Granada n such

So this past weekend I went on my first planned trip separate from Emilio as well. Two girls from my group at the university and I went to Granada, which is a city in southern Spain. Granada is a city with very strong Arabic influence on its culture and the people as well. We left on Thursday evening and arrived Thursday night of course in time experience the nightlife in Granada. One of the girls I went with had a friend from her home town who was studying in Granada this semester so we met up with her and she showed us around a little bit. We then woke up early Saturday morning to go to an Arabic bath/spa (this was the perfect cure for a hangover, I finally figured it out!). They had around 7 pools/hot tubs to sit in; we got free tea and a 25 minute message. How it worked is we went in the locker rooms, changed into our bathing suits then went out and relaxed in the hot tubs…after a few minutes they took us to get our message and then after the message we rinsed off in a shower and then relaxed in the pools again for the rest of the time (it was an hour and a half total). This was definitely an experience that I’ve never had before and it was really cool to see the Arabic culture of the city this way as well. The rest of the day we just wondered around the city, I took a Double Decker bus tour to all the main attractions and got some cool pictures from being on top of the bus. We could also see the Sierra Nevada really well from various parts of the city so I took a lot of pictures of that…it really made me want to go snowboarding. After the bus tour we just hung out around down town and explored, nothing really exciting just took some more pictures. I then went and got my first Spanish haircut later on…I decided since we did not really have any plans for a few hours that I would go and search for a peluceria (I think that’s how you spell it but its like a hair salon). I took me a while to find one but eventually I did, while I was waiting in line I was debating about what I wanted to do…I didn’t want to do anything too crazy but I was also thinking maybe of getting it cut more like the Spanish guys here to try and fit in to the culture a little bit more. So as I was debating I decided I would ask for the same hair cut that the barber had (which would also make it easier to explain what I wanted in Spanish). So that’s what I ended up doing…Its not really any different than normal but he cut my sideburns differently and it is best when I gel it kind of like a Mohawk.

On Saturday we woke up early again but this time to go visit Alhambra, they recommend that you buy tickets online in advance and we looked to do that but they were all sold out so we had to get up early enough to get there when it opened to get tickets. Luckily we did make it. Alhambra is like an old fortress I think with Arabic influence that is on like the top of a hill overlooking the downtown part of Granada. It was really cool because we could look down on everything but also we were surrounded by the mountains on all sides. I actually found out that it was in the running to be one of the “7 wonders of the world” (I don’t really know how that works but that’s what I heard). We spent pretty much our whole morning in la Alhambra and then afterwards relaxed in our hostel and then went out to explore the town a little bit more. We stayed down town for a while, went out to dinner and then to a few bars…I went back early because I was just exhausted from the previous two nights of no more than 5 hours of sleep, and I knew we had to wake up before 7 to catch our flight back to Madrid this morning. Needless to say I was a great trip but I am extremely tired and probably going to go to bed early tonight.

The next trip I have planned is to Paris the last weekend of February, and I think I am going to have to be a little stingier with my money because this past trip to Granada definitely ate it up quicker than I wanted. I also have midterms coming up in a week, so I’m hoping that those will go alright and I’ll be able to pull off decent grades in the classes that I am currently struggling a little bit in. Hope all is well with everyone else and I will post again sometime soon. Hasta luego.

A couple "firsts" in España

On Thursday of this past week I had my first true “intercambio”, this is were I talk to a Spanish local and practice my Spanish/ask questions about the culture and such and learn new words and cultural norms. It went really well actually…we ended up talking for over 3 hours and by the end I really felt like my Spanish had improved just over those three hours and I learned a lot about the culture and even a few new words to add to my vocabulary. This was a good thing for me at a good time right after I started to feel like my speaking abilities were kind of at a stand still…needless to say I'm excited to have more of these intercambios.

This past weekend I also had my first true trip while abroad…Emilio and I went to Leon to visit his friends that now life there. Leon is a really cool city, much more relaxed and much smaller than Madrid and even than Alcala but I enjoyed it a lot. We ended up not leaving until Saturday morning (the original plan was to go on Friday) so the trip was a little short but fun none the less. When we arrived Saturday afternoon we met up with Emilio’s friends and walked around the city, for lunch we went from bar to bar ordering drinks and getting tapas (the majority of bars give a little free portion of food when you order drinks which are called tapas). This was actually a lot of fun because I got to talk to them a lot and they introduced me to typical Spanish foods and drinks and also typical foods and drinks for Leon. They also showed me around to the famous cathedral of Leon and other monuments there. Like a said it is a much smaller city than Madrid so we were down town for about 5 hours and we briefly covered almost everything. When we finished downtown we went grocery shopping and then headed to their house up in the mountains. Their house is actually more like a house in the US…they have a little yard and its more spread out which I liked. Once we got to their house we just hung out and talked and ate dinner.

We had planned to go up into the mountains today but they got some snow over night and the roads were starting to get bad so Emilio was afraid we if we waited we wouldn’t be able to make out back to Madrid and we also weren’t sure if we could go into the mountains with bad roads. While we were on our way home we also heard that Madrid was getting snow and everything was chaotic (that’s three times since I’ve been here that they’ve had snow and before now they haven’t had it in like 20 years). As we got closer to being home we were afraid it was going to be really bad to drive but by the time we got back the roads were fine with very little traffic so that was a relief. After we arrived in Alcala we went to an open parking lot and Emilio tried to teach me a little bit how to drive a manual. The parking lot was really small but I was able to drive around a little bit which was cool since it was my first real time being able to drive one…I know all of you outside of the family are wondering how I never learned with my dads love for cars but it was because all the manuals we had at home were Dad’s company cars and I was not allowed to drive them. Anyway it was neat to learn a little bit and he said some night when there is not traffic we can take the car out and drive around the area a little bit which I’m excited for.

Well that’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to, hope all is well for everyone at home or wherever you may be. Next weekend I’m going to Toledo on Friday with the free trip from school so that should be fun (its only a day trip) and then in two weeks I’m thinking about heading to the southern tip of Spain and going over to morocco with some friends from school so I’m looking forward to the next few trips. I’ll be sure to post after I go and inform you all how they went. ¡Hasta Luego!