More adventures
I’m getting worse and worse at this as the semester goes by, but here’s a bit of an update. The weekend before this last weekend, a friend and I went even further south in Spain to Gibraltar, Tarifa, and into Morocco for a day. On Friday we went took a bus to La Linea de la Concepción, a little town that is right across the border from Gibraltar. It’s still owned by the British so we had to show our passports going in, although the passport control was very lax. It was really interesting because it’s a mix between Britain and Spain – with the red telephone booths and “bobby” police men from Britain but in a hot, small strip of land with palm trees and monkeys (more about that later). When we got there we went to a little British restaurant and I had fish and chips, since we were in Great Britain. It was weird having our waitress speak to us in English, with a British accent, and hearing a lot of people around speaking English (lots of British tourists). We then walked through the town toward the rock and took the cable car up the rock to see the view and the monkeys. The Rock of Gibraltar homes the only native primates in Europe and they’re all over up there – on the stair banisters, lying in the sun, playing with each other on the roofs of buildings. It was pretty cool to see so many monkeys up close and not in captivity. After walking around on the rock more and seeing the 100-ton gun that was used to protect Gibraltar, we crossed back into Spain and made our way to our hostel, which happened to be in the middle of nowhere between Algeciras and Tarifa.
Saturday we took a bus down to Tarifa, the southernmost city in Spain and took the ferry across the strait into Morocco. We were just going to show ourselves around Tangier, the city in Morocco that the ferry goes to, but once we got off the boat we were surrounded by office of tourism employees advising us not to go alone and to hire one of them as our guide for the day. We gave in, figuring that if we were hassled this much just getting of the boat we might not have the most fun for a whole day wandering around a city we didn’t know. So Abdul, our tour guide, took us up to the old part of town, the Medina (city) and Kasbah (market), and showed us around in the area where people live and shop. The streets were very narrow and confusing, so it was really nice having someone who knew exactly where he was going. He took us to a couple bazaars and different stores where we got some interesting presentations about carpets, spices, etc. When we explained that we really had no need for carpets or spices, though, we were quickly left for the next group of tourists. We also stopped as a nice restaurant for lunch, which was really good. It was four courses with soup, some pastry-looking thing with meat inside, couscous with chicken, and a little pastry at the end. It was really good and it was authentic Moroccan food. After wandering around the city a little more, we hopped back on the ferry to Tarifa. Morocco was really interesting and it was cool to be in Africa, although I think further south in Africa is a lot different than northern. It was also interesting to be in an Arabic country where a lot of the people still wear traditional clothing and the lifestyle is a lot different. I was kind of surprised, though, how similar to Southern Spain the city itself looked, although I guess it makes sense since they were built by the same people around the same time.
On Sunday we took an early bus back to Granada because my friend’s sister was coming that day and she wanted to be back in time to meet her at the bus station. On Monday night, our program took us to see a flamenco show, which was really cool. It was a mix between flamenco and more contemporary, lyrical dance, so it wasn’t exactly like what I envision of when I think of flamenco, but it was really well done and beautiful to watch.
Last Thursday, May 1, was Spain’s Labor Day, so we had a short week of classes, which was really nice. On Wednesday night, since we had no classes the next morning we went to the botellon, a sort of party in the streets that young people go to on the weekends. There’s one specific place in Granada where it’s legal, so that area is packed with mostly college students drinking and talking. It was outlawed this year over the Labor Day weekend (Thursday through Sunday) because I guess in the past few years students from all over Spain come to Granada that weekend because it has the best botellons and it got really crazy, so on Wednesday night it was pretty big since no one could do it the next few days. It was really fun to see, but a little crazy and there were a lot of people packed into a small area.
This past weekend, I went to the beach in Malaga, about an hour and a half from Granada. A couple of friends and I just laid on the beach from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, taking a few breaks to eat, shop, etc. It was really nice just to have a weekend to relax. I’ve gone to a lot of different places on weekends but they’re always so full of things to see that I end up more tired after. One interesting thing that we did, though, was on Friday night our hostel roommate told us about this procession/caravan that started that day from Malaga across Andalusia to Huelva, the province near Portugal, and they stop every night in a different town and have a big feast and party. Somehow, he got invited and so we went with him and some other people from the hostel. It was really cool – every family had their own wagon-thing that was decorated with flowers and flamenco stuff and most of the women were in flamenco dresses. We thought that there would be more flamenco dancing and singing, but there was only a little singing. It was fun anyway and really interesting to see. I think we were the only non-Spanish people there, too, so that was cool, and the next day we saw all the wagons lined up leaving Malaga. Anyway, those are the highlights of the past couple weeks. I’m trying not to think of upcoming finals and packing and the DELE test, but they’re all getting closer. I’m getting excited to go home, but there’s still a lot to do before then.