. It was a mix of things: enjoying Sevilla, working on school, and all the other odds and ends of life. The last two weeks or so has been crammed full of schoolwork, but now I’m done with finals (except for one in January) I’m busy getting ready for my winter break traveling. Mom is flying across the pond on Monday and we’ll be doing Dublin and Sligo for a week and then London for a week. I am ridiculously excited, since seeing both of these places is a dream come true, especially since England is so tied to Christmas in my mind.

So while the end of the week just meant no more finals-induced insomnia for me, it meant the end of the Sevilla experience for almost all of the Americans here with me. While seeing everyone going home from Christmas, and reading about everyone’s plans on Facebook has made me rather homesick, seeing everyone going has also once again reafirmed my decision to stay here for the whole year. Yes, Spain can be challenging, and yes, there are some things that I truly miss about home. But I am very happy to have another few months for travel, for meeting people and experiencing things in Spain, and to spend with my wonderful senora, Loli. Saying goodbye to the fall group hasn’t been terribly hard — I found most of the people on my program from NU to be as impossible to connect with as the people I’ve met at NU in the last two years. I did make two wonderful friends in my classes, Brianda and Anthony, who unfortunately I may not see again since they live and go to school in California and Washington.

The hardest part of this semester ending has definitely been saying goodbye to Suz. I don’t think Danielle had any idea of how close we would end up being when she said we would get along. Three weeks into the program, one of our professors said she thought we had known each other for years, and we’ve only bonded further since that. In all honesty, I don’t know how I would have survived this first semester without her. Having someone around who understands my lifestyle, who understands what my fandoms do for me and who understands all my nerdy freak outs made such a difference to me. Sure we may have our differences (and we had about 578 “we can’t be friends anymore” joking moments), but she has been a wonderful friend and travel companion and my life is going to be quite empty without her. She’s also just a truly amazing person, and I’m extremely thankful to have met her. Luckily, there shall be much fun in our future, when we are reunited for senior year at NU. (A senior year that I’m looking forward to a lot more after spending time with Suz and her boyfriend.)

Despite the absence of Suz, I am quite happy in Sevilla and I’m looking forward to the next few months. One of the things that makes me happy is just how settled I feel here. I truly feel very at home, and I’m now starting to worry about how it will feel to back to the US. I finally got my residency card the other day (which was a big victory after a bureaucratic nightmare), so now when I’m asked for an ID, I can pull out the same card that any other Spaniard has. I have a bus card and use the buses regularly (they’re very nice). I can converse with taxi drivers (this was a big problem at first). Generally speaking, I’ve learned the ropes of living in Sevilla for the most part, and I’m very proud of that. I go to class, I have an internship of sorts, I live a pretty normal life and it’s pretty wonderful.

I am feeling quite bad about neglecting this blog for the last month or so. Almost every day I think of something I would like to write about, but when I’m actually around my computer, I don’t have the time or inspiration to make it happen. I meant to write about my classes, because they’ve all been interesting experiences, but now I couldn’t possibly do them any justice. Perhaps next semester. I am very conscious of the fact that there has been a lot of not-Sevilla on my Sevilla blog, so I’m hoping next semester to get out more entries about Sevilla. Still, there will always been 10,000 things to say about Sevilla for every one thing that goes on the blog, so if you want to hear about it, hit me up on Skype/Facebook/email, or when I get home.

In looking forward to the next semester, my main hopes are to do several other trips around Europe and Spain, to continue to explore and enjoy Sevilla, and to meet some more Spaniards. I’m sure my plate will be plenty full, as I also have some pesky things for senior year and the summer to worry about. But hopefully I’ll be on here every once and a while to tell you about it.

In between my packing, I’m going to try to post some pictures on here of odds and ends, just to liven things up a bit.

When most people think of France, they think of the Eiffel Tower, various food clichés, the Louvre, and other cultural symbols.

When I think of France, I think of all those things, and I think of war.

You may be asking why (and if you are I think you don’t know me very well). Well, just think about French history for a moment: you’ve got Louis XIV, warrior supreme, Napoleon, who built a huge empire for the French through war (and made a few enemies in the process…oops!), and then you’ve got the number of wars that France fought in other periods, as well as the famous French-German wars. And while we’ve all heard those jokes about the French army I will say simply this: the person who does not have respect for the French army has not learned properly about history, especially where World War I is concerned.

So I had this history in mind for my entire trip, and that probably colored what I thought about what I saw. Maybe I’m reading too much significance into these things. Maybe not.

While still in the airport of Paris, I was confronted with a surprising sight: several men walking around in military uniform, openly carrying guns that were similar to M-16s (although a little smaller). I immediately thought something’s going on and it was; there was a case of unattended luggage that prevented me from leaving the airport for a while. But still, I’ve never in the US seen something quite like that.

When I got on the train to the city I noticed something else: on the traditional give up your seats from disabled, elderly, etc. people sign, the first category of people listed was “militaires de la guerre”.

I’ve definitely never seen that in the United States.

Throughout the trip, I had a number of impressive encounters with military institutions. The Eiffel Tower, in case you were unaware, sits at one end of the Champ du Mars with the École Militaire, a stunning building at the other end. And, of course, at Versailles, it’s impossible to forget about war, as that palace was built to celebrate Louis XIV’s victories has remained tied to warfare for centuries since. 

On Sunday morning, Suz and I went to the Invalides, which is not only the site of Napoleon’s tomb, but also a military museum. Unfortunately, because we had other plans for the day, we didn’t have much time for the museum, but we did pass through the sections on the Franco-Prussian War through WWII. The most moving part was not, as you may have guessed, the WWII section, but rather the WWI part. Generally speaking, WWI tends to get overlooked in American education, but I had lasting impression of that war after hearing about it from John Lynn. And that portion of the museum was just incredibly striking, especially when I came across an officer’s coat caked in pounds of mud. In a single room of photographs, uniforms, and weapons, that war was vividly present.

The most striking moment of my entire trip, however, happened on Saturday night, when Suz and I walked through an underground tunnel to reach the Arc de Triomphe. (In case you are somehow unaware, it sits at the center of a huge traffic circle in the middle of Paris.) And wow, it’s really huge; both Suz and I agreed that tv does not do it justice.                                                                 

If you ever go to Paris, you must see the Arc de Triomphe, and you must see it at night. It was amazingly imposing and beautiful. As it was lit from below with bright golden lights the various statues on the facades of the Arc appeared supernaturally powerful, casting dark shadows behind them. Carved on the interior walls are hundreds of names and battles, many with strange names and many with names that are hauntingly famous. Standing under the arch and looking all around you, you feel like you have all of Paris at your fingertips — cars constantly whirling around you and avenues moving away from this central spoke.

Suz and I walked around there for a long time, alternately marveling at the beauty of Paris and the Arc. And then we walked around to the other side and what we saw took my breath away. A small eternal flame and an engraving: ICI REPOSE UN SOLDAT FRANÇAIS MORT POUR LA PATRIE. And there was nothing for me to do but stand there for several minutes, under the arch reflecting golden light, the cars of hundreds of Parisians driving past, that tiny flame flickering in the cold night air.

We have a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and many millions of people have seen it, and have seen the changing of the guard. If you haven’t I recommend you do. But it’s at the top of a hill in a pretty green estate across the river from our capital. We have war memorials scattered throughout the city and the country — thousands of statues, the Wall (which I will give great credit to), and other tributes. But do we even have a WWI memorial in an obvious place? Our WWII memorial is basically a big, awkwardly-placed circle with a number of different stone tabs.

Needless to say, I love the fact that the French have their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the middle of Paris, and that the Arc de Triomphe is there as an powerful, unavoidable, unforgettable reminder of the French military and its sacrifices. In the US, we do not pay enough to the military current or past. Despite the tendency to put a yellow ribbon on anything, there are not enough of us who truly support the troops, and there are definitely not enough of us who stop to really think about Saratoga, Chancellorsville, Belleau Wood, Normandy, Iwo Jima, and all that came before and after. As a budding historian, I am also aware of the fact that military history is very out of fashion right now in academic circles. I don’t know why this is, nor is there any reason you could give me that could convince me that it should be so.

France is a nation that has been shaped for centuries by its wars, and this was clearly reflected (at least in my eyes) in Paris. So, let me just say this: war, and honoring the institutions and sacrifices of war, is something that, in my opinion, the French have gotten profoundly right.

I don’t particularly believe in reincarnation. But if I’m going to reincarnated, please let it be as a French person.

For my latest trip, Suz and I decided to take advantage of the long weekend for All Saints’ Day and we headed off to Paris. The trip was pretty amazing, although Suz and I both suffered a lot from overall exhaustion. Both of us were absolutely awestruck by the beauty of Paris. That had a lot to do with the fact that autumn was in full swing there; everywhere we looked there were these gorgeous tall trees with the leaves changing colors. Both Suz and I really miss all of the seasonally stuff in the US (although I think this may be hitting Suz even harder than me) so getting to experience a true fall-like atmosphere for a few days was very nice. We also both really enjoyed the feeling of being a in real big city, and Paris really is huge. On top of that, there were so many absolutely gorgeous buildings with beautiful balconies. The majority of these seemed to be apartments/houses, and we just could not get over the fact that people could live there. So we basically spent a lot of our time in Paris stunned and saying this like “*expletive* Paris, why are you so gorgeous?”

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Hello to anyone who’s actually reading this! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I thought I would check in. Here are some notes from my life:

1. I activated the ask button on this blog, so anyone can ask me questions. (It’s the big blue button on the right.) You can ask without a Tumblr account. Please leave me any thoughts or questions you have, whether they’re about a specific post or any other study abroad thing. I’m absolutely open to suggestions for what I should post about here, although I can’t promise it will actually happen.

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Something about this just fascinated me. A balcony with no window. And something about it — the filled in windows, the weeds sticking out of cracks — reminded me of home. (Although not the better parts of home.) You don’t see things like this often in Sevilla.