Journal for lcongdon

After another week of classes, I’m still really enjoying all of them. One of my classes got moved, though, so that now instead of Monday and Wednesday mornings it’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5-6:30pm. This means that I now have four of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and only one on Mondays and Wednesdays. Although this change makes my schedule a little worse, we have a new professor for our class who is really interesting and engaging. He’s actually the professor we were originally supposed to have but something with his schedule changed right before classes started and we had to have a substitute (his wife) for a week of classes. Anyway, everything’s all worked out now and hopefully there won’t be any more unexpected schedule changes for the rest of the semester. Last week I also started a Pilates class at one of the main university campuses which I’m liking a lot so far. I don’t know all the Pilates vocabulary in Spanish so sometimes it’s a little hard, but I can always follow someone else in the class because the majority of the class took it last semester. They’re also mostly Spanish women in their 30s (and some older), which I though was kind of weird since it’s a university class but the class is fine and it’ll be a good workout.

On Friday our program had another presentation about Madrid, this time the Museo de Reina Sofia, another museum we’ll be visiting on our trip. We leave on Wednesday morning and will be gone until Sunday night, which means we’re missing one day of classes (Wednesday) but since Thursday is Andalucía Day there are no classes then. I’m really excited for this trip but I don’t know that much about what we’re going to see besides the two museums we have had presentations about. We have a meeting later today about the rest of the trip, so I guess we’ll find out then. Anyway, more on that trip next week after we get back.

On Saturday a friend and I took a bus from Granada up to a little town called Güejar Sierra. It was about a 30 minute bus ride up into the mountains to get to the town. The town was even smaller than we expected and we spent the first half hour there looking for any trails either up the hill or down to the river. We finally found a sign the pointed to the river (actually more of a stream) and made our way down and then across it where there were better trails heading up the hill. We ended up just hiking up and around for quite awhile until it started raining and we headed back up to the town to get some lunch. Overall it was a really fun day, except for the fact that we missed the 6pm bus going back because I guess the later buses don’t go all the way up to the same place that it dropped us off (how were we supposed to know?) and we had to hang around the town until the next bus at 8. It was fun, though, and it was interesting to see how different this part of the province of Granada is from the city itself.

Posted by Leah R Congdon at 02:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written anything, last week seemed to fly by but I guess that’s what happens with 4 day weeks. Classes started on the 7th, so I’ve had either 2 or 3 of each class so far. Based on the first week of classes, I think that they’re all going to be pretty interesting. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have two classes: Islamic Culture in Spain from 10-11:30 and Oral and Written Production from 3:30-5 (this is the class we all have to take – sort of an extension of the intensive class based on your level). On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have three classes: Current Social-politics in Spain from 8:30-10, Spanish Art from Baroque to current from 10-11:30, and Intro to Hispanic Literature from 1:15-2:45. The literature class is the class that’s being taught by the visiting professor from UPS that came with our program and it’s probably going to be the hardest class I’m taking. In the other ones there hasn’t been very much homework, if any, and they’re mostly just lecture and discussion classes. I think they’re all going to be interesting, though, since I’ve never really studied most of the subjects before.

It’s also really nice now that classes have started to have a schedule that will continue for the rest of the semester. It makes it seem more real that I’m actually living in Spain for 5 months and not just on vacation. Now that I’ve been here over a month I’m really starting to feel like I understand the society more and have my own little place in it and I find myself thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m in Spain!” a lot less often.

Other than classes, my program has had a few little activities since I last wrote. Last Friday we had tour of Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) and the Cathedral here in Granada. They were both really interesting buildings (although really, really cold) that come from about the time of Isabel and Fernando. Capilla Real was built to be the mausoleum for Isabel and Fernando and their coffins, along with those of their daughter Juana la loca (the mad) and her husband Felipe el hermoso (the handsome), are there. These were really interesting to see since they were such a huge part of Spanish history. This Friday we had a presentation about the Prado Museum which we are going to visit during our trip to Madrid in a few weeks. It’s the biggest art museum in Spain and it holds a lot of really famous works of Spanish artists. I’m really excited for this trip and to see Madrid along with Toledo and Segovia.

Posted by Leah R Congdon at 02:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We left for Sevilla on the morning of Wednesday, the 30th, and got there after a 3-hour bus ride at about noon. Our first stop was the Reales Alcázares, which is the Islamic palace in Sevilla where the kings lived while this city was their capital before they moved to Granada and the Alhambra. This building was really beautiful and a lot of the architecture was similar to the Alhambra with beautiful archways and intricate walls. It also had a really pretty garden filled with orange and lemon trees. It was interesting to see the different Christian and Jewish areas of the palace that were added on after the palace was no longer inhabited by the Muslims. After this, we had a big group lunch at a restaurant in the city center. The lunch was really good with a big salad and bread to start, delicious paella as the main course, and pudding for dessert. After lunch was over we went to our hotel and checked into the rooms. The hotel was pretty modest but it was nice enough for our purposes.

For the rest of the afternoon we had free time to do whatever we wanted in the city. First, a small group from the program and I made our way over to the cathedral, which is the 3rd largest in Europe, after the Vatican and St. Paul’s in London. We made it there about an hour before it closed so we had to do a pretty quick tour, which was too bad because there was a lot to see and it was amazingly beautiful. The cathedral holds the remains of Christopher Columbus and also has a really tall bell tower that you can climb to get a view of the city. It was all so beautiful, and less than an hour definitely wasn’t enough time to see and appreciate it all. Once they herded us out at 5:30, we went over to the Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum) which had a lot of beautiful paintings by Spanish artists.

In the evening we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, which was really good but a little weird – there was only one other table of people besides our table of six. Overall, dinner was a lot of fun and afterwards we met up with some other people from our group and went to a bar and then a discoteca, which were both a lot of fun.

The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel and then took our tour bus through the city a little and to the Cartuja Monastery where Christopher Columbus stayed while he was planning his second trip to the Americas. Then we drove out to the archeological complex Itálica, which was the first Roman settlement in Spain. This was very interesting and our guide gave us a lot of information about how the Romans lived while they were in Spain. One of the most interesting parts for me was the amphitheater where they used to hold Gladiator battles and fought lions. After this, we had a little more free time in which we walked to the Maria Luisa Park, which is a large park in the middle of the city near the river.

In the afternoon after lunch we took a boat tour of the Guadalquivir River which runs through Sevilla. It was very smooth and peaceful and the weather was perfect for a boat ride, sunny and about 20 degrees Celsius. From the boat we were able to see many of the sights of the city including the Torre del Oro, the bull ring, and some of the buildings built for the expo that was held there in 1992. After this we went to the Plaza de España, which was built for the world expo in Sevilla in the ‘20s. It’s a huge, intricate, semi-circular building with a beautiful fountain in front of it which includes paintings depicting each of the provinces of Spain. This plaza was our spot of departure for the trip and we left at about 5pm, getting back to Granada a little before 8:30pm.

Overall, our two days in Sevilla were a lot of fun, but I didn’t feel like I got to see the entire city. Our trip was full of activities, so we saw a lot of the main tourist places in the city but it was also very tiring. I really liked what I saw of the city. It feels like a much bigger city than Granada (it is the fourth biggest city in Spain) and also much more touristy. I think it’s a city where you could spend a lot of time and still not see and experience it all.

After our group trip to Sevilla we had free time to travel for 6 days. Three other girls and I went to Barcelona for this time and had a lot of fun. We left on Friday evening from the Granada airport and flew into Girona, which is a smaller city about 80km north of Barcelona. We took a bus from the airport to Barcelona and got to our hostel at about 10pm. The hostel that we stayed at was pretty nice and was really close to Las Ramblas, one of the main streets in the city which is filled with small stands selling flowers and produce, and has a lot of street performers. We were staying in an 8-person room with 4 bunk beds. We shared the room with a girl from Venezuela, who was only there for about 2 of the nights we were there, and 3 guys from Brazil, who left the day before we did. They were all really nice and good people to share a room with.

On Saturday we visited La Sagrada Familia, the church that was begun by Gaudi and is still being worked on 70 years after his death. It was very interesting but a very strange design and it was odd that it was filled with construction. After this, we went to Park Güell, another work of Gaudi that was constructed in the theme of Hansel and Gretel. It was definitely the oddest looking park I had ever seen. It started raining Saturday evening and continued off and on through all of Sunday, which put a damper on our sight-seeing plans since none of us brought anything to wear in the rain. On Sunday we went to the Picasso Museum, which was really interesting (and indoors, which was nice). In the evening we went to the soccer game between Barcelona and Osasuna, which was so much fun. People are crazy about their soccer in Spain, so it was fun to be in that atmosphere. The stadium was huge but not totally full. I didn’t know that much about the Barcelona team before we went but there are quite a few famous people on their team like Henry, Ronaldinho, and Messi. Barcelona won 1-0 and it didn’t rain through most of the game, although it started pouring when there were about 10 minutes left in the game, but it stopped after a couple minutes.

Monday morning we went to the Chocolate museum which was free that day and saw some chocolate replicas of Ben-Hur, Don Quixote, and La Sagrada Familia, among other things. The museum didn’t have any free samples, though, so afterwards we went to a marketplace and bought some lunch and chocolate. We also went to the cathedral here, which was really pretty but not as big and spectacular as the one in Sevilla. For the rest of the afternoon we just walked around the city a little and enjoyed the sun. That night we went to see two of the other Gaudi buildings all lit up. They were pretty but his designs are really strange. On Tuesday we took a bus up the hill to Monjuïc, where the Olympics were held in 1992. We were able to see the Olympic stadium, the pavilion (but only from the outside), and the pool. There were also a lot of beautiful patios and gardens in the area. It was all surprisingly small and it was hard to imagine it being full of people for all the different games. Later in the day we walked down to the port and the beach, which were both really beautiful. It was a little chilly, so we just touched the Mediterranean and sat on the boardwalk for awhile. That night after dinner we went to the movie theater and saw Juno, which was really good and really funny. It was in English with Spanish subtitles but I don’t think that the translation was very good because I think that the only people who were laughing were American.

On Wednesday we had to check out of our hostel by 11am, so we just spent the rest of the day wandering around the city with our luggage and sitting in plazas. We walked to the Arc de Triumph which was interesting, although I didn’t even know there was one in Barcelona. We caught a bus back to Girona and our flight left at about 5pm. We ended up getting back to our houses in Granada a little before 8. It was a really fun vacation but I was happy to be back home to my own bed and to Carmen’s cooking. Food was very expensive in Barcelona so we ended up just eating sandwiches a lot.

Anyway, our exciting vacation is now over and it’s back to school. Classes started today, but I’ll have more on that another day. Hasta luego!

Posted by Leah R Congdon at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)