Serving at Los Naranjos

On Saturday, students had the opportunity to serve one of the local churches in the area by helping them fix up their retreat center. The church is called Prosperidad and each week they let us use their building for a service on Wednesday nights called Encuentro. The retreat center is called Los Naranjos and is a hour and a half train ride out of the city. Prosperidad, along with four other churches, bought the old military base years ago and have slowly been improving it and expanding it as a retreat center.

Our job for the day was to repaint and clean one of the apartments.

Emily, Kat, and Liz jumped on the chance to serve.

The owners treated us to a nice lunch, served camp style.

After lunch we enjoyed a nice walk along the river to the waterfall. The cool part about this was that normally it is not much of a waterfall, but because of all the recent rain, the river is stronger than ever.

The finished product!

The couple who ran the camp were very grateful for the help and the students enjoyed the change of scenery from the city for a day. They invited us back to come and help out or just enjoy the camp anytime.

Trip to Cordoba

Last week friday, Semester in Spain took a trip to the city of Cordoba. Cordoba is well known for La Mezquita, or the great mosque, which is actually used as a cathedral today. Professors José María Navarro (History) and Carmen Suarez (Art History) came along as the professional tour guides.

The architecture inside La Mezquita tells its history. The first thing you notice on entering is the seemingly endless Muslim double arches and the 856 columns of jasper, onyx, marble, and granite. On the other side you will see the beautifully decorated mihrab, which is just as famous for its beauty as it is for the fact that it faces directly south even though Mecca is southwest.

But as you wander into the middle you find yourself in a drastically different atmosphere. For when Cordoba was recaptured from the Muslim army in 1236, the mosque was converted into a Christian church. A Gothic style nave was built in the very middle of the structure.

After exploring the church the group walked over the Roman bridge and entered in the Calahorra Tower where audio tours were available about the history of the city and how the three cultures of Christianity, Muslim, and Judaism lived side by side. One highlight of the trip, for student Kat Hewett, was being able to climb the stairs to the roof of the tower and get a great view of the bridge and city.

After the tour the student were set loose to eat lunch and explore the city. The bridge and cathedral are found in the old part of the city where you encounter small winding streets in the old Jewish quarter.

Cordoba makes a great day trip from Seville, being only an hour and forty-five minutes away.

You can view more photos from the trip HERE.

Video!

New Blog!

¡Hola a todos!

Semester in Spain has started this blog to inform others about the program here in Sevilla, Spain. Whether you're a student checking out the program or you are friends or family with someone in the program now, we will try to keep you updated on what is going on. We hope to include descriptions and pictures of some of the activites going on here and also include some insight from the students, whether it be an interview or a story they want to share with you.

So keep checking back for more!