Overseas Adventures 2009

I'm HOME! (...my last blog)

2009-12-19T13:31:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

Let's see...the last few days have been pretty crazy. Thursday I woke up around 7:45 to study a little for my Oral Exam in POE. The exam was at 12:30, and went decently well...not as well as I had hoped. I think I was just too excited that I couldn't think straight! I got back to Jardines and started to pack. It took about...3 hours. We had our last lunch with everyone, and that was sorta sad. After lunch I packed for a little more and then walked with Chryssi, Florian, Adam and Lauren to drop Marisa off at her bus. After that Merete and I walked around a bunch, taking pictures and getting gifts for people. I guess a lot of people had that idea, because we saw a TON of AIFS kids walking around getting presents for people! We had our last dinner at Jardines (hot dogs and eggs), and we said goodbye to some of the people. Marta kept saying "que pena", which basically means 'how sad'. She just sorta wandered out of the comedor, looking sad. It made me even more sad to be leaving! After dinner, Merete packed a little more and I waited for her before we left for the bar Odeon to meet all of the other AIFS people. A few of the kids, Armand, Colby and Max had been taking photos the whole trip of people not paying attention, etc. so they had put together a movie to show everyone. Unfortunately it didn't work when they tried to play it at the bar. We all then went to this disco called Metro, where a lot of the Spaniards met up with us. That was really fun, because it was like a big goodbye party. Everyone was there! We left around 3 to say goodbye at Neptuno to the first busload of AIFS kids leaving to catch their planes in Malaga. It was really sad. However, Colby had brought his computer so we got to see the video they had made! A few people had told me that they saw part of it, and that I make an appearance that was the best part of the movie, so I was a bit nervous as to what that included, haha. It ended up that the song they used at one part was a popular one that goes "Maria Mariaaaa", so when that song started there were like 6 pictures they had taken off of my Facebook and just thrown in there. Haha.

After that bus of kids left, we went back to shower and finish packing. Florian came over around 5am to Jardines to help us bring our stuff to Neptuno to our bus. Leaving with me was Merete, Breana, Will, and then Adam and Florian with us. It was super sad! After we finally made our way to Neptuno (those bags were HEAVY...my first one was 83 pounds before I evened them out!) we said our goodbyes. Inma was there to send us off. Florian looked like he was about to cry, and he reminded us about the first day he was there and how he remembered seeing Will and I in the basement when he was getting a tour of Jardines. He goes "you guys were my first friends here! It won't be the same!" Aww. He made me promise that when he goes to New York in July that I'll come visit. That would be so much fun!!!!!

Well, our bus left, and as we pulled away, Colby, Jacqui and Max mooned us. Wonderful. Haha. It was very sad driving out of Granada...

We got to Malaga and Paula was waiting for us. She had been there with the first group of kids. She helped us get through the check-on process, and then said her goodbyes and told us we were on our own! Yikes! There was a rather large group of us...about 20 on that plane, so that was fun, even though it was only about an hour and a half to Madrid. Once we go to Madrid, we ate some food, and then waited for our plane to Dallas/Fort Worth. That plane ride was 10 hours and 55 minutes, but it actually didn't feel that long at all. They showed the latest Harry Potter movie and Madagascar 2, so that helped. We had 2 meals, but I was so confused as to what time it was that I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be hungry, or what, haha. We landed in Texas around 5:30 and made our way through customs. The guy at customs was super nice, and all he asked me about was why I had dyed my hair...he liked the blonde. Weird. Anyway, we said our goodbyes to people who were leaving to other parts of the airport, and those who like in Texas. There were 6 of us (Taryn, Liz, Breana, Yuri, Will and I) on the Dallas to Minneapolis flight. We all hung out while we waited for our flight. It was weird being back in the states where everything was in English. Well, actually, Dallas was sorta a middle-ground for getting back into English, since there were a lot of people speaking Spanish there too. We all got smoothies...yumm...but I almost ordered in Spanish! I kept thinking prices were in Euros, and was like "Geez, a 4 Euro smoothie...that's like 6 dollars. Maybe I'll pass." Haha. Will said he by accident talked to one guy in a store in Spanish, but the guy just answered him in Spanish so it worked out. Haha.

Our plane was delayed by half an hour, so we ended up leaving there around 9:15pm. That flight seemed to take the longest since I was so excited. As we got into the Minneapolis area, I could see the snow on the ground! Yay!! We landed around 11:30 and then headed to the baggage claim. We got our HUGE bags and said our goodbyes. Will and I waited for my mom, and when she got there, we somehow managed to get all of our bags into our Camery! Wow!

Our traveling took 24 hours total, and I had been awake for over 50 hours. The last time I had gone to bed was after Granada 10 on Wednesday night. Haha.

It's weird to be home. I keep thinking in terms of things in Spain: Everything is still in Euros to me, the toilets flush funny here, and it's SUPER QUIET. I miss everyone that I met over there, but I'm definitely happy to be back home. It really is starting to feel like Christmas time now, with the snow and everything.

Well, I just want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read my blogs. It really means a lot that you guys could enjoy my experiences with me through my writing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I hope I get to tell y'all even more stories the next time I see you! Have a very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year! Thanks again!

Hasta pronto!

M :)

Guess what...

2009-12-17T13:40:00.001-08:00

I'M COMING HOME!

All packed and ready to go...at 5:45 am. We're all going out and not sleeping, so I'll already be on MN time. Wonderful :)

Profesor Florián

2009-12-15T22:42:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

I got up a little early this morning to study some more before my 12:30 Lit test. It is sooooooo much information to remember, but surprisingly, I think I actually memorized my 9 pages of notes. I got to the room a little early to get settled, and it seemed like everyone else was there, studying, as well. Cram session! Mariangeles handed out the tests, and I got started. I wrote an essay on literature in the 50s, and then another essay on literature in the 60s and 70s. Then, we had to analyze this one poem by Blas de Otero which we had done in class, so that was decently easy. Overall, I think it went well, except my hand hurt really bad from so much writing (I basically wrote everything twice because of the scratch paper I wrote on as well). Whew. At least that’s over. Now it’s on to Grammar studying.

Hopefully I get enough done before tonight because people are going out for Chinese food to celebrate Lewis’ last day here before he goes home for Christmas. So far I have about 3 pages of my study guide done and it’s only 3:00, so I think I’ll make it! This is my last big test, and then I just have my POE oral exam and the POE paper, which I already had Mariangeles read through. YAY!

LATER…

Well, we went out for Chinese food. I had been studying the whole day, so it was nice to go out. In total, there were about 17 of us in the little restaurant! A lot of Lewis’ friends from the University were there (including some of the girls from the other night at Florian’s). It was fun just hanging out with them.

After dinner, Florian came over to help Will with his paper, but ended up trying to tutor us in grammar. It was really funny, but very helpful. We ended up online, doing exercises on different websites. On one of them, (after Florian ‘approved’ the answers) we ended up getting 4 wrong. He was horrified. We went back through, and a few that I thought were wrong WERE wrong! HA! J Because of that, we decided to try one in English and have Florian fill it out. He learned a new word, “whose”, so I consider it a successful night. It was definitely interesting trying the English version of the exercises we do in grammar class!

I hope Sr. Florian’s help follows me to the test tomorrow! Merete and I plan on getting up around 6 to study some more. So…if nothing else, at least I’ll be awake for the test by 10:30…or falling asleep during it!

Tire su basura aquí.

2009-12-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 14, 2009

Today, as I mentioned, it DID snow. However, it wasn’t nearly enough for it to stick, it just looked like it rained a bit. I got up a little earlier than normal (around 7am) to go to school a bit early to study. I went down to breakfast earlier than normal as well, so I sat with some different people. I had my notebook out and was studying some of my notes, so the Spaniards I was sitting with asked me about my exam. They said it was mean that I would have a Spanish test at 8:30 in the morning. They said they’d hate it if they had an English test that early!

So, I took my Culture test, which I was a little nervous about. Pilar told us the format, and once again, it was a bit different. She said since it was a lot more information than the mid-term, that the questions would be shorter. I thought that made sense, and was expecting fill in the blank questions, or just short 2-sentence questions. It turned out it was a 6 page test with 6 questions. We were expected to write everything we knew about a few select topics that she chose. YIKES. I felt bad for the people who hadn’t gone in depth with their studying, because I even had trouble remembering some of the details! (My 15 page study guide was just enough!) I think it went okay in general, though it’s always an odd feeling after taking a big exam like that. At lunch, the Spaniards checked in with me about the test. Luckily I felt like I could say it went well!

I started to study for Literature after lunch. I went pretty well because I had most of the study guide done already. It’s just a LOT of information—from the literature Generation of 1914 to the 70s. Whew. Time for some hard core memorization!

Will and I went to Dunkin Coffee for a short break, but brought our study stuff along as well. While sitting there, we realized that some Spaniards are VERY messy. People just leave their trays on the tables (as we’ve also seen them do in places such as Burger King), even though the trash cans clearly say “throw your trash away here” (in Spanish). There was this one guy at Dunkin who was sitting at the table behind us. He was done with his tray and I watched him get up and walk toward the trash can. I thought for once that maybe he was going to throw his food away, but he stopped about 10 feet short at this table where a group of girls were just leaving. He asked them if they were leaving and when they said yes, he placed his tray down and walked back to his table. The girls didn’t think anything of it, but I was shocked. Why didn’t he just walk the extra 10 feet to throw it away, rather than just leave it for one of the poor workers to clean up! I almost felt obligated to go clean it up myself. It was a very odd situation.

Well, time for more studying. Wish me suerte with my Literature final. It’s gonna be tough!

Welcome, Minnesota. We've been expecting you.

2009-12-14T06:20:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 14, 2009

This just made my day:

Scarlett in the kitchen: “¡Elena! ¡Elena!”

Elena upstairs cleaning: “¿Si?”

Scarlett: “¡Hay nieve!”

I went rushing to the window, and sure enough, it’s SNOWING.

Florian (from the Canarias) later at lunch: “Geez, it’s cold outside. How cold do you think it is?”

Me: “Well, about 0, because it snowed.”

Florian: “It didn’t snow.”

Me: “Yes it did!”

Florian: “S*** I missed it!”

I hear MN got some snow as well. I also heard that it might be snowing on Friday, as we're trying to fly into the Twin Cities. Regardless, I guess I'll just have to send Florian a photo of snow when I get home. Oh, and Daryl too.

What'd you do today? Studied.

2009-12-14T01:35:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Today I did end up meeting Daryl’s parents. I felt bad I couldn’t go out to eat with them because I had so much studying to do, but studying gets me good grades, not eating. They came back to Jardines after they ate (at our Chinese place!) and so I met them there. Daryl actually brought me leftovers! Aww. They were super nice, and it looked like they were enjoying their time in Spain so far. I just hope it doesn’t snow tomorrow like it says it’s going to! Yikes! That would be an interesting Alhambra trip!

Well, as I said, I spent literally the whole day studying for Culture. That’s the exam for tomorrow. It’s about…50 pages full of info that I decided to make into my own study guide. It only ended up being a 15 page study guide. No pasa nada. My hand just hurts, and you know you’re in for a tough exam when the study guide uses up a whole pen. Oh well. It’s worth it in the end. It’s just hard to watch other people whose grades only come back at pass/fail. They’re all “come play futbol”, “let’s go out to tapas”, but I have to studyyyyy. It’s really an unfortunate way to spend my last week in Spain.

Will went out and grabbed 2 pizzas from the NEW Dominoes. They re-did the whole store, so we hadn’t been able to get food from there, but Will says it's nicer now! It was a 2 for 1 deal, so we both spent the rest of the evening with our study guides on top of our pizza boxes. Mmm.

I was over with Will and Adam, studying when Victor came to the door. He told us that he was leaving in the morning and came to say "farewell". It was sad...my first goodbye! He was really easy to talk to, so I enjoyed sitting with him at meals. I thanked him for his help, once again, with our Canarias project. He said we're always invited to visit. Mom? Dad? Let's go!

A crazy meal for a rather boring day

2009-12-13T16:32:00.001-08:00

Saturday, December 12, 2009

This morning was really funny. Everyone got up just before lunch (well, I had to get started on some homework so I was up a little before it). Merete and I walked downstairs and everyone was in their sweatpants and sweatshirts, chattering away, waiting for the comedor to open. We went in, and the first thing Elena says is “Alguien quiere cerveza?” Haha, I thought she was kidding because of how everyone looked, but she wasn’t! They had so much left over from last night that she was just going around and pouring people cerveza. Oh, Jardines. Then she came around with Coke and Fanta (I opted for Coke). We had our normal sopa, but then came the meal of the century. It was all of the leftovers from the party last night. Chips, potato salad, thin sliced pork with sauce, fried ham and fish, croquetas, cookies, apples, oranges, etc. It was awesome! (And I’m sure Scarlett liked that she didn’t have to cook…just microave!)

Then I did more homework…until about 11:30 pm. I did some more of my Literature study guide, and then started on my Grammar. I took a short break around 7:30 to go see all of the Christmas lights in the streets turn on, except they never did. That seemed normal though, because Spaniards are never on time! We waited until about 8:10 and then gave up. A lot of people were waiting around for them…oh well. Will and I wandered up to our Shwarma place to get one last one before we leave on Friday. It was soooooooooo good, as usual. I continued with my homework and then Will and I watched Good Luck Chuck, and then I went to bed. It was a rather thrilling day. I assume Sunday will be about the same.

Oh! Daryl’s parents are in town…I get to meet them tomorrow.

My last Friday in Spain...

2009-12-12T04:23:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 11, 2009

In the morning I headed over to the AIFS office to give Paula and Inma these little “goodie bags” that Mom had sent over to me as thank-yous. They included some candy from MN and a homemade bracelet by my mom! Inma wasn’t there, but I gave Paula hers and she LOVED it! Well, first of all she said she loves Nut Goodies…who woulda known. But, she also said green is her favorite color, so I guess that made the bracelet even more perfect for her! She put it on right away and said she was going to wear it to our goodbye dinner later that night. I left Inma’s for her, so she’ll get that on Monday!

After that, I did homework for about 4 hours. I started working on my Literature study guide and only got 1/3 of the way done. Ick. I guess that will be what I do tomorrow too.

Then, at 7 we left for Neptuno to meet all the AIFS people for our goodbye dinner. There were 3 little mini-busses that were there to take us. There was a LOT of traffic, but somehow our bus driver managed to not go below 30 even in the tiny streets of the Albyzin (where our Flamenco restaurant was). It was crazy…and a bit terrifying!

Dinner was…decent. All it really was were a bunch of plates of tapas. First it was jamon Serrano, then we got little tortilla espanolas, then we had some fried shrimp, calamari and fish, and then some pork. There was a dessert tapa too! At around 9:30 the Flamenco show started. There were 4 musicians on the stage, 2 singers, one flute player and one guitarist. Then there were 4 dancers who came out and each did their own sort of “showcase”. I really liked it…but I actually think the show we saw in Nerja was better. Regardless, some of them were very talented! And I liked having the live music, rather than recorded music! After they finished, we left, but a lot of people took pictures with the band, etc. It was too crowded for me, and I sorta just got shuffled out the door. Oh well. It was probably good I saved my camera battery anyway, because…

We all got dropped off at Neptuno, and people were saying “come to Babylon, come to the Chup”, etc. but I just decided to go back to Jardines. I heard that Jardines was having their annual party, but it seemed odd that they had planned it for the same day they knew all of the Americans would be gone. We were all a little upset with them. We got there, and EVERYONE was in the lobby (Eugenia, Scarlett, Elena, Fig, Julia, ALL the residencia kids…) and there was music blasting from someone’s room upstairs. It was ridiculous. Florian answered the door and was super excited to see all of us, but it seemed like no one else was. People started shuffling into the comedor and I saw there were plates and plates of food. All sorts of appetizers. I was still hungry from the lack of food at our dinner, so it all looked good, but the Spaniards gave us weird looks, and Elena and them disappeared and didn’t say anything. I felt like the kid who didn’t get invited to someone’s birthday party across the street. Everyone was there and you can see them all, but you couldn’t go over there. Marisa, Adam, Daryl and Chryssi left for the Chup to meet up with people, but Merete, Will and I just hung out in my room for a bit. I decided I was hungry, so I went downstairs to leave. I was caught by Scarlett, Eugenia and Elena who were all like “porque no?” and said that they wanted us to join in. We kinda said that we thought it was just for the other kids, and they were horrified. Scarlett said she made so much food that they would never be able to eat it, haha. So, I kinda felt stupid not knowing anything about the party in the first place, but they really seemed to want us there, so the three of us joined in. It was totally fine by then, because a lot of the kids already had wine and beer and were up for chatting with whomever. As soon as I walked in, Elena handed me a glass with some yummy sparkling wine. Then, Florian made me a large plate of food (that I never finished). It was a LOT of fun. We literally spent about 3 hours just taking pictures with everyone, singing with the songs, and trying to decide what to do next. The 5 Jardines ladies were all dressed up. Well, everyone was really dressed up, but it was fun seeing Scarlett and Elena in their normal clothes for once! I gave the 5 Jardines ladies their little goodie bags of MN goodies (no bracelets though...), and they were SO happy. They couldn’t stop smiling, and Elena just started munching away on some of the chocolate I had added in.

There were some Jardines “alumni” who came over for the party. There were about 4 kids who had stayed here last year that aren’t here this year who know just about everyone. It was funny to see them come back. Then, Scarlett and Elena hosted the “Jadines royalty” election. I guess everyone voted for a king (rey), queen (reina) and orange (naranja…the person they like the most). Eloy (a boy) got a lot of votes for reina, because Florian and friends decided he needed to be treated like a queen (haha, they had already started treating him like one yesterday...bringing him his food, bowing to him, running him through "crowds" like they were his secret service, etc.)…but at the end, Isaac and Maria Ramos won. I’m pretty sure they’re sort of a “thing”, haha. Technically I got a ton of votes, because no on wrote down which Maria they were voting for. Haha, sweeeeeeet. Elena got voted the naranja even though it was a close match between her and Scarlett. I think some of the boys have third-grade-esque crushes on her.

As I said, we went around and talked with everyone, and took pictures with everyone. Elena told me she wants the one of us, so I’ll have to email that to her at some point. Scarlett liked hers too, and continued on to tell me that I look like Bella from Twilight (but Will doesn’t look like Edward…harsh). Haha, crazy lady. I have a lot of funny pictures. A LOT.

Then, around 2am, Daryl, Chryssi, Marisa, Adam and some other AIFS people came to Jardines. They were like “WHAT is going on” haha. Everyone was back out in the lobby dancing to ridiculously loud music. Armand showed up, and he hadn’t ever been to the residencia before, and we had to try really hard to convince him that this WASN’T how it was every weekend, haha. They left after a bit, but so did all of us. We walked up to El Camborio, up in the Albyzin…right next to our restaurant! Geez, what a long walk! Let’s see…it was me, Will, Florian, Merete, Marisa, Adam, Luna, Esteno, Ricky, reina Eloy, and Gerardo. Florian knew the girl who as working the tickets (go figure), so we got a discounted price. WOO! Anyway, Camborio was a lot of fun, even though we got back reeeeeeeeally late and my throat hurts from all the smoke in there! The walk home was a bit painful too, because the flats I was wearing didn’t quite agree with my feet during the 4 mile walk (there and back). Whew.

Classes, ceremonies and cantantes

2009-12-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December, 10, 2009

LAST DAY OF CLASSES! YAY! I really like Mariangeles, so I was a little more sad to be done with POE and Literature than I was to be done with my classes yesterday. However, I won’t miss sitting through 4 hours of her talking on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I mean, I figure I understand about 80-85% of what she says, but it’s just the LENGTH of the classes that gets to me! Anyway, we reviewed a bit for the finals, and then after class I asked her to take a picture with me. She was so embarrassed that she was “SO” much shorter than me. Even though she’s not really. Then, at around 2:45 in the middle of the CLM courtyard, they had the trophy presentation ceremony for the intramural teams of basketball, volleyball and soccer. AIFS almost got the sweep, but ended up as “subcampeons” for volleyball. Oh well, they still got a trophy! Inma was there with her little video camera, getting all of us yelling ridiculously. I got some photos on my camera too! The soccer trophy was the biggest of them all, and some people said they wanted to bring it to botellón tonight or to our goodbye dinner tomorrow night to drink out of it, haha. We also got t-shirts…hunter orange t-shirts. Very classy, CLM. I said we should all wear them the day we leave for home, so we can all get off the bus at the Malaga airport and look like some funny tour group…just in case we already don’t stand out enough! Haha, it was a fun little ceremony!

Oh! On my way TO school, I found my first fire hydrant. I had been wondering about that, since I hadn’t seen one yet…and I started wondering in general what they do about fires and stuff considering I still have yet to find a fire alarm in my room… Anyway, the fire hydrant is actually just this red rectangle on the ground in the middle of the street that says “BOMBEROS” (firefighters). No wonder dogs just pee in the street! All they’re trying to do is pee on the fire hydrants! J

On the way home from the ceremony, Will and I decided that since we weren’t going to make it back to Jardines in time for lunch, that we would go out…to celebrate. We chose Burger King! I mean, it’s literally RIGHT on our way home, so it worked out. We got their “King Ahora” meal which is 3 Euros for a chicken sandwich, fries and a pop. Yum!

At dinner, Florian told us that the movie the Spaniards had wanted to go see with us was only showing really late, so he decided to have a party at his flat instead. I figured it’s one of the last days to hang out with people, since I’ll be stuck in my room studying the rest of the weekend and next week, so I said I’d go. Marisa, Chryssi, Adam and I went from Jardines, and Lauren and Erika met us there too. Victor, Lewis and Florian live in the flat, so obviously they were there. Florian also invited some girls from his class (he’s such a ladies man), so those 5 were fun to meet. At first they didn’t think we knew much Spanish, but then picked up on it when we laughed at things they said. We shared funny Youtube videos with them, which was really funny to hear what they thought about them. Apparently one of them is from the Ukraine, one is Latvian, and one was from Sevilla, etc. They were from all over! They thought it was really cool when we told them where we were from. I said “Minnesota” and Alicia goes “OOOH! Cerca de Canadá, ¿no? Canadá es muy, muy bonita!” Haha, so at least she knew where Minnesota was…I was impressed! After a while at Florians, we went to Hannigans for some Karaoke (but stopped for a Shwarma on the way). It was super crowded, and by the time we got there they were almost done with the songs for the night (well, it WAS like…2:30), but Florian charmed his way into getting us a song to sing. What did he choose? White Christmas. Haha. All of us went up there when it was our turn…it was pretty funny because the Spaniards knew the song better than us! Haha. I’m sure those photos will be fun to see! Some German kids were singing a German song right before us, and before that there were a bunch of Spaniards singing Lady Gaga. It was just a fun mix of people.

¿Quién es Luis Rosales?

2009-12-10T07:25:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

AHH! No one knows anything about Luis Rosales! I have to interview at least 3 people, and everyone I have asked so far doesn’t know anything about him! Mariangeles was sure people would know something about him because he’s from Granada…I guess it’s like asking someone in MN to talk about Charles Shultz. Anyway, I asked Florian, Victor, this other kid at dinner (whoops, forgot his name…Lloyd? No…that’s not Spanish), Esteno and even Elena. Victor goes “the first time I heard about him was just now.” Elena told me to go online and look at peoples’ thoughts on him and then put her name to one of those thoughts. Uh oh, I might have to!

Anyway, today was rather boring because it was just a lot of review in class. Pilar was back finally, so she just went over everything for the final. It’s a LOT of material! Then, in grammar, we finished up the Subjunctive verb tense and did this funny exercise where we had to go around and ask people if they knew someone who…can do/has something weird with them. We found out a lot of weird stuff. For example, we talked for a long time about the pregnant man, and then about this girl who has 2 different colored eyes. Then Will talked about color-blindness, and then Emmy told us that her brother (who we all met at Thanksgiving dinner) has 2 left feet and 2 right hands. No wonder he wouldn’t take his jacket off at the bar! Lola didn’t believe her, haha. Then we got into an interesting conversation about sex changes, because apparently it’s free here in Andalucía. Lola said that everyone here has to pay for dental work, but if you want a sex change it’s free! Mom…Dad…there’s something I need to tell you. Just kidding, the name “Mario” doesn’t suite me quite right.

I worked for a long time on my project today (even though I don’t have my interviews done yet!). I sent it to Mariangeles, so hopefully she gets a chance to read through what I have so far before tomorrow! I was surprised by how much I could actually write—without help from Google translate! Here’s a clip from it: Luis Rosales Camacho nació en Granada el 31 de mayo de 1910. Fue un ensayista y poeta español de la generación de 1936. En 1930 se traslada a Madrid para estudiar Filosofía y Letras, y finalmente obtuvo el doctorado de los dos a la Universidad de Madrid. Inició su actividad literaria con una revista dirigida por Pablo Neruda y José Bergamín, se llama Cruz y Raya. Rosales nació en Granada, pero eso no es todo lo que lo ataron a la ciudad. También había mucha familia y buenos amigos de aquí. Fue buen amigo de Federico García Lorca, que se ha refugiado en su casa de Granada durante la Guerra Civil. Lamentablemente fue finalmente ha detenido allí en agosto de 1936. Blah, blah blah.

Oh, then I took a break from my homework to make this masterpiece that all you Twilighters will enjoy: http://www.faceinhole.com/show.asp?id=323b37d9c9c39125d

Haha, ‘ta luego!

'Cause you're hot then you're cold...

2009-12-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Will and I are some of just a few people who are still at Jardines…which I guess it’s good for the people who aren’t here because there still isn’t hot water! Ugh! They said that a moto hit our hot water…which I don't quite believe... No one’s trying to fix anything, and she said it’ll be back on tomorrow morning. How convenient.

Anyway, Merete got home pretty early this morning from Barcelona. I got up and began on my final project for POE. I have to choose a famous Granadian and find their plaza or street, etc. that they have named after them and do a short paper about them. I chose to do Luis Rosales, but had a rather hard time finding my little plaza! I Google-earthed it, but it still was hard to find. Will chose to do Manuel de Falla, who was a composer. He has this huge orchestra hall named after him, conveniently placed next to the Alhambra. So, we hiked up there today…in t-shirts and tank tops! It really felt like fall(a…haha), with all of the tress with leaves falling and such.

We wandered over to Dunkin Coffee for breakfast/lunch. After that we walked around a bit more down towards Neptuno Mall. They have an ice skating rink outside of the mall…it’s kinda funny just to go watch everyone because it literally seems like almost all of them have never seen an ice rink before. I kinda wanted to join in and help hold some of them up. It looked painful falling that much! Haha. They all looked like they were having fun anyways! Hopefully I can make it over there sometime this week…before finals and everything starts! Yikes! Only a little over a week left!

People started arriving back at Jardines once we went back to start on our papers. I was a little upset when we watched older Julia walk into the basement room (where the presumed hot water valve is) and then walk back out. I’m still waiting for my warm water! It’s freezinggggggg!

Once almost everyone got back, we went out for Chinese food, since the staff here is still on “break” (meaning they don’t cook/clean/do laundry over holidays or the days that follow). It was quite yummy.

Well, time for a sink-bath. Yay…

Palm Christmas trees?!

2009-12-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 4, 2009, Saturday, December 5, 2009, Sunday, December 6, 2009, Monday, December 7, 2009

Well, like I said, we left in the morning on Friday for Marbella. The bus ride wasn’t that bad, as it sometimes is on the way to Nerja. We just found our little hostal and got settled before we wandered around. It was a very pretty town, and my favorite part was just walking around and looking at the cute little buildings on the side streets. It feels a lot bigger than Nerja! Unfortunately, my camera died basically as soon as we arrived. I thought I had packed my charger, but it turns out I grabbed my wrong “electronics” bag. Well, at least I had my flashdrive incase I needed to transfer some files, haha.

It wasn’t warm enough to swim either of the days we were there, but that was okay. I hadn’t really planned on it anyway. It was obviously “off-season”, because a lot of the tiendas, and even some of the hotels near the beach were closed until around March. Regardless, there were still some touristy stores open, and we found a nice pizzeria and a Mercado to get some food.

Sunday we made our way from Marbella to Nerja. The guy at the hostal laughed when he saw us there again (for the 3^rd time), but was very happy to have us back and offered us coffee with him right away. We got settled in, and tried to make it over to see the donkeys/pigs/horses again before they closed at 2, but we were just a bit too late. Oh well…maybe next time, haha. We headed over to the Balcon, where they were setting up Christmas lights all over. It was weird to see Christmas lights on palm trees…that was a first for me! Then we walked over towards Playa Burriana for a stroll along the beach during the sunset. It was kinda chilly, but nothing like the -6 or so I heard they were having in Minnesota! I couldn’t believe it was December and I was just in my sweatshirt! Anyway, after our walk along the beach, we hit up our regular Indian place for dinner. They were funny when they saw us again, too. Will walked in first and the woman goes “Welcome back, Will!” Haha, the people in the restaurant probably thought we used to work there or something. The food was wonderful as always, and they even threw in some extra Chicken Pakora for us! Yay! After dinner we went back to see the Christmas lights. It was SO cool! The whole Balcon was lit up, and there were TONS of people. I didn’t even know that many people were in Nerja, since it’s off-season! It was fun to watch all of the families with their little kids. It made me miss home though…I want a Christmas tree!

The next morning we got up and wandered around some more, heading up more towards the mountains. We considered going to the small town of Frigiliana before out 7:15 bus home, but decided against it, considering the river still wasn’t even visible (they dam it up, and I still have yet to see it un-dammed…if that’s a word).

Well, we caught our bus home to Jardines. It really is starting to feel like a second home! Except for the fact that they had turned off the hot water…I don’t think my mom has ever done that to me! That was an unfortunate end to the weekend, but it was still a lot of fun and I’m glad we went!

The empty garden

2009-12-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Well, Merete left this morning for Barcelona. Adam, Marisa, Daryl and their group left at 2:30, and Chryssi is leaving tomorrow morning at 5am. Jilian is leaving sometime in the morning too. I’m pretty sure Mirella’s going somewhere…so it seems like it’s really empty here at Jardines!

It seems as though that trend followed us to class today, because in POE there were only about 7 of us, and in Literature there were literally about 12 out of the 30 or so. It was nice and relaxed, but we still got stuff done! Mariangeles definitely isn’t a slacker! We read this theater piece in Literature, and I volunteered for reading it. I ended up being the guy who is in love with this other girl, but whatever. It was funny…and I got my participation points.

Will and I finally figured out what to do over the break…finally. The hostal we’ve stayed at in Nerja has a sister hostal in Marbella, another town we wanted to visit. They said that if you book both they’ll take a 10% discount, so we decided to stay 2 nights in Marbella and 1 in Nerja. Fun, fun! So we leave in the morning on a bus.

At dinner, we had an interesting conversation with Marta and Florian. They were trying to come up with interesting English words that they think are funny…like “broad”, so we had to tell them certain things they can and can’t say. They told us some in return. (Like the difference between ‘de puta madre’ and ‘te puta madre’…)

Time to get some sleep before Marbella tomorrow!

A whole mezcla of things

2009-12-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Pilar was sick again, and we had Amelia as the sub for the second time. Sadly, a lot of people just left when they saw it was her again. Since we had already finished the book, we just sorta reviewed some stuff about flamenco, and then watched this documentary by Carlos Saura about flamenco (one of the filmmakers I wrote about in my Powerpoint). It was really cool! It really made me want to go buy some traditional music like that!

Today in Grammar, Lola started trying to tell us about something that happened on the plane when she was flying to the US. Since she learned “British English”, so she was not used to the pronunciation. I guess the stewardess asked her if she wanted “water”, and she didn’t understand at ALL. She was used to the British “wah-tuhr”. Well, you get the point. Anyway, she picked up on it finally, and when she was in the states, she was in Texas and her friend who TEACHES English in Spain couldn’t understand a THING. She was proud of herself for understanding the southern accent, haha and related it to us being able to understand her and her fellow Andalucians. She said we’re ready for ANYTHING now…except Chinese (I beg to differ! J).

On the way home from class Will and I stopped at the AIFS office to fill out their evaluation form. There was a form for Jardines and one for AIFS. I think I was pretty nice, except I said older Julia (Fig) can be difficult to get along with considering how controlling she is over everything. That seemed legitimate.

On the way back to Jardines Will goes “we should send our Culture project to Pilar.” And right as he says Pilar, I look up and Pilar’s staring at us, walking towards us! Que Misterioso! She said she had gone to the doctor to get tested for Gripe A (Swine flu), and told us about how she was really sad she couldn’t teach about Gitanos and Flamenco because they’re her favorite topics! That’s too bad…she really did seem sick. Will says “well, at least we got our participation points for today”. Haha, true. Speaking of Gripe A, Victor is over his case of it, finally after over a week. He walked in to lunch today and got a round of applause, haha.

Tonight we went to this bar for Catherine’s birthday. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of people were there, so that was nice for her. It was really random though, because they were playing Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam on 4 of their TVs. Of course, people who have friended me on Facebook have slowly begun to figure out about the “circus thing” that I do, so I spent the evening trying to get out of answering 5 billion questions about it. I left sorta early because I have class early in the morning, but they were on their way to the disco called Vogue for the Michael Jackson themed party. Some people even had white gloves and sparkly shirts! Haha.

Gracias, Father Dease

2009-12-02T04:47:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

HAPPY 20^th BIRTHDAY, MERETE!

Today in POE we talked about tattoos and piercings. That was interesting. And then in Literature we finished up a lot about the poets and writers of the 40s and 50s in Spain. Only 2 more classes of each of those! AHH!

After class I worked for about 5 hours on my Culture project—a Powerpoint on Spanish cinema. I think it turned out pretty good! At 8, Will, Adam and I went and met Tim Dohmen at his hotel. Briana and Catherine were there too. Horray for St. Thomas! We decided to go to this Indian restaurant, because Tim really had no idea what would be a good place to just sit and be able to talk. He said he didn’t go much for the “traditional Spanish” food they had at lunch…so he was glad we chose the Indian place! He studied abroad for a while in England, so he was knowledgeable in the different Indian foods! I got this curry that had pineapple and chicken in it. It was really good! We all laughed about how Father Dease had just bought us 2 bottles of wine and a 100 Euro meal. Bueno.

Anyway, it was really interesting talking to him, and hearing his perspective. He said the same about us. We basically told him that we would all definitely recommend AIFS to anyone who was interested in Spain/Granada. The side trips are very fun and since they’re already planned for you, it’s fun to just be able to relax too! He told us about how the people on the board that is with him here in Granada right now come from all different aspects: some teachers, some advisors like him, and some heads of universities, etc. They sat in on some classes, and while some of the teachers were a little more picky about how they rated the classes, he said he thought they were wonderful (which I guess Paula liked to hear since she told us later that she like him and trusted his opinion most of all of the people on the board). He leaves to go see the AIFS Salamanca campus on Wednesday morning, and then is off to Poland or something for the weekend. Then he goes back for an unofficial visit to some UST kids in Barcelona and Madrid. Sounds like a pretty fun job!

Well, Catherine, Briana and I left dinner after about an hour and a half. Tim knew it was someone’s birthday and that we sorta had plans, but I felt bad leaving him and they boys there! We literally ran to the movie theater to meet Merete, Mirella, Chryssi, Kara and Marisa. Yay for Luna Nueva again! I was sad I missed out on tapas and crepes that they had while we were at the Indian restaurant…but free food is totally worth it! (Sorry Merete!) Will said that he, Tim and Adam had fun talking some more once we had left for the movie. At first at the movie it was Kara, Catherine, Briana and I, but then Catherine and Briana went to the bathroom before we went into the theater. Kara and I got seats, and when I went out to get popcorn, I ran into Merete, Chryssi, Marisa and Mirella. Marisa and Chryssi went to the bathroom, but Merete and Mirella came back into the theater with me. Marisa and Chryssi showed up just a bit later, and I was super confused as to where Catherine and Briana were...they still hadn't shown up in our theater! It turns out they had gone into the wrong theater, and it was already half over. Neither of them really knew the story that well, so they didn't realize it until the movie was over after only an hour! They said they just hadn't looked at their tickets to check the theater! Haha.

Overall it was a pretty fun day! …If it only hadn’t been for that Powerpoint I worked so long on!

sweep, sweep, sweep, scrub, scrub, scrub

2009-11-30T11:00:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 30, 2009

Well, today was obviously they day the study abroad advisors were coming to visit Jardines. The plants were trimmed, our rooms cleaned double, and we even have a Christmas tree and decorations in the lobby! WHOA. I met Tim Dohmen at school today, between classes. Paula introduced us as I walked to Grammar. I’m pretty sure I’ve met with him once or twice, but whatever. He said that we can pick wherever we want to go tomorrow for dinner (and it can even be expensive, since it’s on Father Dease’s tab)! Haha. Hmm…well I’d like to go to the Indian restaurant in Nerja—is that too much to ask? J

We had a sub today in Culture. It was the same sub I had had in POE, so I think she recognized me. People in the class were being so stupid—I felt like I was back in grade school! They were trying to tell her we were doing something different than we were supposed to. I had talked with her before class for a little and I think she just stuck with what I told her. Ugh. People can be annoying! Well, regardless, we finished our book, so I don’t know what we’re gonna do for the last 2 days in that class! YIKES! Only 2 more days of Monday-Wednesday classes! Grammar was the same old, same old…I’ll be glad to be done with that class!

Once I got back to Jardines, the ladies were cleaning even MORE. It was ridiculous! Fig was upstairs frantically doing laundry (thank goodness!), Julia was scrubbing the marble floors, and Scarlett was making lunch. I was half convinced they were gonna stay here! When the group finally arrived, I had been on the other side of the residence giving Fig some more laundry to do and had to walk past them. Paula goes “well, there’s one of our students, probably going to clean her room…haha.” Funny, because I actually DID. Fig was a little scary about making sure we did… Anyway, I heard them walking around, but they never made it into my room. I think they liked it…

Lunch was unfortunate. I thought that because we had those people stop by that maybe we’d have something good. I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t say for lunch because we literally got 2 appetizers. It was this salad that we sometimes get before the main course, plus this other stew that we sometimes get for a starter. I was confused. Regardless, it was pretty tasty…just not that filling. Maybe a Shawarma is in the works for this evening if dinner isn’t up to par either.

I started working on a video of all of my photos and video clips that I have so far. Well, the ones that are on THIS computer…and I’m really hoping to get the other ones off of my old one! As of right now, it’s running at about 1 hour and 35 minutes. Maybe I could afford to lose those other photos! Haha. I just thought this would be a good way to show people what I did. I’ll put in little titles and captions where necessary, so it’ll be like you all were right there with me! (Except for that hanging camel-head photo. You really had to be there to get the real feel for that.)

Well, I’m off to finish up some homework and work some more on the video!

Sorry, tortilla.

2009-11-30T08:17:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 29, 2009

I got to sleep in a bit, which was nice. Since it was almost lunch time by the time I had gotten ready, Will and I went to our favorite Sunday Chinese food place, just off of Plaza Gracia. I got my normal pan Chino, pollo con salsa curry, helado limon but this time also tried their arroz frito (fried rice). It was preeeeeetty good, and I’m pretty sure Will ended up eating more of it than I did! After that we settled down to do some homework. Yippee...

Later in the evening we were wandering around trying to find some cheap snacks for dinner, but since it was a Sunday evening, most places were already closed. We ran into Sarah on our way home in defeat and she told us she was meeting some people for Indian food. We took her invitation to tag along. It ended up being Will and a bunch of girls, haha, though I’m sure he didn’t mind. It was Will, me, Liz, Sarah, Daryl, Debbie and Mirella. They had just come from a bar where they were watching the Madrid-Barcelona game. I guess the fans were getting pretty rowdy!

Will and I split some rice and tried their Chicken Tikka Masala. It definitively wasn’t nearly as good as the place in Nerja (or Anupma’s!) but it hit the spot! The serving bowls were so cute—they were basically mini woks, set on thick wood paddles. What a creative idea! They also had really good music, a lot of which sounded almost Cirque-y! Apparently Sarah used to do some sort of Indian dance, because she kept going “OH! I USED TO DANCE TO THIS SONG!” Then she proceeded to talk a tiny bit with the waiter in Hindi! This was all after she first spat out “Thanks! I mean, shokran! Wait…gracias!” I guess that’s proof our minds really are going for a spin over here!

Merete and I cleaned up the room a bit because the board of study abroad advisors is coming to visit Jardines tomorrow. WOW. I have not seen Fig, Julia and Eugenia clean that much, EVER. Well, I guess it’s good for us!

Sierra NevadAHHHHH!

2009-11-29T08:31:00.000-08:00

Saturday, November 28, 2009

3 months and counting!

Today was the trip to the Sierra Nevadas. A lot of people still weren’t feeling very good, so it was only Mirella, Daryl and I who went from Jardines. Total, there were about 25 kids of the 54 in AIFS that went. Paula went with us, which was fun to get to talk to her. She was working on the Summer AIFS Granada guide for online, so she was asking us about things like how much Shwarmas cost, entrances to Discos, books, etc. I assume she’s trying to get that ready before the study abroad advisors come on Sunday! This group includes Tim, from St. Thomas. He emailed all of us St. Thomas-ians here in Granada and offered to take us out to dinner on Tuesday. Yippee! Free food on St. Thomas!

Anyway, the Sierra Nevada trip included an hour ride through windy mountains. I guess it was a good thing that some of the people who weren’t feeling so great didn’t go. I even started to feel a bit woozy. Well, we made it to the small ski town, which is just outside of Monachil. The actual ski season doesn’t start until next week—the long weekend, so nothing was really open. Actually, there wasn’t even any snow! Paula said she hadn’t seen it that bare since 1994, the year she got married. They were just starting to make snow further up the ski runs, but I’m guessing they might have to postpone opening day if it’s still like that next weekend! That didn’t really matter. I wasn’t really planning on going skiing anyway. I just wanted to see what the mountains were like. A group of us (Jasmine, Daryl, Erika, Kara, Lauren, Paula and I) sorta walked around together for the whole time. We found these fun Alpine Slide-type things, which were a ton of fun! They weren’t exactly like the ones in Lutsen, because they were more rollercoaster-esque. They were the same cart things but attached to a rollercoaster track! Lauren didn’t want to go, so I had to convince Paula to ride with me, haha. Daryl and Jasmine were in the front cart, and then Kara and Erika, and then Paula and I in the back. Paula made me drive because she didn’t trust herself. Great. The guy at the station was trying to talk to us in very broken English, and we basically responded in Spanish. Then Paula gets up there and goes (in Spanish) “you know they all are Spanish, right?” Haha, the look on his face. We all started laughing and he caught on. Oh, Paula. Always making things awkward. Anyway, we got our carts going, and were taken up the hill on a tow-rope thing. Since everyone else was in front of us, we got to watch them head down the hill before us. That was pretty funny. Then it was mine and Paula’s turn. The signs said “despacio” (slow), but she goes “let it rip, girl”, so we go flying down the track. She starts screaming, and once we get to the bottom, everyone’s ready with their cameras, haha. She tried to jump out of the cart without unbuckling, and since it was automated, the cart kept going with her in it. Luckily I got her unbuckled before she went around for a second time, but that was pretty funny. I’m sure someone got a picture of it! After that, we went to see if the ice rink was open. It wasn’t even frozen yet, so we went to one of the few cafes that was open and sat down for some hot chocolate. It was fun just hearing about other AIFS groups Paula has been with (apparently ours is small with only 54 kids, they usually have 90!) and other details I wouldn’t have known otherwise about Spain and the AIFS programs. We ate our bocadillos there, and then went on a walk to see the view down the mountain. It was beautiful! However, it was super cold too! After a while we went back to the bus. A lot of other people had tried to hike up part of the mountain, but they said it wasn’t very interesting. Oh well! I had fun on the alpine slides and stuff, anyway! The town was really cute and fun to walk around in!

Once back at Jardines, I just worked on some homework and looked up some possible things to do next weekend for the long weekend (we don’t have class Monday or Tuesday). I think I either want to go to the town of Ronda, which is a little past Malaga, or I want to hostel-hop along the Costa del Sol. Either would be a fun way to spend the weekend!

my make-shift family

2009-11-27T15:09:00.000-08:00

Friday, November, 27, 2009

Dinner last night was VERY good. I wasn’t nearly as good as food from back home, but who can blame them for not knowing how to make stuffing. We had about 5 courses: bruchetta stuff, soup, main course, dessert, coffee, etc. All of it was pretty tasty! I really enjoyed the blueberry sauce they had for the turkey! The ‘pumpkin pie’ wasn’t really pumpkin pie. It was more like pumpkin flan—a consistency I just couldn’t handle. Well all each had about 5 glasses in front of us: water, white wine, red wine, champagne and a Coke/Fanta. It was funny to watch people decide which glass to drink from. We all sat at one big table, which reminded me of Hogwarts (even though the obviously don’t celebrate Thanksgiving there because it’s England, haha). I chose a spot at the far end so I could get some good pictures of the whole group. Once we all sat down, I then passed my camera down the row and said “take a picture and pass it down”. I think that was the most brilliant idea I’ve had yet, haha. And now I have some very interesting photos that I never would have gotten otherwise! A few other cameras started coming around the table, so I guess other people thought it was a good idea as well. We had a few people make toasts and Ashley sang “I’ll be Home for Christmas” (because we will be)! It was a really fun night—especially seeing everyone dressed up all fancy!

After dinner, we all went out for a bit. We ended up at a karaoke bar, and this other bar called Babylon. Emmy brought her 2 brothers along with her, so that was pretty funny to see them in the middle of the Spaniard’s dance circles every once in a while. Some people had to run home to change shoes, since heels weren’t the best choice for all the walking we were doing. Good thing I packed my flats!

All in all it was a wonderful Thanksgiving, even though I really did miss being with family. I guess, like Paula said, the AIFS group has turned into my make-shift family. Aww.

Anyway, today was a very laid back day. It was the first time in a long time that I actually had the chance to sleep in! We’re always on trips and such and the days are always planned out to start very early. I was happy to wake up in time for lunch J After that, we walked around a bit, enjoying the weather. In the evening, we went to see La Cuenta de Navidad (A Christmas Carol). It said it was for all ages, but I definitely heard some kids crying. I was even terrified! I didn’t know Disney animated movies could be that scary…granted the sound was just super loud as well, so it made it even worse! Overall, it was a very good movie. The detail of the animation was amazing. I had thought it was real people until we actually got into the theater. The posters and such look so realistic!

Time for hot chocolate and some more Monk episodes! I hope we can take over the basement again! Crazy Spaniards and their sneaky tactics of stealing the basement.

¡Feliz día de acción de gracias!

2009-11-26T10:58:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Well there’s not much to say. It’s a month until Christmas! And…classes were pretty boring. We learned about the Gypsies in culture class, which was sorta fun because we watched a movie. I plan on going to one of their markets our professor told us about. I guess there are 2 main ones in Granada, neither of which are very far away from Jardines. I have no idea what I’d buy (I don’t really need any spices or woven baskets), but I’m sure it would still just be fun to look!

I wish I was back in Morocco! Everyone’s really sick, so it’s kinda quiet around Jardines. I spent most of the day doing homework and just trying to blog about everything. It’s hard to remember everything that happened!

In the evening, we had chicken nuggets for dinner! Will ate almost the whole plate at our table, which was ok considering Daryl and Merete were both sick and eating tortillas, and I just wasn’t very hungry. Still, that doesn’t top the 21 (!) he ate on Daryl’s birthday last time we had them, haha.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

¡Feliz día de acción de gracias!

Tonight we’re going to the nicest restaurant in Granada for a Thanksgiving dinner. It won’t be nearly as nice as having Mom’s food, but it’ll be close (plus I hear they’re having tofurkey anyway…). We get sweet potatoes, turkey and, of course, pumpkin pie! I really hope they have good recipes, haha.

Today in class, Mariangeles felt bad we had to be there, since we’re so used to not having class Thanksgiving day…but that didn’t change anything. Work, work, work. However, almost half of both of my classes were gone anyway. “Traveling”.

After class Will and I walked around a bit to try and work up an appetite. We didn’t make it far…only to Dunkin Coffee before Will decided he wanted something to snack on. And by snack on, he meant buy a box of 6. Oh well, no complaints.

We went back to Jardines and I streamed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was awesome! I didn’t watch the whole thing because Ill wanted me to cut his hair. We’re supposed to dress up really fancy for the dinner tonight, so he thought it would be nice to have a clean-cut hair cut for the evening. I think it looks good! Now I’m all dressed and ready to go. Yippee! I feel bad for everyone who is still sick…maybe they can bring home a plate of food and freeze it until they feel better!

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Mrs. Jacob Black

2009-11-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I had class at 10:30, so I didn’t have to get up SUPER early. Though I did spend about 2 hours working on a project for Literature after we got back to Jardines the night before. It was a group presentation on a poet/writer named Damaso Alonso. Pretty interesting guy.

A lot of people from AIFS weren’t in class because they had trouble with the food from Morocco. I’m really glad I took the stomach protector!

After school I just did some homework and actually had the chance to watch a little TV. I managed to get downstairs before the Spaniards infiltrated. I went back to my Disney Channel and then watched some of this game show called Password (I think we have it in the states to) that is basically Catch Phrase. Then I watched some Will and Grace, which was funny in Spanish because they talk SO fast. I sometimes even have trouble understanding them in English!

That evening Will and I went to go see Luna Nueva (New Moon). It was in Spanish (obviously), but I understood almost all of it! It was sooooo good, I might have to go again! Merete wants to go for her birthday (December 1), so maybe I’ll go with her then!

رحلتي الى المغرب

2009-11-25T08:08:00.001-08:00

Friday, November 20, 2009

Well the day started early, as I mentioned. Us Jardin-ians left around 4:30 to make it to Neptuno. It was funny to be walking in the streets, surrounded by Spaniards and other people who were still out partying! We walked past Kapital, the disco close to us and there were a ton of people in the plaza. Then when we made it to our bus, it was parked right below Mae West, another disco connected to Neptuno. It was pretty funny to think we were already awake for the next day when they hadn’t even gone to bed yet! Inma and her boyfriend, Raul were there waiting for all of us. Paula and her switch off being “chaperones” for the Morocco trip, considering they aren’t in charge of it—it’s technically a Luxotour trip. While we were waiting for people to show up, I saw something very odd. Our giant bus had parked in this nice little car, and when the guys came out of the disco to get in it, they were a little frustrated. That frustration turned into the ever-so-Spanish “no pasa nada” (don’t worry about it). They had better plans. I could barely see into the car from where I was on the bus, but I clearly saw them snort about 5 lines each of…something off of a CD case. Raul was sitting right in front of me and just started laughing at my reaction and says “está bien, ¿no?”. Hardy har. The guys in the car then just got out and waved to the bus driver and went back in the disco. Classy. Anyway, after starting off the trip with a bang, we drove our 5 hours to Terifa. Busses have laws here where they can’t drive more than 2 hours or so without stopping, so luckily we got a few bathroom breaks. I was feeling a lot better, but still didn’t trust myself enough to eat anything. We made it to the ferry in Terifa with about an hour to spare. We ate our bocadillos and watched the ferries come in. Ours wasn’t very big, but it was relatively nice. After we got our passports stamped and such, we settled in for the 45 minute ride. Once in Morocco they checked our passports again and then we were off on our same giant bus (I initially didn’t know that our driver was coming WITH us). We went and changed some of our Euros in Dirhams before we headed back to the bus. We picked up our tour guide for the weekend and his GPS man (the guy to tell the bus driver where to go). The guide’s name was Jonah, and the GPS was Aniss. It kept confusing me when I’d hear “Jonah!” “Jonah!” all the time from kids on the bus, haha. Anyway, Will and I were sitting up front right behind Jonah so we got to hear all the interesting tidbits he didn’t share over the microphone. For example, we found out he speaks at least 5 languages (Arabic, Spanish, English, German and French…but I’m sure he dabbles in MANY others), and we got our names written in Arabic! Our ferry had let us off in Tangier, so we drove around a bit and took some photos at some touristy places before heading off to Meknes.

I had expected to get odd looks, wandering around in a large group, but we did most of the trip on the bus. We had been told to pack very conservative clothing, and the girls who decided to ignore that tip definitely got the stares. I opted for a cardigan and scarf paired with jeans, even though it was about 80 degrees there!

We stopped in Larache for lunch at this “traditional” Moroccan restaurant. I suspect it was very touristy because there were other tour busses out front and they obviously catered to large groups. As it was with every meal, we had to pay for our drinks, while the meal was included. However, THIS meal wasn’t one I was too fond of. I felt like I had taken a ferry to Japan or something, because when the lady set my plate down in front of me, I flinched. There were a few shrimp staring at me, 5 whole fish deep fried (eyes and all) and then some fried calamari (no, they weren’t onion rings). I took a picture of it, stealthily. I picked at some of it, but just couldn’t force myself to scrape off the scales and fillet the fish myself. I managed (better than some, at least), eating little pieces I could pick off. I think one person started crying. The vegetarians got eggs and hashbrowns…a few people were tempted to tell Inma that they recently switched to vegetarianism.

We then made our way to our (4 star!) hotel in Meknes. I think most of the people were sleeping on the bus, but I decided to try and stay awake to see the scenery. It was sorta dark, but it was still interesting to see the small towns we passed along the way. Sometimes a group of kids would start running alongside our bus, or wave enthusiastically. I also saw this group of men, some sitting and some standing around a table playing cards outside of a cafeteria. I expected them all to have beers in their hands or something, just like in Spain, but they all had cute little bottles of Sprite! I forgot that Morocco is a generally 'dry' country. It was a nice change of scenery compared to that of the beer and tapas-goers in Spain. The roads were pretty narrow, considering it was technically a highway. Our giant bus looked like a monster, and the driver wasn’t about to slow down for anyone or anything (donkeys included). There were numerous times all of us up front thought we were going to crash, haha. Right next to the road there were donkeys pulling carts, people walking, people biking, and other small cars. Our bus would just flash its lights, like all the other cars were doing, and they would try and move out of the way. Sometimes we’d have to squeeze between another larger vehicle and a donkey or something, and I was scared we were going to hit something! Even Imna squealed a bit. I’m still confused as to why they flash their lights…I thought I understood it, but then realized they flashed them randomly at other cars coming towards us as well. Sometimes it seemed like a quick “hello”, sometimes it was a warning to move over a bit for us, and sometimes it seemed like they were just having a light flashing contest. No entiendo.

Anyway, we made it to our hotel and got our room assignments. We ate dinner at their nice restaurant…this time it was a bit more edible. We had vegetable puree soup, some lamb, and then a yummy chocolate torte for dessert. The hotel was very nice. I loved all the decorations, but felt dumb taking photos of them (obviously I did it anyway). After dinner, some of us wandered down by the pool outside and peeked into the disco that was below the hotel. We had read that women who go there are only looking for “clientele”, so we stayed clear of there. However, I was a big fan creeping on the music and lighting! Merete and I roomed together again and had a fun time exploring our giant room. Unfortunately, even though it was a very nice hotel, we still had to make sure to brush our teeth with bottled water!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

We ate breakfast around 9:00 and then headed out on our bus about a half an hour later. Jonah was in a traditional dress called a Djellaba. He told us that later in the day we were going to go see where they make them and would have a chance to try them on. While on the bus, he did a nice fashion show for us, haha. Our bus took us around the city while Jonah explained things. Every once in a while we would get off the bus to take photos, or see things closer. We saw the Royal Palace and the gate of Bab Mansour. Here there was a small market which he walked us through. That was quite the shock. I actually remember saying to Will, “and I thought Japan’s market was crazy”. Here they literally had heads of cows just sitting around, and guts hanging everywhere. There were random vegetables and other goods to see, but I couldn’t stop staring at the meat shops. Once we made it out of the market, it was interesting to see everyone’s reactions. Obviously it smelled HORRIBLE, so a lot of people had their noses plugged. Jonah laughed, but had to give this one girl a hug who looked like she was about to cry. His response was “it’s just normal”, which I guess is the truth. Then we kept going on our tour—walking a tiny bit, but mostly on the bus. I guess they’re serious about keeping us safe, because we literally had a police car following our bus the entire time. We also saw the Mosque and mausoleum of Moulay Ismail. Everything was very interesting to see, but I liked just watching the people (and they really liked watching us too)!

We then departed for Fez. It was about an hour and a half bus ride. We ate at another (more traditional) restaurant. We had little plates of appetizers and then got some more lamb. It was pretty good! Surprisingly, a lot of the people spoke English—but I assume that was because they deal with a lot of tourists.

After lunch we toured Fez a bit. We picked up our local tour guide, Habibi (which, in Arabic, means “my eyes, my love, my everything”, sorta like the English version of “darling”. The female version is: Habibati). He was probably the best guide we have ever had. Fez is a medieval city, and so we got to see the Bab Jeloud gate, the medersa (a Koran school) and then we stopped at some typical craft shops. The first one we stopped at was this pottery/ceramics place. We had a tour and got to see where they make all of their mosaic tiles for the gates to the palaces and mosques. Here they had a very tempting gift shop (as they did at all of the craft shops we visited). They had everything from teapots and plates to hookas and 5 foot tall vases. Most people opted for mugs or bowls. Then Habibi took us on a tour through the Medina, the market place. There were over 9000 streets, he said, and even though we probably only went though about a hundred or so, he knew literally EVERYONE. I loved being at the front of the tour with him because he would give us little tidbits of info about each shop, or the people who work in the different tiny shops. At one point, he had Kyle ask one guy to buy a sheep. Another time, he tried to make me touch a dead camel head. Will was fed some random guy’s soup—just because Habibi wanted him to try it. He was always cracking jokes on people. For example: there were these 2 kids who fell off their bike right in front of us. He rushes over to pick them up, and then leans down to the air thing on the tire of the bike. He pretends like he untwisted it, and then makes a hissing noise. The kids freaked out and thought he had actually let the air out of the tire. It was hilarious (once the kids realized it was HIM making the noise)! He did this a few other times throughout the tours. Habibi kept us moving through the streets, while stopping every so often to chat with someone. Apparently he owned a workout facility a while back, and so a lot of the people he knew was from his time running that. (He challenged Will to an arm wrestle on the bus—and won. Not so shabby for an old guy!) Whenever he wanted to get our attention, he’d just yell something like “HABIBIS!” and we’d all know where to go. I can just imagine what it sounded like to the locals: “Darlings! This way!” Anyway, the shops in the Medina had just about everything. We stopped in a few, including a spice shop (and herbal medicine) where we basically snorted this black stuff that cleared up my stuffy nose. Merete got a makeover with their traditional eyeliner and this cool lipstick that looked green, but went on as a beautiful red. There they also had plenty of spices and herbal creams and oils that some people bought for presents. We then went to the Djellaba shop. We had a nice fashion show from Habibi as well as some “volunteers”. After, we were all allowed to try on any outfit to take pictures in. Inma and Jonah reminded us that we had our fancy dinner that night, and that it might be fun to have an outfit to wear! Seeing as the outfits were pretty cheap (and we could try and barter them down, eek!) about half the group ended up getting something to wear. I opted for the cheapest outfit—it’s a 1 piece dress that…well, it’s difficult to explain, but basically it looks like a cute, saggy diaper. It’s black with gold embroidery. I figured I could wear it for Halloween, themed parties, our ethnic Christmas celebration, etc. Will and a few of the other guys ended up getting plain Djellabas. I think Will’s looks like something straight out of Star Wars. Like a Jedi or an Ewok, or something. You’ll see the pictures.

After that, we wandered around the tiny streets of the market some more. They were so compact, and there was stuff hanging all over the place. For the vendors to get into their shops, they have ropes hanging down, and they’d swing into them. Talk about circus-friendly! Obviously the streets weren’t big enough for cars to drive through, but every once in a while, there would be someone shouting “BALAK!”, which basically means ‘get out of the way’. That means that there was a donkey, or a train of donkeys trotting down the street with stuff piled high on their backs. They all reminded me of the donkeys at the donkey sanctuary—except they weren’t all following me around for food! All the time, though, we did have kids and older people following us around, trying to sell us little souvenirs, like keychains, fez hats, leather purses, etc. One of the kids was with us for BOTH of the days. He wasn’t annoying or anything, just sorta wanted to hang out with us. He spoke pretty good Spanish, so we talked to him via Spanish (since our Arabic was limited to: No, Yes, Please, Thank you, Habibi). Once we walked back to the bus, our police officer had to sorta shoo him away, haha.

Then we went back to our (5 star…yet still couldn’t drink the tap water) hotel to get ready. We all put on our fancy outfits. I had to wear mine with flip flops that I had thrown into my bag just in case (luckily I did, or else I would have been wearing my Converse). Inma and Raul showed up decked out in theirs—they looked the most legit of us all. We just looked like tourists trying too hard, but it was fun! We took a lot of photos, and then hopped back on the bus to go to our dinner show! It was at this restaurant/store called the Palacio Al Firdaous. There was a small band playing fun traditional music when we walked in. I grabbed a spot facing them, but along the wall, so I was sitting on a big couch. It was soooooo comfy! Why haven’t the states picked up on that trend yet? I also had a clear view of where the belly dancers would be! Sweet! We took some more photos before (and after) our food arrived. There were some kebabs, some more appetizers, and then some giant pieces of chicken. It was a ton of fun—especially once the belly dancers started picking people out of the audience to dance. We got Inma up there at one point! I have pictures (though they’re sorta dark) of all of them. Then there was this other band/dance group that came out. It was about 5 or 6 guys who just marched around with their drums, singing loudly. By the end they had almost our whole AIFS group up there with them, dancing in circles. There were about 4 tables that weren’t AIFS kids, and even some of them joined in! Then, I noticed that the Indian couple from next to us was missing. Their friends were still there, but I soon found out where they had gone. Apparently it was their 25 year anniversary, and they got dressed up in traditional Moroccan wedding clothing and were walked around the restaurant. It wasn’t until then that we found out they were actually from New York…they were just as surprised, and asked us to take photos with them, haha.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Well, breakfast was interesting. We had juice, hard boiled eggs and a TON of bread. Croissants, more croissants with stuff on them, croissants with stuff in them, and then these fun pancake-type things. They reminded me of Anupma’s chipati’s…for BREAKFAST! Yum! Oh, and what also made breakfast interesting was that we found out the one belly dancer girl from the dinner the night before actually works at that hotel. I think she was a bit embarrassed that we recognized her!

After breakfast we loaded up the bus and headed off to see more of Fez. We saw the Royal Palace, which was fun because the king was actually there. Habibi told us that was why we had seen so many police guards around the city. Who knows, I’m sure Habibi knows the king too…he honestly did seem to know everyone and their mother. Then we went through the Jewish quarter, called the Mellah, and the north fortress. This was part of the Medina, so it meant more walking through the tiny streets! Horray! This time we also stopped at some scarf shops and tapestry places. Seeing them in action was really cool. I got a few scarves to bring home! Habibi challenged Will to a pull up contest on this construction rigging, which was interesting. The locals thought that was pretty hilarious. (See video when I get home.) After walking through and seeing the many entrances to the mosque that’s inside the Medina, we headed back to the hotel for a quick (buffet) lunch. As we do with all the buffets we have encountered, the AIFS clan ate just about everything they offered us. Unfortunately I think that hurt some people in the long run… Anyway, we said goodbye to Habibi, who told us we need to all bring our families to meet him (okay, Mom?…Dad?).

We hopped back on the bus for a nice 5 hour long trip back through the tiny “highways” up to Tangier. Half way there, we had to switch out our tour guide, Jonah, for a new one, Abdul. We literally stopped on the side of the street, and then another tour bus pulled up facing the other way and the guides switched. We were all sad to see him go, but he was Luxotour’s only guide who could also speak German, so he had to be transferred to that group. Oh well…though we wouldn’t realize how much we missed him until our tour of Tangier.

Anyway, we had a few more near-accident encounters with donkeys and other cars, but I loved the scenery while it was still light out. I saw a lot of interesting things on the side of the road, too…like a dog eating a donkey, tons of sheep being herded, a dancing chicken, another dog eating a left-behind sheep, etc. I had been waiting for an email back from Mostapha (my CJ coach) because his sister lives in Tangier. He wanted me to meet her, and so he was going to send me her number. I didn’t get it until we were ON the bus on the way to Tangier, but I tried it anyway. Unfortunately she didn’t really speak much English at all, and after she found a translator (and I tried communicating with about 20 other people in French, Spanish, Arabic, etc.) they realized they had plans that night and we wouldn’t be able to meet. (Sorry for that phone bill, Mom.) I was really bummed that I wouldn’t be able to meet her, but we were scheduled to start our tour Monday at 9, so I wouldn’t have any time to meet up. By the time we got to the hotel, it was time for dinner, so we just ate dinner and went to bed.

Monday, November 23, 2009

We started our tour of Tangier pretty bright and early. The city was a LOT more modern than Fez, and it was obvious they wouldn’t have the same sort of handicraft options as they did in Fez (Fez is the handicraft capital). We did see the Petit Socco and had lunch at a typical restaurant (finally, couscous!). We got to go ride on camels! That was pretty interesting! There were 2 connected together, so Marisa and I decided to go together. I got on mine first (the front one) and hers started to sniff my hair. YIKES! And then after I got off of mine, I went to pet its head. It was really, really fluffy! THEN it turned and bit my thigh! Meany. His teeth weren't sharp or anything, and the owner guy thought that was pretty hilarious. Everyone there was laughing and then decided to all try and take pictures as close as they could to it without getting bit at. It was a pretty interesting game... Once we were walking around the town I realized that our new guide was sorta weird, and didn’t really tell us much about anything. He just kept saying “take a picture of this, this is nice”. He had us stop in weird stores, where he obviously was getting commission on anything we bought. Most of us caught on, and it started to get pretty annoying. However, he did take us to some nice photo ops. We had “free time” at this one area for about an hour and a half where we got to go in some more traditional shops. Kids had fun bartering for things (ask for 40% of what they initially say!) and drinking mint tea (the traditional drink). Emmy called one of the waiters “Habibi”, and he immediately spun around and had this huge smile on his face. Whoops, haha. He thought it was funny, and so every time he saw her from then on, he’d yell “habibi!” and she’d yell it back, haha. We also got hennas from this lady that Abdul had called in. I tried to get some photos of mine, but I’m not sure how they turned out. It’s all over my left hand and down my pointer finger. Everyone’s was different, and Raul even got his name in Arabic on his forearm! That was fun, but then we had one more quick bathroom stop before we headed over to our ferry. This bathroom stop ended up being at a hotel that Rick Steves stayed at! The guy in the gift shop had a photo of his family with Rick up on his wall, with a nice note from him. I snapped a creeper photo of it to put in my Spain/Morocco 2009 Rick Steves tour book. I just looked, and Rick in his books says “Jimmy, who’s always around and runs the shop adjacent to the lobby, says he offers everything but Viagra. When I said, “I’m from Seattle,” he said, “206.” Test him, he knows your area code.” It was ridiculous. You’d tell him where you were from, and he’d just spit it out. I guess Rick liked the place, because it’s first under the “$$-priced” Tangier hotels.

At 4 we hopped on our ferry (this time it was a lot larger and nicer) and took our 45 minute ride to Terifa. We got back on the bus after our bags were searched and then made our 5 hour journey back to Granada. We stopped twice, but that wasn’t enough for some people. I guess the food and tap water that people mistakenly ate kicked in, and at least one person puked on the bus. Regardless, the ride also consisted of a karaoke contest—we had both an opera singer and an Adele-sound-alike on the bus, as well as Armand who serenaded Inma more than a couple times and Nora, who had a spot on impersonation of Brittney Spears. Inma sang a bit back to Armand, but much preferred to dance up and down the aisles. Who knew she was so crazy. She even grabbed the tour giude microphone from the bus driver a couple times. Raul got a few chants, but refused to do anything…the bus driver suggested a striptease, and he refused that as well, haha. Then we had a nice bus-wide sing-along of “Feliz Navidad”, before Inma informed us it is bad luck to sing Christmas “charols” before Christmas. It was quite eventful, but I was glad to get back to Granada. Even though it was 12:30am.

Of course this would happen the day before we left for Morocco

2009-11-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 19, 2009

I woke up puking, but still tried to go to class. I didn’t last too long, and ended up going home after just half of my first class. The rest of the day was pretty much sleep-filled. I was a bit nervous, knowing I had to get up at 4:00am to hop on a bus to Morocco. 5 hours to our port, 45 min ferry ride, and then another 6 hours driving to Meknes. That wasn’t want I wanted to think about…but it’s Morocco! I wasn’t about to miss it! I packed and then took another quick nap before getting up and running over to the bus leaving from Neptuno.

Vamos campeón!

2009-11-18T14:10:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Today I kinda took it slow and slept a bunch after class again. I didn’t even make it down to lunch. I did a little work on my U of M application and then we had our championship fútbol game! All of the players from the residencia (Will, Adam and I) had gotten bocadillos ahead of time for dinner. Yummmm, jamon y queso.

Adam and Kyle had sorta scoped out the team we were playing and knew they had a few good players. We were missing Mike who had left for Prague earlier today, but we managed to keep a solid defense without him. I didn’t play too much because I still wasn’t feeling that great…but that still isn’t an excuse for me not scoring! Sorry team! Haha. There was a kid from my Literature class on the team, which was sorta funny because he was trash talking a bit in class. I guess tomorrow might be a bit awkward…for him at least. We considered calling the AIFS emergency phone (that Paula keeps on her at all times) to tell her we won, but we decided she can just find out tomorrow, haha. I guess we’ll get a trophy and t-shirts! Yay! I had given my camera to Daryl and some other of the fans who came to watch to take photos of the game. Hopefully I can get those up at some point before I come home! We also got a nice team photo after the game J Way to go AIFS aphids!

Now it’s time for a shower and then tapas!

Germs and German

2009-11-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

Ugh. I’m getting sick again! I really hope it goes away before Morocco! I went and bought some medicine…the same stuff everyone else had bought when they were sick, so hopefully that helps. Though…it sorta makes you sleep all the time. I haven’t done any homework yet today! Yikes! Today classes went super slow. It was quite unfortunate. Though, we did get our exams back in Literature. I got a 9.75! Score. Let’s just hope I can keep that up throughout the rest of the semester…

Oh and today I thought I started understanding German. Well first of all, I was a bit confused as to why my Mariangeles was speaking German to us, but then found out it’s actually a Spanish word. It’s just “FIJAOS”, but I’ve never actually seen it written down, and it sounds like “fee-how-ohs”. German, right? Nope. It just means “y’all, pay attention”. No wonder she uses it all the time.

Churros y...clase?

2009-11-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 16, 2009

Culture class today started out pretty rough. We got our exams back, but that wasn’t the bad part. She literally just read from our packet…something I had already read last night for homework! I swear she told us to read it, and a few other kids had done the same thing, so we were all pretty bored. BUT, during the break between the first and second hour of her class she went to Café Futbol and bought us all churros! She brought them back in this giant bag and we got to eat those for the rest of class! She claimed that it's just a part of Spanish gastronomia, but then admitted that she was just craving them. Will and I ended up getting a 9 on our presentation on Murcia and the Canary Islands (yay Victor and Florian!) and I got a 9.6 on my written exam. Decent, but it sorta made me angry that the only thing I got wrong was the foods from different provincias…which I KNEW. Anyway, the churros almost made up for that. Almost.

Grammar class wasn’t that exciting either. We worked on a new verb tense (surprise, surprise) and then got our exams back. I did decent, but she graded realllllllly hard, so I didn’t feel too bad about that. After class I took a siesta and then did some homework. We have this project for Literature on a poet named Damaso Alonso that is due the day after we get back from Morocco (Nov. 24), so I figured I should start working on that.

Tonight for dinner we had fish sticks, this stuff that was like coleslaw with rice, and then these fried mini empanadas that actually tasted like Indian samosas. The filling was a bit weird—tomato paste—but I was excited to have something different! At dinner, we found out that one of the kids from the residence, Alan, has to go home because his Spanish visa isn’t long term. I’m not sure on the facts, but it looks like he’ll be leaving next Tuesday to go back home to New York. Oh no! We’ll miss you Alan!

Well, it’s time for a little more homework! I’m just glad mid-terms are over! J

"Nair" jaja (aka Nerja)

2009-11-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 13, 2009

Will and I made a spur of the moment decision Thursday evening which sent us on a bus to Nerja at 4pm. FIRST OF ALL, I got up rather early because I had signed up for our AIFS tour of Federico Garcia Lorca’s house. Daryl, Merete and I were on our way to the house, which is in the Garcia Lorca park, when we saw something pretty funny. They have exercise machines in this one part of the park that I hadn’t seen before. There were a couple old people on them, and they actually looked really fun! They had a military press, something that looked like an Elliptical machine and a bunch of others. They were play-ground style…made out of thick dark green metal pipes. It was just funny to see these people hanging out in the park, working out. My favorite was the guy in his dress pants and nice shirt who looked like he just stopped there on his way to work, or Mass, or something. Haha.

Anyway, after the tour I headed over to the AIFS office to print out my Ringling Bro. Barnum and Bailey’s tickets! Malaga, here we come! Well, actually Nerja…and then Malaga! After deciding to go see the circus, we decided to make a trip out of it. We budgeted ourselves to 60 Euros for the whole weekend, and were trying to figure out a way to do so. It ended up that it was a LOT cheaper to stay in Nerja at the Hostal we had stayed at a few weeks ago…between the tickets and places to stay. We tried to make reservations for a place in Malaga, but it was 3 times the price of the place in Nerja, so we booked our (cheaper) tickets and hostal reservation in Nerja! I was excited to go back to get some more Chicken Tikka Masala!

So at around 2 we left for the bus station. We got there and tried to buy our tickets at the do-it-yourself station, but it wouldn’t take our credit cards, so we had to go to the info window. There, we had a little trouble communicating our need for a return trip ticket as well, but ended up getting what we needed…after a bit of time. I blame everything on it being Friday the 13^th…which my mom tells me now has no significance in Spain. I’ll have to check that out. We waited a little for our bus and then hopped on and made our way to Nerja once again. The guy at the hostal remembered us right away (“otro vez!”) and gave us a choice between two rooms!

We wandered around the city a bit before going to get our favorite Indian food (still…not better than Anupma’s). The lady there remembered us too…awkward, haha. I didn’t care because I had been craving it for such a long time! We spent the rest of the evening on the Balcon de Europa before heading back to the hostal. I was going to check the bus times to Malaga on the one computer they have at the hostal, but when I looked through the window, I saw that the manager guy was on it, Skyping someone. I started to turn around, but saw him motion for me to wait. He then told me to come over and say hi. He goes: “Mi mujer!” and points to the screen. I recognized the lady who had been there when we had stayed at the hostal before. They were talking loudly in Russian, but I understood when he told her I was one of the Americans that was back for the second time (apparently that Tikka Masala has magical powers…I understand all sorts of languages). He turned the web-cam towards me and I waved and said hola, haha. I thought it was funny. Anyway, I found out the bus to Malaga would be around noon the next day. Time to rest up for circus…who knows, maybe the cloudswing girl wouldn’t be feeling well and they’d need a substitute J

Saturday, November 14, 2009

We made it to Malaga around 1:30. Will was starrrrrving so we ate at McDonalds. Classy. THEN we were looking around to try and figure out exactly where the Palacio de Deportes was. I had looked online and it didn’t seem that far, so we decided to at least try and walk. We didn’t get going until around 2:30, so I figured we would be okay on time. Nope. Granted Will was telling me the time PLUS 10 minutes, we still didn’t make it to the Palacio with much time to spare! We’re lucky they were on “Spanish time” because that meant they didn’t start until about 4:20. We walked for literally an hour and a little more, which was actually pretty fun! We got to see a lot of the city, even though we didn’t really know where we were going. By the time we got there, we had already decided we were going to take a Taxi back to the bus station after that show or else we’d miss our 7pm bus back to Nerja!

Okay…the show. The arena was relatively small…it was a one-ring circus, and I immediately spotted the cloudswing ring and the Wheel of Death. First of all, they started out with this cute mini program and also let the kids and their parents down onto the floor to dress up in costumes, try out their tiny low wire, and learn how to juggle, etc. They didn’t let us down on the floor…I guess Will didn’t look old enough to be my dad (just kidding). I liked watching all the little kids run around, excited just to be near the ring. I picked out the cloudswing girl and the guy who did Wheel from the pictures Jim from C4Y had sent me.

Overall it was a pretty good show. I was a little disappointed with the cloudswing routine, considering it was about…3 tricks long. Maybe it was because it was a matinee. I really enjoyed the clowns (who spoke about 4 different languages) and the 5 little wiener dogs. I tried to get some photos and videos (videos worked better). The lion act was a bit odd…I’m about 98% sure they ended that act after it was only ¼ the way done. The lions weren’t very responsive and 3 of them actually got into a fight. 2 just ran back into their cages, and one kinda actually listened. The trainer was speaking to them in English, and I could hear him mumble things like “well that wasn’t it”, etc. Too bad…and a bit scary, but their roars were cool! Also included in the show were 3 elephants (1 which couldn’t stop going to the bathroom…the shovel-boy had his work cut out for him), a tumbling team, a cross-bow guy, the Wheel of Death guy and a group of 3 jugglers (1 girl and 2 guys) who were actually really good.

After the show we walked back for a bit before we found a Taxi. Luckily we didn’t decide to try and run back because we found out that our 7pm bus was actually leaving at 6:45! Yikes! We made it back to Nerja and went to find some food. Don’t laugh…we had Indian food again. The lady didn’t even have to ask for our name this time on the take-out order. Almost everything else was closed because it is very off-season by now. Oops!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Our bus back to Granada didn’t leave until 2:30 so we left our bags at the hostal and headed out to the beach. I decided against swimming, even though it was REALLY nice out (about 80 degrees). It has been so chilly in Granada that I forgot to shave my legs, but I guess my emergency ‘Nair’ frenzy was un-necessary, jaja (that’s Spanish for “haha” J). Regardless, Will had fun ‘bouldering’ on the rocks under the Balcon. I got some good photos, which I’m sure will be up shortly! I also tried to help him learn how to juggle...but using rocks from the beach was a bit painful! There were also 2 guys on weird sailing things…they were sitting in these chairs with giant fans behind them and huuuuuuuuuge parasailing sails behind them. One guy kept flying pretty low over the Balcon…it was fun to watch!

We grabbed our bags from the hostal and walked across the street to the bus stop. Before we left, the manager goes: “vemos la próxima vez!” meaning “we will see you the next time”. Haha. Maybe we’ll be back!

We got back to Granada around 4:30 and when we were getting on the local bus to go back to Jardines, we ran into Marta, who was dropping her boyfriend off to catch his bus. A funny coincidence. I didn’t think I knew enough people in Granada to run into someone!

We saw a billboard for the movie 2012 on our way back so we planned an evening around that. Being as awkward as we usually are, we didn’t realize their seats are numbered in the larger movie theaters (all the other movies we have seen have been in the small ones). Me: “Why is no one sitting the middle?” Ohhh…that’s why. Also, it was interesting to see that literally EVERYONE in the movie theater was eating something. I saw people opening up bocadillos and other things that were obviously not from the movie theater. I guess they aren’t so strict on that policy here. Whew. Some people had literal bags of food they had brought with them…the girl in front of us had a bag of marshmallows she downed before the movie even started. It was like a feeding frenzy. Craziness! The movie was really good, even though I probably only understood about 75% of it. It was basically a mixture between War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow…both good movies! Now, I’m trying to decide whether or not to go see Luna Nueva when it comes out this Thursday at midnight…tempting. J

Lost in translation...as always

2009-11-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Yay! Thursday! Today we had a sub, Emilia, in my POE class. She was really nice, but a lot of the class wasn’t very nice to her. We learned a lot of vocabulary relating to objects around the house…most of which probably didn’t stick. Whoops. Then Mariangles was there for Literatura and we started the next tema (theme). We went over different art movements, which I enjoyed. I took a Visual Communications class last semester at UST so I actually sorta knew what was going on! Monkey Man (aka Bob Craig), my professor would have been proud! Then again, I didn’t really know how to explain any of it in Spanish, so my knowledge was…lost in translation.

After class today I spent some time doing homework just so I won’t have to think about it this weekend. Tomorrow we have a tour of Garcia Lorca’s house and then my Safari Photo group is going around to take our photos. That should be fun. I’ve walked around the Garcia Lorca park, but I haven’t ever been to his house! Then, Will and I are in the midst of planning out a trip to Malaga for Saturday to go see Ringling Bros. I really hope that can happen, but it depends on bus availability! I’m also trying to plan something for the long weekend we have over the first weekend in December. Everyone else seems to have been all over the place, so I’ve been trying to get suggestions. Of course, I’d love to go to Italy again, but flights looked pretty expensive! Another group of people suggested Greece, which would be amazing! Hopefully I can find a relatively cheap flight! J

I forgot to mention a fun incident that happened on Tuesday night. Will and I were studying for our Grammar mid-term when we heard a knock on the door. It was Marta from next door. She had this paper she had written in English that she needed edited. It was very difficult trying to explain some things to her, but the paper in general was really good! She had some minor things here and there that we eventually explained to her, in a mixture of English and Spanish. Then she offered to help us with our Grammar, which was nice, but we politely declined because there was no hope in saving us. Haha. She thought that was funny.

Well, time for some relaxation time! Yay! I’ll finally have the chance to dig into my goodie box from home! (Thanks, Mom!)

Follow the Smelly Brick Road

2009-11-11T14:37:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Dios mío! Finally I’m done with my mid-terms. That was quite the whirlwind. I studied, studied, studied for what ended up being an hour and a half grammar mid-term. I don’t even know what the Preterit Perfect is in ENGLISH! Yikes! Anyway, I think all of my studying paid off in the end because at least I think I understood the test! Then again, I wouldn’t put down an answer I thought was wrong…

What confuses me is the fact that many people (and I really mean a lot of people) didn’t study for any of these tests. I’d hear them sitting behind me saying to each other “Hey, did you study?” “Nah, I was out last night…oh well.” I mean, it might just be me, but I would FAIL those tests if I didn’t study! I feel like yes, you should take advantage of your time here, but you should also use it to take in your classes! Ugh. Anyway, that’s just me being frustrated that I put so much work into things. I will be very surprised if they do well though! I don’t think I even did well with all my studying!

We had our second soccer game today…it was the semi-finals. Haha. Next week is the championship game! The AIFS basketball team has already won their championship and it looks like the volleyball team will win theirs, so there’s a bit of pressure to do well next week! It was freeeeeezing out (well, freezing because we were all in shorts), so we all moved a bit slower than normal. Regardless, we won 6-1 or something. I scored again! (Another outside-of-the-foot shot!) Wish us luck next week!

Oh! I also got a fun package from home! It had a lot of yummy snacks that I’ve been missing over here! The chocolate tastes reallllllly weird. I have no idea why! I guess Spain just has lots of odd tastes…and smells! Oh! So I’m pretty sure the sewage line runs about…1 centimeter under the sidewalks here because every once in a while you’ll be walking and get this nasty whiff of SOMETHING. The brick streets have grates in them every so often and I’m pretty sure I’ve pin pointed those as places to avoid. However, sometimes on crowded streets (um…all of the streets) it’s difficult to avoid them. Then there are the dogs that just go to the bathroom all over. I was reading my 20 Minutos newspaper again today on the way to school and almost didn’t dodge a few different…presents left by dogs on the streets. It’s disgusting, but they have a pretty good system of cleaning it up. They have people in these navy blue and reflective striped outfits that wheel garbage carts around the streets and clean up everything. Looks like a pretty gross job, but they keep the city looking nice for the most part.

Speaking of looking nice—they put up Christmas decorations on the main streets! There are big lights stringed across. I haven’t seen them at night yet, but I’m super excited to see them lit up!

MIDTERMS!

2009-11-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

Monday, November 9, 2009

Allllllrighty. This day was officially dedicated to studying. Well, first of all I got up a little earlier than normal (around 7:10) to study a bit before I went to take my Culture mid-term. It turns out the teacher decided to make the test NOT multiple choice, but fill in the blank/paragraph answers. She told us this right before we started. I had spent a LOT of time memorizing all 17 comunidades autónomas of Spain and a food famous from there, but that was worthless. She said we could memorize ANY food from there and then write it down, but on the test she had already picked them! I knew about 5 out of the 10 she had. Stupid. Other people said they had the same problem, so maybe she’ll figure that out when she corrects them. Other than that…I think I was able to do decently well!

Literally right after I got home from taking that mid-term (well, after Grammar class), I started studying for my literature mid-term. For some reason NONE of the info would stick! I don’t know what it was…I mean it’s not THAT boring. So, needless to say, studying for that was rough. I made a 12 page hand written study guide for myself. My hand hurt pretty bad after that! Anyway, I studied for the rest of the night with a little break for food (Dominoes!).

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

And….this day was also dedicated to studying. Well, after I took my literature mid-term. Luckily the things I had studied the most were on it (and the teacher actually formatted the test how she said she was going to). It included 4 essay questions (and had to pick 2) and one poem that we had to analyze. I chose the essay questions about Teatro Romántico and Poesía Romántica. I think I did pretty well, but my hand really did hurt after that. I wrote for almost 2 hours straight! It was really funny because she gave us some scratch paper and I literally FILLED that paper right away so I wouldn’t forget anything (I could barely remember it in the first place). She looked at me like I was crazy…but she’ll understand once she reads my test J

THEN I studied for my Grammar mid-term. Will and I tried to study for this one at Dunkin Coffee, but Spaniards are just tooooooo loud, so we gave up and came back to Jardines. I feel like I haven’t gotten to do anything fun these past few days…I’ve just been sitting on my bed making study guides! How boring!

Alubias, Habas, El Fruto Musical

2009-11-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Last night I think there was a house party (fiesta de la casa?) across the street from Merete and I last night. Literally the whole night there were people outside talking. Loudly. I don’t know if the walls here are just super thin, or if they really were yelling the whole time. There was music and such too—it was nuts. I thought they might give up around 6am, but no. They definitely were still going strong.

Today I spent literally the whole day studying for my Culture mid-term tomorrow. Well, I did take a short break to go to Dunkin Coffee to get a “Moka Dunkalatte” (basically a Mocha). It was very good, and it was much needed after sitting here on my bed for 6 hours straight trying to force myself to be interested in the influences of the Romans in the Mediterranean diet. The title of this blog comes from something I was trying to translate. There are SO many words for each thing in Spanish it seems (well, to be fair, I guess it’s similar in English). For example, I searched “Alubias” and then searched “Habas” right after. I giggled when the translator replied “beans, beans”. Anyway, I had to bundle up to go get coffee…that’s how chilly it has gotten here! I don’t really have a jacket, so I just wore 2 cardigans. That seemed to work, and I actually saw a lot of other girls with layers like that, so I guess that’s part of the Spanish fashion (“moda”). Score one for Maria for accidentally fitting in.

Right now Will’s procrastinating from studying by trying to crack the Microsoft 2008 Word key online. I don’t think he’s having much luck. His notebook looks like this: “~~AJK834OFQQGKS385~~, ~~SGIS8327GOWSJ5~~, 28FSKJL22GN4SP” when it should say “Los Romanos tienen una influencia muy grande…” J He spends quite a bit of time over in our room since his side of the building doesn’t have internet. Merete is studying too…though she also went out earlier to get away for a bit. It gets so dark out so fast here that she said she basically ran home! I think we’ve all settled in for the night…studying and Hipercor snacks.

It was an interesting discovery today when we realized we only have 17 days left of class. WHOA. I feel like once we get to the Morocco trip (November 20-23), that will be the beginning of the end. Once we get back from that trip, we have Thanksgiving dinner that Thursday. It’s a sad feeling, but also happy because it’ll be nice to get back home (no more house parties just 10 feet away across the street, no more noisy motos, etc)!

Anyway—back to studying. I guess I’ve been doing my own procrastinating!

Maria: the brunette rabbit-eater.

2009-11-08T04:38:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 6, 2009

Ugh, classes early this morning. They were our “recuperacion clases” (recovery classes) because of all of the holidays we have had on Monday/Wednesday classes. I just had Culture and Grammar (some people had 3 or 4 classes), but it still wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my Friday morning!

After lunch, Will and I ran over to the AIFS office before they closed. He had heard that he had a letter there, and they close at 3 on Fridays (and aren’t open on the weekends), so he wanted to get it. It turns out it was a nice letter from his dad with sketches of things from when he had studied in Spain, as well as a sketch of MILEY! It was so cute! After that we walked down to Hipercor, the big department/grocery store about a mile away. It’s kind of a long walk, especially when you have 2 bags of things to carry back. I got some snacks to help me through studying for mid-terms this week/weekend. I have one on Monday, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. Luckily my POE class doesn’t have one…we only have a final. I guess our presentation on the article counts basically as our mid-term. I got my grade back on that the other day—an 8.5 which is equal to an A-. I guess that’s good, considering how much I hate talking in front of people!

For dinner, Will and I went out to this Chinese restaurant we had seen a while ago. They have a really cheap “Menu del dia” (5.95 Euros) where I got white rice, a salad, curry chicken, lemon ice cream and a Coke! Pretty good deal considering a normal plate of curry chicken is 4.15 by itself! Will got basically the same thing, except with “Pan Chino”, which I’m sad I didn’t get because it was a giant bean-paste bun—minus the bean paste. And he also got sweet and sour chicken. I liked being in the Chinese restaurant again because it was a break from Spanish…time to think in CHINESE! I heard them talking about us (but whatever, we WERE the only people in there right at 9pm). Will kept thinking he recognized the songs they were playing…he thought they were some of the new Spanish songs he had gotten from Adam. They all turned out to be in Chinese—go figure. After dinner, we wandered around for a bit. It was kind of chilly, but I didn’t really mind. Still, I should probably buy a jacket considering I’ll be coming home to below zero weather. I didn’t plan that out too well!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

I got up pretty early because AIFS has this thing called “safari photograph” going on. It’s a contest where you get in groups of 3 or 4 and go around the city and take pictures at certain places. Then Inma and Paula pick the best photo and that group gets a gift certificate to either the Arab Baths or a restaurant of their choice. They give you a piece of paper with clues to go find the different places, for example, the Cathedral. My group (Daryl, Adam, Will and I) had decided to go out Saturday morning to take the photos, but once I got ready, no one else was up! I guess Adam had gotten home at 6am or something crazy. Anyway, then I found out that they had extended the due date of the photos from this Monday until next Monday. Great, I could have slept in longer! I guess Paula had looked at the weather and saw that it was supposed to be cloudy this weekend and they wanted the photos to be “happy and bright”. It was actually really nice out, but oh well, it gives us some more time!

I ALSO got up pretty early because Elena had her kids with her. They were playing downstairs…some game with slamming doors. FUN. Then, the boy kept yelling for “ELENA”, which I later found out was her little girl’s name too. I guess it’s normal for people to name their first-born girl after the mother. I don’t know what the little boy’s name is, but he looks EXCATLY like his dad (Figs’ son…Elena’s ex-husband…the one who comes to eat lunch here every day). He was so cute with his little stuffed animals! They were at Jardines for the whole morning--until about 4pm.

For lunch we had paella today! That was a first. I was really excited about it, and enjoyed it (minus the “pulpo”, or octopus). There was also other meat in it that we thought was chicken. There were a ton of bones, so I couldn’t eat most of the meat, but I managed to get some of it. It was pretty good! Then, after we were done eating, I think it was Florian who informed us of this…the meat was RABBIT.

After lunch I dyed my hair! Mom had sent me my hair dye because my hair had been fading to blonde again (oh no!). It’s the “30 day” stuff, which actually dyes blonde hair permanently and then just fades, as I’ve figured out. I had dyed it right before I left, so I figured now was a good time to make it dark again! I managed to keep my extensions in while I dyed them, but it was probably pretty funny to watch. I had separated all of my extensions from my regular hair and then Will held those out to the side, Pippi-Longstocking style while I dyed my hair. I think it worked pretty well, but once I DO take out my extensions, it’ll be interesting to see the little pieces that didn’t get dyed!

Then Will and I did a bunch of homework. We started making study guides for our mid-terms this coming week. It’s a lot of work, especially since it’s all in Spanish, so everything (even the study guide) has to be in Spanish! Yikes! We worked on that for about…5 hours. There goes my Saturday.

After that we all ate our bocadillos (tortilla espanola). They were sorta dry considering there wasn’t anything like olive oil or mayonnaise in it. Oh well, it was still good! After that Will and I watched The Village (!). I don’t know how he convinced me to watch a semi-scary movie, but he did. Congratulations. It wasn’t that bad, but still.

Remember, remember...

2009-11-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Remember, remember, the 5^th of November. Well, my 5^th of November wasn’t that memorable. Nothing truly exciting happened. I had 4 hours of class that felt like it was 8 hours, and now I’m working on a TON of homework for my culture class tomorrow. Our teacher is mad that we have so many holidays (Saint this day and Saint that day) so she’s making us do all the work outside of class instead. Yipee. Oh, and that’s why I have class tomorrow (if you haven’t noticed, we don’t have classes on Fridays normally, but we do tomorrow for a “make up”). I need a gelato.

However, we did have a good lunch. We had this really good pumpkin soup with croutons, and then fries and pork. It was really yummy and made up for the long day of classes. Still, I think I need a gelato. It has been far, far too long.

OH! Wait! There was something exciting that did technically happen today…at around 6:30am. I woke up and had no idea why, but I checked my phone and then went back to sleep. I woke up and had this really weird feeling because I had had a really weird dream about an earthquake (which I thought was because of a Monk episode I watched…) but I guess there ACTUALLY was an earthquake about 20 miles away from Granada this morning. Daryl told me later today that she felt her bed moving a little, and that’s why she woke up. WEIRD. No one else really felt it, but everyone was talking about it today at CLM.

Tonight, Florian helped me get money on my phone. Here was the problem: Last Friday, right before we left I had Will run to put money on my phone. It turns out the guy at the store put the money on a different phone! He typed the number in wrong because he was busy talking to some other guy in the store, so it went to “857” instead of “057”. UGH! Someone got my 10 Euros! So, I couldn’t do anything about it until we got back on Monday, but by then they were closed. And then I had my project and stuff, so today was the first time I had some free time! I took Florian with me because I thought it might end up being an awkward situation. He managed to convince the guy to at least TRY and get the 10 Euros off the other phone and onto mine. The guy in the store was SO shocked when it worked—because it had been 6 days! I guess whoever got my money didn’t use it! Yay! Anyway, that made me happy.

Today I was looking online and saw that Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey (gold unit) are going to be in Sevilla, Malaga and Madrid. I’m seriously considering going down to Malaga next weekend to go see it! I emailed Jim from Circus4youth.com and asked if he knew anyone on the show, and he said he knew a couple people. I guess there is a really good Cloud Swing act! It would probably make me REALLY miss circus, but I think it would be a ton of fun! I asked some people if they’d want to make a day trip down to Malaga to go see it, and I think there are at least a couple people who are interested! I’m super excited!

Well, I better finish this homework. Or maybe I’ll go get a gelato…tough decision ;)

NERJA PHOTOS (Will's)

2009-11-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to Will's Nerja photos...enjoy! I'll get my photos up once I get home :/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/willthrill/sets/72157622732084140/

and...some more:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/willthrill/sets/72157622739229988/

Aseos de Caballo

2009-11-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 (Congrats on one year, Obama!)

PRESENTATION! Will and I went first, which was good. I think he talked for…about 25 minutes and I talked for a little over 10. I have no idea how that happened, but our teacher said she really liked it and that we had a lot of good information! (Thank you Florian and Victor!) The other groups that went were only about 10 or 15 minutes total, so that was a bit awkward. I’m just glad we had TOO much information rather than too little. Plus after class our Professora said that time is no issue! Woot! I’m just glad that’s done, so now I can focus on studying for midterms. Joy. Oh, and our Professora also laughed about this one type-o that Will had on one of his slides. It said “Aseos de Caballo” (literally meaning bathrooms of horses) instead of “Paseos de Caballo” (walks of horses/horse riding). Har har…us Americans are so funny with our type-os. J

On our way back from class today, this random older lady stopped us in the street and said “sois de aqui?” (are you guys from here?). She didn’t look like she was a lost tourist or anything, but we were like: no, sorry we’re just students. She seemed surprised but went on her way. I still have no idea what she wanted from us, but it’s always nice to be mistaken for locals. I guess my fast-growing blonde roots haven’t given me away yet! Haha. Which reminds me, I should go dye it again!

Well, I’m off to find some colloquial phrases for tomorrow’s class! Maybe I should ask Florian and Victor again! Nah, they’d probably tell me to say something rude, haha.

J-walkin' with the locals

2009-11-04T11:26:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

I finally figured it out. You know those guys who sell stuff on the streets? They have fake brand-name watches, sunglasses, belts, purses, pirated movies, etc. and they just lay them out on blankets for people to look at when they walk by? I finally figured out what they remind me of! I realized it while watching one guy set out his batch of fake Gucci and D&G bags: they’re like the proud owners of show dogs. They take such good care of all of their products, and try so desperately to sell them to you. The handles of the bags are propped up just so that they look stuffed full with things. I was watching one of the guys, and one of the handles of the bags flopped over. He rushed over and propped it back up, but it wouldn’t stay. So he grabbed the bag by the sides and sort of fluffed it like a pillow and then tried again. This time the handles stayed but he hovered around it for a bit and then basically petted it as if to say “good job, stay like that and I’ll give you a biscuit later.” It was ridiculous. I think I might have to buy one of the bags just to try it out myself.

Anyway. Back to real life without the beach just minutes from my room. Classes actually went by really fast, but once back at Jardines it was difficult to look forward to anything because I had SOOOOO much work to do on my Canary Island project. Will took on Murcia while I typed up all my information. We just BARELY had enough time to print out our sheet for the class before the AIFS office closed. That was another adventure. It was about 5:45 and I figured I would only need 5 minutes on the computer and maybe 5 to get there as well. So I set off, jump drive in hand. I really felt like a local. J-walkin’ with the locals. I don’t think I crossed one street (one of the 3) either way on a green light. It’s just how it’s done here…you get more weird looks if you stand there and wait for the light to change. Sure, it’s illegal here too, but the cars basically wait for you to take your sweet time. HOWEVER watch out for the busses. Those things don’t stop. They just give you one little honk and if you don’t move, you’re toast. But really, it was fun to just run across town (illegally) with the rest of Granada.

Will and I spent the rest of the day just working on our project. After dinner I talked with Florian and Victor some more about the islands. They were still bickering about which one was better. But they did help me with some phrases that are different on the islands than they are here…for example, they call potatoes “papas”, not “patatas”. And they call the bus the “guagua”, not the “autobus”, haha. Will and I made a powerpoint and I wrote up what I was going to say. It was about 4 pages hand written, and Will had the same so I figured we were good to go. It was 1:30am when I finished! Yikes!

Nerja! (Donkeys and Maria, the human sand-bag)

2009-11-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

Friday, October 30, 2009

We ended up not going to the Michael Jackson movie on Thursday because I had to pack and the movie didn’t start until 11:40pm (and Will didn’t want to be up that late…wuss).

Merete, Will, Chryssi and I left for Nerja in the morning. The bus Will and I were on was full, so Chryssi and Merete had to go on an earlier bus. The bus ride took about an hour and 45 minutes and when we got to Nerja, I was prepared to walk a bit to our Hostal. However, once we parked, I looked out the left side of the bus and SAW our Hostal! How nice! All we had to do was walk across the street! The guy and his wife who own the place are Russian (we heard them yelling a bit, haha), but spoke to us in Spanish. I have a feeling they also speak English because they were talking to some other US travelers at one point… Anyway, while we were checking in, Merete and Chryssi were heading out to the beach! We set our stuff down and headed out a little after them, but decided to explore the town a bit. We made our way to the Balcon de Europa which is basically a big lookout point. Back in the day it was used for military purposes, but when we were there it was just filled with tourists! Most of the tourists were British, which I thought was interesting! We wandered along the beach (past some restriction signs…) from one little cove to the next. We finally settled in to one and spent hours skipping rocks and sitting in the sand. It was so much fun! We took a ton of pictures as the sun started to set, and then went back to the Balcon de Europa to get a good picture of the sunset! It was really beautiful.

We ended up finding this cute little Indian place to get take out from for dinner. We talked to some of the workers because they weren’t busy at all, and one guy was so excited to talk about his trip to the United States. Pennsylvania. Who woulda thunk. We took the food back to the hostal to eat and it was AMAZING! We got Chana Masala (not nearly as good as Anupma’s!), Chicken Tika Masala and some nan. It was a really good price, so we figured we may have to go back again! However, we realized on the way back to the hostal that we didn’t have any silverware. We stopped at this little Asian Euro store (like the dollar store, except it’s more like the $1.59 store with the stupid exchange rate). We found a pack of 4 forks. Perfect!

Yummy, yummy, yummy. After dinner we went back to the Balcon to sit and watch the people. Will got some gelato, but I was freezing! No one told me it was going to be that cold in the evening! Regardless, it was a ton of fun!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Today we got up pretty early and headed out to the beach. That was a funny thing to do…go to the beach on Halloween. I can’t say I’ve ever done that before! On the way down to the small beach we found on the map, we saw numerous “Halloween Fiesta” signs for clubs and bars and such, and I just had a hard time convincing myself that it was actually October 31. It felt more like…the middle of July. Regardless, it was AWESOME.

We made it to the small beach just to the right of the Balcon de Europa. About 5 minutes after we had sat down, these 2 guys in this tiny boat come speeding up to the shore. There were houses behind us so I just figured they live there. Some other people came out of the houses to meet them, and they were all huddled around the boat. I was a bit confused until…this one guy started walking back to the houses with a rather large bucket. Squirming around in it were 2 live octopuses. Live. Grabbing at his arm. He grabbed the one by the head (or face, or whatever you call it) and lifted it out of the bucket so it wouldn’t grab at his arm any more. He proceeded toward the house closest to us, but stopped short at this wooden panel. He then butchered both of them RIGHT there. Chop, chop, chop. It was rather gruesome…but quite Halloween-y!

I got my enough of my appetite back about 20 minutes later to eat my Napolitana pastry (square shaped chocolate-filled croissant). It was just around that time when I was looking out at the Sea and noticed some weird clouds out in the distant. I was convinced I could see the curvature of the Earth because there were NO clouds in the sky, only clouds RIGHT along the horizon (therefore they were the clouds from far, far away, I thought). I layed there for a bit, and then all of a sudden Will goes “the clouds are attacking us!” I sat up and, sure enough they were moving closer and closer. Except they weren’t really clouds, they were fog clouds! It only took about half an hour before they completely engulfed us. It was ridiculous, you couldn’t see ANYTHING. There were some people swimming about 30 feet out from the shore, and you couldn’t even see them! A few boats went past, but you could only hear them. It was still pretty nice out, so we decided to stay there anyway. This also seemed quite Halloween-y…I half expected Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl to emerge out of the fog. That would have been awesome.

After the beach, Merete, Chryssi, Will and I took the short bus ride to Las Cuevas de Nerja (the Nerja Caves). As soon as we made it through the tiny cave door, I was completely shocked. I thought it was going to be very similar to the caves we had seen in Gibraltar, but these ones were way more impressive. Sadly, the section with the ancient cave paintings was not open to public because of cleaning. That didn’t really matter, because I loved the rest of it! There were so many cool looking stalactites and stalagmites! There was one HUGE one that was actually a column, made up of a stalactite and stalagmite that had connected. It is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the largest one! My camera didn’t really work very well indoors (without flash, go figure), but Will managed to get some REALLY good ones! I’ll have to steal those! Being in the creepy cave was yet another Halloween-y adventure for the day. We got back outside and sure enough, the fog was beginning to engulf the caves. Crazy Nerja.

We caught the next bus back to Nerja and wandered around before getting more Indian food for dinner. Yum! We watched the sun set from the Balcon de Europa and then hung out on the beach for a while. While we were wandering around, we saw a bunch of smaller kids dressed up, going trick-or-treating at the shops. Since all of the apartments are above the shops, the shop owners just hand out candy instead! That's kinda cool! They were all dressed up as vampires and zombies. The girls were all witches. Literally ALL of them were witches. I guess they don't have much choice over here! It was really funny to see this US tradition find it's way all the way to a small beach town. Oh, and I'd like to say I did not detect any anti-Christian vibes from those kids like the article I did my project on.

As fun as it was to watch all of them run around yelling "Happy Halloweeeeeeeen" (I considered teaching some of them "trick-or-treat", but I couldn't figure out how to explain WHY), I wanted to go to bed pretty early because I had quite the day planned for Sunday!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

So, Nerja says they have 320 days of sunshine a year. We managed to be there for two of the ones that isn’t. This didn’t really matter because it would have been super hot out if it wasn’t cloudy.

That morning, Will and I headed over to the Donkey Sanctuary that I had found online (thanks, Mom!). Merete and Chryssi decided to try their luck on the beach again. However, the hovering fog didn’t seem like it was going to let up anytime soon. I was SOOOOOO excited to see the donkeys, dogs, and other animals they had there. I really had no idea what to expect. We walked to the sanctuary from the hostal…it was only about a 10 minute walk! We got there and there was just one tiny little sign! The old lady opened the gate for us and her husband came over to greet us. I assume he was from England because he spoke perfect English! He handed us a (laminated) sheet that had the names and background information about all of the animals they had at the sanctuary. He showed us around the little office area, where there was a ton more information about maltreatment of donkeys, ways to help, information about adopting one, ect. Then the guy asked us if we wanted to feed them. OF COURSE! We gave him a donation and he handed me a LARGE bucket of chopped up carrots, potatoes, bread, plums, bananas, etc. Then he let us into the area where all the animals were. Most were kept in pens with one or a few other animals, but some were roaming free. Apparently after they close, they let all of them roam free, but while visitors are there, there are a few they want to keep separated. My favorite was this tiny black pig that came running over to me right away (Piggy!). He just stood there staring at me, so I handed him a carrot. He just kept looking at me, like I had done something stupid. So, I tried giving him a banana instead. He accepted that one. Apparently he doesn’t like his vegetables. Tisk, tisk. Calling someone a “pig” doesn’t have quite the same meaning. I guess pigs can be picky eaters too! This pig (Iggy, our sheet told us) kept following me around the whole time, even though he didn’t really seem to want much to eat. The donkeys LOVED anything and everything, and most of the horses really liked the bread. Iggy’s mom was HILARIOUS. She was ginormous…her belly literally hit the ground. She liked to stand right under this one horse’s hay that he was munching on, so she had hay piled up on her back. It was pretty funny to watch. One of my other favorite animals was this giant sheep that was roaming around. He didn’t want food at all. I tried to feed him numerous times, and he even had his head in the bucket a couple times, but he just liked smelling the food and following us around. Will had an amazing picture that depicts EXACTLY how the sheep looked at us when we tried to feed it. I can’t wait for those to get online! Another fun animal was this white donkey that tried to eat everything I tried to give to the other donkeys. He just wandered behind me and then would shove his head against me to try and get at either my bucket or the piece of food in my hand. He wasn’t mean about it, but it was really funny. I think he is in EVERY picture we have from there, because he just need THAT much attention! Haha. The donkeys were adorable. It was sad to read about where they had come from (some were abandoned, some were saved from abusive owners, etc.), but it was fun to see that they were being treated so well there! The guy at the front said “they may seem like they’re desperate for food, but they just love the attention more than anything.” So I made sure to pet each of them! There was one horse that was very misshapen. I guess it was forced to carry a lot of weight at a young age, and now it literally looked like someone had taken a giant bite out of its back. Some of the donkeys looked like they had similar problems, just not as severe. On my way out, I saw a humorous article they had about this called “get the fat asses off of the asses”. Not the nicest thing, but it got the point across. They also had a little pony that we couldn’t feed because it was on a special diet. It was SO cute! After we finished one bucket of food, we went and got another one! The lady seemed shocked that we wanted more, but happily gave us another heaping bucket. This time, it was Will’s turn to feed them. I got some good pictures of him with the little pig! Overall it was a ton of fun, and I decided that if it wasn’t nice out on Monday that I’d go back!

We went back to the Balcon de Europa and enjoyed the view for a bit. Then we just wandered around the small streets looking at all the fun restaurants and stores. We ended up eating at this little cafeteria where Will got Spaghetti Carbonera (with ham, oh no!). We spent a good part of the evening along the beach, looking for rocks (which were all beautiful and perfectly smooth from being washed around on shore so much). I still couldn’t believe that it was the 1^st of November! Then Chryssi and Merete suggested this Flamenco show they had seen for pretty cheap the night before. It was just in this little bar and it was 6 Euros for a drink and admission to the show, so we decided to go. It was the same show that night as it was the night before, so Chryssi and Merete didn’t stay. The show was REALLY good. There were so many fun costume changes. It was 4 girls and 1 guy, and they were all really good! One of the girls really reminded me of Anna Danila for some reason. I think it was her facials while she danced, haha. Random.

Anyway, it was a really fun day and I really didn’t want to have to leave the next day!

Monday, November 2, 2009

NO MORE FOG! YAY! …Even though I secretly wanted it to be cloudy so we could go back to the Donkey Sanctuary! We packed up and checked out of the hostal and then made our way down to the beach. It wasn’t cloudy, but it sure was windy! This made for some rather large waves (in my opinion). Will convinced me to go body surfing/wave jumping with him, which was SO FUN (and very cold)! On my way back to shore, a huge wave hit me from behind and I got thrown into the sand. I got SO much sand in my swimsuit, it wasn’t even funny. I mean, I was a walking, talking, human sand-bag. Luckily there were some little porta-potties close by that helped me out a bit, but WOW. I didn’t know that was possible! We dried off and headed to the bus-stop around 4:00.

We made it home by 6:30 and then did some homework. We also ended up going to see the Michael Jackson’s This Is It movie because we figured we could still enjoy the weekend. The movie was in English with Spanish subtitles, which we realized was probably a good decision on their part because finding a Spanish double for Michael Jackson may prove to be quite difficult. The movie followed the rehearsals leading up to the final tour Michael was planning on doing. It had a ton of dancing (of course) and all of his most famous songs. It was really cool! I might even go see it again!

Michael Jackson and David Bisbal (and some other fun stuff)

2009-10-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Well, tomorrow we leave for Nerja. I did some research and I think we have a few places we want to go. There are a couple short bus rides we could take to different towns as well, so that might be fun! The one thing I really want to do is go on one of these Jeep tours in the mountains. Well, actually it can either be a jeep tour or a walking tour, or a mixture. However, they’re kinda expensive (60 Euros for a full-day, and 35 for a half-day). I dunno, I think it might be worth it! They also offer rock climbing (Will’s pretty excited about that) and boat excursions. I guess we’ll just have to go check out their office once we get there and see what they have within our price range: cheap.

Today Victor and Florian helped Will and I with our Canary Island project. Well, Victor wrote everything down while Florian yelled about how his island was better than Victor’s and that we shouldn’t even listen to him, haha. “No! There is only one capital! Tenerife!” One funny thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that Victor reminds me a lot of my dad. His face, his mannerisms…it’s actually really weird. PLUS he’s studying chemistry and engineering at UGR. Anyway, we eventually got our questions answered from the quarreling boys. Tonight I think we’re going to see the movie Michael Jackson’s This Is It. It just came out yesterday and is a documentary about the last little bit of Michael Jackson’s life while he prepared for his final concerts that he never got to do…could be rather interesting!

OH! Speaking of concerts! I saw the other day that David Bisbal will be in Granada on December 13^th. DAVID BISBAL. Here are 3 of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW_ZH0rDrI0 (you’ll see why), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZvh3m6Kzvo&feature=channel (used 2 May shows ago), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRhGwRG0YK8&feature=channel (we used this one for juggling at the Chinese festival at Highland Park Sr. High, haha). Once we get back from Nerja, I think I may purchase these tickets. Yay!

2 months and counting

2009-10-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

That’s right. I’ve been gone 2 months! Miss me yet? Haha. And, WHEW, I'm finally caught up with my blogging. I wonder how long this will last...

I keep forgetting to write about all the different people I keep meeting here. Tooooo many other things going on! Well, for starters there are all of the kids in my classes. Obviously most of them speak English as their first language, but there is this one kid from Japan who has also played soccer with some of the guys. He’s in my Culture and Civilization class, and today the teacher asked him what the most famous dish in his city was and he started the sentence, “En mi ciudad, Osaka…” Osaka?! If I’m not mistaken, that’s one of the small towns we visited in 2003! Oh, and speaking of Japan, there’s another guy, Estreno, in the residence who just moved in to the Jardines apartments for a year who had been living in Japan. He’s 31 and got his masters there in Japan and everything, but is now studying Physics at the University of Granada. He’s originally from Brazil (are you following this?), so I figured out that he speaks 4 languages fluently—Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and English. We had a nice conversation about my eating of McDonalds while I was in Japan. He thought that was hilarious. It was really funny when Estreno was talking to Florian, trying to explain something. They both were speaking English, but trying to explain a Spanish concept. I had no idea why they didn’t just speak Spanish, but it was funny to watch! BUT, my new favorite Spaniard here is this guy named Victor. He is super easy to talk to, and if you can’t figure out how to explain something in Spanish, he’s always up for trying out his English. Basically, life here at Jardines is one big intercambio (which is good, considering I don’t have much time to GO plan one!). Some of the Spaniards ignore us Americans, but others jump at the opportunity to sit with us at dinner, or help us with projects and papers. Right now, Will and I are getting help on a project about the Canary Islands from Florian and Victor. Victor gave us photos to use and also offered to answer questions that we have! Also, last night I guess one of the girls here, Marta, went over to Mirella and Breana’s room at around midnight and asked them to correct some English papers they had. One was a book review and the other was just some random ACT essay question. It’s nice that we can all help each other out!

Today we had our first intramural soccer game. I hadn’t been feeling very good (still…) but I didn’t want to take my medicine because I didn’t want to take it on an open stomach. Unfortunately I have almost gone through all of the food Mom sent me in my care package…time for another one! J On top of that, I was nervous because I really haven’t played soccer or even RUN for quite a long time. I was sure I would just trip over my feet and not be able to get any shots of with any sort of “umph” behind them. Regardless, I went along just to see how I felt. We were playing this “Iowa” team, but they had 2 foreign kids that I’m pretty sure weren’t from Iowa. One guy was this huge German who was actually kinda gross, haha. We were winning only by one (3-2) when Armand made me sub in for Will. Surprisingly, I was able to move. I ended up scoring with an outside-of-the-foot shot (props to Daniel for inspiring that), and then had another left shot that I sorta impressed myself with. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and think I’m bragging, haha—but I honestly am just happy to know that at least some of my soccer skills survived! We ended up winning 5-2 and moving onto the next round. The other AIFS team has already lost, so they’re out—it’s all up to us, says Paula! Next Wednesday is our next game. All I am worried about is getting my soccer shorts back from the laundry before then!

Well, we head out for Nerja on Friday (“we” as in Merete, Chryssi, Will and I…and maybe Breana, Mirella and Daryl). I’m super pumped to go to the donkey sanctuary and the cooking school! Come find me when I get home and I‘ll cook you a tortilla Espanola! Or a jamon y queso bocadillo.

I’m off to do more homework so I don’t have as much this weekend…stressing about homework is the LAST thing I want to do on the beach (or while walking a donkey).

Wine tasting and rambling in Spanish

2009-10-28T14:40:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

So, I get to class a bit early to prepare. Mariangeles comes in and asks me how I’m doing. I fake a smile. Everyone piles into our tiny room and then it’s time for me to go. Mariangeles takes my seat and turns on her RECORDING DEVICE! Yikes! I didn’t know I was going to be on tape with this! I hoped that once she heard it, she wouldn’t have to hear it again! Anyway, I wrote the title on the board and began. As soon as I started, I resorted to basically reading off of my paper. I have a feeling that if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have said more than half of the things I wanted. Oh well, the recording device will only replay what I said, haha. Overall I think it went okay…not as well as I would have wished, but oh well. I get nervous and there’s nothing I can do about that! The other people in the class seemed to enjoy the topic as well—we ended up talking about different traditions of Halloween here versus in the United States for the whole first part of class (about 45 minutes). I’m just glad that’s over with. However, it didn’t help that I then found out it was worth 25% of my grade. I’m hoping Mariangeles will cut me some slack because I was the first person to go in our class!

After lunch we rested up for a bit, did some homework, and then headed off to wine tasting! It was at this tiny, tiny little shop owned by a husband and wife (and their little daughter) lined with bottles of wine. We stood along this long table with our glasses and white placemats. None of the AIFS staff was there with us, so we were on our own to translate what the owner, Juan Antonio, told us. He first explained the 3 different steps to making wine, and then went on to talk about how to decipher the different flavors through taste and smell. He told us about how each wine usually has both flower and fruit included in it, which is what you can taste and smell. He had us hold up each glass to the light to see how clear or not clear it was (this told us how old they were…apparently “old” is only 4 years. I didn’t know that!). Then we leaned it over our white placemats to see the reflection against the paper. He pointed out that the red and rosa wine got lighter along the sides, showing clarity. The first wine we tried was a white wine from Navarra in the northern part of Spain. Like most white wines, it was to be drunk with fish (pescado) or seafood (mariscos). It was made from apple (manzana), banana (platano) and peach (melocoton). The flower in this one was Jasmine. I couldn’t taste that…but then again, I can’t remember ever eating jasmine before. With the first bottle he tried to open, he broke the cork in half. He kept trying to get the other half out, but couldn’t, and then explained that if that ever happens at a restaurant, to send it back because it means the wine is no longer good. He went and got us a different bottle (from the cooler that said 175.00 Euros…I wonder if that sticker was for OUR wine!). The second wine was a “rosa” wine, in between the red and white. This one was also from Navarra and is supposed to be drunk alongside fish. The flavors in this one were strawberries, raspberries and cranberries with an obvious flower scent of rose. Hence the name. The third wine we tried was a red wine…a REALLY dark red wine. This one was fun to look at through the light because of its scarlet color. This one is to be drunk with meat (carne). The flower in this one was the violet…so pretty! The last wine we tried was put into a smaller glass that we had. This one is from Rioja and was a white wine. It was pretty sweet, and is to be had with desserts and fruits. The flavors in this one were pineapple, banana, coconut and almonds. (“ALMONDS?! How do you make a wine with almonds?!”—Nora “Well, the same way you make beer out of chunky stuff.”) We asked the reason for the smaller glass, and Juan Antonio just replied “well, it’s a bit stronger than the rest.” I guess that made sense. After we were done, we all took a picture together—so keep your eyes out for that! I really enjoyed this, but not even for the wine. It was fun to hear about all the different parts to wine, and there were some pretty funny things that happen during a wine tasting. For example, there was this bucket with a weird strainer in the middle of it, and after we had all taken a sip of the first wine, Juan Antonio just spit his into the bucket! He said that we just get the taste in our mouth at first, and then if we want, we can drink more after we figure out the tastes. After each wine, if you hadn’t drunk all of it, you were supposed to pour it into the bucket. I felt very wasteful! Some people finished all of theirs…haha. It was funny just seeing everyone spitting out mouthfuls of wine and then going back for seconds. At the end of the tasting, Juan Antonio picks up the strainer and looks at all the wine/spit in the bucket. He raises an eyebrow and goes (in Spanish) “Well, you guys are better than the last group I had.” We didn’t understand what he meant, so he explained. Apparently the last group of AIFS kids barely had anything in the bucket…meaning they had all drunk basically everything. He said that a good wine tasting has a full bucket, and I guess we were in between, haha. Más o menos.

Sevilla, Córdoba y mi primera presentación

2009-10-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 24, 2009

We got up bright and early for our tour of Sevilla. We left about 10 kids at the hotel because they didn’t make it to the bus on time. I have a feeling they weren’t even trying to make it, since I heard some people come in around 6am. I got up at 7:30. We did a little driving tour with our two tour guides (I forget the one guy’s name, but the other was Izzy!). We first stopped at the Plaza de Espana that was part of the 1929 international fair. We took some time here to take fun pictures before it became more and more crowded. Also, there were horse drawn carriages all over the place! We got back on the bus and headed to the Alcazar. First we walked through the gardens, which Izzy told us had many, many types of citrus fruit trees (oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, etc.). In fact, this garden had many different kinds of just about everything! Izzy pointed out a flower from India, a tree from Brazil and another plant from Argentina just off the top of his head. Apparently there were many more too! Once in the Alcazar palace, Izzy gave us a wonderful tour of all the different rooms. We saw where King Pedro the Cruel lived, and where Christopher Columbus first went to ask to be funded for his voyage. Then we walked over through the Barrio Santa Cruz, which was the old Jewish quarter. We made our way through the tiny streets to the Cathedral and Giralda bell tower. The Cathedral had a plaque from the Guinness Book of World Records stating that it’s the largest Gothic church. It is also the second largest in volume after St. Peter’s. It was pretty impressive. I’ve been to St. Peter’s, and obviously that one kicked this one’s butt, but it was still amazing to see the kind of architecture they were capable of. One of my favorite things in there was this giant mirror they had placed on a short platform that you could look down at, and then see the high ceiling and the giant organ. The main altar was HUGE, and consisted of 44 different scenes of Jesus’ carved out of wood. The crucifix on the top was over 8 and a half feet tall, but looked like it was only 3 feet tall. That’s how big the altar was. Also in the Cathedral was Christopher Columbus’ tomb, which was pretty neat to see! His giant tomb is carried by 4 big men, who apparently were 4 different kings from different Spanish regions. Before we left we went to the Giralda tower to go up and see the view from over 330 feet up! It was made up of all ramps, so there were some people pushing strollers! On every side there was a window, so we stopped to take some pictures at those, and then finally made it to the top. It was pretty impressive looking out at everything, but what I liked was all of the bells. Paula said that sometimes kids have gotten stuck up there when the bells started ringing. We heard them ringing earlier that day…from the Alcazar gardens…and it was still loud. I can’t even imagine being up there if they were going. There were about 20 of them all together.

We were then set free and left to find our way back to the hotel. Before our guides left us, they told us that there was a Sevilla soccer game that evening. That sparked some interest, so Will, Daryl and I decided to go check out the stadium—which happened to be right around the corner from our hotel. I don’t know how we missed that on our walk the night before. We got there and were bombarded with scalpers trying to sell us VIP tickets for ridiculously cheap prices (cheap meaning 70 Euros). We finally got past them and got to the ticket window and bought our ACTUALLY cheap tickets…up in the nosebleeds. I didn’t care, I just thought it would be fun. I have been to a pro game before, but that was when we went to Germany in 2003, so I felt like it was time to see another one! We stopped by the team store on our way back to the hotel and found out they were having a HUGE blowout sale. I decided to get a giant flag (2 Euros!) for the game that evening. If I didn’t get the chance to wave it around, at least it would act as a nice blanket. Will got some other things, and so did Daryl! Instead of making it back to the hotel, we stopped at the mall that was right next to the stadium. They had already set up pre-game festivities (it was about 3:00…and the game didn’t start until 10pm), but it was mostly for younger kids. They had those little bungee things where the kids get strapped into the bungees and then jump on the trampoline. I just about went over and did it—I miss bungee trapeze! Haha. Anyway, we shopped around for a bit and then ate at Dominoes. It was PACKED with school kids who had just gotten out of school. Once we got back to the hotel, it was just about time to go to dinner and then to the game. Paula said that people didn’t really do anything before the game, but we saw otherwise on our way back to the hotel earlier. People had already started drinking and there were vendors set up outside selling all sorts of things. Apparently they can bring whatever they want into the stadium, they don’t check your bags for illegal snacks! We got into the game with about 20 minutes until it started. It was kinda funny because the whole pack of Espanyol fans (the other team) ended up setting up right in front of us. It was entertaining, but I felt a bit awkward with my giant Sevilla flag, haha. One of my favorite parts of the game was the Sevilla song, which I managed to get a short video clip of. It was so epic and sounded like it should have been in some sort of action movie. The game was really exciting even though no one scored. The Espanyol fans had cheer battles across the entire stadium with the rowdy Sevilla fans. They all had huge flags (theirs were on sticks though) and waved them the ENTIRE game. They must have huge forearms. A lot of AIFS kids were at the game, so that was fun to see everyone there. Only a few people got tickets better than our cheap ones. I don’t even know where they were seated, but I didn’t mind at all where we were. We actually weren’t that far away, and we could see the whole game perfectly. Will got some amazing photos with his really nice camera, and I got some cool videos with my not so nice camera. Overall, it was really fun and I would definitely go again!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

We left pretty early in the morning for Córdoba, but not before we stocked up on churros and chocolate from the hotel breakfast (they claimed to have the best in Sevilla…I concur). We hopped on the bus for the 2 hour trip. I fell asleep, but heard that some of the scenery along the way was pretty nice. Once we arrived we walked across the Puente Romano (Roman bridge). We wandered with our tour guide, Juan Carlos Córdoba (yes, Juan Carlos as in the King, and Córdoba as in the city). I thought he was really good—prepared with photos and such to back up what he was saying about each thing. He took us through the Jewish quarter and through the Calle de las Flores (Blossom Lane). Then we toured the tiny Sinagoga that dates back to 1315! The last stop on our tour was the Mezquita, or La Catedral de Córdoba. This is an old Islamic Mosque that has a Cathedral built in the middle of it. The Cathedral ceiling was created with the Sistine Chapel in mind, and I could tell why (jugglers—“wow, you COULD do quads!”). There were really cool carvings (not paintings, that was one difference) that I tried to get some pictures of, sadly with not much success. The mosque part was really interesting as well. Each section had been built at a different time, but for the most part it looked pretty similar. There were hundreds of columns of different stones that had the signatures of the stone-worker’s name engraved in it. The arches that were made between the columns were filled with alternating red and white stone. The overall look was really spectacular—and my favorite was the section they lit via fake candles hanging from chandeliers. It had a very…Adam’s Family vibe. I guess my mind must really be thinking about Halloween 24/7 these days. After we said goodbye to Juan Carlos, we had some time to eat before we hopped back on the bus to go back to Granada. I passed out again on the bus…I guess I had an exhausting weekend even without staying out until 5am every night like some people! Coming back to Jardines felt like we were coming back home. It was a really odd, yet comfortable feeling. I guess Granada is becoming my home…finally, after almost 2 months.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Ugh. Classes bright and early again. After class I mailed some more post cards, and then headed back to Jardines to eat and do some homework. I had been assigned to do a presentation on an article in my POE class on Tuesday, so I spent quite a long time on that. I didn’t really know what sort of article to write about, so I went onto www.elpais.com which is the biggest newspaper over here. I ended up finding a few articles I thought would be interesting to the class, but decided on the Halloween-related one instead of the Facebooklite one. See, my mind is on Halloween, even though I’ll be on the beach on the 31^st. I had to answer a bunch of questions and then ask some of my own that I was to present to the class. Let me put this in perspective: I can’t even talk in English in front of a group of people. Sure, give me some juggling clubs or a trapeze and I’ll perform in front of however many people you can find, but ask me to say one word and I get extremely nervous. And they want me to talk for 10 minutes in SPANISH?! AHH! Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night practicing my presentation. I took a break a little before dinner just to walk around and try to make myself less nervous. I think it helped, but then as soon as I got back to my room I could feel my heart start to pound again. I actually found my article quite interesting—it was an article on how the Catholic Church here in Spain doesn’t want Spanish kids to celebrate Halloween because it has an Oculist background that harbors anti-Christian ideas. Whew. Let’s hope I can remember what I wanted to say!

GIBRALTAR!

2009-10-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 23, 2009

We left from Neptuno mall around 9:00am. Luckily no one was late because Paula was insistent on leaving right at 9…and not waiting for the stragglers like we did last time! We had about a 2 hour drive to Gibraltar, during which I read New Moon (to refresh my memory before the movie comes out November 20^th!) and the People Magazine: Country Edition that Mom sent me (she knows me so well). The bus dropped us off outside of customs at the Gibraltar border…for those of you who don’t know, Gibraltar is part of Great Britain, much to the dislike of Spaniards. Almost everyone remembered their passports, only one kid forgot. Chris had to stay in La Linea, the small town right next to Gibraltar…he asked what there was to do and Paula responded, “Well, you can either sit in the McDonalds or the Pizza Hut…for 6 hours. Oh, and there’s a beach.” Unfortunately, Yuri was also stopped at customs and not let through because of his Russian passport. I guess it was a good and bad thing, because then Chris had someone to hang out with! The rest of us breezed through customs by merely showing the security guards that we had passports. Easiest customs ever! I guess visitors need passports, but Spain citizens only need to show an ID. There were many people who just seemed to have been shopping on one side or the other of the border and were passing through like it was not a big deal at all that they were passing over a country border…which really, I guess it wasn’t.

We walked all the way to this big plaza area in the center of the city, and along the way, there were some great views of “The Rock”. Once we got to the plaza, Paula explained that we were on Main Street and that there were tons of shops to go look around in. We had about 2 and a half hours to explore before our actual tour was to begin. A large group of the AIFS kids wandered into the Burger King, hoping to find something more…homey than the normal bocadillo for lunch. And that’s exactly what they found—plus most of the workers spoke English! It was a very weird situation wandering around Girbraltar. There were SO many different languages being spoken. At one point I was just sitting on a bench and was listening to the different people walk past and realized I was sitting in the middle of a giant…language stew. I heard German, French, Spanish, English (both American English and England English!), Portuguese, Berber (recognized from Mostapha speaking it at circus to Anwar!), a dialect from India, something that sounded like Dutch, and quite a few others! It was ridiculous.

Anyway, during the 2 and a half hours we had to explore, we walked up and down Main Street and made our way to Little Ireland (like China town, except Irish). We made our way into some of the arts and crafts shops where they had some wonderful watercolor paintings of The Rock and other nearby landscapes. With all of his artistic creativity, I thought that Will’s dad really would have enjoyed those! Then some of us went and saw a glass blowing demonstration where Will thought the statues outside were real. He had to poke on just to convince himself once I told him otherwise, haha. The blown glass was beautiful, and reminded me a lot of being in Italy. It was difficult to get a good photo, but once I get them up on Flickr (hopefully soon…) maybe something will be visible! I considered getting a small vase, but realized we still had the whole tour to go through and didn’t want to risk it breaking while carrying it with me! I guess some other people didn’t think that far ahead, because there were numerous people with shopping bags full of stuff that they had to carry along with them…whoops.

We had to wait quite a bit for our two mini tour buses to show up. Apparently they were moving the NATO helicopters and that required closing the road the mini tour buses use through the airport. Paula decided that was why Yuri wasn’t let in that day…they thought he was there to sabotage the NATO-copters, haha. Jusssssst kidding. We finally got our bus, and our driver, Paul, was hilarious. His first words once he got off the bus were “alright, only the good looking ladies on my bus”. Throughout the tour up through the many switchbacks and TINY tunnels of The Rock, he was making joke after joke (“I just got my license half an hour ago, and during practice I just close my eyes at this turn and my instructor tells me when it’s over”). We made our way to a beautiful lookout point where we could see other coasts of Spain as well as the Northern tip of Africa! It was a very, very clear day, but it was extremely windy, so in all of the pictures we’re all trying to hold our hair out of our faces to no success. Then we went to go see the stalactites inside part of The Rock. It was a huge cave, and they had made it into an auditorium. It was difficult to take photos inside the cave because with and without flash didn’t work very well! On our way back to our mini tour bus, Paul called us over to take photos with this monkey that was hanging out on a railing. There were tons of monkeys that live on the rock, but the ones up by the caves were the ones who were the most powerful out of the pack. It’s very illegal to feed the monkeys (and not a good idea to look them in the eyes) but Paul had some snacks in the pocket of his shirt that all of the monkeys seemed to know existed. He knew each of them by name and explained about their different lives, etc. I got my picture taken with the monkey (and Paul)! After visiting with that monkey, we hopped back on the bus and headed over to a more heavily populated monkey area. There were some mother monkeys with their babies which were super cute. I got some good pictures of these guys! My favorite photo is of Paul and another mini tour bus driver leaning against the cement fence that overlooked Gibraltar. Next to them is a big monkey, and they all have the same daydreaming look. It was pretty funny. We made our way back down the winding streets in our mini tour bus with Paul telling us more jokes and stories (“Here’s where John Lennon and Sean Connery got married. But not to each other.”). After being dropped off near the airport, we walked back to our bus to meet Yuri and Chris…who had spent the whole day on the beach in jeans and t-shirts. We hopped back on our BIG bus and headed toward Sevilla.

Once at the hotel, we got to eat in the hotel restaurant. I gave up on my band diet, because I honestly hadn’t eaten anything that day. It was pork chops, sautéed vegetables and fries. I wasn’t about to pass that up! After dinner Will and I wandered around a bit, trying to find where some things were that we could do the next day after our tour of Sevilla. Surprisingly a lot of things were closed at 10pm, and it was very dark (not many street lights) so it was difficult to see things. Regardless, it was fun wandering the streets of the city!

Blah, blah, dieta blanda

2009-10-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 20, 2009, Wednesday, October 21, 2009, and Thursday, October 22, 2009

I still haven’t been feeling too well the past few days, even though my medicine has been helping a lot. Today was the only day it really didn’t help much. I went into the AIFS office and Paula asked me how I was doing. I said I was doing pretty well considering my stomach still hurt a little, so she asked what I had eaten. It was early afternoon so I had only had a little bread. She goes: “No! You can’t have bread! Only toast!” What? Is it just me or is there not really any difference? I thanked her for letting me know, though I’m still not sure how different they could be.

For the past 3 days I’ve been on my “dieta blanda”. Florian keeps making fun of me because all I get are potatoes and fish. YUM. I like some of the fish they give me, but it’s just really…BLAND. The soup I get for lunch has rice in it but it still tastes like fish. The worst was when everyone else got turkey and mashed potatoes, or the day they got French fries and pork, and I was stuck with my baked potato chunks and fish. Hopefully I’m doing this for a reason!

Classes have been going pretty well. My Culture and Civilization class always has a lot of homework, but it’s just a bunch of reading and answering questions about Spanish customs and festivals, etc. Pretty interesting, just very time consuming. On Tuesday I did homework from 3-9, straight through. I mean, Will suggested going out for churros con chocolate, but as soon as we got out the door I remembered that churros are both fried and sugary. No good for Maria. I really like my POE and Literature teacher (they’re the same teacher). She is super nice and is always on top of things. I have my first presentation of the year coming up on Tuesday…and I’m pretty nervous about it because I’m the first person to go in our class! The girl who was supposed to go today switched classes, so I have nothing to base mine off of. Granted it’s only a review of an article, it’s still super intimidating. I’m glad it’s in that class though, because Maria Angeles said she’d be nice to me about it. Yay! In Literature we had to write a poem…in Spanish, obviously. I was really proud of myself when I was actually able to come up with something that was coherent and rhymed! Maybe I’ll post it later…maybe not. It was supposed to be based off of Gustavo Adolfo Becquer’s poem: Volveran las oscuras golondrinas, so it doesn’t quite make sense out of context. Maria Angeles said that Becquer’s poem was the equivalent of a “roses are red, violets are blue…” sort of poem. Apparently Spanish middle school girls write lines from it all over their notebooks. Or at least Maria Angeles did! Haha.

Tomorrow morning our AIFS group leaves for Gibraltar. (Remember your passport, Maria!) After that we head to Sevilla to stay there. The next day we have a tour of Sevilla and stay there another night. On Sunday we leave Sevilla and stop in Cordoba for the day. Then we head back here! I’m excited for this trip, especially since it’s supposed to be nicer in Sevilla than it is here in Granada! Hopefully all goes well and we don’t get stopped by the police again!

I’ve had time to write some more postcards, so being sick hasn’t been that bad I guess. Keep your eyes out for the mail man, one might be coming to you! Or, if you have yet to get one, send me your address and I’ll get one in the mail so it arrives before I get home in December. The post office is HORRIBLE here…for example: they didn’t have stamps today when I went to get some. NO STAMPS. What next? The gelato stores aren’t gonna have gelato? Oh, the horror! Actually, I heard (sadly) that the gelato stores DO close for the winter…but I don’t know when that is. I guess they don’t know who they’re dealing with. I go to Dairy Queen in the dead of winter. It must be a Minnesota thing.

Maria goes to the doctor

2009-10-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 17, 2009, Sunday, October 18, 2009 and Monday, October 19

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LIZ…on the 18^th!

The past few days have not been too fun. I ended up not going to Florians on Friday night (which turned out to be a good thing because Julia busted it…) and stayed home because I wasn’t feeling too well. I ended up staying in bed almost all of Saturday and Sunday because I had such bad stomach pains it hurt to uncurl from the fetal position. I figured it was just something I ate and that it would pass, but it didn’t. I got up for class early this morning (Monday) and felt well enough to get ready. I made it almost all the way to the CLM before the cramps started up. I sat through the first 45 minutes of class, and then gave up. Luckily Will was in that class, so he brought me my homework (all 8 worksheets of it) and brought home my notebook and pen I had just left in class. Paula went to the doctor’s clinic with me that morning. It was a Monday…so it was pretty full. Even Paula said it was more full than she had seen it in a while. The doctor was late too! It was really interesting how it worked. There was only one doctor and it was basically the honor system when trying to figure out what order people got there. We were “behind the woman in red”. Haha. We ended up waiting about an hour before it was my turn. The doctor didn’t speak any English at all, so Paula really did have to translate everything. They decided it was probably just some sort of gastro thing…yay…even though I didn’t have many of the symptoms. Odd. I got som medicine which has helped a lot, so that’s good! I ended up missing the rest of my classes, which was really a bummer because it was supposed to be my first day in my new Grammar class (no more Susana!). Paula said she could make a copy of the doctor’s note, so I could take that in if I really wanted.

The most interesting part of the doctor’s visit was when the doctor found out I was lactose intolerant. She had asked me what I had for dinner the night before, and I had responded “pizza”. She goes: “but that has milk in it”. I explained (through translator, Paula) that I had Lactaid pills…this shocked her. Apparently here in Spain they treat lactose intolerance as untreatable and she had never heard of Lactaid-type pills. She kept asking: “so if you eat the pill before, you can eat anything with milk in it?”...completely shocked. Paula leaned over and said, “they have very different ideas of what is curable and what isn’t…” It’s just too bad, because I’d like to help the lactose intolerant Spaniards be able to eat gelato!

Anyway, I spent the rest of the day back at Jardines and started my “dieta blanda”. Ugh. I watched some episodes of Monk and Psych, so that was fun!

Zombies and Sororities...Spanish style

2009-10-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday, October 11, 2009 and Monday, October 12, 2009

Over these two days I did some homework, rested up a bit, went back to the festival. Overall it was a good weekend. I may not have gone anywhere exotic like a lot of the AIFS kids, but it was nice and relaxing! There wasn’t school on Monday because it was a holiday…another saint of some sort. No creepy processions this time though!

I made a trip to Hipercor later in the day to get some more school supplies, birthday cards for Liz, Shannon and Sarah, etc. And then I also went by the Mac store here to see if they had any cheap laptops…haha. They didn’t. It’s crazy expensive here because they have IVA, which is a tax of 16% (!). It’s included usually in all restaurant bills and everything else, but apparently not on computers. This makes them look a lot cheaper than they actually end up being!

On our way to Hipercor, we saw hundreds of high school-aged kids walking around dressed like zombies…or some sort of dead things. Lots of the guys had on shredded turquoise hospital scrubs with fake blood and dirt on them. They all had white faces with dark eye shadow and were ALL buying alcohol. It was really creepy (so I guess this makes up for the lack of creepy processions), but more so because I had no idea why they were dressed like that. Initially I thought it might be another weird thing they do to celebrate the saints, since it was a holiday, but I guess not. We asked Florian at dinner that night and he said that it was in celebration of the release of Rec 2…a scary movie that just came out here. So I guess it’s the equivalent of me dressing up like Hermione for the Harry Potter movie. Just a tad more creepy.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Classes again…boo. I still was stuck in Susana’s Grammar class so I had to get up at 7:20 again to make sure I had enough time to get down to breakfast and then make the trek to the CLM. I’m lucky that all of my classes are in the CLM. NONE IN THE KENIA BUILDING! That saves me about 15 minutes every day, so that’s nice. However, I can feel the flab returning in my thighs from the lack of walking. On the way home from class today we were stopped in the street by this group of girls. They were all in pajamas and were chanting together, sorta like the last time we heard the group of girls go by Jardines at night. This time, they were all standing in a big clump under the windows of the apartments in the street. People were out on their balconies with buckets and buckets of water and were throwing them down on the girls. We figured this was some sort of sorority-type hazing because there were other, older, well dressed girls who were following them around, making sure they were getting soaked. We asked Paula about this and she said that it WAS hazing, and that this time of year we’ll probably see some weird things like that. She said we could probably find them sometime this week in the fountains by the AIFS office too, haha.

The rest of the day was less exciting than that. We mainly did homework and wandered around. I missed having the Renaissance festival right there to run over to…that always had such quality people-watching!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I found out in the afternoon that I FINALLY got out of Susana’s Grammar class. Which was too bad, because I still had to go to it Wednesday. They had changed the room number on me without me knowing somehow, so I spent the first 10 minutes running from each room on the 2^nd floor asking kids if it was Susana’s Grammar class. One girl goes “no, sorry…but really…I’m sorry. Susana’s crazy.” Haha…I’m not alone! I finally saw Susana actually walking out of the teacher’s room, so I ran to catch up to her. I hadn’t planned what I was going to say, so I kinda just blurted out, “Tiene clase ahorra?”(Do you have class now?) Basically the most basic thing ever. She just looks at me and goes “Yo? Si…tengo.” (Me? Yes, I do.) And then I was trying to say I didn’t know where the class was since it had moved, but that seemed too difficult to put together. After an awkward pause I decided on “donde?” (Where?) Creative. I know. But she scares me! She put it together that I was lost, so she brought me with her. We managed to have a decent conversation on our way, so that made me feel a little better. BUT I still hated the class, so I’m glad I got switched! Plus a lot of AIFS kids are in the class I got switched into! All of my other classes were wonderful, even though the 6 hours of class right in a row were a little rough. I now have 2 classes on Monday/Wednesday and 2 classes on Tuesday/Thursday...a good balance. No classes on Fridays!!! It was really funny because there was a new guy in my Literatura class who looked really familiar. I was sitting there trying to figure out who he was when all of a sudden it hit me. HE’S THE GUY FROM THE KEBAB PLACE! He was the one who was helping translate for the guy who couldn’t really speak English! I’m assuming he’s Moroccan because he sorta looks like it…and sounds a bit like Mostapha! Will is in that class, and I mentioned it to him. He thought that was pretty funny…and kinda weird since he speaks pretty fluent Spanish! The guy definitely recognized us. Maybe we can have study sessions at the Kebab King!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARYL! Daryl turned 19! We had class as normal today, but then we kicked it into high gear once we got out. After lunch we rested for a bit and then went out for tapas around 6:30 for Daryl’s birthday. Whoa. Early. But they were super good! We went to this Chinese place right at Plaza Nueva. Most of us got lo mein noodles as our tapas, but Will got chicken wings (mistake!) and Matt got these tiny spring rolls. I’d definitely go back there! At dinner, Will and Florian got everyone to sing her “Cumpleanos Feliz”. Speaking of dinner, because of some miracle, we ended up with chicken nuggets for dinner. Daryl was pretty pumped about that. Will and Florian had an eating contest. It started out as them eating 19 in honor of Daryl, but then Florian made it up to 20, so Will of COURSE had to show him up and make it to 21. Elena didn’t mind, she just thought it was hilarious that she had to bring out 4 trays of them just for our table.

That evening to celebrate Daryl’s birthday we went out to Café Piaf again for triva. Of course we lost again, but it was still fuuuuuun! I can definitely tell that my Spanish is getting better! At least my ability to understand the questions! Then we headed out to the chupeteria. We hit a few other bars to dance at before we headed home to get some sleep for the AIFS hike the next morning!

Friday, October 16, 2009

This morning some AIFS people went on a small hike into the Sacromonte area up to the old Abbey that’s at the top of the hill. When Merete and I got to the front of the AIFS office, we were surprised to see only a few other people there! We thought we were going to be late for meeting everyone else, but nope! I guess a lot of people are traveling (Mirella’s in Dublin, Jilian’s in Morocco, other people are in Portugal, etc.) and some people were still…recovering from the night before. However, one girl’s parents are in town, so she brought them along. That was fun to have some new people there, even though they were pretty quiet! They did take a nice group picture of all of us who went! The hike was a lot of fun because we got to spend a lot of time talking to Paula about really random things. She told us all about the Spanish education system, told us she too knows who Florian is (apparently everyone does these days), suggested places to buy pumpkins for Halloween, and pointed out where our wine tour is going to be held (and why she’s no longer allowed to go with us, haha just kidding)! The hike was a little steep, but it was still fun and a good way to get some morning exercise! On that healthy note, I have to mention the wonderful gelato we got on the way back to Jardines. The lady at the gelato place literally knows me now. She grabbed the small cone and reached toward the hazelnut without me asking today. It was awesome, yet horrible.

I went along to the soccer fields again today. Florian and Adam had organized a giant game…but I felt weird being the only girl, so I opted out. There was such a random group of people there: CLM kids from some of my classes, AIFS kids, people from Florian’s UGR classes and some random Granadians. At one point people were talking about how no one was really ‘talking’ much on the field…er…cement. We decided it was because no one really knew what language to speak since there was Dutch, Japanese, Spanish, English and French being thrown around. I almost threw in some Chinese just for the heck of it. Anyway, it was fun to see everyone together. Florian made sure to invite everyone to his apartment (yeah, apparently Jardines has apartments a few streets over) for a botellon later. Crazy kid…but it should be an interesting night with another large group of an interesting mix of people! I hope it’s as fun as he promised!

Festivals, Florian and the first days of classes

2009-10-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday October 7, 2009

Ohhh what an early morning again. I had class at 8:30am (half an hour earlier than my intensive class) so I got down to breakfast before it even opened. Luckily Julia was quite quick with the pan tostada. My first class was Civilizacion y Culture de Espana. There were about 5 AIFS kids in that one! The teacher, Pilar, seems really nice but I can tell it will be pretty difficult as well. I had two hours off, and then I went to my second class of the day, Geografia de Espana. The teacher, Miguel Angel, walked in and I thought he was a student. He is actually probably about 30 or so, but since there are some older students at the CLM he definitely could fit in. We did a practice test and such, which was pretty entertaining. I seemed like one of the smartest kids in the class because we had just talked about some general things about Spain in my Civilization y Cultura class. For example, yes, there IS a place in Spain that is like a desert…I just happened to be there the day before…San Jose. And, the distance between the tip of Spain and the top of Morocco is about 14km. Obviously. That class seemed pretty fun, but I knew I was probably going to drop it since I don’t get any significant credit for it from UST. I’d rather spend my time studying for my other classes that WILL count toward my minor. Plus, I don’t think I could spend another day in that class with all the girls swooning over Miguel. Sure, he can’t speak much English, but he could still understand what they were saying about him…talk about being awkward. All of my classes are completely in Spanish. When I was signing up for the classes back at UST during the registration process that I thought I was going to take, I initially had my grammar class in Spanish, and then the rest in English. After being here, Paula and others suggested that we just take them in Spanish, so I thought I’d try. I’m pretty good at understanding things, but I’m just worried about writing and speaking. The teachers only speak a little bit more slowly than they normally would…at least that’s what they all say. However, Miguel Angel was talking pretttttttty fast.

After classes I had to rush back to Jardines because I was already half an hour later to lunch. Since there are so many kids living here now, we actually have to eat in 2 shifts, so it works out that some of us have classes that go into lunch time. I spent the time after lunch trying to fix my computer…but with no success. My own personal tech-assist, Will, ran some tests on it, and it ended up that my hard drive had some error. Ugh, I really hope I can get all my photos off of it at some point! Now it’s just sitting in my room mocking me as I use Will’s old computer that overheats within 2 minutes.

That evening, I didn’t feel like eating at Jardines, so Will decided to take me out to a movie (well, he HAD to pay because that was the only way he was going to get me to go see this semi-scary movie). Will ate at a Dunkin Donuts on our way to Neptuno Cine to see Distrito 9 (District 9). How American of us. The movie was actually not that scary, just a little gory at points. It wasn’t actually that difficult to understand, because the aliens in the movie had Spanish subtitles, so we could just read those. After the movie, we made our way back toward Jardines. We stopped by the Cathedral to sit and people-watch. While we were sitting there, about 6 big white vans pulled up and people in suits and ties got out and started talking very loudly with each other. I was a bit confused, but figured they were probably planning something for in front of the Cathedral…since there always seems to be things going on out there. Turns out I was right! (See Friday…)

Thursday October 8, 2009

I had another 8:30am class…no fun. This time it was even worse because it was my grammar class. This was one of the worst experiences yet here in Spain. The room was TINY and I was literally sitting…on the sidelines of the classroom. Everyone else was set up like a normal classroom, but since there were so many people, the few of us on the side were pushed up against the corner, and basically looking at the teacher’s back. THEN, as always, I was first on the attendance list. The teacher, Susana, talked SO fast, and the window was open (and of course there was a lot of road construction going on) so I couldn’t hear anything. She just kept yelling and yelling but I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. It was super awkward and embarrassing and I didn’t know what to do. She got mad at me for asking the kid next to me what she was saying…but he had no idea either. After that, I had already decided that I wanted to switch out of her class. The rest of class didn’t get much better. The rest of the kids after me at least knew what she was asking (what group are you with, where are you from, how many years have you studied Spanish, etc.) so they all looked like they had no problem understanding her. HOWEVER, the 2 other kids she decided to ask different questions to got caught in my same situation and looked as silly as I’m sure I did. Ugh. Still, I wanted to get out of there. Then we did this practice exercise, and when anyone said something wrong, she’d just go “NO. SIGUENTE.” (No. Next.) I knew I wouldn’t be able to learn in that sort of environment because I was so nervous I’d get it wrong. Anyway, I had a class right after that one (this was a class I didn’t sign up for but that is required by AIFS…and will count for my 301 course at UST). This was my POE class (oral and written class) that had been scheduled oh so nicely into my schedule…I had planned I that I would have 2 hours in between classes again on Tuesdays/Thursdays, but since AIFS scheduled me in this one I had 6 hours straight of classes. Of Spanish. I didn’t mind much because I really liked this teacher, Maria (I like her name too). She was super nice and understanding…much in contrast of my time with Susana. There were only 10 kids in that class (2 from AIFS) so we just talked a bunch and went over this article she wanted us to talk about. It was really relaxed and I’m sure I’ll be able to learn a lot in that class! She doesn’t make people feel bad when they mess up. I mean, I know I conjugated things incorrectly, and she would answer anyways, and then would go on to explain how to say it in a better way (aka…the right way). Luckily, my class right after that, Literatura was with Maria as well! Even though I have to survive through 4 hours of her talking (she talks relatively fast as well…) I don’t mind! The literature class seems pretty hard, but I need it for my minor so I’ll have to do my best! A lot of kids in that class are really good at speaking. Normally, even in my classes in English back home, I get nervous talking in class. However, I think that since I have Maria for my POE class I am more likely to talk since she understands where I’m coming from and I know her a little better. I talked on the first day! Yay for participation points! The homework from this class was suuuuuper hard because it was a reading and I only knew about 2/3 of the words! Eek!

I was basically Spanish-ed out by the time I got back to Jardines (late…again) for lunch. THEN I remembered that we didn’t have school on Friday, so that made it a little better. Regardless, I went to the AIFS office and put in my request to change Grammar classes. NO MORE SUSANA, POR FAVOR.

Later that evening I went with all of the Jardines kids and a lot of the Spaniards from here to this bar really close by called Café Piaf. (Not Pilaf…because that’s what I thought the first time.) Florian arranged this because it was trivia night there…in Spanish and in French. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a lot of fun! I understood a lot of the questions, but luckily we had Lewis on our team to help us understand certain words! We didn’t win, but I’m convinced the group of Germans cheated. Just kidding, it was still fun!

Friday October 9, 2009

I got up rather early again to go on the AIFS organized trip to the Cathedral and Royal Chapel. It was so weird that I had been living so close to the Cathedral but still didn’t know anything about it or hadn’t been in it. It was good to finally go! Daryl and I left a bit early from the residence to get pastries before we met up with the AIFS group on the Cathedral steps. Surprise, surprise—there was a huge festival being set up in front of the Cathedral! I knew it was a long weekend, so that made sense, but something seemed a little off about this festival…with the large, large grills with meat and a tiny pig I literally watch get shoved onto a spit…all of the little shops selling jewelry, etc. Paula confirmed my suspicions that it was a Renaissance festival when she showed up. SCORE. I thought I had missed out on the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, but it came to me here in Granada! I’ll come back to the festival…but first, the tour!

The Cathedral was a LOT bigger than I thought! I should have expected this since it IS the second largest cathedral in Spain! It was hard to take pictures in there because no flash was allowed… We started out in the priests' dressing room, which was sorta funny. Paula laughed when kids started taking pictures in the multiple mirrors…Myspace-style. Inside the Cathedral, there were a few organs which Paula said are only played a couple times a year, once which is in November, so I’ll be sure to go! Paula told us about how this Cathedral (made up of 3 different altars) was different than a lot of other ones because it was made to shuffle through large amounts of people at a time. In the Royal Chapel we saw the tombs of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel and their children. There was also a small room with a lot of artifacts from the king and queen’s reign. For example, we saw King Ferdinand’s sword and all a jeweled box which was said to have been given to Columbus. It was all really interesting, so I might even head back some other time since we’re so close to it!

After the tour some of us decided to wander around the Renaissance festival since it was RIGHT there. It was a ton of fun seeing all the hippies out and about, and all of the workers dressed in their Renaissance clothing. As I said, there were ENORMOUS amounts of meat being cooked…the photos don’t even do it justice. There were tons and tons of vendors spread out around the cathedral and in Plaza Bib Rambla. It was such a fun atmosphere I decided to wander around even more after everyone else went back. I was aiming to get a few small gifts for people back home from some of the vendors that seemed more legit (some stuff looked ACTUALLY hand-made, some not so much). I had seen this one stand that I really thought looked cool earlier (but they hadn’t quite set up yet), so I went back. I was browsing around when the guy behind the stand started talking to me. Apparently he told me that if I wanted to try anything, I could, but since I had my ears pierced I had a difficult time explaining that I couldn’t, haha. Then he goes “Ahh…hables un poco espano, si?” So, my cover was blown…no, I’m not a Spaniard, I only dress and act like one. We talked for a little bit in a mix of bad English and Spanish about the CLM and such and he also told me a little more about the festival. I finally decided on a pair of earrings (that he once again suggested that I should try on). He took quite a while getting the earrings in the tiny bag and then when he finally handed me my change, with it was his name and number on a tiny piece of paper. Gaspar. Isn’t that the name of the guy in Beauty and the Beast or something? Haha, I also realized later that I totally got a discount on the earrings. Sweet! Maybe he could be my intercambio!

That night a few of us went back and just sat on the steps of the Cathedral and people-watched. We were sitting in front of this one place that was serving all sorts of (expensive) meaty empanadas and bocadillos when all of a sudden this huge, hairy guy on bouncy stilts came wandering by. He looked like something out of Narnia! He was like a…faun or whatever they’re called. He said he was Zapatero’s son…which I don’t believe, haha. He had a huge drum and decided to play along with the music that was playing at the little food place in front of us. I got some good videos and photos of him…they’re pretty funny! Then, he went under the canopy of the little food place and started serving people! He had to duck down though because he was too tall on his stilts! He then proceeded to grab a bag pipe that they randomly had there and play it. I got a video of that as well.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I got to sleep in! Yay! This was the first Saturday since we’ve been here that we haven’t had something planned for us to do by AIFS…then again we had the tour of the Cathedral and Royal Chapel on Friday.

I spent most of the day at the festival again. Lewis and Florian hadn’t been there yet so they went with us. They bought necklaces and we all got these giant gummy candies. YUM. Daryl and mine was watermelon flavor. Will was convinced his was plaster flavored…toooooooo bad.

We ate lunch at Jardines but then went out for tapas for dinner. Tapas turned into olives, so we decided to go back to the festival to get some MEAT. I decided it was too expensive, but people got pina coladas, mojitos, rib tips, brats, etc. I just enjoyed the smells! Sorry Scarlet, but I’d take rib tips over blood sausage any day.

Cabo de Gata: San Jose

2009-10-14T11:06:00.001-07:00

Sunday October 4, 2009

Since classes didn’t start until Tuesday the 6^th, many people had made plans to travel after our Madrid trip. Some had already left by breakfast time, so MORE FOOD FOR US! The 6 of us who WERE riding back on the AIFS bus to Granada stocked up on the breakfast cookies once again before our 6 hour bus ride home. It was nice being able to sprawl out between two seats (with our seat belts on of course). I decided I am going to make a montage of olive trees, because during this bus ride I got so much footage! It’s crazy how many trees there are, and some of them don’t even seem like the farmers would be able to get to them! Once we got back, Will and I got everything re-packed to head off to the SOUTH, south part of Spain, Cabo de Gata. My professors and numerous travel books had said that this place had some of the best views in Spain. Unfortunately we took too long packing that we had to grab a cab to the bus station. This was actually pretty fun though because we told the cabbie (Antonio…taxi numero 73!) that we had a bus to catch in fifteen minutes. Immediately he stepped on it and we made it there with plenty of time. He talked to us the whole time (while swerving in and out of traffic…I’m pretty sure we went through a few red lights as well) about his American car, a Jeep Cherokee. He was really proud of it. He also told us that we were going to LOVE Cabo de Gata…so I started to get really excited! Once we got to the Almeria bus station, we were trying to find the bus that Paula told us we could catch to San Jose…a tiny town in the eastern side of Spain right in the middle of the Cabo de Gata national park. We looked and looked but all of the places we went to and people we asked said that there weren’t any more that evening. PAULA! There was only one that really went straight to San Jose, and since it was a Sunday, the last one that left was at 8:30…it was already 9:30. Will ran into these two English girls who had the same problem. They were studying in Almeria and had wanted to catch a bus to San Jose for the weekend. They decided just to leave the next morning, but we still had to find a way there! Finally we ended up just taking a taxi after about an hour of trying to find something cheaper. Oh well, at least we got there! After we were settled in, we made our way to the boardwalk to check out the sights. Seeing as it was dark out, all we could really see was that we were surrounded by some sort of LARGE hills. The town was built into these hills, and I could tell that our hike the next day was going to be difficult, yet fun! The place seemed almost deserted. I didn’t know if that was because it was sort of late, or because it was off season for travelling. Then I remembered that many of the travel books said that this town was always pretty tranquillo (relaxed). Just what I needed! Almost EVERYTHING was seafood, but I guess that made sense because it used to be a fishing town. Since neither Will nor I are big fans of mariscos, we decided to opt for something different. We ate at this little Italian place that had REALLY good pizza…it really reminded me of Punch Pizza from back in the states! Will got Spaghetti Carbonera that he really enjoyed. While we were walking along the boardwalk after dinner, we saw this older guy with his mini amp playing and singing. He sounded a LOT like Bob Dylan and played so many different American oldies. I wonder how he ended up in that tiny town…Will and I both agreed that he could easily play professionally!

Monday October 5, 2009

As we headed out in the morning, we saw that there was a bakery right across the street from where we were staying. It was pretty early, so we managed to get some pretty fresh pastries! I also grabbed a bag of muffins for our long trek through the hills. As we started off, we really weren’t sure where we were going, but got pointed in the general direction of Playa Monsul…a beach which is considered one of the most beautiful in Spain, and was also used in an Indiana Jones movie! We walked through the tiny streets of the town (that really looked like we could have been walking through streets in Greece) until we ran into a gravel road that looked like it was taking us away from the beach. Cars passed us and gave us odd looks, but then we finally found a sign that had a little map of the beaches. It directed us down this dirt path that looked like it would be perfect for mountain biking. There were SO many aloe vera plants as we walked, and very little shade. Once the aloe vera plants started getting to be fewer and fewer, their lack was made up for with the presence of a ton of cactuses. I could totally imagine a movie being filmed there! First we reached Playa de los Genoveses after about 40 minutes of walking. Seeing the beach was really interesting because we were still in the middle of the…desert. Behind us there were HUGE hills and in front us was desert that turned into a giant beach. There were only a few people there (who had driven…) so it was very relaxing. We hadn’t brought our swimming stuff, so we just walked along the beach for a little. Check out the photos…when they get posted! We found what looked to be the continuation of the path we had just been on, so we decided to take that. I’m still not quite sure what path it was that we found…but it definitely wasn’t for any old travelers. Speaking of which, we ended up being followed by this Spanish couple who was in their 50s (ok, they’re not OLD). We went along for a long time, having to hike up very steep parts of the hills to get over one and look onto the other. In between each of the hills was a tiny cove with its own personal beach. I kept expecting to see Playa Monsul, but as we made our way, it seemed like it would never come! When we stopped for some photos, the couple caught up to us. They thought we were Spaniards as well…and then we started talking. Apparently they had no idea what path we were hiking on either, so we all sorta wandered along together trying to get to Playa Monsul. THEN it got really interesting. As Will and I pulled ahead of them we saw that around the bend of one of the hills was this area where we were literally walking on a 60 degree incline of rock. I’m fine, don’t worry…it was crazy though. Will got some footage of it, and it was pretty ridiculous. The couple ended up doing the same thing as us…after I found a do-able path, of course. This lasted for about 40 minutes. We talked with the couple again and they had gotten their map out and saw that Playa Monsul was still quite a ways. The path we were on didn’t look like it was going to get any…safer, so we decided just to stop at that cove for lunch. We hopped down onto the beach and made our way to the shady part under one of the sides of the hill. The couple headed toward the opposite side of the tiny beach. Will and I ate our muffins as we looked out over the Sea. Then, the couple decided to go swimming. Spanish-style. Stripping down to absolutely nothing, they proceeded to go running into the Sea. I couldn’t decide if it made it more or less awkward that we had just talked with them. Regardless, it ruined any chance of me getting photos of this beautiful beach, because I didn’t want to whip out my camera and have them think I was a creeper taking pictures of them. Oh well, there were plenty other photo ops. Right before we were about to leave, we realized that we were sitting right next to a boat that had been completely covered with sand. Only the bow of the boat was sticking up, and it was at quite a sharp angle, so it must have gone at least 20 feet under the sand. Wow! Again, unfortunately I was unable to get a picture of this, or else in the background there would have been the carefree couple, haha. We made out long hike back to San Jose, but not before running into even more couples doing the same thing as the one we had met! Each little cove seemed to just call to these people…however we didn’t see anyone our age doing it, so we decided against it, haha.

Once back in San Jose, we headed to the beach that was right there in our tiny town. Surrounded by fishing boats instead of tourist shops, this beach felt a lot less touristy than Roquetas del Mar. We laid out there for a while, people watching and enjoying the view. After the sun started to set, we headed back to freshen up before we took a sunset walk past where all the boats were tied up. We climbed out onto some rocks that allowed us to watch the sun set against the far end of San Jose’s cove. It was really beautiful. (Again, check out the photos once they’re up!) We made our way back into town for another Italian dinner, this time at a different place. Will and I were so hungry from our 5 hour hike that we each ordered our own pizza…not what all the other people there were doing, but we were HUNGRY. The guy kinda looked at us funny when we ordered, but you should have seen him when he came to get our empty plates at the end, haha. I think he was impressed that I had just eaten equally as much (if not more…because I eat the crust) than Will! Funny, fat Americans. That’s Will and I in a nutshell…at least that night. We sat out along the beach for a while, listening to the Bob Dylan guy again. I decided that if we saw him again before we left the next day that I’d give him a bit of a tip. He seemed to be following us to give us a soundtrack to our weekend.

Tuesday October 6, 2009

We decided to catch one of the only two busses going from San Jose to Almeria. It was to leave at 3:00 and we weren’t about to miss it. We were walking across the street to the bakery when I heard our Bob Dylan friend. He was literally right outside of the bakery…how did he know. After grabbing another yummy breakfast from there, I tipped Mr. Dylan and we headed toward the beach to pass the time. We ended up finding a nice spot in the shade of one of the palm trees. I kept thinking about how happy I was that I wasn’t in the states waking up (in the cold) for class. Mmmm…how relaxing. At 3, we hopped on the Bernardo bus and rode back to Almeria. We caught an earlier bus back to Granada, which was good because I still had a few things I wanted to do before classes started the next day. Overall, I think Cabo de Gata has been one of my favorite trips so far. While the others have been very historically informative, I really enjoyed all of the nature of Cabo de Gata and San Jose. Now, if only pictures could do it justice...

Madrid, El Escorio, Segovia and more!

2009-10-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

WHEW! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged! I wrote some notes to myself about the past couple weeks, but I may end up remembering things later as well. I’ll post about those when that happens! This is only the first few days in Toledo and Madrid, and is quite the novel, but I hope you enjoy it!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

This was the last day of our “intensive” Spanish course. Many kids skipped because we obviously weren’t going to do anything in class that would affect our grades, considering we had already taken our finals. I knew I had done poorly on both of my finals, but I went to class anyway. We watched a movie called Empuje del Sur that was a kids cartoon about Washington Irving and his time spent in the Alhambra. It sort of reminded me of Aladdin mixed with Prince of Egypt mixed with Pocahontas. I enjoyed it even though we had just gotten our finals back right before we started it. To make up for this, all of the Jardines crew (including the Spaniards) went to see Enimigos Publicos (Public Enemies…the one with Johnny Depp) that night. I hadn’t seen that movie yet, and I thought it was really good! I understood most of it, because it was pretty visual (as most movies are…) so good thing it wasn’t a comedy or else I would have really been lost! I packed when I got back to Jardines, because early the next morning the AIFS group was set to leave for MADRID!

Thursday, October 1, 2009

I got up rather early to make it to breakfast before running to catch the bus. We met at the Neptuno Mall plaza…where we had gone to see Enemigos Publicos the night before! We left around 9:45 after we had to wait for a few girls who apparently missed their alarms. Paula always says we’re leaving RIGHT on time and that you’ll be left behind if you’re late, but that has yet to happen. I think it’s because she missed the bus once for an excursion when she was studying abroad, so she knows what it feels like to be left behind. So, at least she has some sympathy! However, she ALWAYS says it’s the last time she will wait for someone. Anyway, our bus left and we drove for about 2 hours before we stopped at a little gas station and cafeteria for lunch. The Jardines crew, once again, had to sit back with our frozen bocadillos and watch the other kids munch away at their Subway-esque sandwiches. This time, the cheese had actually frozen to the meat, so I couldn’t even separate the two even after the 2 hour bus ride. I had to make do with nibbling around the edges and eating my apple.

After 2 more hours on the bus we made it to Toledo, where we were to spend the next few hours with our tour guides Carlos and Luis (nephew and uncle, respectively)…not to be called “tour guide” or else they would call us “tourist”. Paula mentioned to us multiple times before arrival that Carlos is the best guide she has ever had in all of her years traveling throughout Spain. He did all the talking on the bus part of the tour, and was VERY funny. I thought he sorta sounded like Triumph the Insult dog (both because of his accent and because of how many jokes he told), so I took a video that, if you’re interested, you’ll have to see when I get home. We got off the bus to make our way around to see the Catedral, Iglesia de Sto. Tome and the Sta. Maria la Blanca (an old synagogue). **SIDE NOTE: On the way into town, I saw a sign for Hotel Christina Maria…or was it Maria Christina?? Anyway, I thought that was funny!** I ended up in the group with Luis, who was also a pretty good guide, but for different reasons. He was VERY enthusiastic, yet serious, about his tours, and always made sure that no other tourists were listening in on his speeches (“THIS IS A PRIVATE TOUR…”). He was extremely knowledgeable about everything, and had a specific story for every place we went. He told us that in 1995 he had the honor of giving a tour to Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, so I guess he’s pretty well known in the guide world! I was a bit upset because pictures weren’t allowed in any of the places, but I did manage to get a good picture of him and Daryl sharing an umbrella once it started raining. I’ll make sure to try and get my pictures up…somehow…sometime. In the Catedral we saw works of Goya, Velasquez, El Greco and other famous painters. We also got to see a blacksmith at work in the “fabrica de damasquinado y espadas”. Here was where the best swords of Europe were made for battles back in the day. In the gift shop, everyone had a field day playing with all the different swords…check out flickr. Paula said that some kids in the past had actually bought swords (I mean, I considered it. Who WOULDN’T want a sword?? They were only 50+ Euros!) but had trouble sending them back home. (No, you can’t take them on the plane.)

After we left Toledo, we headed another hour north to Madrid. We got to our hotel, Hotel Principe Pio and had the rest of the evening to explore. Our hotel was very nicely situated in between Plaza Espana and the Palacio Real—and also pretty close to Principe Pio mall. This is where we found our dinner for the evening. Paula had pointed out a few places that we could try and we ended up at VIPS. It had American-type food…I say American-type because it still didn’t quite taste like home. Daryl and I split a chicken cesar salad and a cheese burger. After dinner we just walked around for a bit to see what else was close by. On our way back to the hotel we ended up walking behind this guy and his “bomb squad” dog. How comforting. Apparently a group of them were staying at our hotel, because in the morning, all of the dogs were sitting in the lobby in their kennels. The people who didn’t put 2 and 2 together had a bit of a freak out session as we boarded the bus the next morning…

Friday, October 2, 3009

BREAKFAST! FREE! Oh, it was wonderful. We had churros, hot chocolate, toast, muffins, fruit, juice (except that tasted a bit funky), cereal and more! I made sure to stock up on the small packs of cookies before we got on the bus to go on our tour of the city! We started at the Prado Museo with our tour guide, Paloma. Again, no photos were allowed, but Paloma did well to tell us things about the different pieces of art so that we would remember them. She called these “gossips”, and seemed really excited about each and every one of them. For example, she called one painting “Homage to Cellulite” and went on to tell us about the different people in the painting and how they were all inter-related to the painter. Drama, drama! After the Prado, we went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and wandered through only a small amount of the 2800 (!) rooms. My favorite, like Paloma, was the smoking room. “I don’t know what they used to smoke in this room, but it was not cigars. Just look at the wall paper.” It was all bright colors with realllllllly random cartoonish pictures. It really did not fit in at ALL with the rest of the rooms. Photos weren’t permitted inside the palace, but we all made sure to take photos in the courtyard! After this tour, we were set free. We had heard that there was a fiesta starting right next to the Palacio Real to celebrate the announcing of the 2016 Olympic Games. Madrid was up for the bid along with Tokyo, Rio, and Chicago. On our way over to the stage, we were stopped by this lady with a microphone. She said she was from some local radio station and wanted to get different peoples’ views and thoughts on who would win the bid (…in Spanish). She talked to us for a bit, and convinced Will and Merete to stay until they went on the air. I filmed… Will decided to support Madrid, but Merete, from Chicago, decided to support Chicago! Along with those two, other Spaniards were talked to, and also these two ladies from Brazil! As we were walking through the fiesta, we saw the booth for the radio station that was blasting their channel…Will and Merete must have been on there!

For the rest of the day, Daryl, Chryssi, Merete, Will and I decided to go to the Madrid Zoo Aquarium. Though it was a bit pricy, it was a ton of fun. We saw a sea lion show and a dolphin show! The dolphins there understand Spanish! I took lots of photos, mainly because I was in awe of how little shielding they had between us and the animals. For example, the buffalos only had about a 2 foot high fence. The only animals they really kept locked up were the lions, tigers and bears (oh my!). Later that night when we went back to the hotel, the guy at the door told us that Rio had won the olympic bid. That was sad to hear, because it would have been a lot of fun to be able to say I WAS THERE WHEN THEY WON! Oh well…I WAS THERE WHEN THEY LOST!

Saturday October 3, 2009

We hopped on the bus in the morning and headed East toward Segovia. Unfortunately, some of the kids didn’t make it on to the bus because they had been out too late the night before. This really seemed like quite a shame because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this day trip! On the way to Segovia, we stopped at El Escorial, built by Felipe II (King of the infamous Spanish Armada, who was later killed there via a large grill). It is a palace, library, royal tomb, monastery, school and basilica. Photos weren’t allowed INSIDE of the building, but we took some photos in the courtyard (starting to sound like a reoccurring theme?). Palace, walking, pictures, palace, walking, pictures…kinda like in Japan: temple, walking, pictures, temple, walking, pictures. Luckily our group was the first through, because we made it down to the chapel JUST in time. The guard outside told us we could go in if we hurried. At first I didn’t know why, but then we saw the people coming in after us. We were awkwardly standing up by the altar when the doors opened for the guests of a wedding to come in. We hurried out the side, but not before snapping pictures of the beautiful dresses and hair pieces/hats that the women were wearing (I want one!). I only got a photo from pretty far away, but it was funny to think of having your wedding at such a place. I asked our tour guide who has the opportunity to get married there, and she said, “Anyone! You could!” So, start saving for a plane ticket (and a hair piece)…I want you all there.

After El Escorial, we hopped back on the bus and made our way to Segovia. We were dropped off by our bus literally RIGHT underneath the Roman Aquaduct. This is one of the main attractions of Segovia. It was very beautiful there, and sort of reminded me of Siena…not sure why. We ate dinner at this restaurant (yeah, all 57 of us…including our bus driver). It was pasta, chicken and French fries…Spanish style of course. This meant it was a huge piece of chicken that you had to peel off the bone, pasta that had some sort of fishy taste, and very, very oily fries! After our lunch we hiked up to the top of the Aquaduct for better photos, then on to the Sleeping Beauty castle, the Alcazar! It’s called the Sleeping beauty castle because it is said to be the castle that inspired the castle in Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty…and I can see why! It was a place for amazing pictures! Facebook profile pic for SURE, haha. However, I wasn’t looking too hot after walking up the HUGE tower, so maybe not. Our tour guide there was amazing, and very informative. It seemed like she had been there…quite a few times, haha (INMA!) Photos were FINALLY allowed, so we all got a bit photo happy…taking pictures of things that really didn’t deserve a photo. Be sure to check out Inma’s favorite room—the pineapple room! We then had a bit of free time once we got back to the main plaza. We wandered around and all managed to find the same bakery…which had wonderful pastries and chocolate. We then headed back to Madrid on our bus. At one of the toll stops, we got pulled over by the police. They had seen into the bus and saw that one kid was sleeping in the aisle, and that almost none of us had our seat belts on. (What? Belts on a bus? Even Paula admitted she didn’t know that one.) Regardless, we had to sit there while our driver got ticket after ticket for different things. Apparently he was being super mean. Inma asked him at one point what the difference between a tourist bus (taking people from place to place) and a destination bus (just going from place to place) was and he just said “the 1000 Euro fine.” SO, needless to say, Paula and Inma were upset, especially since the police then followed us all the way back to Madrid because they didn’t believe we were going where we said we were…or something. It was all confusing. Once we got back, we had the night free, and ended up eating at the Chinese buffet some other AIFS kids had found earlier on the trip. It was good to finally feel full for once!

more coming soon........

COMING SOON...

2009-10-14T01:54:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone...sorry for not being able to post anything! My computer died on me the day before we left for Madrid (2 weeks ago) so I have been stealing internet and computers from other people! However, I have a lot to write about between Madrid, San Jose and the start of classes, SO I didn´t want to spend 5 hours on someone else´s computer!

Now I´m in the AIFS office, using a weird Spanish keyboard that really confuses me...but LOOK AT ALL OF THE COOL THINGS I CAN DO:
ç € ñ ¬ ¿ ¡ á é ó í ú

Haha, I´m just hoping that the computer Dad just bought for me via a Spain Mac store doesn´t have this same confusing keyboard! Well, I´ll hopefully have a loooonnnnnng blog soon about the past two weeks. Thanks for being patient!

¡Adiós!
M

Old school

2009-09-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Well, we had our final exams today. They definitely didn’t go as well as I wanted them to. The first one was REALLY bad, considering there were things on it that I didn’t even learn (I had switched into the class 3 days into it). I think I guessed on more than half of it. I guess I’ll see how I did tomorrow. Regardless, I rewarded myself with some gelato today. I’m really starting to like this new place where we can get more than one flavor at a time. Today I got tropical fruit and mango! Lunch was interesting because now we have too many people to all eat at once, so Merete and I and a few others had to wait until the next shift of people. I felt like I had “second lunch” at high school, haha.

This afternoon Chryssi got her ear pierced. Well, she has both of her ears already pierced and has a small hoop in her cartilage as well, but today she got a horseshoe shape (or as they called it: ‘banana’) one right under her other hoop. The piercing and tattoo place is RIGHT around the corner from Jardines, so I reminded her that if she fainted we wouldn’t have to drag her far. Hmm…maybe I’ll finally get my ears pierced :P

Before dinner we booked our cheeeeeeeeap place to stay at in Cabo de Gata (well, technically it’s San Jose). It’s right on the coast AND right in the park, so that’s good! However, the bus station isn’t as close as we had hoped. I guess we’ll have to take a taxi.

Before people went out tonight we had a little music/video party in our room. Old school music like Hanson, Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Avril Lavigne and DISNEY SONGS! It was fun.

Well, time for bed. Last day of our Spanish intensive class tomorrow!
M

1 month down, 2 1/2 to go!

2009-09-29T04:43:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 28, 2009

Study time!!! That’s what today is for, I guess. However, I did manage to make some time for watching a couple episodes of Weeds…just so I wouldn’t go completely nuts. I think I finally figured out why I’ve been so confused. My Spanish professors back home called these verb tenses something just a bit different than they do here. I thought they sounded weird. Today I got so confused in class…my professor kinda got mad at me.

My study guide is up to about…17 pages now. Still not done, but I’m going strong. Now I’ve just started to write down everything I’m hoping to remember (but I know in the back of my head that I won’t). I just keep telling myself that I get a vacation after the test tomorrow—which is true—and that seems to be helping! I’m excited to look up placed in Cabo de Gata…it looks B-E-A-utiful.

So, basically all of the Spaniards are here in Jardines now. That made for an interesting breakfast. First of all, it was Julia #2 who served us (a.k.a. Fig), but it did go a lot faster. HOWEVER, my piece of pan tostada was itsy-bitsy. There were about 12 of us at breakfast, whereas we’re usually used to having only 4 or 5. Then, at lunch, we had even more than that…I’d guess around 20. We’ had pasta and meat sauce (with sunny-side up eggs on the side…random), which I decided they had made because it’s an easy way to feed that many kids. After we had finished, Elena asked us to kindly move our conversation outside the comedor so that other students could take our table. That was a first!

As I said, I’ve spent most of the day studying, yet I still feel like I know nothing. I know have an immense respect for people who speak multiple languages. I don’t know how they keep the different tenses straight! I mean, take this example: María quiso comprar la casa (Maria tried to buy the house) VERSUS María quería comprar la casa (Maria did not want to buy the house). I look at this and can’t decide why people would make a language so hard. That verb should NOT mean so many different things!

Anyway, I should probably get back to studying. SEND ME CANDY. I NEED STUDY SUGAR.
:)
M

Gelato count: 18

p.s. Telepizza has 1 Euro medium-sized pizzas all of today because of the holiday yesterday…so maybe after tonight’s dinner of deep fried ham and cheese I’ll opt to go get one of those. Florian already ate 3.

Parades, Pollo and Poker

2009-09-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Today was a very relaxing day. I got to sleep in until 11 and then went out for churros con chocolate. The chocolate here is SOOOOOO good. It tastes like hot chocolate from the states (not Swissmiss…think Ghirardelli ), except just a tiny bit more bitter. It’s super thick, so it sticks well to the churros. Each plate of churros that you order comes with five 9 or 10 inch tubes of churro. The first day we got churros, we made the mistake of ordering two plates of churros. Even though we finished both plates that day, we have now limited ourselves to sharing one plate.

I spent most of the afternoon studying for my exam which is on Tuesday. We have gone over so many things in my class, so it’s difficult to figure out what to study. I decided to go along with my normal way of studying—making a huge hand-written study guide for myself. As of right now, it’s 10 pages…and I’m not even close to being done. We have imperative negative, imperative affirmative, preterit indefinite, preterit imperfect, preterit indefinite, pronombres, and much, much more. I don’t even know what most of these things mean in Enlgish! Haha. I really hope I do well, because I’ve really been trying! I just know that I don’t test very well, so I have to over-prepare. We have the test on Tuesday, and then I guess we’re watching a Spanish move on Wednesday (we’ll see if anyone shows up…), and then the AIFS crew leaves for Madrid on Thursday.

Will and I decided not to go to Barcelona after Madrid because it was getting too expensive just for a day and a half. Instead, we’re planning on doing a day-trip, or stay over at Cabo de Gata…one of the most beautiful places in Spain (at least that’s what both of my professors have said on separate occasions). There are salt marshes, beaches and a huge national park.

This evening Will and I went on a long walk to get away from studying for a bit. We went down to Parque de Garcia Lorca and sat there for a bit. On our way home we went to grab some gelato but ran into this HUGE parade. We had heard marching band-type music earlier, but didn’t think anything of it. It turns out that today is a holiday (I believe they’re celebrating San Maria…ME!). There were literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of people out in the streets. Starting near the cathedral there was a huge band, some priest-looking people and lots of important official type people walking VERY slow. Then behind them there were two lines on either side of the street of people with big, long candles. Some had multiple candles. There were vendors on the street selling roasted corn, potatoes and chestnuts among other toys, balloons and such. The lines of people went alllllllll the way down the main street that we walk on to school…and must’ve kept going for almost a mile from what I could see. There were multiple bands that would walk in between the two lines. When we were right next to one, they started playing this creepy slow song that reminded me of something from Angels and Demons or The Davinci Code or something. Their march wasn’t the typical marching band march…it was very slow and they just sorta rocked back and forth. There were also rounds of very loud Black Cat-esque fireworks. Regardless, it was very interesting. I was basically so impressed with it that I couldn’t even force myself to take pictures of it. I felt like it would be rude or something…in addition to distracting my attention from it!

Then we met up with some other people and went to this Mexican restaurant (!) near the CLM. It was pretty weird to be eating Mexican food in Spain, but it was good! The place reminded me a lot of Little Angie’s Cantina in Duluth, MN. I ordered a Quesadilla de Pollo…as did Will and Merete. Chryssi and Daryl both ordered Burritos de Pollo. I think everyone enjoyed their meals! On our way back to Jardines, we got caught in the middle of the parade that was STILL going on. I guess since they were walking so slow, that makes sense!

Now the boys (Florian, Lewis, Will and Adam) are playing poker in the basement and I plan on studying a bit more. Wish me luck!
M

Hiking al Llano de la Perdiz

2009-09-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

Today we got up in time to get some breakfast in our stomachs before the long hike. We left at 10am and I was surprised to see so many people at our meeting point…considering what I heard about their nights yesterday! Haha. As we started walking from Plaza Nueva, numerous kids admitted to either still being a bit tipsy or extremely hung over. Paula just e and said “me too”. I guess she had a fun night too! Inma and her husband, Raul were the leaders of the pack—Paula sort of hung back with us. As I said, I had no idea what to expect. We started walking and ended up by the Alhambra again. It was a super long uphill walk on uneven cobblestone ‘stairs’. Then it was even more uphill walking, but this time on semi-paved pathways. The group started to stretch out, and it was obvious who had been out the night before. Regardless, everyone managed to keep up pretty well!

We walked through all of these orchards of olive trees, and then past the Granada Cemetery (I guess we took the shorter way this time…) and then started to take a more…less traveled path. There were so many awkward rocks and stones that it was almost impossible to look up while walking, but we took short breaks every so often to get some pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78071008@N00/sets/ The views were amazing, so I guess all the sweat was worth it! After about 2 hours we stopped at this little rest stop (for cars…of people who had DRIVEN there) to eat our bocadillos. Unfortunately, Scarlet had put ours in the freezer last night, so mine still wasn’t thawed out. Good thing I had brought some of my “maria” brand crackers with me!

The way back down was REALLY cool. Inma told us “the way down is a lot more dangerous” and we all sorta just shrugged that off. She wasn’t kidding. We were on these tiny paths along the side of the hill that had the hill on one side and a big drop off on the other. Our group was really spread out again, so with all the turn backs in the path, it was fun to look across the valleys and see the other people in the group! (Look at the pictures!) The whole hike took about 4 hours…and my feet were dead. However, it was really actually quite relaxing, since it was really quiet. No motos, no loud bars, no screaming babies. It was very peaceful.

On the way home we decided we wanted to go to Hipercor to buy a George Forman grill (Jorge Forman…). We miss steak. And grilled cheese. I wonder if those are allowed in our rooms…or if we’ll have to get an extension cord and cook on our balconies. Whatever, I can’t stand eating so much fish.

Tonight we got Dominoes Pizza…didn’t taste quite the same, but it was a good change from the cuisine here at Jardines. Still no George Foreman grill, maybe tomorrow. We also watched Wedding Crashers. I guess it was a night to be American. Well, gotta rest up for churros con chocolate tomorrow!
Buenos noches!
M

Introducciones de mi vida

2009-09-26T06:49:00.000-07:00

I know some of you read Will’s blog as well. He introduced some of the people I talk about, but I thought I should do the same!

Merete: Pronounced: “Mah, reh, tah”. My roommate from both London and here in Granada. She goes to Ohio University and is a Sophomore ALSO studying Journalism (holla!). Merete enjoys loooooooooong siestas and any kind of disco, haha. Oh, and she’s in love with Juanes.

Daryl: a.k.a. Daryl-Dactyl. One of the chicas who lives next to Merete and I on the 2nd floor of Jardines. She is a freshman this year at Wash. University in St. Louis. She is originally from Miami, Florida. Daryl loves to giggle at everything. All the time…Lewis is convinced she even giggles in her sleep. Daryl has class in the Kenia building, so we get to walk together every day!

Jilian: a.k.a. Juanita. Jilian is Daryl’s roommate, and loves to Skype everyone, all the time. She’s not afraid to use her Spanish, even if she’s not quite sure what she’s saying. She’s also a freshman this year from Wash. University.

Mirella: Mirella is very serious about her school work, but also really likes to go out! One of my most memorable moments of her so far is when she got a package at the AIFS office and started yelling, “Yay! My Chemistry and Physics books!” Either that, or the time at lunch where she started crying because she was so happy we might go to a Backstreet Boys concert.

Breana: One of the five AIFS kids from St. Thomas. I actually had a Spanish class with her last year. She is Mirella’s roommate and they live directly below Merete and I.

Marisa: From the Boston area, and is studying to be a teacher. She reminds me a LOT of Christina (my cousin) in many different ways…even though she’s not blonde. She lives on the other side of Jardines. She enjoys leading the pack when we’re out and about…Jefe. Marisa is in my intensive Spanish class for this first month, so we get to do the long 30 minute walk every morning together.

Chryssi: Also from the Massachusetts, Chryssi is the third and final Wash. University freshman we have here on the AIFS trip. Chryssi is the other Jardines girl who is in my intensive Spanish class this month. She was initially in the first class that I was placed in, but we moved up together. Chryssi rooms with Marisa on the other side of Jardines, and apparently talks in her sleep.

Adam: One of the only 2 AIFS boys who are living in Jardines. He enjoys playing soccer (well, any sport for that matter), and will most likely be the captain of our intramural team. He is one of the other St. Thomas students here in Granada. He did a J-Term through St. Thomas before in Seville, so he is VERY good at Spanish! He’s Will’s roommate and they live above Marisa and Chryssi over on the other side of Jardines.

Florian: Or Fabio, or Frodo. He lives with us here at Jardines. He’s from the Canary Islands…but his dad is English and his mom is French, so he has a very interesting accent. I’m very jealous of his ability to speak so many languages (French, Spanish, English, and he dallies in a few others as well)! He is very outgoing and loves to have a good time. We can always count on him on getting us off our butts and out to do something.

Lewis: A newer addition to Jardines. He’s from England but speaks basically fluent Spanish, which is probably a good thing since his BRIGHT blonde hair makes him stick out among the Spaniards. He loves to play all sorts of sports, so Adam has already recruited him to play soccer with us.

Alan: From New York. We met Alan one of our first few days here. He lives in one of the Jardines apartment style rooms across the street. He tends to hang around with our AIFS group because he came here on his own—not through any program or anything!

Other Jardines kids you might hear me mention: Alejandro, Michaela, Amaia, Ana, Maria.

Paula: Our resident director here in Granada. She is originally from New York, but studied abroad here 23 years ago and met a boy…he was actually her intercambio (this is the reason Will doesn’t want me to do an intercambio with a boy, haha). They fell in love, and he convinced her to move her 2 years later. She finished up school, worked for a year in the states, and then moved here with one suitcase, and has been living here since. Her and Miguel now have 2 little kids, both of which came with on the beach trip. Super cute! Paula has a very strong attitude toward everything, and is always willing to help with anything no matter how important or unimportant it may be. When we started having issues here at Jardines she goes, “I’m not scared of them, and don’t let them scare you.” She also helped Will get his new computer through customs—dodging a 600 Euro charge. It’s nice to have someone like her here, because she KNOWS what it’s like in the states, and is able to explain things very well to us in ways that make sense.

Inma: Paula’s assistant of…15 years. Inma helps coordinate everything, and is always willing to help. She’s a bit quieter than Paula, but I can tell that if there were any issues, she’d be able to stand up for us. She always seems to be smiling, which is nice to see whenever we walk into the AIFS office.

Emilio: My first teacher of my intensive Spanish class in the Kenia building. His favorite English phrases include: “you are fired!”, “what in the hell is that?”, “the party is over” and “oh my god”. As you can see, our Spanish skills must frighten him. He is hilarious and I wish he was teaching one of my classes during the actual semester!

Sonia: My second teacher of the intensive Spanish class. Sonia is very mellow, but is very funny. She doesn’t speak much English at all (that’s why the whole “she sells sea shells…” thing was so cute). Her favorite English word is “super” which she likes to add on to just about everything. She has successfully managed to teach us some of the rights and wrongs of Granada, but not before we’ve already embarrassed ourselves.

Eugenia: The tiny little old lady I never thought would yell at me. I was wrong. Regardless, she now has a sprained ankle so I can’t be too mad. I’m not quite sure what she does here, or how she fits into the mix, but she’s usually around to open the door during the days. She’s always smiling and gives us a big “hola!” whenever we come home. She’s basically our Senora (homestay mom).

Scarlet: Our cook. Even though it’s a lot of fish, we still love her. She’s serious about her food, and that’s much appreciated. We always have enough to eat (usually extras!) and the desserts are always something to look forward to: fresh fruit, yogurt, ice cream bars, ice cream sandwiches, etc. Scarlet doesn’t spend much time at Jardines, but she’s always friendly when she’s there!

Elena: Our room cleaner, and chef-helper. Elena is super nice, and is always cheery. She is always willing to help and does everything with a smile. Her two kids sometimes come to Jardines—a son and a daughter. They’re super cute, but stare at us like we’re weird. After all of the telenovela-type things we heard about Jardines (keep reading), the AIFS kids decided that we’re on EQUIPO ELENA!

Julia #1: a.k.a. Fig. Julia seems to run the place even though Paula specifically told us that Elena used to be in charge (and they never had problems back then…). Julia is Elena’s ex-mother in law, and that becomes quite obvious sometimes when they get into arguments. Elena apparently had been married to Julia’s son, but then he cheated on her. NOW, Julia’s son and his new wife come and eat lunch at Jardines almost every day. It’s really awkward now that we all know the back story (Elena obviously doesn’t know we know…), but it keeps things interesting…we all just feel bad that she literally has to serve her ex-husband and his new wife.

Julia #2: ‘The night watcher’. Julia’s daughter who works every night except Saturdays and Sundays. She lets people in whenever they come in from being out and about, whether it be 11pm or 7am. She makes us toast and coffee in the mornings, and always seems happy!

Pedro: Our Saturday night and Sunday watchman. He looks like he’s about 26 or so, and he looks like a human bull dog. However, he’s super quiet and usually just gives us a little “hola” when we come in or out of the residencia. We saw him walking (ironically…) his bulldog the other day on the way home from school, and we still got the tiny little “hola”. This is a nice change from the other ladies trying to explain things to us that we obviously don’t understand.

...A bit under the weather

2009-09-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

Friday, September 25, 2009

Today was a pretty normal day…breakfast, school, lunch, walking around, etc. In class we started reviewing for our finals—EEK! Ours is on Tuesday, and from the looks of it, I’ll be studying all of Sunday.

Will and I booked our hostel in Barcelona for after the AIFS trip to Madrid. It’s this tiny little place, but I think it should be fun! It’s really close to the center of the city, which we read was really important. Even though we don’t have very much time there, I think it will be a good experience. Some other people are staying in Madrid, some people are going to Portugal and other random places. We figured that since AIFS never makes any trips to Barcelona that we should try and get there even if it’s only for a short time!

Tomorrow we have our AIFS hike through the hills and valleys of Granada…not sure what to expect, but Inma and Paula both said it’s pretty intense. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better than I am tonight before we leave at 10am tomorrow morning. I’m pretty sure I have a fever, and I feel really nauseous. I’m planning on just sleeping through dinner and trying to rest up for tomorrow. I can’t believe some people are actually going out to the disco tonight!! Craziness.

Well, wish me luck on the hike tomorrow!
M

El vino vino, pero no vino vino, vino vinagre!

2009-09-25T04:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Today Emilio wasn’t in class, and the substitute was sick…so Sonia had to teach BOTH classes for the entire 4 hours. Ouch. It actually wasn’t that bad…and it was fun for us because Daryl is in the other class, so we got to have class with her! After lunch Will and I went to check out this “Festival de Chocolate” that is in the Bib-Rambla Plaza by us. It was just 2 tents with…basically nothing much (except some chocolate), so we opted for some gelato instead!

Tonight most of us Jardines kids went to see our second Flamenco Guitar concert at the Museo Casa de los Tiros. Tonight there were three performers: Alfredo Mesa (Guitarra flamenca), Karim (Guitarra clasica), and Ramon del Paso (Guitarra flamenca). I really liked the first and the second guys. We didn’t get nearly as good of seats as we did last week, but all you really need to do is hear it—so it was still a lot of fun! While listening to the second guy playing, I was reading his bio in the program and saw that he was born less than a year before Daniel! I bet the Spaniards here wouldn’t know what to do with his kind of music though…haha.

After the concert we walked over to the Shawarma place that we had gone to on Monday. We missed dinner because of the concert, so we were all really hungry. The guys in the restaurant remembered us from Monday, which was pretty funny. I’m sure we’ll be back there again sometime soon!

On the way back to Jardines, we checked out Hannigan’s because we thought they had said they had karaoke on Thursdays…and Merete really wanted to sing. However, it was pretty empty so we ended up just coming home. I guess we are all pretty tired anyways, so that was probably a good idea. Maybe next week.

M

Gelato count: 17

Planning ahead...

2009-09-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

For some reason all of the German kids don’t eat any meals with us…I guess they heard about the weird meals we get fed. SPEAKING of which, this morning we were about to celebrate because we thought they finally got us strawberry marmalade (it’s sad, but we have to find happiness in the smallest victories here…) but then were shocked to find out that it was actually TOMATO marmalade. Wow. However, this might help Chryssi, Marisa and I convince Emilio that tomatoes are actually fruits…because honestly, who makes marmalade out of vegetables? Exactly.

I searched around a bit for flights to different places today…trying to plan out the rest of the semester since Paula just reminded us yesterday that we only have 10 weeks left once normal classes start. AHH! Time is going so fast!

I also signed up for the Morocco trip today. I had talked with Mostapha from Circus a bit and he wanted me to go visit his sister who lives in Tangier and stay with her. So Will and I had planned on doing that, but after thinking it though, we decided that maybe we’d be better off just going with the group on this one. I still really want to meet up with them even if it’s just for a quick visit! Paula seemed to think that that was definitely possible.

Apparently there’s free cover and an open bar at the disco Granada 10 tonight…a bunch of AIFS kids were going—along with some other people we’ve started to meet here at Jardines. I’m actually starting to think it was a really good idea to be here rather than in a homestay. I know the kids in homestays are forced to speak more Spanish, and will probably learn more than me, but here I get to meet kids from all over and actually hang out with them. Tonight there are a few guys from Jardines that were going with the AIFS crew…one of them, Florian, was REALLY trying to get everyone to go. He’s extremely outgoing! I figured that since I’m usually tired anyway in my 9am class that I probably shouldn’t go to the disco at 3am.

Well, I’d better go get that sleep then! Have a good night!
M

Oh, I forgot about this random little thing from the beach…we were all just laying there, and every once in a while a vendor of some sort would walk by, usually selling drinks or massages. This one Chinese woman walked by and started trying to talk to Chryssi in Mandarin. It was a funny situation because Chryssi was having trouble understanding the lady, considering she speaks Cantonese. However, I understood most of what she said, and answered her at one point. That got a pretty funny look!

Blood sausage and gelato. Yum.

2009-09-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Back at Jardines for another week. There are a LOT more students here…including a huge group of Germans, but I heard that they are only staying for a week. Apparently it’s some sort of study abroad week through their school. They were SUPER loud downstairs last night, so we’re all hoping that the Jardines staff starts to appreciate how quiet we actually are.

After lunch a bunch of us took advantage of the internet that actually is now working in the common room! I finally got to check my email and post some more pictures from this weekend, etc. http://www.flickr.com/photos/78071008@N00/sets/
Then we headed off to the AIFS cultural meeting at the CLM. This was to go over some of the cultural differences we have experienced so far in Spain. Some of them included PDA, personal space, proper table etiquette and clothing. It was funny to hear about peoples’ encounters. Apparently some of the Senoras get angry when the students don’t eat all of the food they are given. I’m glad Scarlett doesn’t do the same thing…especially since we had blood sausage today! Eek!

After this, we grabbed some gelato before heading back to Jardines. I finally tried this new gelato place where I could get 2 flavors on a small cone! I got coffee (cafe) and hazelnut (nocciola...named this for some reason). Very good…especially them together! Before dinner, I just sort of stayed in…seemed like the thing to do today.

Well, I have to finish some homework.
M

Gelato count: 15…yeah, I know. I had 2 today. Guess I was making up for the lack over the weekend!

Roquetas del Mar

2009-09-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 19, 2009

BEACH TIME! We all left at 10am from the Neptuno mall. It was about a 2 and a half hour bus through mountains and fields until we made it to Almeria, and then eventually to our hotel in Roquetas del Mar. It was a very touristy town, but since it was off-season, there actually weren’t many people there at all. We got everything situated (I roomed with Merete…we got lucky and got one of only 2 double rooms!), checked out the hotel and then headed down to the beach. Our hotel room was pretty weird. It was REALLY nice, except our toilet didn’t have a toilet seat…and at one point Merete goes: “well, I peed in the other toilet.” I thought she meant the bidet…good thing she was just referring to the fact that our toilet LOOKED like a bidet because it didn’t have a seat. There’s a pretty funny picture of them up on Flickr. Our room also had a sink, stove top, microwave and fridge, but too bad we didn’t know this earlier or else we would have brought something to cook! I miss being able to cook! Anyway, Merete and I ate our bocadillos we had taken from Jardines on our balcony, looking over toward the mountains that separated us from Granada.

The beach was amazing! There were little cabanas everywhere, but we opted for the cheaper option—towels and sand! Some people played volley ball, and some people just sat there. I liked wandering up and down the water line, people watching. We stayed out there for about 4 hours (in the words of Paula: “reapply, reapply, reapply!”), and then headed in for dinner. This is what many of the kids had expected to be the highlight of the trip. Seeing as the meals we are served here are sometimes questionable, we were all excited to have access to a buffet of basically anything we wanted. I think the hotel waiters were starting to get a kick out of seeing us act like we had never seen food before. They even had a guy making crepes! Of course I had to get one, even though I was pretty stuffed. It was wonderful.

That evening a bunch of us went down to the beach again. It was so dark out there!!! We just ran around and sat and looked at the stars. It was a bit chillier that night, but made for some good pictures—I’ll have to steal some of the other people’s from off of Facebook…

The sun had made us all pretty tired, so we went back to our rooms rather early. I heard some people went to a disco nearby…but I’m glad I didn’t because I knew we had another buffet waiting for us at breakfast that I didn’t want to sleep through, haha!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Breakfast wasn’t as exciting as dinner, but it was still good! (Better than our normal pan tostada todos los dias.) We headed out to the beach even though it was still kind of cloudy. Luckily it cleared up by noon, so those who left with the AIFS group got some sun in. We ate at this pizzeria right on the boardwalk, which had surprisingly good pizza!

A couple of the boys had rented one of those 4 person bikes and had ridden around on it (mainly because the one kid was still on crutches from his sprained ankle, but I think they just wanted to anyway). It was funny to see these 4 big guys peddling around. They even managed to get it to drive out onto the beach…somehow. There’s a funny picture of them pushing it back to the boardwalk up on Flickr.

In the evening, we got to eat at the buffet again…so good. That evening consisted of some boardwalk walking and another evening under the stars with the waves crashing in. It got pretty windy, so we had to move inside. Regardless, it was nice not having to pack up and leave that day…because the beach was just too nice to leave.

My only complaint was that I couldn’t find any gelato places! However, I did find these yummy popsicles! It seemed like everyone went to the local supermercado at the same time…because there was always a long line to grab my daily popsicle.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Monday was an interesting day. We got to sleep in (kinda), and then went on a hunt for different food. Since a lot of things were closed (no idea why), we ended up back at the same pizzeria as on Sunday. Oh well, it WAS good pizza! We got to stay at the beach until around 4, and then we asked the receptionist for her suggestions on traveling back to Granada. Paula had suggested that we take a taxi to the Roquetas del Mar bus station, and then a bus from there to Almeria, and then from Almeria to Granada. However, the receptionist (through a mix of us trying to speak Spanish, and her trying to speak English) told us that there was a public bus that would take us directly to Almeria within 35 minutes. Then we’d only need to catch the bus from there to Granada. We thought we had it timed out well, but the bus ride from our hotel took a bit longer than 35 minutes…and we ended up missing our connection we had wanted in Almeria. We had to take the later bus (3 hours later), and there wasn’t really any way for us to go out and about and see Almeria…we had our bags and their lockers were ALL out of order. Ugh. So, we had a nice time exploring the small bus station.

Luckily once we got to the Granada bus station, we knew where to go. Will had lost his phone earlier and we had to pick it up at a place near that bus station, so he was able to lead the way. We had missed breakfast, lunch and dinner by then at Jardines, so we decided to stop for Shawarmas! (Will and I both agree that that word reminds us of Anupma…SHARMA) The guys at the place were super nice, and the one really wanted to practice his English. I’m pretty sure the only English lessons he had were from English people coming into the restaurant. However, the other 2 workers actually spoke very good English, and were helping us translate his…English. I told Will that he should ask that guy to be his intercambio…maybe he’d get some free food out of it too! We took our Shawarmas and ate them on the steps of the cathedral. It felt like we had finally gotten back home!

Fútbol

2009-09-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Friday already. Wow. I feel like it was just the weekend! No complaints, especially since I get to pack for the BEACH tomorrow! Yay! I’m excited because, unlike most of the kids here, I haven’t been to the coast yet, so it’ll be something new! It should be fun, and hopefully it won’t rain. Regardless, it’ll be nice getting out of Granada.

Internet at Jardines isn’t working so well…so posts may be coming in bulk, like these two. I think it’s because more students are moving into Jardines and are online as well. There’s one kid that just moved in here from the Canary Islands who speaks pretty good English. I think he’s coming out to Karaoke tonight with all of us. This should be interesting…I heard Alan sang Backstreet Boys last night.

I’m heading out now to go join a pick-up fútbol game with Adam and Will and some other UGR students. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I heard the ground is cement-like. One kid already sprained his ankle playing basketball, but hopefully my shins can hold up for some intramural.

…later

Whoa. I am out of shape. I just played soccer for a whole hour! We rented a court (cement.yup.) and played for a bit. We were playing 5 vs. 6 but then this Spanish kid named Saul came and asked if he could play. Turns out he is studying Physical Education at UGR and so a few people got his number to do an intercambio sometime. It was a lot of fun playing soccer again, even though the cement was really slippery (and hard) and the ball was a size 3, haha. I can feel my shins starting to ache…uh oh. I wonder how you say ‘ice’ in Spanish…I’ve never had to ask for that before. Or I could just go get some gelato and hope it cools my shins down too.

Now we’re going to hear another free concert on the cathedral steps (about a 2 minute walk). Apparently tonight the orchestra is playing Disney songs! My favorite! Then it’s on to karaoke.

I got some more photos loaded today. Hope they turned out okay!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/78071008@N00/sets/

Buenos noches!
M

Gelato count: 13…thought I’d try and hold back for the beach.

Guitarra Flamenca, Barranco del Abogado y El Cementerio Granada

2009-09-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 17, 2009

We got to try out the computer lab today in class. Basically, we just went to our professor's website and did the exercises available…well most of us did. Some spent most of the time on Facebook, haha. However, Emilio’s plan to have us just work on our own was probably a good one, considering about half of our class wasn’t there (and there are normally only 8). They all had late nights out at the disco—there was an ‘international student welcome party’, which I thought sounded sort of weird. It only invited non-Spaniards…

Days are going by faster and faster, it’s hard to believe we only have a little more time left in these intensive Spanish classes before they throw us into the REAL classes. Uh oh! Each night there’s something different to do, so there’s always something to look forward to. Today AIFS had a 2 hour walk planned to the Barranco del Abogado and the Cementerio Granada…through the old Jewish neighborhood, and then through Granada’s cemetery. It was a longgggg uphill walk, but the views were amazing, and it was cool to see another part of Granada I may not have visited otherwise. I tried to get some pictures, but I may have been shaking too much from the exhausting walk for them to turn out well, haha. There was a very good view of the Sierra Nevada! After the walk, we had a little time to freshen up…then it was off to the next activity. Good thing I did my homework right after class!

A few of us went to this cute little café for sandwiches and gelato. I tried Coco...a yummy coconut candy bar. I must say, it still wasn’t nearly as good as Joey’s Coconut Chip at Grand Ole Creamery! Anyway, we wandered over to the little local Museo that was hosting a small concert Paula had told us about. It was sort of near school, but since I had opted for heels, it seemed a lot further. Luckily we got there with plenty of time to spare--some other AIFS students were stuck in the ‘standing room only’ area. It was a classic guitar and flamenco guitar concert, but also included a violinist. It was hosted in the courtyard of the museum, and there were only about 30 chairs set out. I was sitting basically front row, and got a couple good videos. All 3 performers were very good…and I plan on going back next Thursday as well!

Adios! Maybe time to get more gelato??? :)
M

Gelato count: 13

Chuchuria...it's local

2009-09-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

Well, today started off nice. It was rather cool out, actually, which was a change from the normal 100 degree weather we’ve been having since we got here. Mid-day it got a bit warmer, but still was a very nice temperature. The locals have brought out their jeans and long sleeved shirts—though to me as a Minnesotan, it’s definitely still shorts season. I guess I’ll have to try and blend in…jeans it is. Today included another lonnnnnng walk…just sort of scoping out the area some more. That is, before it rained. I finally found a beach towel that was less than 10 Euros (!), and also picked up some snacks to eat between classes.

Between lunch and dinner some of us went out to get some food…since lunch wasn’t the staff’s best. We ended up at this nice café in Plaza Trinidad. I got churros con chocolate because I wasn’t actually that hungry (and I missed mine on Sunday). Right when we were almost done eating, it started to POUR. It was a literal downpour. We were eating outside in their terrace seating, so luckily we had a roof. BUT, it was still blowing in from the sides, and after a bit all of the water from across the plaza started flowing under our feet. It was crazy…I tried to take a picture, but it doesn’t quite give the experience justice. Luckily I had packed my umbrella earlier (going against Will’s: “well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain.”). Right now I’m sitting in the lobby of Jardines and I can’t even hear ANYTHING other than the rain pounding on the skylights.

I was looking online to see what sorts of things are going on in Europe within the next few months to see if there is something I wanted to attend. So far I have found a Backstreet Boys concert, Jonas Brothers concert, David Bisbal concert, bull fight in Madrid, Club Atletico de Madrid soccer game, and a few other things. So far I haven’t found anything circus related…but I’d love to! I was considering looking into the Latina Festival in Italy…but unfortunately it’s sort of at an awkward time.

Dinner time…wish us luck, haha!
Hasta luego!
M

Gelato count: 12…I know, I’m really slacking.

Streets and Sprains

2009-09-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

It rainnnnnnnnned a bunch today…so it was rather difficult to go outside. The streets are pretty dirty here, plus they’re doing street construction everywhere. Every street is only about 10 feet wide, made out of blocks of stone. They’re literally tearing up the whole city (Paula mentioned this on our first day there), but plan to be done within the next couple weeks…so before all the ACTUAL students arrive for classes. This makes for loud evenings, because trash pickup is around 2am, and then they start construction around 4. Also, there is a building very close to us that is having a lot of work done, so between streets being hammered, buildings being torn down, and loud bars, it makes for an interesting night’s sleep. Good thing I’m always so exhausted that I just pass out! But yeah, there is a lot of street work and when they decide to tear up only half of the street so people can still pass on the other side, cars/motos sometimes decide to try the streets still, and then it’s like a bad dream, where you’re being chased down a small alley by a large machine. However, the MAIN reason I believe the streets are dirty is because there are so many wild dogs. They’re ALL over the place. Some are really cute, but some not so much. There’s this one weiner dog that must live somewhere by us that’s really cute. These dogs just go to the bathroom in the middle of the street, and obviously there’s no one to pick it up. Even the people who walk their dogs just sort of leave it. So, it both smells and makes the streets really dirty. I made the mistake of trying to read my “20 Minutos” while walking…I will make sure I keep my eyes on the ground ahead of me from now on.

Life at Jardines is like living in a Telenovela. Drama, drama, drama. And it only gets more exciting every day! The tiny little old lady sprained her foot today, so now she’s on these crutches things for 4 weeks! I’m not exactly sure what happened, but she kinda always shuffled around, so I think she must have slipped on the marble. It gets REALLY slippery when its wet…even I’ve slipped quite a few times when it’s not wet.

Hopefully tomorrow it will be nicer outside…I wanted to get some good pictures of the cathedral!
Goodnight!
M

Gelato count: 12…it was too rainy!

Recess? Beach? Dark chocolate? Bueno.

2009-09-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

I skipped breakfast this morning with full knowledge that I’d be better off stopping at a panaderia on the way to class. And that I did. Class was the same as ever, but it was really nice out today—not too hot, not too cold, so break time was actually really enjoyable! I think I’m finally starting to fall into a sort of schedule! Today, like a real local, I grabbed the free “20 Minutos” paper that is handed out for free (until they run out) on the sidewalks in the mornings. I enjoyed reading about the sports teams (Real Madrid game on tomorrow!) and different TV shows that are popular here. However, it definitely took me longer than the twenty minutes it’s supposed to take to read!

Today after lunch I booked the apartment/hotel for the second night at the beach this weekend. Everyone from AIFS is going for Saturday-Sunday, but then a few of us wanted another day of relaxation, so we went in on staying another night! I think it should be fun! Mediterranean, here I come!

There are more and more Spanish students starting to move in. We have a guy living just down the small hall from us. I don’t think he’s been to any meals yet though…so maybe he’s not ACTUALLY moved all the way in yet. Some of the other students have shown up to meals, and it’s fun to watch them walk into the room of 10 Americans and choose a table. Just kidding, we’re all very welcoming!

I just become more and more impressed with the dubbing of English TV over here the more I watch. The voices they get literally sound exactly like each character. Before dinner tonight a big group of us were watching Disney Channel’s Recess…one of my favorite shows from way back when. We all knew the characters and story pretty well, and all agreed that each of the voices sounded exactly the same! It’s really kind of weird. Also, the timing is VERY spot on. I’m impressed. Tonight Will found out that they show Smallville dubbed in Spanish. He was pretty excited.

Time for bed! Another Spanish-filled day for me tomorrow!
Buenos noches!
M

Gelato count: 12 (Chocolate Negro…chocolate brownie a.k.a. dark chocolate. YUM.)

p.s. I signed up for intramural futbol today! :)

A restful day...sort of.

2009-09-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Today I got to SLEEP IN! Too bad I slept in a little too long to get churros in the morning. They were already serving lunch when we went. I guess I’ll have to either wait until next week or go before school sometime this week. Churros con chocolate sounds a LOT better than the pan tostada that we’ve had every morning so far.

After lunch Will and I did some laundry, but had to take it down pretty quickly because a storm blew through. If the wind had been any stronger, I think some of our clothes would have blown off the balcony. When I went up to grab our clothes, I got yelled at by a different lady. Paula had said we were allowed to do laundry that we didn’t want to give to them (since it takes a week to get back), but apparently they thought differently. She kept telling me I needed to put everything in my laundry bag and leave it for Julia…but all I wanted were a couple things! Good thing I got what I needed off the lines outside, though, because after I had gone back inside she took the key with her. Some of the other kids’ stuff is out there still… I think we’re going to talk to Paula tomorrow to clear up some rules here in Jardines. It’s just really hard to explain yourself when they talk so fast and have trouble understanding our Spanish. I thought I was helping by relieving them of some work. I guess not.

A lot of people went to the beach again today. I’m kind of glad I decided not to go. Initially I had decided not to go because we are all going to the beach next week and I didn’t want to waste money, but then I saw what the weather was like and was really glad I had decided against it. It rained for quite a while today. Those of us who were still here had been planning on going to a Flamenco show tonight in the Albayzin, but then decided against it, thinking that we’d wait for the others and go a different night. Instead, a small group of us just went and walked through the Albayzin for a bit. We stopped to take some pictures of the Alhambra lit up. It was really spectacular! We then found a place to eat, where we could sit and still see the Alhambra. I got a Copa Brasil, which was basically ice cream with espresso sauce. Very good. However, the tapas weren’t that good at all (potato chips with bbq sauce...), so we ended up getting ‘shawarma con pollo’ on the way home. Merete dubbed it her ‘Chipotle of Granada’.

Time for bed. Wouldn’t want to fall asleep in Emilio’s class tomorrow…
M

Gelato count: still at 11…I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

Wo xue SPANISH.

2009-09-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

Today we had our walking tour of the Albayzin. We all grabbed our bocadillos for lunch and headed out around 11am. Early for a (Saturday), but worth it. Our tour guide, Antonio did the tour with a mix of Spanish and English. I enjoyed this, because it seemed to make it feel more authentic. We started out, just like the Alhambra tour, in Plaza Nueva. We walked for a bit while Antonio gave us the background, and passed around a holographic postcard that showed the ruins from today and what the bridge/gate over the Darro River looked like years and years ago. There were a bunch of little kittens that were sitting down in the stream…super cute. Will said they must be the great-great-great-grandkitties of the ancestor cats that lived back in the day.

Along the tour we stopped at the oldest building in Granada. It’s an old bath house, and it’s over 1000 years old. It is the only thing older than the Alhambra. I tried to get some good photos, but the only light coming in was from the small lights, so with flash (too bright) was just as bad as without flash (too blurry). We saw the church of San Salvador, the San Nicolás church and the Plaza San Miguel Bajo. We also stopped at this old painter’s house, Max Moreau. It has now been turned into a museum and sight-seeing stop. I thought one of the plaques inside the house was funny, so I took a picture…see if you can find it in my Flickr photos (a shout out to Maximus Oswald). Here there were lots of pomegranate trees and grape vines. It was a beautiful house! We ended at the San Nicolás viewpoint, and Rick Steves was right. There are a lot of tourists here mixed in with hippies, and other locals there just to enjoy the view. The photos are amazing, and we could barely pull ourselves away long enough to eat our bocadillos. Some of the girls bought pendant necklaces of hand painted stones from this one local vendor on one of the benches. They were of tiny Granada cityscapes…super cute, but, sadly, a little pricey for me (10, 15 or 20 Euros for the larger ones…though I’m SURE locals barter). Maybe if I feel like I’m really missing out, I’ll go back and grab one for myself.

Will and I decided to tour the western part of the city more. We walked down by Garcia Lorca Park (apparently where all the couples go at night…says Paula who met her now husband there 21 years ago). Seeing as it was daytime, it was full of sunbathers. We found the mall called Neptuno and looked around for a bit. I guess it’s sort of the Mall of America of Granada...with a movie theater, tons of stores, and a discoteca. Definitely not as large, but an interesting assortment of stores and such. We then kept walking along the park and found this Chinese restaurant Will wanted to try. I was still full of my bocadillo, but I thought it could be fun having some Chinese food in Spain. He ordered the Menu del Dia, which is a cheap way at any restaurant here to get a drink, appetizer, some sort of meat, and an entrée. I had fun listening to the conversations of the Chinese waiters. By the time we left, I was actually very linguistically confused. I was thinking in Spanish, Chinese AND English. I think I may have said “muy bien, xie xie”. Whoops.

We played cards down in the common room for a bit. It’s always fun to have all of the crew together. Now we’re gonna head out to a movie…not quite sure which one! Hopefully nothing scary! :/
Buenos noches!
M

Gelato count: 11…I tried mango today. It was SUPER good.

The good, the bad, and the...confusing.

2009-09-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

Friday! Horray! Class today went by pretty slowly, but that was just because we’re all looking forward to the weekend. Tomorrow we have our tour of the Albycin, the Moorish community next to the Alhambra. Not quite sure what to expect, once again, but I’m sure it’ll be fun! They said ‘be prepared for a lot of uphill walking’, so I guess I’ll get to work off some of that gelato.

I finally finished Breaking Dawn today! I’d had it sitting in my room at home FOREVER, and had about 100 pages to finish. I saw it at the AIFS library and decided to bring it back here to read. SO good, but I can’t tell if they’re gonna try and make another book…I’d read it. Speaking of Twilight, I’m super upset that I’ll miss going to the premier at midnight when New Moon (the movie...durrhh) comes out. They have 4 or 5 movie theaters really close by, but they’re just getting movies that came out in the states at the beginning of the summer…so I doubt they’ll have it for a while. THEREFORE, I have decided that I’m gonna go see it the day I come home (planning ahead, I know). I want to DRIVE to the movie theater too…it’s weird, but I really actually miss driving. Not because it takes less energy than walking, I just always enjoyed a nice drive. I have actually really enjoyed walking everywhere.

Merete and I went for a rather long strollllllll today. We grabbed some gelato and wandered around, window-shopping like all the locals. However, with her blonde hair, it’s hard for us to blend in, haha. I keep telling her I’m gonna dye it while she’s sleeping some night. She threatens to dye mine blonde again. Eek! At dinner, it came up that I had been a blonde, and Amaia, one of the Spaniard girls didn’t believe me. I pulled out my ICIS card to show her. She seemed very shocked, and thought it was really (smart and) funny that I dyed my hair. She said I looked more Spanish. Mission completed. Although…my roots are starting to show…

Before dinner, Will was craving some gelato, so I accompanied him to our favorite place. No, I restrained myself from having a second helping. We sat down to people-watch in the plaza. There were 2 guys entertaining a large group of children in the center of the plaza with big bubbles. They had the same sort of contraption my mom brought to the reunion…it’s made out of 2 sticks with a string attaching them. They would dip it in the bubble mix and then let the wind make these HUGE bubbles. The kids loved it, and it was a lot of fun to watch! I think EVERYONE in Granada was out then…the plaza was packed. I guess we’re starting to catch on to the timing of everything.

I’m a little confused as to what we’re allowed to do here at Jardines. Some of the workers are crabby towards those of us who aren’t very good at speaking Spanish. I think they may just be frustrated that we can’t communicate with them very well. I thought everything was going fine, but tonight I got yelled at for having the light on in my room. I’m not quite sure why I can’t have it on…I’ll have to ask Paula about that as well. Will and Chryssi also got yelled at for sitting in the lobby with their computers (their rooms don’t get internet…they said they’d fix it about 4 days ago). I guess we’ll figure things out as we go. It’s just scary to get yelled at and not really understand what they’re saying!

Well, I’d better turn the light off before I get in any more trouble. Goodnight!!
M

Gelato count: 10

From Scattergories to Orchestras

2009-09-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

Before class Chryssi and I saw Javier (our old teacher) in the hall. He stopped us to ask if we were in the intermediate level. Yessssss we are, and he asked how it was. It’s going really well, and he seemed decently happy that we seemed to find where we fit. So that was good. Today in class we played Scattergories! It was awesome, but I failed miserably, haha. We also got to listen to this one song and talk about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvLQRqzAXuY . All of us really liked it, so Emilio let us listen to it a bunch. By the end we were all singing. We’ve now been playing it all day off of youtube…I think we’re a bit obsessed. The ladies who work here just sort of roll their eyes at us, haha.

Today for lunch we had spinach soup, breaded pork and french fries. I thought it was sort of random, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. I thought I might not like the soup, but it was actually pretty good! After lunch I did some research about flights and busses and such for when I want to travel. Everyone has started making plans to go places after our Madrid trip (October 1-4), because we have until the 7th to travel. I’m thinking I want to go to Barcelona! Or Paris. Or Florence. Oh decisions, decisions. AND, some of us are planning on staying an extra day when we go to the beach next weekend with AIFS. We found a bus back home and everything—all we have to do is find a hotel. Maybe if the one we’re staying in with AIFS isn’t too expensive (I doubt it is since they’re brining 50+ kids there), we could just stay there another night.

Another odd dinner (even the Spaniards were iffy about it…) led us to go grab tapas at our favorite tapas place, El Cine. Today they were little pizza like things with vegetables and bbq sauce. On the way over, we ran into this small concert on the stairs of the cathedral. There were lights set up on a make-shift rafter system (not sure Tim would approve…haha) and speakers surrounding the musicians. It was some sort of orchestra playing…no idea who though. I took some photos, so those should be up shortly! It was a very cool atmosphere, and obviously the photos won’t do it justice!

Class early tomorrow, so I’d better get some sleep! Check out the new photos I posted a link to! Buenos noches!
M

No gelato today…count is still at 9

An easier way to view my photos!

2009-09-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78071008@N00/sets/

Now they're separated into 'sets' so they're not all mixed together. Enjoy!

:) M

Progress!

2009-09-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Class today went by really slowly…my first professor (9am-11) just had us doing worksheets the whole time. However, Sonia (ironically the name of my last Spanish professor at UST), managed to make the second part of class (11am-1pm) more exciting. I’m positive I made the right decision to change classes!

After class, I had to run a few errands, and I was pretty proud of myself with how well I accomplished them, haha. I had to return the book I had bought for my previous Spanish class and exchange it for another, and I had to go buy stamps (sellos) from the post office. The girl at the bookstore understood what I needed to do, and didn’t seem to even bother slowing down what she was saying in return! I think I’m making progress! I rewarded myself with (you guessed it…) some gelato. I tried another new flavor…tarta de queso (cheese cake, with blueberries). It was VERY good. I may have to go back for some more before I go to bed!

Today, Scarlet redeemed herself with lunch. We had pasta with meat sauce.

This evening about 20 of the AIFS students went to this Arabic Tea Ceremony. It was located right next to the Kenia building! So…I could stop by for some tea after class sometime! The ceremony consisted of some belly dancing, the explanation of how they make their tea, the drinking of some tea, and a lot of storytelling. There were also lots of dried fruits and nuts for us to munch on. It was a lot of fun, and some people even got up to try belly dancing!

After dinner, a group of us went to one of the cafeterias close by that we knew had a TV because there was a Spain/Estonia World Cup qualifier game on. Everyone else was outside, but our group took over the inside (horray…). It was a lot of fun to experience the game with the bartenders commenting every once in a while!

Adios!
M

Gelato count: 9

SCARLET! haha.

2009-09-08T15:33:00.000-07:00

YAY! I moved up to the next level, and what a good choice. This class was actually EASIER than the other class, simply because I didn’t spend all my time trying to explain simple concepts to the people next to me. The teachers both seem nice, and I know a couple of the other kids in the class. However, it IS in the other building, and takes about an extra 10 minutes to get there. I guess I’ll just have to go to bed even EARLIER! No chupitos for me! Haha. I really liked my class in general. The location is beautiful, because it is even higher on the hill than the other CLM building…even closer to the Alhambra if that’s possible. I took a picture of the hillside during our short break during class (dork!) so that will be up shortly on flickr!

There are about 5 of us at the Kenia building, so we all hurried back for lunch. Actually that’s a lie. I had eyed a panaderia on the way to class, and suggested we stopped on the way back. Nothing too big to spoil lunch though…I ended up getting this ‘filo dough’ looking thing with chocolate/nutella paste on the inside. Yum. Lunch was…interesting as always. We had egg-drop soup, baked vegetables and large slabs of some kind of fish. I was actually kind of glad I ate that pastry—sorry, Scarlet! It was funny though, because Elena had her 2 kids with her, a boy and a girl, who thought it was funny to run into the comedor and yell random things in Spanish. I think they thought none of us spoke much Spanish (well, we kinda don’t), but we could still understand them—AND there were a couple of the Spaniard girls eating with us as well. I think one of the kids yelled “VENGAMOS BAILAR” about 30 times. Random, but funny.

After lunch, I had to go over to the AIFS office to do some things (get stamps, sign up for some other activities, chat with Paula, get ‘Breaking Dawn’ from their library, etc.). ANNNNND I got some gelato on the way back at my regular place. I went for the Roché for the second time since I’ve been here. It was wonderful.

WEIRD dinner. Really weird. Weirdest yet by far. I don’t know what Scarlet was thinking…maybe it’s traditional Spanish food, but I doubt it. We had squash soup, rice with mushrooms and hot dogs. Ironically, we learned the word for hot dog today in class—perritos calientes. The Spaniard and kid from Holland thought that was pretty funny that I knew that word. I guess it was a good meal though. OH—and bread. We had lots of baguette-type bread, as always.

Time for bed.
Goodnight, Alhambra.
Goodnight, Jardines.
Goodnight, gelato.

M

Gelato count: 8

p.s. Danny, the guy from Barcelona, has gone back home :/ it was fun hanging out with him and trying to talk about all sorts of things (movies, music, etc.). He left us his number in case we want to stop by there after our trip to Madrid. How fun!

Alhambra pictures are up!

2009-09-08T11:22:00.001-07:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78071008@N00/

Hope you enjoy them! :)

A real siesta

2009-09-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 7, 2009

This morning we had to get up early again for breakfast. SCHOOL! Chryssi, another AIFS resident student and I had been considering changing classes (moving up a level), so we acted on that today. I think it was a good idea, though one of our professors wasn’t very supportive. Our first professor of the day, Mariangeles was very helpful and wished us luck, while Javier told us “we risked failure” by changing classes. We decided to risk it. “Go out on a limb—that’s where the fruit is.” –Will Rogers (Ironically the quote they used in our weekly newsletter for AIFS.) The lady who had to approve our move looked over our tests and signed the sheet right away. I guess she thought we could handle it. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow!

We got back kind of late for lunch because of all of the changing and such after class. However, Elena was very nice and still served us…whatever it was we ate. Not quite sure. Looked like hamburger patties. After lunch I actually fell asleep down in the common room watching TV. A REAL SIESTA!! That’s what they usually do…go home from work around 2pm, eat lunch, and then sit down to watch TV. Then they slowly drift off for about 20 minutes...before waking up to go back to work. How wonderful. I hadn’t yet done the real siesta, but I guess today was basically it! Haha. Merete and the other like doing the “super siesta”…meaning they just sleep for 2 or 3 hours. I guess that’s necessary after a night out!

Tonight a few girls and I ate dinner here with one of the Spaniard students. Her name is Amaia, and she rooms with Ana…the girl who I had watched TV with/ate with before. She was REALLY funny, because we were all trying to say things to each other, but we couldn’t understand her fast talking, and she tried to understand when we were talking to each other in English. Overall it was just a VERY funny conversation. I tried asking her about her favorite gelato places, but she suggested the one place (Los Italianos) that I really DIDN’T like. She was appalled.

Talk of gelato at dinner obviously made me crave some…so I went out and tried a new heladeria. I tried a new flavor as well…Dad and Daniel’s favorite, Tiramisu! It wasn’t very good, but I think it was because of the place I went to. I guess I’ll just have to stick to my regular place. I think they’re starting to recognize me. Is that good?

I signed up for my hotel room for both the Madrid trip and the trip to Nerja beach next weekend. Both are set up by AIFS. Should be a lot of fun!! Paula is bringing her whole family, and encouraged us to speak in English with her 2 boys to help them practice, haha. I also signed up for an Arabic Tea Ceremony/story telling on Wednesday…not quite sure what to expect, but it should be fun!

Tonight we went out for this one girl’s birthday. Even though it was another big group, I thought it would be fun, but it was actually kind of weird. Everyone decided to go to this “chupiteria”…a shot bar. They had over 100 different kinds of shots, and the kids took full advantage of it. It was kind of sad because the only people in the place were Americans…as Paula had mentioned: Spaniards don’t ‘drink to get drunk’ like Americans. They’re all out having Sangria and tapas. I decided that’s where I wanted to be, so Will and I left after about half an hour. I felt bad for leaving, but it’s just not my thing. It’s not a Spaniards thing.

ANYWAYS, I’m gonna head to bed, since tomorrow is my first day in Intermediate 1! I hope it goes well! Also, it’s in a different building (Kenia…pronounced like ‘Kenya’) which is even further away from Jardines.

Adios y buenos noches!
M

Gelato count: 7

p.s. They have LAY’S chips flavored: Jamon (ham), Jamon y Queso (ham and cheese) and Paprika. COOL.

...C is for Churros con chocolate

2009-09-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

SUNDAY, September 6, 2009

We didn’t get fed today…staff had the day off. They’re probably lucky they didn’t have to deal with some of the people here. One girl didn’t come home last night (well, not until 8am), and some of the others freaked out and decided to wake everyone up to figure out where she was. Drama, drama, drama. Then another one of the girls passed out on the street, and then the police brought her home, and then she passed out on our stairs, etc.

Anyways, this morning, just to get out of the building, Will and I had breakfast in one of the nearby plazas. We got churros con chocolate, but we didn’t know how many to order. Thinking we should each just get one, we ordered 2 chocolates and 2 churros. Big mistake. And I mean BIG. Each order of churros is 5 foot long pieces of churro. Granted they aren’t very filling, they’re still HUGE. Regardless, as hungry college kids, we ate our money’s worth and downed them all. They were soooooo good…I can’t wait until next Sunday when I have an excuse to go buy breakfast.

For lunch a few of us went to the first cafeteria that we ate at the first day we were here. We ordered Cokes and were given large tapas. The first round was tortilla y baicon (sandwich with eggs and bacon), and the second was hamburguesas (mini hamburgers). Even though they were pretty filling, we still stopped at a gelato place on the way back to Jardines. I tried a new flavor called tarta de miel y canela (Spanish cake with cinnamon and honey). That was very good, yet still not as good as avellana (you guessed it…hazelnut).

There were only a few of us around today since 2 girls went to the beach, and a few others stayed in bed all day. This was quite relaxing, so the few of us who were up just sort of wandered around the entire day. I didn’t want to go to the beach this first weekend because I decided it would probably be a good idea to learn my surroundings (since I’ll be living here) before running off to other places. We go to the beach with all the AIFS kids in 2 weeks anyways! In the evening I watched some more television. Billy Madison was on…Adam Sandler sounds even funnier in Spanish. I also watched some more Disney Channel, though CNN is growing on me.

For dinner a small group of us went to the place we ate at for dinner the first night we were here (I guess today must have just been a ‘repeat’ day!) called El Cine. It’s actually an Italian themed place, but they’re always very nice. We got home pretty late from that, and all I had time left to do was finish up my homework. It was during my homework that I decided I would try and move up a level in my Spanish class. TOOOOO easy.
Well, tomorrow we have class early again. Wish me luck switching levels!
M

Gelato count: 6

A is for Alhambra. B is for Bocadillo.

2009-09-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

This morning we got to sleep in a little bit more than usual. Breakfast wasn’t served until 9! This was lucky for some of the AIFS kids because they didn’t get back from the disco until 5:15 this morning! Crazy kids. Anyway, after breakfast we grabbed our bocadillos from Scarlet and headed towards Plaza Nueva to meet up with the rest of the group. Paula then led us up to the Alhambra for our tours. The tour lasted about 2 ½ hours, and it was REALLY cool. My group’s guide was named Robert, and he was super funny and very informative…I creeped a picture of him preaching to us about the Sultan’s summer house…check it out on Flickr sometime later today. We walked all throughout the palace and gardens. There were SO many photo ops…I think Robert started getting frustrated that we all kept stopping to take so many pictures! Haha. My favorite part was the gardens by the Sultan’s summer house. There were tall, tall bushes that were carved into arches to make a maze. It really reminded me of the 4th Harry Potter movie when they’re in the final Tri-Wizard tournament challenge (if you’ve forgotten this part, heaven forbid, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq1JxO9CnYA). The views from the towers, and just walking along the side of the palace were amazing. Every picture I took looked like it came out of a travel brochure. And I’m not even that great of a photographer.

After the tour we were left on our own to find our way back. It is SUPER close to everything, so it wasn’t hard. We found a nice bench and ate our bocadillos…which were HUGE pieces of baguette-like bread with about 2 slices of thin salami. Needless to say I needed something to drink after that. Instead, I grabbed a gelato. It was really exciting because I found a new flavor of gelato that I like! It’s called Roché and it’s made out of those Ferrero Rocher candies. I might have to go back for more tonight.

…Well it’s after “dinner” now. It’s actually 10:50 and we just got done eating our second bocadillo of the day. Apparently on Saturdays, Scarlet doesn’t want to stay to make us food, so we just pick up bocadillos. Luckily they were different than the ones we had earlier! These ones had tortillas in them (thick potato pancake-type things). So it was bread and potatoes…two of the driest things possible. HOWEVER there was a mix-up, and we didn’t even get them until almost 10. Apparently one of the girls went down around 9 (when dinner usually starts) and told Juanita, one of the ladies, that we didn’t want them…for some reason. SO when we were all waiting out in the lobby, she didn’t give us any until we actually asked. Ugh. Food is difficult on the weekends. Saturdays every store closes after siesta…so around 3 or 4. It is impossible to get something to eat, especially since our kitchen isn’t open either! I guess that’s a lesson, so we’ll have to all stock up on food from our nearby 24 hour store!

I watched more TV today…a little bit more Disney Channel and some CNN. Yup, I’m progressing, haha. Hopefully I’ll understand it ALL by the time I leave!
Time for tapas! Adios!
M

Taking it easy

2009-09-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

The second day of class went pretty much like the first. It really doesn’t feel like four hours, but it is. Every day. Except tomorrow and Sunday, which is exciting! AIFS has built into their program some day trips, and tomorrow is one of those. We’re all going to the Alhambra for a tour. I don’t know that much about it, so it should be interesting! We had to tell our cook today that we wouldn’t be at lunch tomorrow. She’s making us bocadillos (sub sandwich-type things) for us to take with us instead. Speaking of meals, today’s menu wasn’t quite as satisfactory as the past few days. Breakfast was, once again, toast and coffee. I have a feeling that’s all it’ll ever be. No complaints. For lunch we had this odd cold soup (gazpacho?) which all of us US students sort of tried to get down as fast as we could. Then there was a sort of mushroom and pork stew with fries on the side. The fries were really good, and reminded me of the fresh French fries at the fair. Yummy! For dinner we had our more normal (hot) soup that looks and tastes like alphabet soup (actually, the first day we had it, it DID have letters in it). I’m a big fan of that. Then we got this pasta with olives and carrots mixed in. On the side there was cold ham with some sort of melted cheese on the inside. Dessert was an ice cream sandwich…haha. Over dinner, there was a new kid who came into the comedor. We had an empty seat at our table, so we offered it to him. He didn’t look like a Spaniard, but he was speaking to Scarlett pretty fluently. We started talking, and found out he’s from the southern part of Holland. His name is Thijmen (I made him write it down because I couldn’t even start to imagine how it was spelled). He speaks VERY good English with almost no accent. Apparently he decided he wanted to study Spanish here, but his university wouldn’t help him get situated, so he organized everything himself. However, one of his old teachers is now a professor at UGR, so he has been able to keep in contact with him. I’m just amazed at the different types of people we have around us.

Quite a few of the students are out and about right now. They left around 11pm for tapas and drinks, and then were going to head over to meet (a bunch of) people at one of the discos. They were planning on leaving the bar for the disco around 2am…so I decided to pass. We have our trip tomorrow that apparently has a lot of walking, so I don’t want to be too tired. Speaking of which, I should probably start getting ready for bed! Keep an eye out for all of my Alhambra pictures tomorrow! …or when I get internet fast enough to upload things. As of right now I’ve had my computer on for 3 hours and it still hasn’t uploaded my most recent 5 pictures…

Chao!
M

p.s. I have my Skype working now, and I can call any US landline or cell phone! I tried it today and it works! So crazy how that works…so if anyone wants a phone call, just let me know!

p.p.s. Gelato count: 4

MIMI'S FIRST TAPAS!

2009-09-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of our “Language Intensive” classes. We all kind of walked to the CLM building, not knowing what to expect. Some people found out their classes were actually in a different building, but I got lucky! My class actually has 2 profesores. One named Mariangeles and one named Javier. Mariangeles is VERY nice and teaches us for the first 3 hours of the day. Today was all review, so it was pretty easy…I hope it doesn’t stay this way! Javier was really funny, and he dealt with the more cultural aspect of our lesson. Class ended in him giving us the names of his top 5 bars. Homework.

Before lunch I decided to watch more Spanish TV since it really seems to help. I went downstairs to find one of the Spaniard girls down there watching what I assumed to be a rather popular comedy show. We tried talking for a bit in Spanish, and then she admitted that she had studied in the US for 2 years and spoke very good English. Tricky, tricky. Now she’s here at UGR studying pharmacy.

We had an interesting lunch today. It was fried fish (looked identical to the fish I ate in London) with a side of this bean/tomato salad. I think we all had a difficult time with this meal, but dinner was wonderful. We got sopa (soup) for starters, and then moved on to a plate with jamon (ham), juevos (eggs) and some sort of mixed vegetables. It was really good! Dessert was yogurt! I think I could get used to eating like this…

After dinner a few of us went out in search of a fun tapas bar. We brought along our new friend, Danny, from Barcelona. He’s staying at Jardines and has become quite close with a number of us. He is still a bit unfamiliar with the area, but it was nice having him along to get tips and hints from locals. Literally every bar was filled up outside, so we ended up having to sit inside. However, the door was wide open, so air (and street vendors) came in easily! It was just like being outside. Our tapas included a sort of bruschetta and mannnny olives. On Danny’s second drink he got chicken wings! Lucky. Somehow he managed to get me to talk about circus. I have kept it very quiet so far on the trip (only Merete and Will knew) just because people a lot of the time don’t understand and just assume it’s a lot weirder than it actually is. And with Danny, seeing as I can’t even explain what I do to people in ENGLISH I was quite nervous about trying it in Spanish. I think he got the gist of it! It helped that he knew what Cirque du Soleil is…it’s surprising how many people don’t! That just makes things more difficult, haha.

Tonight was a lot better in regards to going out with a group. We kept it rather small, and were actually able to fit at one table! Whoa. However, tomorrow is a kid’s birthday in the program. I heard from a reliable source that there are about30 kids going out to celebrate. Classy, chicos, classy. I hope no one ends up ‘con la policía’!

Class again early tomorrow…so I better head to bed. Merete’s already sleeping! Hope all is well!
M

Becoming a local

2009-09-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

This morning we all got up at different times here at Jardines. The different levels of groups met at different times in the AIFS office, so some of us made it to breakfast while others decided to sleep in for the first time in a long time. Maria Julia’s pan tostada is too good to pass up, so I joined the small group down around 8:15. She always looks at me funny when I turn away café con leche (coffee with milk), but always offers me zumo (juice) instead :)

At the meeting in the AIFS office, we signed some contracts for the University of Granada and were instructed on how to decide what to register for. She suggested that based on our middle level Spanish, we should try and take all of our classes in Spanish. I hadn’t planned on it (I was only going to take 2 in Spanish out of my 4), but decided I might as well try it. She said it is VERY easy to drop and add classes so even after the first few classes it’s still possible to change to the English version…haha. After the meeting, everyone seemed to go shopping. Most of us were cell phone shopping…and BOY was that a process. We were all literally going from store to store getting info about all of the different phones and plans (all "prepago", or prepaid). Will and I decided to do this one plan with a place called "Movistar" (moh-vee-star), which is the network my T-mobile phone picked up immediately when we landed in Malaga. I've had 5 bars EVERYWHERE we have been, with no trouble...so we decided it would be a smart choice. Also, I talked with the 2 resident directors and they both said they had had issues with some of the other companies, like "Orange". Inma (Paula's helper) said she used to have to press her face against her bedroom window in order to get a signal when she had Orange. SO, I feel bad for the people who already had bought their phones and didn't spend time researching before buying. Too eager, too bad, I guess. The plan Will and I got was because we knew we would probably be contacting each other more than anyone else. We got a "Mi Favorito" which is where we chose each other as the one line that we prefered, and would get calls for .01/min and texts for .06/ea. COMPARED to Orange, Blau, Yoigo, and Vodafone which are all about .10/min for calls and .15/ea for texts. Also, to any other phone here, we have .12/min nights and weekends which was the best we found without sacrificing text prices, etc. I was pretty proud of our choice. And the girl was really nice at the store. She programmed it all for us so we wouldn't have trouble with the company. A bunch of kids got "Blau", this newer company which advertises free Blau to Blau calling and everything else is .08/each (calls, texts). HOWEVER there is a connection fee they didn't see in the fine (spanish) print... Anyway, I guess I thought this was all more exciting than it should have been. It’s just fun to go into stores and try and see how much Spanish you can get out before they figure out you have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s about 4 words for me.

This evening we ran into this kid, Alan, who is staying here at Jardines on his own from New York. He planned out his own trip...no study abroad program or anything. And surprisingly his Spanish is around my level, haha, so I commend him on his confidence to travel alone like that. I think our group here will befriend him, since he's taking similar classes at CLM, etc. I really am starting to get a feel for how in shape I will be when I get home. Everything around here is within walking distance, and right now I’m in the “exploration” mode, so I’m walking ALL the time. I think I must have walked at LEAST 15 miles today. With all the walking around we do, it really is like fat camp instead of study abroad. Haha...small portions, no sweets (except gelato), and a TON of walking. Some of that walking was while we were all trying to find phones and do some other shopping, but most of it was this evening when Will and I split off from the LARGE group of students to explore the northern side of Granada. This is one thing I’m having an issue with here. Paula, Inma, and other people who have been here before have told us numerous times that it’s not smart to go around in large groups, speaking English. That is a very American thing to do, and we don’t want to attract attention to ourselves. We tend to be louder, etc. and everyone is WELL aware that we are foreigners. I think my previous traveling experiences have helped me realize how important it is to try and act like a local in order to get a feel for the real culture. For example, while trying to find phone information, the clerks at the cell phone stores seemed a bit overwhelmed and annoyed when even more than 3 kids would go in to look at phones. Most of them are still shy and won’t ask questions (I tried to pitch in whenever I could, but Will was really on a roll today). Anyway, when we were just walking down the small streets we are obviously very much louder than the locals and people kind of stare us down. I hate feeling like that, and have suggested many times that we just split up into smaller groups. I don’t know what it is, but almost everyone seemed to think it was okay. Another example was last night when we were at the pub…Inma and Paula ended up leaving early because they didn’t want to watch the students drink just to get drunk. And that’s exactly what they did. After leaving for a bit, a few of us returned to grab a last piece of pizza, and it was shocking to see some kids from our program acting like they owned the place, yelling, dancing inappropriately, etc. I mean, have fun, but try and be respectful! When another student told them to calm down a bit, one girl replied “they expect us to act like this, we’re Americans.” Well, that’s not how I think it should be. Speaking of which, they just walked in now and I can hear them VERY clearly. It’s 1:20am. Anyway. Like I said, tonight Will and I decided to split off from the large group that was going out to a bar (and meeting even more students there for a total of about 15) to explore. It was the most fun I have had yet. We ended up on the steps of a HUGE cathedral, eating gelato (I got “Avellana”…or Hazelnut. Of course.), and watching a few locals bring out their guitars and drums and draw a small crowd. We wandered around for about 3 hours just trying to see what is around. While I didn’t want to seem rude for leaving the other group, it was VERY nice to be able to not feel like we were being stared at and judged because we’re part of a group of loud, obnoxious Americans. We were able to observe the locals by being mixed right in with them. At the gelato shop we actually were spoken to in Spanish with no notion that we didn’t understand. That was a first! So all in all, it was a wonderful evening, and I hope that other students will be able to experience Granada in this same way.

Well, classes start early tomorrow morning, so I’m going to head to bed. I took some pictures of my room (and new phone haha) for y'all to see, so they'll be up shortly! Gnight!
M

My Flickr account with PHOTOS!

2009-09-02T02:04:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! Here's the link to my Flickr account, so you can check out my pictures!! I don't have too many yet, but more are coming soon! They're also up on Facebook...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78071008@N00/

Lizzards and Tests and Sangria...OH MY!

2009-09-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today was quite a rough day to be honest. We got up around 7:30 and I had my first taste of our extremely low water pressure showers. I felt like I was standing beneath a leaking pipe, waiting for each drop to try and wash out the massive amount of shampoo in my hair. Everyone had a fun time with that. We ate breakfast in the Comedor together around 8. Our chef, Scarlet wasn’t there yet, but one of the other old ladies made us toast and coffee. Our resident director, Paula came and met us and we walked to meet up with all of the home stay kids at the CLM (Centro de Lenguas Modernas) for the placement test. It started with a 30 minute written question/answer test. Then we moved into the 45 minute grammar multiple choice section, specifically sorted into the four sections we are attempting to place in: beginning, intermediate, advanced and superior. It was kind of overwhelming to try and see what we are going up against on paper! The last part was an oral interview with one of the professors. I was super nervous, and really didn’t get much out of my mouth except “yo estudiado español para cuatro semestres, pero durante el verano pasado se me olvidó todo”…meaning: I have studied Spanish for 4 semesters, but during the past summer I forgot it all. That all came out...and I tried to get around explaining where I worked when she asked. FAIL. Everyone else’s interviewers told them what level they had placed into immediately. Mine decided not to…so I found out during our “welcome fiesta” tonight at the pub. It looks like I’ll be joining the beginners.

After the oral exam we went back to Jardines. We watched some TV in the common room…Spanish-dubbed The Wizards of Waverly Place (Los Magos de Waverly Place) and Boy Meets World on Disney Channel, as well as some Fresh Prince of Bel Air. We then ate lunch (at 2:30) in the Comedor, which was cooked by our chef, Scarlet. It was Spaghetti and meat sauce, which I think Paula told them to make to try and help us adjust. Regardless, it was really good! After that, we met up with everyone again at one of the (many) local plazas for a small tour of the important landmarks (AIFS office, post office, banks, etc.). The thermometer on the outside of one of the banks read 40o…go look that up. Following our walk was our "welcome fiesta" in which they ordered a LOT of pizza (from…DOMINOES!) and had it delivered to a pub. We also were given drink vouchers for either beer, sangria or coke. I felt bad for the people who had been in there before us, because there were over 50 of us, and some people got a little wild.

Well, now I’m back in my room. We have meetings with our respective class placements tomorrow morning, and then the rest of the day free to explore. I think I’ll end up buying a cell phone tomorrow…it’s cheaper than just buying a pay-as-you-go card for the phone I have now! The four main companies here are Vodafone, YoiGo, Orange and Movistar…most people have gone for Orange, but that was before Paula told us they don’t have that great of service between the tall buildings. Hmm…I’ll have to Google those.
Hope everyone is doing well!
M

p.s. I never mentioned that we had a little visitor in our room yesterday. It was a tiny lizard, about the length of my index finger. I have no idea where he went, but Merete and I are hoping he’ll come back to say hi. OH, and there’s this plaza near Jardines that is FULL of bats in the evening. You can hear them from a block away (and smell them). Regardless, it’s pretty fascinating!

LONDON! ...and the beginning of Granada

2009-08-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 28th, 2009
Friday was quite a hectic day…even before the flight! It was filled with last minute shopping and goodbyes as well as a final emergency sunless tanning session. I finally was packed about half an hour before we left for the airport, but not before I weighed my bag. And good thing we did—it was about 30 pounds over the limit! So, instead of just taking one giant suitcase and my backpack, I had to split it up into 2 suitcases and my backpack. While at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, Will and I recognized the other few faces of students traveling to Granada from St. Thomas. Also there were 2 kids from the University of MN Morris, one from Augustana College, and one from the University of MN Duluth. The flight to Chicago was SUPER rough. Our pilot seemed to slow down and speed up a bunch, and change altitudes constantly. I’m sure you can imagine what the landing was like. Anyway, we got into Chicago about 45 minutes late. Our connecting flight to London/Heathrow was supposed to close at 6:55, and we had landed around 6:30! We had to transfer terminals and go through security again before we found out the flight had been postponed until 8:00. We got lucky on that one! I’d like to thank Dad for giving me his ‘traveling genes’ in the sense that while the rest of the group was rather hesitant to lead or ask for information, I felt oddly comfortable. We sat around until our flight boarded, talking and getting to know each other. Apparently 2 other students were sitting near us (including my London hotel roommate, sophomore from OU, Maretta), but we didn’t know they were with AIFS. I suppose the bright orange tags should have given it away. Regardless, we all met up once we got to the London airport. Also there was a girl who had flown in from Washington D.C. We were bussed to our Holiday Inn hotel about half an hour away in a large coach bus.

I suppose this is now Saturday, August 29th, 2009
It was around 11:30 by the time we got to the hotel, and we met with the AIFS welcoming staff who let us run free until our hotel rooms became available at 2. A small group of us walked to a pub nearby and had some of our first traditional English food (Fish & Chips, Potato Wedges with Cheddar, etc.). That evening a “welcoming drink” was scheduled for all of the students going to both Salamanca and Granada. In total, there were probably about 90 of us. Before this, we walked around Kensington Park to do some people-watching. And people we did watch. Near a small bandstand, a man in a kilt was teaching a large group of people how to do some sort of folk dance (looked like line-dancing). We rushed back for the “welcoming drink”, mainly because we knew the Man United/Arsenal game was also on. That evening Will and I went out with our “Pub Passports” in hand (a ticket for a free meal and drink at certain pubs). We didn’t end up finding a pub that wasn’t packed, but did find a nice café in which we got a small pizza.

Sunday, August 30th, 2009
We all got up rather early this day for the tour we were promised. Actually, I mostly got up to see what the continental breakfast was :) We split up onto 2 coach busses and headed off with our highly trained tour guide (2 year program, about 20 exams!). Our tour guide, Nikki, was very, very friendly and funny. She made sure to point out the sights all of us kids would appreciate (like Harry Potter and other movie landmarks, hotels celebrities favor, and funny billboards). Every once in a while we would get off the bus to get a better look and to take pictures. We almost left my roommate, Maretta at Buckingham Palace. Whoops! That would have been a long walk back. Sights included the Globe Theater, St. James Cathedral, Big Ben, London Bridge, Tower of London, Trafalger Square, and Harrods! Well, there was more than that…haha. We were dropped off in Covent Garden to fend for ourselves. Nikki pointed out a Pastie shop and other places easy to walk to. Those of us who still had yet to use our “Pub Passports” found the most convenient pub and grabbed some grub. From there we literally walked all the way back to the hotel. On the way we stopped at the sights we hadn’t spent much time at, including the National Gallery, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the Science Museum. When we stopped at Trafalger Square again, we were reminded of something Nikki had told us about. She said to celebrate…something…each day for 100 days, people had applied for an hour slot to stand on top of this large, wide pillar/platform in the Square and do whatever they wanted. When we had driven past on the Coach earlier, there was a guy sitting on a stool, taking pictures of the crowds walking past. THIS time when we were there, there was a man completely naked…just standing there. People were taking pictures, but I passed on the photo op. On the way back we also walked all the way through Hyde Park (no, we didn’t see Peter Pan) and Kensington Gardens. Will hand-fed a squirrel, but I don’t think it was much of a fan of the Chex Mix we had to offer. All Londoners obviously have a much more sophisticated palate. Once we got back after the 7 hour journey back to the hotel, we took a break. I then went out to the same café as the day before to grab another pizza (and a piece of chocolate cake I had been eyeing) with Will and his roommate, Yuri (U of M Morris student). So, I never used the Tube, but I think it was for the best. I got to see so much, much more by walking.

Monday, August 31st, 2009
I went to bed around 1am…well aware that my alarm was set for 3am. We were to leave the hotel for the London/Gatwick airport at 3:45. I ended up getting up around 2:30 instead, after we received a wonderful wakeup call the AIFS people arranged. However, we DID get to ride on a double-decker bus, so it made up for some of it. Right now I’m on the plane to Malaga. Judging by how many children are on board, I think it must be “Take Your Child to Spain Day” or something. It’s CRAZY.

...quite a few hours later. I'm in my room now at Hostel Jardines, my home for the next few months. My roommate ended up actually being Maretta, so at least something about this move was familiar. We flew into Malaga Airport and all rushed around to get our bags and meet our resident director, Paula Messina. She's a New York native who was an AIFS student here 21 years ago. She met a boy while on the trip, and before she knew it, she was living here! She came on our bus (the resident students), while most of the homestay students went on another bus. We all met up and got to see those kids meet their families. It was pretty cute. The old ladies were so funny and superrrrr excited. The resident students packed up Paula's husband's van with our massive luggage and then we followed her through the streets to Hostel Jardines. Once we brought our bags up to our rooms (that was pretty hilarious...), Paula took us to a Cafeteria for lunch and we all got bocadillas (basically sub sandwiches). We then were on our own. Will and I went to this huge mercado Paula suggested we buy toilet paper and such. We had fun trying to figure that out. Back at Jardines, the little old ladies who basically run the place are very sweet, but don't speak a word of English. They're fun though...trying to talk to us like we're natives. We pretend we understand. Oh, we also had a guy come up to try and fix our AC, but I had to try and figure out how to tell him it must be a different room...I think he understood. Maretta and I unpacked, and it all basically fits. Whew.

Tonight a group of us went out to a small restaurant. We ate outside because it is still SUPER nice out. We're all trying to go to bed early because of the placement exam tomorrow, but that's not happening because we're all STUDYING! Already.
Well, I hope to get some of my pictures up tomorrow...but the internet here is pretty on and off. Wish me luck tomorrow on the placement test! :)

On your marks...get set...

2009-08-23T23:54:00.000-07:00

GO!

...in T minus 4 days :)

Keep an eye out for news posts and photos regularly!