Primer fin de semana

9/4 Friday (continued)

After meeting our host mom and dumping our bags in our new apartment, Laura and I went to our madre's grandson's 14th birthday party. We went to their beautiful house outside of the city and enjoyed empanadas and drinks with the family and a bunch of their friends. All the teenage boys kept laughing at our Spanish skills- asking us questions and then giggling when we tried to answer them haha.

This is the view of the sunset from the balcony of the house. It overlooked some of Granada and was so so pretty.



This is Laura, my roomie! Dunno how happy she'll be that I put this photo up... She is absolutely wonderful though, we make great companeros de cuarto and I love her yayy :)


9/5 Saturday

We had orientation at our school center on Saturday, and oh my gosh the building is so beautiful. There is a bottom floor which is basically an entry way with a fountain, and then two floors of classrooms, offices, and a mini library. The top floor has a computer room, student lounge, more offices, and a rooftop terrace WITH A VIEW OF THE ALHAMBRA! Seriously, you go outside and look up and it's right there, across the street! You can also see the top of it from my classroom window, it's super cool.

After class during the day and siesta with lunch at home, we all went back to school in the evening for walking tours of the city with our classes.

All of the streets look like this, with cobbleston roads and then beautiful houses with balconies.

We got up to the top of the hill and had an incredible view of the Alhambra! It stretches all the way from the white palace on the hill on the left, across to the right, and...

to the rest of the fortress that you can see here. My school center is at the bottom right edge of the trees in this photo.

Right next to the lookout was a mosque (Granada is famous for its rich religious history) but we couldn't go inside.

This was in the courtyard outside to mosque.

There are so many stray cats around this city, it's crazy to me. There are also a lot of dogs running around too, but there are sooooo many cats!

Towards the end of our walk we stopped by the Cathedral. I hope to go inside someday, but for now we just walked around the outside.

There was a concert in front of the Cathedral, and our profesora made us all get onto the dance floor. A couple days later we came here for the afternoon session of class sat on the steps of the cathedral playing charades :)

9/6 Sunday

This was our day off, so we all slept really late. Our madre made fun of us for sleeping in so late, but said she understood that we were jet-lagged. I met up with a couple girls and we decided to walk around the city more to get acquainted with our new home.

We met at our school and then walked past the Alhambra, heading up to the hills again. There are fountains (and see the dogs!) everywhere throughout the city. Most are not safe to drink from, but some are set up as drinking fountains.

We went to a cute little restaurant for dinner. Dinner here happens super late, around 9 or 10 at night, and is not the biggest meal of the day (lunch is). Also, dessert is usually coffee or a piece of fruit - like our sandia here!

And that's my first weekend in Granada! Coming up is our field trip to Cabo de Gata and more of the city!

I'm in Spain!!!

Hello all :) I have decided to keep a blog while I am abroad in Spain this fall! I will do my best to stay current with it, updating with what I'm doing and new photos as often as I can. Buuuut, as some of you know, staying on top of posts online is not my strong suit :) Please don't hate me if I fail at blogging, and bear with me if I blab on too much (probably bound to happen...)

9/3 Thursday
Sooooo I'm in Spain! I left the US on Wednesday 9/2 (thanks for the ride to the airport, Dougy!) and flew to Frankfurt and then to Malaga, Spain. The flights went smoothly, and I made a couple friends on the way which was really exciting. I arrived in Malaga (accent on the first "a") safe and sound, and then had an interesting time finding the hidden baggage claim area and figuring out how to get a taxi. I went to the hotel, met some other students, and enjoyed a lovely walk around the city and to the Cathedral!

This is one of the main drags in Malaga, there are shops and restaurants all along it. The directors of the program took us on a walking tour through here around 8 pm. Some of us kept trying to sneak off to get food cause we were so starving, but they were on top of us and wouldn't let us go haha. In Spain they eat dinner really later, around 9 or 10, something that I'm trying to get used to...

There are cloths hanging between all the buildings in this area, I think it's so cool. And this building had rainbow windows which is also awesome.

Most of the streets are little pathways like this, with cool buildings all around and every window has a little balcony. The tall thing you see in the back is the Cathedral, super pretty.

See! It was a lot wider than this but I couldn't capture it all...

After the stop at the Cathedral they finally let us go to get food. I went with a bunch of girls to a little cafe place, where we got tapas type dishes for dinner. We actually all ended up ordering the same thing: a baguette with olive oil, tomato, and manchego cheese. Such a Spanish food - my host mom serves it at basically every meal.


9/4 Friday
We were in Malaga for Thursday night, and then Friday we had orientation and headed to Granada to meet our host families and move into our new houses! Just before the buses took off, the director of the program, Javier (who is totally totally awesome) ran a couple of us down to the beach. The group had gone the day before, but our planes arrived later so we missed the trip. Javier was kind enough to walk us down and back just before heading north.

A nice little park on the way to the beach. This little pond had tuuuurtles!! They were so cute :) Also, looking back, none of the parks in Granada have grass or water like this one in Malaga. It is super dry in Granada (and basically the rest of Spain) and so the parks look more like deserts with little fountains, not lawns and huge ponds.

And the beach!! We didn't have time to actually go touch the water, but we saw it. We went on a field trip to the beach Monday, so whenever I get around to putting more photos up you'll see lots of the Mediterranean Sea.

Then we hopped in the bus and drove up to Granada! We all met our families at a hotel and went to our new homes. I have a madre named Hortensia, and her 36 year old daughter, Berta, also lives with us. I share a little room with Laura, a girl from New York who goes to Tulane - she is super great. We eat breakfast and lunch with Hortensia every day, and then are on our own for dinner. Breakfast happens when we wake up, but then lunch is super late in Spain, around 3 in the afternoon. Also, they have a siesta, which is a resting time in the middle of the day when everything shuts down. We come home from school around 2 to relax and have lunch, and then the city starts up again at 5. It's nice having a little down time in the middle of the day, but the long stretch from 8 to 3 without food is rough.

More to come later about Granada and our trip to Cabo de Gata!!