Espana 2012

What a great few days this has been! Monday was for the most part an ordinary day at school, but in our spanish culture/history class me and my partner presented our group project. we were assigned the topic of Traditional and Religious Holidays in Spain. I'm so glad that we got that one, because all the other groups before us got all these historical topics/boring ones, so learning more about three kings day and running of the bulls (and much more) was very interesting and pretty fun! The presentation went well too so that was a good way to end the day of school! At 3:00, after lunch, I headed back to the school to meet up with 9 other girls and a University person to go on a hike guided by him! there are a lot of different sports/activities that are offered to be taken through the school for a small amount of money. A lot of girls went horseback riding (no thanks!!!) and some of us went hiking, which was only 10 euro! I forget the name of the mountain we climbed, but we got some great views and a pretty good workout!!


muy fuerte!

Then at the top top of the mountain there was this sun dial, or Reloj de Sol (which means watch of the sun, so it's like the same thing). It was so cool.. I can imagine that it's not too too old, but it was really neat to be in nature away from all the smells and noises and dirt of the city of Granada, and to be seeing something similar that Spanish inhabitants used years and years ago before Granada was developed at all! It's stuff like that that I expected to see more in Granada, and I'm really glad to have seen it.


and then we headed back down the mountain!


We back to the school at 6:30 or so, so it was a pretty long expedition! I don't mind at all though, it felt so good to put my workout shoes back on and feel my heart beating above a normal pulse for more than like 2 minutes!!! And I was a bit sore the next day in my legs, so that made me happy too From there I headed back for dinner at 8, and worked on a study guide for next Tuesday's language exam, and that was the end of my night!

Tuesday: not too much happened today, normal class stuff as usual. Afterwards, Julia, Meghan, Jules and I went to this cafe just because why not! I got churros and chocolate and shared them with the girls... MMMM so GOOD! great way to celebrate another day of classes! From there we went home for lunch... this week there are these 3 Norwegian high schoolers staying with us (who speak decent English). They're taking Spanish for the second year now (aka they know nothing) and their teacher assigned the class to go to Spain for a week to study it more in depth. Oh, to live in Europe and have so many amazing and different cultures to experience at my disposal! Such a seriously amazing concept to be able to do that. Anyway, these kids are actually pretty rude and inconsiderate so me and Julia do not enjoy our meals as much when we have to eat with them. But no sense in getting worked up about it! Which you know I could do easily Call me naive, but I just hate how there are rude people like that out there!
Anyway, after lunch came our last Flamenco lesson. It's been fun this whole time, but the more the classes continue the less fun it becomes because it's impossible and the more frustrating it becomes because it's impossible. Hey, I'm my father's daughter - if I'm doing something, I have to get it right! At least I know I can check "Flamenco Dancer" off my list of possible back up careers!

the teacher, if you couldn't tell, is the 2nd guy to my "left"! Just for a good visual!
At dinner we got to eat with the 3 sister-host moms because the kids were out getting sushi (don't even get me started....), and something practically remarkable happened. The main sister, who does most of the caring for us, spoke ENGLISH!!! You know that scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where Caesar tells James Franco, "Caesar is home," as a frickin ape??? Yeah, that's as blown away I was. It was literally like hearing a dog speak english. It took me back that much! She said "fork", "kni-eefe" (spelling intended for pronunciation purposes), "spoooon" and "cheeckin" (chicken). It was crazy! And that was the biggest highlight of my night for the rest of the day! After that we just did homework and hung out.
Gotta love this Spanish life!!!

This Saturday we had a free day, and being the adventurers we are, we weren't going to sit around on facebook all day! It was almost always the idea to go to one of the beaches on the coast of Spain, which are only about 1 hour away. It was nice, I didn't do any of the research, I just showed up when and where they said to for the bus, and paid what they said we'd have to, and we were on our way! We met at 10 am to take a bus that brought us to the main bus station, and from there we took a coach bus (only $12 round trip!!) to Sabrolena.


It's funny, no matter where you go, it seems that all coastal towns will have the same sort of feel to them. Tourist shops, ice cream places, cutesy restaurants, and lots of palm trees! And it was probably in the upper 60's the entire day, so with that very pleasant temperature and the sun beaming down on us, it felt like absolute Heaven to be there. After walking about 15 minutes from the bus stop, we arrived at the beach.


It seems that everyone has such beach instincts - once at the end of the boardwalk, we remove our shoes, and then have light conversation about the location to sit, and then organize the towels almost like a speechless tetris game where everything just fits perfectly into place. Already a great start to the day! For a while we just enjoyed being in the sun (the phrase to sunbathe is "tomar el sol," which means to take in the sun). We still had our jeans on, but I had taken off my leather jacket and cardigan and was laying there with my tank top!
After some time of sitting around, a couple of us decided to climb the cliff in the not so far distance. What an experience in just a half hour! The sights got better and better as you climbed up, and it felt fun and free to be climbing around like little monkeys.







After that, we headed back to our towels to relax more. By this time we had been there for about 2 hours, so it was roughly 2 pm. With the climbing, I was feeling actually pretty hot so I decided to go ahead and just sunbathe in my bathing suit! Although it was a tad chilly, I'm sure you can just imagine the feeling of the sun soaking your skin. Mmmmm. Then once the others were back from a restaurant (their host parents didn't give them lunch - as always I got a ham and cheese baguette thing with a banana and orange juice box. So more like a lightly adorned ham baguette and the rest), we decided to do what most of us really went there for: swimming in the Mediterranean Sea!!!! I'm in the orange bathing suit and to the far right (for the ones where it's us running in!)


The water of course was cold, it actually kind of took my breath away for a second because of the shock... but isn't that what true adventure feels like?? I think you're not doing it good enough if you're still comfortable. So of course we jump out after less than 5 seconds of idling, but then after a quick assessment of one of the girls' cameras, she realized that the person who took them took the pictures in some way that they didn't come out! So we figured, hey let's just run in again! Anything for the sake of a good picture. I was reasonable enough to not get my hair wet, so it doesn't look like we all jumped in, but believe me, it happened!!!


What's funny is that it was snowing that day at home, all while we were sitting on the beach and going into the water! Overall it was a really fun experience. What a great day at the playa!!!

What a weekend what a weekend!
So once we left the Italica and drove a short 9 km more, we arrived in the wonderfully beautiful city of Sevilla. It was around 7ish ish, so it was dark, but the glow of the streetlights showed enough to indicate to me that this is somewhere that I will definitely like a lot. After a 10 minute walk along the sidewalks, dragging our little suitcases behind us like baby ducks following their mama, we arrived at the hotel. It's part of a chain of High-Tech Hotels, so the lobby was pretty modern, and the room/bathrooms were too. the wall/door of the bathroom was just frosted glass so it was a bit interesting to be in the bathroom and only be visually protected by such a small amount! And there was a bidet. I'm so glad I got to see one in Europe!!!
After we freshened up and got ourselves settled, we went out to go tapas-hopping. I actually learned that tapas ORIGINATED in Sevilla, so to have the wonderful tapas in their place of birth is seriously like having beers in Germany (don't know if beer originated there but obviously it's at its prime there!) or some other significant worldly comparison. Again, just another reason to travel, so I can learn about everywhere! Tapas, if you didn't know, are these small mini-appetizer type plates... usually the size of your palm all the food can fit in. Just realized how grammatically poor that sentence is, but when you speak so much spanish and hear so much spanglish and spanish and broken english, you forget how to talk well! Didn't expect it but it's true! which I actually really love Anyway, tapas were made for a specific reason. They mean "lids," which makes sense because they were made to put atop one's drink (usually wine glass), to 1) keep the bugs out of the drink and 2) because eating food while drinking will reduce the amount of drunk someone will get since they'll have food to absorb some of the alcohol. so I guess people just walked around with little baguette slices on their wine glasses like it was wearing a beret or something!! So yeah, with all of that being said, tapas are huge in Spain and all of us love to discover and eat at many tapas bars in all the places we've stayed at (Madrid, Granada, Sevilla). So we did that for dinner and shared pitchers of Sangria (there were a bunch of us that went).. we went to 2 different tapas bars for some food. One of them was super authentic; it had parts of pig bodies hanging from the ceiling!! It was gross, but so so cool to see it all and to see the contraption they have to get the meat. It's seriously like a holder that you crank tight and it holds the bottom of the shin in place, while they shave thin slices of the leg meat from the upper leg. Like, the hoof was still chilling there on one side of the crank, and this bright red and marbled white piece of muscle was on the other side. Again, gross, but absolutely fascinating. So from there we went to this little mexican tapas bar and got quesadilla tapas (BANGIN) and ordered some fun Mexican drinks, including a Mai Tai and another one that seemed just like a spiked milkshake. Delicious but dangerous haha. And after that we pretty much headed back and went to sleep, excited about what the rest of the weekend had to offer!
Saturday morning we ate a fabulous breakfast at the hotel, and then headed to the Reales Alcazares. It's this royal garden thing, and was absolutely beautiful!



look what we found! I call my boyfriend Peacock (long story short, he chased a peacock at the Philly zoo a few summers ago and when we became better friends and exchanged phone numbers, I called him Eric Peacock because "Eric VD" was too boring) so this was exciting to see! It's like I got a special visit from him


so as you can see, this was a lot to take in visually. It was absolutely magnificent and it also smelled so clean and nice and on such a beautiful day, I definetely was not in a hurry to leave!
However, we had more things to see and do, so from the Garden we meandered into the Cathedral right by it.


From there we went to another Cathedral, called The Cathedral of Sevilla. This place was huuuge. The organ had either 700... or 7,000 different pipes. I forget which one, but either way that's a whoooole lot!!! Here's some pictures:


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS'S BONES ARE RIGHT HERE!!!

from there we climbed to the top of the tower where all the bells are and everything. There were I think 37 small ramps (instead of stairs), and they had them conveniently labeled so you knew how much further you had to go!

What a beautiful city. How perfect does this look!
From there some of us went Inma, who has been helping out Doris navigate and teach us a lot about the country. She started with us in Madrid and actually teaches at Universidad de Granada so she's been with us where ever we've been going. Since she lives in Spain, she knows of some of the less known attractions. We trusted her knowledge and went to check out the Plaza de Espana, and what a great decision that was!





And again, on such a gorgeous day, it could not have been better.
After doing that and then going souvenir shopping for a bit, we headed back to the hotel by around 6. From there we showered and got a little dolled up for the Flamenco show that most of us decided to go to!!! It was so awesome.. learning some of the basic moves made us appreciate how talented this women was. She was incredibly passionate, it was so easy to see her emotion in her face and body movements. She danced while this other woman absolutely waiiileddd these beautiful Spanish songs and the guy played the guitar. It was only 13 Euros, and the experience was seriously worth at least double. I'm so glad to have gotten the opportunity to go!



After that, some of us went to a discoteca and that was fun! Most of the people were in their later 20s so it felt a little weird to be there but we all still had a lot of fun dancing and all. After that we went to bed!
Sunday we had planned to tour the Golden Tower, one of Sevilla's biggest landmarks, and also a bull-fighting ring, but unfortunately it was raining the whole day so all of our plans got cancelled. A lot of us were bummed to have missed learning about such cool things! but the weekend was still packed with plenty of pictures and memories.

After checking out of our hotel and walking the same 10 minute walk (in the rain of course) to the bus, we hopped on and drove back to Granada in time for dinner!
Between the rain and the traveling and the packed plans, you better believe we slept great Sunday night! And that was Sevilla

So to say the least, the Alhambra gave us a really visually stimulating day!! This post will be full of pictures, so enjoy 
At around 10 am, we met at a central location (the Correos aka Post Office) and from there headed another 20ish minutes up the hill to see the Alhambra, which is by far Granada's biggest "spot" I guess, and also is a big thing that represents Spain as a whole. It is a very old old palace, made of clay mostly, but also has some parts made with marble, like a set of columns at this one part, and also ceramic, but that's mostly for decorative purposes. You'll be able to distinguish it all in the pictures! 
It turns out that they actually never finished it because, I'm pretty sure she was saying, they ran out of money. Which is understandable because this things is very ornately and delicately decorated, but from what I saw, it looked pretty good to me! The Moors built it, so it's very very old. It's weird, all the rooms were empty but I guess after centuries and centuries and the re-take over of Granada, there really wouldn't be much left!! The tour guide did the whole 2ish hour tour in Spanish, so sadly, I have less information to report about it. You know, you think you could speak a language that you're so passionate about all day everyday if you finally got the chance, but between host women who don't speak 1 word of English and not one English word is in any store, etc., it gets pretty damn exhausting trying to constantly translate/understand every word you hear. And you know, sometimes you wander from the big cluster just enough where you can't hear her enough, which for me, isn't difficult since I can barely hear people when they're literally right in front of me. 
Okay enough babbling, here are lots of pictures of an awesome place!!!








okay so after the Alhambra, we ate lunch on the benches outside the palace which was cute because it was a nice little picnic, except our families all made us lunch and I got ham and cheese on a baguette and a BANANA and juice box. And then a lot of us went back down the hill and scoped out some little hole in the wall shops that we'll get lots of souvenirs from, and then went through the town to get back home. From there me and Julia just hung out, showered, and then ate dinner at 8. 
From THERE started more fun! Around 10 of us met at 9 pm at the Plaza Nueva which is another central location and is really really pretty. We passed fountains and beautiful buildings and great lights decorations...

nothing like what we have right around our apartment. But as long as most of our activities are centralized around the pretty part of the city, I guess it's okay! Anyway, so we met up and then headed down the street and just picked one of many tapas bars to hang out in. I got vino tinto (red wine) and then a glass of vino blanco (white wine). So from there, after about 2 hours just hanging out (I was at the bar, most of them were at tables because we had to split up, but I enjoyed my time up there! It was cool to get my drink so soon, and to converse with the bartenders!), we went to this other tapas bar that's actually run by a British man and his Portuguese/Brazilian wife, and there were friends already there when we arrived so we hung out a bit, but some of us left by 11:15 cuz we had to get back for our curfew but our friends today said that they really enjoyed it there so I guess we'll head to that place a good amount of times! 
Okay well that was my First Sunday in Espana!!

06/01/12
Holy Toledo! What sights we saw in this other Spanish city!






We went here today, and this is another really cool place. The sights, obviously, were really amazing. We walked around the town, up and down the hills on the cobblestones and saw lots of really cool things. We went to this amaaazing cathedral:




and then to a once-synagogue that was turned into a church when there was a royal monarchy, but actually Muslims built it in the first place so it’s a great example of the cohesiveness of religions. From there we stopped at another great lookout point
and then headed to the center of the city and saw this incredible cathedral





From there we went to the place of lunch but they weren’t ready for us so our tour guide brought us down the hill from the restaurant and showed us this cool little virgin Mary shrine built into the stone wall thing that was protected by a plastic barrier and metal bars… there are a few little holes in the plastic, and there’s a tradition/superstition that if you stick something small enough in the holes (a pin, for example), you will get a boy/girlfriend or husband/wife. Our your guide told us that she did that and then got her husband! It was cool, she lives right there too so she showed us the front of her abode. I guess they’re apartments… maybe actually they’re townhouses.. seemed more like that. Anyway, then we went to lunch and I had a salad and chicken with mashed potatoes (mmm American food) and this really great frozen hot chocolate type thing. Then we had free time for an hour so we visited this bakery famous for its Marzipan stuff so a lot of girls bought some of that and I bought two of these thin little chocolate cookies. Culinary Creations actually has some identical to those! And I bought a little Toledo plate.
I didn’t plan on starting like a plate collection (no idea what I’m even going to do with them, I’ll just have to get a career and a house with a room for an office right out of my internship so I can display them ), but it looks like since I know have one from Segovia and Toledo, I might as well get them from everywhere we take a day/weekend trip.

From there, we got on the bus to head to Granada to meet our families! It was a four hour bus ride so I worked on these blogs for about an hour and for a bit I talked to this girl Megan who I’ve really been getting along with especially.. and then gave myself over 2 hours to sleep aaaannddd guess what… it looks like I can’t sleep on busses either! I guess I was sort of in and out, but lately I’ve been feeling really awful: sore throat, headaches, ears hurt, my lymph nodes are getting bigger and bigger and I’m just disgustingly exhausted and I desperately need to really rest. So not getting good sleep on the bus just made me more frustrated with my physical conditions ☹ 
But anyway, we finally got to Granada and met our families! We’re living with 3 women who seem to be a little younger than 60. Me and Julia, my roommate, thought that something must be wrong with them if they’re 3 sisters who are living with each other and not husbands, but they seem very nice! And it was cute, they made us chicken and French fries and yogurt. It was so nice for them to make us American type food. I just want vegetables and fruits though. And some real whole grains. More Dietetics trials and tribulations. The apartment is interesting, the kitchen and living room even have actual doors, and most of the rooms are kinda small, but it’s cute and has wonderful Spanish decorations. Definitely inspired me