Anyway, school stuff has been wrapping up over the past couple weeks. The last day of classes was the 13th and then I had finals on Wednesday and Thursday. The finals period continues until Tuesday but I don’t have any more finals, just one more essay for Tuesday. I think that my finals went well, but they were a little stressful because I had three on Thursday and an essay on Wednesday. But they’re over now so I can kind of relax, although I still have the big DELE test on Wednesday and Friday to think about.

Last Saturday we had our last program trip to a little town called Ronda about three hours west of Granada. It was kind of rainy on-and-off that day, but other than that it was a fun trip. We took a walking tour of the city that started in the bull ring, which is one of the oldest in Spain. There wasn’t a whole lot to see in Ronda but it was a really pretty city in the valley, so there was a lot of green which is hard to come by in Andalusia.

Other than that I haven’t had any trips or anything, just trying to see and do everything I wanted to in Granada before I leave. It’s such an interesting city with a lot of character and I’m sure that I’m going to miss it a lot when I leave.

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.

The next day we headed back to Bilbao and went to the Guggenheim Museum in the afternoon. The museum was interesting and had a lot of different types of art, mostly modern, surreal, and contemporary. The actual building itself was probably the most interesting, though, with its curved, metallic walls. A lot of the architecture in Bilbao was pretty modern, which was a lot different from most of the other cities I’ve seen in Spain. We spent the rest of the day and the next day just wandering around the city. There wasn’t really a whole lot to see in Bilbao, but the city was really pretty and it was nice to see some actual grass and greenness. Ali and I spent the whole trip back to Granada studying for our art history test that we had the next morning, which wasn’t really fun, but I think the test went pretty well for both of us.

The rest of that week was fairly uneventful besides the test on Tuesday. On Wednesday evening, my program had another movie night and we watched Jamón, Jamón, an interesting, but very strange movie, like most Spanish films. It was Penelope Cruz’s first major role and also had a very young Javier Bardem in it, so that was kind of fun to see. The DELE test is getting closer every day, so on Friday we had practice oral tests. Mine went OK, but I definitely need to practice more before the actual test at the end of May.

This past Saturday, my program had a day trip to Córdoba, a city about 3 hours from Granada. We had a little free time when we first got there, so a few of us went to the castle of the Reyes Catolicas, where the inquisition was held. We couldn’t really go into too many of the buildings, but the gardens were really pretty. After that, we reunited with the group and went to the Arab baths, where we did the whole treatment. In the baths, which are restored but basically the same idea as long, long ago when they were first built, there are three rooms: a cold room, a tepid room, and a hot room. Each room has baths or a pool and you’re supposed to move from one to another to relax, open your pores, etc. We also each got a 10 minute massage, which was really nice. The whole thing was very relaxing and a lot of fun. After this, we had a tour of the Mosque of Córdoba, which was later converted into a cathedral. It was interesting to see because we’d talked a lot about it in my Islamic Culture class. After about an hour and a half there, we got back on the bus and headed back to Granada. I wish we had had more time in Córdoba because I feel like we only saw one little part of the city and didn’t really have time to explore much of it.

On Sunday there was a bull fight in Granada that our program took us to. It was a benefit festival for down-syndrome so it wasn’t quite as big as when it’s the city’s fair (the toreadors didn’t wear their pretty costumes with rhinestones and ballet slippers and the bulls were supposedly a little smaller, although they were still pretty big). I thought that the bull fight was really interesting, although it’s kind of hard to say that I actually liked seeing six bulls get killed. The environment and the crowd was really fun to see, though, and it’s such a big part of the Spanish tradition that I felt like I had to see one while I’m here. Plus, after the first one, it wasn’t that hard to watch and the toreadors were really talented and even elegant at times with their different moves.

Tuesday I had my last mid-term test in my Islamic Culture class, although it’s quite a bit past when the actual middle of the semester was. It’s nice to be done with tests until the end of the semester but it’s hard to believe that the end is coming so soon. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here forever but at other times it feels like I just got here. I only have a little over a month left of my program and I know it’s going to go really fast. I just hope that I can see and do everything that I want to in Granada and Spain before I have to go.

Anyway, I got back to Granada very late on Sunday and had another mid-term on Monday. My other 2 got pushed back to the upcoming weeks, which is nice because this week has been really busy again. This weekend I’m going to Bilbao and San Sebastian with a couple people from my program. I’m excited to see another part of Spain because I’ve heard that Northern Spain is a lot different than the rest of Spain. Hopefully it’s not too cold up there, though, because it was actually snowing in Bilbao a couple weeks ago.

We left early Monday morning on a bus to Sevilla, the city in Spain with the most famous Semana Santa processions. We went to the cathedral, which was good because I got to see a lot more of it than when I was in Sevilla the last time. We also went on a boat tour of the Guadalquivir and walked over to the Plaza de España. We were able to see a few of the processions here, too, but there were so many people that it was sometimes hard to see and hard to get around the city with so many roads blocked off.

On Tuesday we flew from Sevilla to Paris and made our way on the metro to our hotel, which was very close to the Eiffel Tower. That first night we walked to the tower to see it all lit-up, which was really pretty. We decided not to go up in it that night, though, because it was really cold and windy and we weren’t exactly prepared for the weather. The whole time we were in France, though, it was pretty cold and windy (and sometimes rainy, too), not quite as nice as it had been in Spain (sunny and in the 60s or 70s). On Wednesday we took the train out to Versailles to see the palace. It was pretty spectacular and full of wealth and luxury. The gardens there were huge, too, but it was too windy to spend too much time in them. That night, when we were back in Paris, we went back to the Eiffel Tower and actually went up in it. It was really pretty to see the whole city lit-up at night.

Thursday morning we bought the 2-day Paris museum passes, so we spent most of the next two days hopping from one museum or monument to another. On Thursday morning we went to the Rodin Museum and Napoleon’s tomb, which was really impressive: a huge wooden coffin-like monument right under the church’s dome. After that we went to the Orsay Museum, which had a lot of interesting work from the impressionist period and around. We also walked over to the Arc de Triomphe but weren’t able to go up in it because of a worker’s strike. This was our walking day, so the next day ended up being our metro day (we learned that things seem closer on the map than they really are). Friday we started off with a trip to the Louvre, and we saw the famous pieces like Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. The museum was so big, though, that I don’t know if we even saw a third of it after being there for about 3 hours. After this we walked to the smaller, and much more manageable, Museum de l’Orangerie, which houses Monet’s water lilies and other impressionist art, included a little of Picasso. Next, we took the bus to Notre Dame where there was a service going on since it was Good Friday. The church was really beautiful but it felt a little odd walking around with a camera in hand while there was a service being held. After leaving the church we decided not to go up into the towers because there was a huge line. While on the island in the Seine where the Notre Dame is, we stopped in the Conciergerie, the prison where people, including Marie Antoinette, were held before being sent to the guillotine. After this, we took the metro to the Montmatre area and walked up to the Sacred Heart church were there was a great view of the city. We then walked down the hill into a slightly sketchy neighborhood full of sex shops and cabarets in order to see the Moulin Rouge.

Saturday afternoon we headed back to the airport to catch our flight to Madrid. We didn’t do a whole lot that day in Madrid because it was a little rainy and cold, but we walked around a little and saw a few of the main plazas, the cathedral, and the royal palace. Sunday morning (Easter) we went to a catholic church near our hotel for mass. It was interesting to experience a catholic mass, but the service was a little hard to understand (especially for my parents who don’t know Spanish). After this, we took a walk to the park Buen Retiro, a huge park in the center of the city. It was pretty to see and there were a lot of people walking around and performers playing different instruments. I caught a bus back to Granada that afternoon and my parent’s flight left the next morning. Overall, spring break was a lot of fun but it went by so quickly. It was great to see my parents and Paris was really amazing to see. It’s interesting how Spain and France are so close but their cultures seem so different. It was a little hard to get back into the swing of classes this week, especially with mid-terms starting, but I guess that’s to be expected after a week of vacation. This weekend I’m off to Prague to visit Kelsey and Marissa, my two friends who are studying there. I’m very excited to see them but it’s hard to belief I’m leaving Granada again. I guess that’s what happens when you’re studying abroad in Europe, though – I want to visit all the different places I can while I have the chance.

Sunday in Spain was Election Day, which was kind of exciting. We had talked a lot about the elections in my Social-Politics class and there have been posters covering the city for the past few weeks, so it was exciting to see what actually happened. The Election Day itself wasn’t too exciting, but Carmen got all dressed up in the late morning and she and Miguel went to vote. I thought it was kind of odd that Election Day is on a Sunday, but I guess that means that everyone has time to vote and they have over 75% participation, so I guess it works well. Anyway, they announced the winner late on Sunday night and the Socialist Party that has been in power for the past four years won again. The political system is a little different here in that the Spaniards vote for a party instead of a person and the parties get the number of seats in the congress that corresponds with the percentage of votes that they received. So, in the case of this election, the Socialist Party (PSOE) has the most seats in the congress but they have a simple majority. The other main party, the Popular Party, has only about 15 fewer seats than PSOE and then there are a bunch of smaller parties that have only a few representatives. Since PSOE has the most representatives, their leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, will continue to be president of Spain.

The rest of the week was pretty much the same old stuff – classes, homework, etc. Last night our program had a movie night and showed the movie Tapas which was really good, although it was full of slang so it was a little hard to understand at times. On Tuesday night, I went to a lecture at my school about Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Spain. It’s a very big deal here, especially in Andalusia, with processions every day carrying depictions of Jesus and Mary around the town. I’m excited that I’ll be able to see some of it, although I’ll miss most of the days since we’re going to Paris. Only one more class and then it’s Spring Break! I’m really excited for everything that we’re going to see: Sevilla (which has huge Holy Week celebrations), Paris, and Madrid. More on all of that when I get back after Easter!

The next day started off with a trip to one of the other big museums in Madrid, the Reina Sofia. The temporary exhibition there was almost all of the contents of the Picasso Museum in Paris, which I guess is being worked on right now. This was all really interesting to see since Picasso had so many different styles of painting. The most amazing, though, was Guernica, Picasso’s huge representation of the bombing of a northern Spanish city during the war. It was really breathtaking to see in person since I have seen so many pictures of it. The museum also had some paintings by Dali and Miró, and it also had a lot of modern art, which isn’t really my favorite. In the afternoon we had a historic walking tour of Madrid and saw a bunch of the famous plazas, buildings, and churches in the city. We walked by the Royal Palace and the Cathedral, which were both really interesting buildings. In the evening a couple friends and I walked to the park Buen Retiro, which is a huge park right in the middle of the city. It was dark by the time we got there, though, and we didn’t get to see a lot it.

On Friday we had an early start and took the bus to El Escorial, which was about an hour out of Madrid. El Escorial is a monastery and palace which used to be a royal getaway for King Felipe II. It’s still a monastery and is also a boarding school now. After our tour of the complex we took the bus to El Valle de los Caídos (the valley of the fallen), Franco’s memorial to the fallen in the Spanish civil war (but really just his side). It’s also where Franco is buried, right next to the altar of the huge basilica that he had built there. It’s a huge church built into the mountain with the biggest cross I’ve ever seen in my life on top of the mountain. It was really impressive but kind of gave me the creeps, especially seeing Franco’s grave with fresh flowers on it. We got back to Madrid at about 3:30 and had the rest of the afternoon free. During this free time we went back to the Royal Palace to see the inside. The royal family no longer lives there and it’s seldom used anymore for ceremonies. It was really amazing to see – every room was filled with luxury (the dining room had 15 chandeliers…). Some of it was really beautiful but kind of sickening to think of how much wealth was in that one building when so many people in the country at that time were suffering. After this we tried to make our way to another museum but ended up at the train station (which was really interesting and has a rainforest with turtles inside) and then got to the museum too late to get in.

We spent most of Saturday in Segovia, a city about an hour and a half north of Madrid. We had a guided tour of the city and saw the big historical sights like the Roman Aqueduct, a bunch of churches, and the Alcazar (castle). After the tour we went into the castle which just like a fairy tale – it was actually Walt Disney’s inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty castle. I thought Segovia was a really cute city but it was a lot smaller than Granada, and definitely smaller than Madrid. Once we got back to Madrid we actually made it to the other museum we had tried to go to the other day, Thyssen-Bornemisza. It had a lot of impressionist artwork, which was interesting to see, but we only had about an hour there so we didn’t see the whole thing.

On the last day we stopped in Toledo, a small city about an hour south of Madrid. It was an absolutely beautiful city, and an absolutely beautiful day – about 25 degrees Celsius. We had the whole day here free to see whatever we wanted. It was a really interesting city because the three different cultures/religions that coexisted in Spain before the reconquista were very obvious. We visited two of the really old synagogues in the Jewish quarter of town and then walked over to the Muslim quarter and went in the old mosque. There is also a big cathedral that we saw but didn’t go into and a castle, which we also didn’t make it to. The whole city was really pretty and had so much history. It was really interesting. We left about 4:30 or so and made it back to Granada at about 8:45, just in time for dinner.

Overall, it was a really fun and interesting trip. I really liked the city of Madrid. Even though it was a busy city it seemed a lot smaller than I thought it would be. The main city center was pretty condensed and we were able to walk to everywhere we wanted to go in the city.

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.

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.

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!

I only have two more days of my intensive Spanish class and our final exam on Tuesday. I’m not really looking forward to the tests but I am looking forward to the end of the intensive class because the next day we’re leaving on our first group trip to Sevilla. We’ll be in Sevilla from Wednesday morning until Thursday evening and after that we have some free time to travel before classes start on February 7th. During this time I’m going to go to Barcelona with three other girls from my group. I’m really excited to go to both cities and to see a little more of Spain.

On Saturday afternoon we went on a tour through the Alhambra. We started in the Generalife gardens which are just outside of the Alhambra’s walls. They were really beautiful and intricate, but I’ll have to go back in the spring when everything is in bloom. After walking through the gardens, we went into the Alhambra, which is comprised of many buildings. The main building where we spent most of our time was the Palacio Nazaríes, which is where the Islamic kings lived when the Alhambra was first built. The detail in this building was amazing with almost all the walls covered in carvings which used to be brightly colored but are now mostly faded. There were several plazas with gardens and fountains which were also breathtaking. One disappointing thing about this building, though, was that they were doing reconstruction in the Lion Courtyard, which is one of the most famous and photographed parts of the Alhambra, and none of the lion statues were there. Other than that, everything about the Alhambra was amazing. From up on the hill there was a really good view of the Albaicín, which is on the opposite hill and where we visited the weekend before. There was a lot of the Alhambra that we didn’t see, though, which was also disappointing. We walked by the Palace of Carlos V, which was built after the re-conquest of Spain and is very different than the other buildings there, but we didn’t go in. There were also several indications of the Christian’s rule in the other buildings, like the crest of Carlos being painted on the walls in the Palacio Nazaríes. The differences between the Christian and Islamic architectures are very interesting in the Alhambra and all throughout Granada. I’ll have to go back a few more times to see the parts we missed on our tour or to see it at night when it is all illuminated.

Over the weekend, several people from my group and I went out to some tapas bars, which are overly abundant in Granada. There are tapas bars throughout Spain, but Granada has a “free tapas” culture in which you receive a tapa when you order a drink. Tapas are kind of like appetizers and every bar has their own special tapa that they give out. This is a very big part of Granada’s culture and the locals go from bar to bar throughout the night sampling the different tapas and drinks at the different bars. On the weekends a lot of these bars are packed full so it’s sometimes hard to find one that we’ll all fit into.

Last night the visiting professor that came with our group, Harry, was showing a Spanish movie in his office which I went to. We ended up watching Pan’s Labyrinth which is a movie that takes place during the Spanish civil war and is about a young girl who moves with her mother into the house of her mother’s new husband who is a brutal army captain. The girl finds this labyrinth with mythical creatures who lead her through some wild adventures because they think she is their princess. It was kind of a strange movie because it is a mixture of a fantasy and a war movie and has some really graphical violence in certain spots, but overall I thought it was a good movie. I hope I can watch more Spanish movies because it is a really good way to practice listening and comprehension in another language.

On Tuesday we had to get up early and go to the school for our level test for classes. It included writing, grammar, and oral sections. It took about two hours but in the end I guess it went OK because I got placed in an advanced class. Most of our group is either in an intermediate or advanced class and I think there are one or two people who are in the superior group. Classes started on Wednesday morning. We all have 4 hours of intensive Spanish classes in the mornings and then an hour and a half of a class to prepare us for the DELE test that we’re taking at the end of the semester in the evening. I have a pretty good schedule because my intensive Spanish class is from 10:30 – 2:30 and there are some at the center that start at 8:30. After this class I walk back home for lunch, which most people in Spain eat sometime between 2:30 and 4:00. After lunch I have a little bit of free time (siesta time) before my DELE class, which is from 5:00 – 6:30. Although I’ve only had classes for 2 days, I like them so far. The intensive Spanish class is broken up into two sections that are two hours each. There are two different professors for the sections but we stay in the same room with the same people in the class. My professor for the first section is Emilia Nuñez and she’s a lot of fun. She’s very different than most of the professors I’ve had before because she’s very loud and yells, not because she’s mad, but just because that’s how a lot of Spaniards speak. My second professor’s name is Encarna and she’s also very nice, although a little quieter. I think they have both been teaching at the center for a long time and are very patient about explaining what they mean when someone in the class doesn’t understand something. In this class we are reviewing a lot of grammar and vocabulary and practicing our writing and speaking skills. My professor for my DELE class, Maria José, is also very nice and funny. In this class we’re going to be going over hints and strategies for the test and also doing a lot of practice tests. The DELE is like the TOEFL in the US and if you pass you get a certificate stating that you have a certain proficiency in Spanish as a second language. We’ll have this same schedule of classes for three weeks and then we have a short break and will start the regular semester of classes in the beginning of February.

So, I’m here in Spain and it is amazing. Everything has been going really well so far. I arrived in Madrid about a half hour early, and about 6 other students from my group who were on my flight and I made our way from the airport to the bus station and bought tickets for the 1:00 bus from Madrid to Granada. After about 30 hours of traveling from my home in Bellingham to my new home in Madrid, I was finally here. My roommate and I took a taxi from the bus station to our apartment in downtown Granada where we met our host mother, Carmen. Carmen is wonderful, probably the best we could hope for out of a host family. She is very nice and generous, always making sure we’re doing well and are having enough to eat. She lives on the 5th floor of an apartment building on a fairly big street in the city center. The center of the city is full of shops and restaurants on the first floor of buildings and 6 or 7 stories of apartments above them. The apartment is nice and the room that Cydney and I share is a pretty good size for the two of us. Carmen also has two sons, Nico who is 15 and Pablo who is 11, and a dog, a miniature pincher named Kim. We also met her boyfriend, Miguel, on the first night, and he is also very nice. He’s a lot like the typical Spaniard as it was described to me before I left: he speaks loudly with a lot of hand gestures and laughs loudly at his own jokes, but he’s very kind and easy to talk to. The first night we arrived we had dinner with Carmen and Miguel and, although I didn’t understand every word that they said, I understood most of the main ideas and was surprised by how much I could understand.

The next morning after breakfast, our host mother walked Cydney and I to our school, which is only about a 15 minute walk away from our house. We had an orientation there with our group, which has about 45 people in it. We met some of the people in the group, went over some of the basics of living and studying in Spain (living with a host family, customs of Spain, safety, etc.), and took a little tour of El Centro de Lenguas Modernas where we will be taking our classes this semester. After this our day was free, so after lunch back at home we walked around town a little to the supermarket and a few other places to get things that we needed. That night there was a big parade for Epiphany, which is a big holiday in Spain, which Carmen, Miguel, Cydney, and I went to. On January 6th, kids in Spain get presents from the 3 wise men, a lot like how kids in the United States get presents from Santa on Christmas day. The parade the night before is a big part of this celebration where people come out and watch the 3 wise men on floats along with big paper-maché animals and many people dressed up who throw candies out to the people watching. This is one of the big fiestas in Spain and it was a lot of fun to see, but to anyone who thinks that Spain is so much warmer than home, I’ll let you know that we were out there in our winter coats, gloves, and scarves because it was only about 40 degrees.

Today we had the whole day off to relax and settle in more. The one thing we had to do as homework, though, was take ourselves on a tour of Granada in small groups according to some directions we were given and a map. It was a little difficult at first, but we found our way to most of the destinations and now I feel like I have a better idea of where everything is in relation to our house and the school. Since it’s a Sunday (and also a holiday), everything was closed downtown but there were still a lot of people walking around and sitting in many of the beautiful plazas that Granada has. I’m excited to see more of the city, along with more of Spain. ¡Hasta luego!