Hopping around Europe

So these first 2 weeks have been very busy with booking flights, buses, and trains, to get to everywhere my friends and I want to see in Europe.  I'm starting to realize that it will be impossible to go everywhere with less that 14 weekends in the semester, and I have decided I'd rather travel throughout Spain a lot because I can always visit other countries again but I will probably never live here again.


So far I am going to Madrid and Toledo this weekend, January 27th-29th.  Then February 10th-19th I am traveling through Prague, Vienna, and Budapest!  This is our big trip, and I know it will be unforgettable.  The weekend after that is a 4 day weekend for us, and we are trying to find cheap flights to go to Paris and Versailles for the 24th-27th of February.  THEN March 2-4  I am going to Dublin, Ireland, and staying with a mutual friend to save money on hostels!  March 9th our school plans a paid day trip to Cordoba, Spain for us.  March 16-18 is a possible Barcelona trip, or to Valencia to see their Las Vayas festival (apparently very cool).  Wow I have a lot going on.  March 30th-April 8th we have another weeklong break, but to save a little bit of money and enjoy Spain the plan is to go to Segovia, and then Ibiza (Island off of Spain) and then come back to Granada area to celebrate Semana Santa- one of Spain's biggest celebrations around Easter time!  April 13th the school plans a paid hiking trip to Alpujarras- not sure what this entails but I'm pretty sure I can tackle anything after climbing my little mountain.  And then April 20-22 is a Lagos-Portugal trip.  April 27-30th is another long weekend, and I hope to make it to Sevilla to see a bullfight!  Then May 7th they are shipping me back to the US.  


The areas that I wish I could see but unfortunately probably won't make it to are Amsterdam, Germany, England, and Italy.  I just know as a college student, I don't think I could see ALL of Italy and do it justice in 5-7 days and on a budget.  Italy is somewhere where I would want to go to the best restaurants, taste the best wine, and stay at a nice hotel (not a hostel crawling with cockroaches).  I would love to try to find a weekend to squeeze in Germany and visit my good friend Carmen, who was an exchange student in the states while I was in high school.  And I'll just watch a lot of Harry Potter to feel as though I am in England.  And Amsterdam, well, I don't smoke soo it's not the end of the world if I don't go there!  


I think I am making the most out of living in Spain by visiting several Spanish cities!  And I know that after these 4 months that I would want to come back to Europe again someday.  


That's all for now!  Actually, I do have to say that the one thing I miss the most about the US is that our meat and fish does not come with the heads already attached.  If I have to peel the head, legs, and scales off of one more thing, one more time, I'm gonna puke.  

Climbing a mountain and some other things..

Mari Lou has had guests over for the past 2 nights, her sister and her husband as well as her daughter and her husband.  It has been so nice, because they speak in a different accent than her so they are much easier to understand, and they enjoy getting to know me because Mari Lou’s sister has a 21 year old daughter who is studying abroad in Brussels for the whole year (must be the thing to do when you turn 21!).  I was helping prepare some dinner when Ma. (my senoras 30 year old daughter), broke an entire saltshaker on the ground.  Before even wiping up the shattered glass, she grabs a handful of salt and runs out to the balcony to throw it over her left shoulder- then proceeds to grab a glass of water and throw that over her shoulder without even hesitating to look down and see if anyone was below.  I guess she is very superstitious, and now she is concerned she is going to have seven years of bad luck- I’m just glad it wasn’t me who broke it.

Ma. (pronounced Mary) and I get along really well, we even became friends on facebook!  I literally think she’s the only person in the family who can interpret the mix of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that I try to combine to make a sentence.  She thinks it’s hilarious that I am in a sorority and my boyfriend plays sports, she calls us the “estereotipico” Americans.  It doesn’t help that I’m a blonde either.  I’ve decided that I’d almost rather have them think I am a ditzy blonde American because then they talk to me like they think I’m dumb- which helps me because they will speak very slowly and use a LOT of hand gestures.  We just laugh a lot together about the communication barrier between us.  When I want to take a shower, it’s like I’m acting out a scene from charades where I pretend I am washing my hair first, turning on and off the hot water, etc, until finally she’s like “oh you want to take a shower??”.   I could be in a way worse situation, we have already had students in our program want to switch families because of their strange accommodations (having 40 year old men tenants, living in unsafe neighborhoods, the kids of a family having all their play things in the room and having no privacy).  I live in such a central part of the city that there is always someone to walk home with and I feel really safe here.  And I am right by a TON of shopping, which is a good and a bad thing- I’ve already bought a very European looking pair of boots and a really really really cute brown leather jacket, I mean both of which I needed to have right? 

Today Elyssa, Monica, Emily, and I wanted to explore some hiking trails on the mountain where the Alhambra is.  We threw on our gym shoes and decided to just wing it- we had no idea where we were going and just decided to start climbing as soon as we saw a path that looked decent.  Our first attempt resulted in me being stuck at a point about 10 feet above the ground, stranded because it was too steep to go up further, and the drop down was dangerous.  And of course I’m about the least athletic person in the world so that probably didn’t help my case.  I just sat and scooted my way down- so the joke of the day was my very muddy ass.  Whoops. 

After that failed attempt we found a decent but small path that led us up through the mountain, and it was the most fun thing I have done all trip.  The views were beautiful, and it was so interesting because we think that these paths were created by the gypsies that live in the caves we would walk by in the mountain.  I wouldn’t want to come out here alone or at night, but during the middle of the day we felt completely safe, minus the fact that one missed step on a rock and we probably would have fallen a longgg way down.  I had such an adrenaline rush at the fact that we were exploring all of these paths ourselves, and getting muddy and hoisting ourselves up and grabbing onto trees to avoid pummeling to the ground.  There was one point where we had to scale a small building to get to another hidden path- and I volunteered to be the first one to attempt it.  The three other girls start pushing me up, and I was laughing so hard my body couldn’t support itself.  They ended up having to push me by my ankles while I was inch-crawling to stand up on this structure.  The rest of the group lifted their own body weight with grace and ease onto the building.  Hey, either way I still felt pretty badass, despite being a little bit out of shape.  Once we reached the top I felt like we were on top of the world.  We could see the Sierra Nevada Mountains, beautiful olive tree groves, and the entire city.  


I am so proud of us for stepping out of our comfort zone and having the most amazing day.  We ended up finding some main pathways, but the most fun was going off the main track and basically climbing random parts of the mountain.  We hiked for about 3 hours, and it is something I would love to do again in the Sierra Nevadas or there are some school organized trips to hiking in Alpujarras. 

This is me in between olive trees at the very top of our little mountain, with the Sierra Nevadas behind me!

We also have been going out to the discotecas (clubs) the past couple of nights.  These clubs don’t open even until 2 am and will stay open til around 7 am.  We have been going out to tapas bars before or getting free drinks at local pubs with specials, and then heading out to the discotecas.  The clubs are crazy here, but it’s definitely not something I could pull off every night.  Tapas seem to be more of my thing- 2 Euros for wine and food, sounds good to me!

I guess that’s all that is new for now.  I already have my first speech in my Islam class on Tuesday so wish me luck!  Hasta luego.

Flamenco

I have officially completed a week of classes at CEGRI!  I am taking 4 classes- Art History of Spain, Culture of Spain, Oral Spanish, and Culture of Islam.  They are all taught in Spanish, but I am only in classes with American students in my program so we are all in the same boat as far as experience with the language.  Art History seems as though it will be the most interesting- each week we go on a field trip to a church or a museum or a building in Granada that has to do with the lesson.  This week we were learning about Gothic style, so we visited Capilla Real, where Isabelle and Ferdinand are buried.  The history is so amazing to learn about!  And it's even more surprising that I can understand it all in Spanish.

Tonight we went to a Flamenco show with our group- and basically it was a show where some old men sing some very unusual songs, and a woman comes out in a Flamenco dress and angrily tap dances around the stage. She was very passionate about what she was doing, but it was definitely a show for tourists- there are some more Flamenco shows in the gypsy part of the city that we all want to go to on our own!

Things are better with Mari Lou- except she keeps on telling me that I need to get over my idea that there are different kinds of ham.  She repeats whenever I won't eat something "todos los jamones son iguales!!".  Um, no they are not.  When a thick slice of meat is literally sliced off of the leg of a pig in the kitchen, it looks and tastes a LOT different than our American lunch meat.  Oh well!  At least I haven't been hiding as much food in my shirt because she has been making some great meals.

I am also planning a week long trip to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest!  So far there are for sure 6 of us girls, but another group is now excited about these cities and is going to book the same flight.  I cannot wait because these cities will be so much more different than the Greek and Roman influences you typically see in Mediterranean cities.

I can't think properly right now because I am so tired, but I figured I'd try to update my family a little about what is going on here.  Granada is great, and I am getting over a lot of the culture shock that many of us students were experiencing.  Should be a really exciting 4 months!!  

Mi nombre es Yessica

Just call me Yessica from now on, because that is my name here in Spain with my host family.  It has been a very interesting two days with my host Senora.  Her name is Mari Lou, and that’s about all I can understand.  Mari Lou and her daughter in law Candy came to pick me up Saturday morning from my hostel, and since then I have been attempting to communicate with both- very poorly I might add.  So far, I have told them that Chicago is always 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and that my mom was born in Italy (both of which are not true…).  Oh well, I’m trying. 

I am also trying to hold my food down in my stomach- not because the food isn’t good, but because they won’t stop feeding me.  I have secretly been storing bread in my shirt and later hiding it in my room.  Along with this stash of bread are oranges, chocolate, and a tuna sandwich- and it has only been one day.  The food has been very interesting, I tried paella for the first time for lunch my first day, and for dinner I swallowed down some squid (that looked partially still alive…ugh).  At least wine is served with almost every meal, so that’s helping!! J

The first day, Mari Lou and her son and her daughter, along with their spouses, took me out around the town.  They showed me where the school was in relation to her house, and showed me some streets where the best shopping was.  Then we went for some great tapas at a local bar- overall I was very lucky.  Some of my friends hardly had any contact with their families on the first day, and I know Mari Lou is trying very hard to make me feel comfortable.  She is in her late 60’s, and her husband passed away 2 years ago from some illness, so I think she is just lonely.  However, her accent is very strong and she doesn’t know a drop of English.  She doesn’t even understand the word “internet” unless I say it with a Spanish accent (it is the same word in Spanish).  The leaders of the program, Miguel and Nerea, are very easy to understand because they know to pronounce their words slowly and clearly, and to use vocabulary that we would probably know.  Mari Lou has a thick Granada accent- she drops all of her “s”, and uses slang and kind of speaks in a mumble of verbs and nouns that I don’t know the definitions for.  We use a lot of hand signals when we talk to each other…but we are both trying really hard! 

Most of the day we are in her family room, which consists of chairs and a tv and a table that has a heater beneath it and a blanket on top of the table.  While watching tv, you lift the blanket onto your lap so they heat reaches your body- apparently this is found in most homes in Spain because they do not have central heating or air.  My room is the same size as a dorm room, not too big but I have a queen size bed and some closet space.  The only thing that makes it very different from a room in America is that it is decorated with stuffed animals and dolls nailed to the walls.  I’m not sure who came up with this idea, and from talking to my friends I don’t think this is a normal thing they do in Spain.  Frankly, it is really really creepy.  There are just dolls everywhere staring at me, or stuffed animals from Looney Toons like Tweetie Bird.  It is her daughter’s old room, but I wish she would have gotten rid of it all and made it a simple guest room. 

At least I have made a new friend in Luna, her little dog.  I think the friendship between man and dog must transcend language, because this dog frickin loves me.  Either that or Americans just taste good, because she never stops licking my hands and jumping all over me.  If you know what my dogs Bo and Luke look like, Luna is half their size.

On Sunday, I went with my group to the Alhambra.  It felt good to be with my peers and FINALLY speak English again.  La Alhambra is a very important part of Granada, because it has influence from Muslims and Catholics, and in all of Spain it was the last community to be converted to Catholicism.  This city lasted 200 years before it fell under the influence of the Catholic kings and queens.  The architecture and the gardens are amazing, I took way too many pictures but it’s worth it.  We walked around the Alhambra for more than 6 hours, and afterwards we were all exhausted.  I feel like I have seen so much during the last couple of days!  It has been amazing.  At the top of some towers in the Alhambra, you can see the entire city of Granada and it is beautiful, it really is like something out of a movie.  Sometimes I forget that it is real life here.

Ps- Today I ate hotdog soup.  I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in the states hahah ughh. 

Day 2 Abroad

The day began with some group tours with our program directors, Nerea y Miguel, around Granada and the outskirts of the city where the gypsies live.  Granada is the most beautiful city I have ever been to; no movie could capture the essence of what it feels like to be in a truly historical European city- although that didn't stop us all from thinking we were in a Jason Bourne movie whenever someone was running past us.  Granada has accumulated history from Germanic tribes, cultures of Muslims and Jewish peoples, and los reynos Catolicos.  Ferdinand and Isabella clearly left their mark on the city through the architecture of churches and statues- arrows represent Ferdinand all over the city, and the yoke of an oxe represents Isabella- I think I would have picked something a little more pretty. However, they could not completely stamp out the Muslim culture that had existed for hundreds of years prior to the 15th century.  I felt as if I was walking through Morocco, Italy, Greece, and Spain for most of the day.  On one side there would be cacti and orange trees, on the next side would be the background of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  It's going to take some time, but I could get used to this eclectic culture filled with history.


While wandering through the hillside of Granada, filled with little white homes and cobblestone streets, stray dogs run around free of care.  Most of these dogs actually have owners, considering that they have collars and look decently well-fed and groomed.  Dogs just roam the streets freely, owners take them on walks without leashes, or probably just let them out and expect them to turn up later.  One cute puppy out on the street was sitting down, intently staring above at the terrace of an apartment at another dog- we notice the woman come out of her apartment and start yelling to us "!es el novio!" (it's the boyfriend).  Guess even dogs can't resist the romance of the city.  But watch out for these strays- let's just say they go to the bathroom wherever and whenever, no one seems to care if they step in some dog shit here.  Life is just that good.


Did you know Granada means pomegranate?  That explained the pomegranate symbols all over the city.  I feel like I have been in Granada for a couple weeks already- if I don't start posting everyday I feel like my memory will start to fail me.  The rest of the day is a blur of historical places, stories of past royals, and some more yummy tapas bars.  I am looking forward to traveling to the mountains with the gypsies again to see some real flamenco dancing, and to go to the infamous discotecas.  For now, I am still steering clear of them when they offer us flowers and sage and ask to read your fortune on the street.  I think I can look ahead for myself and tell that this semester should be filled with some pretty amazing experiences.  

Blondes can be Spaniards too!

Today while walking along the street, two women approached a group of us girls asking for directions in Spanish-- of course, we could barely understand what they were trying to communicate, so one of us shouts "Somos de los Estados Unidos!", and the women just started laughing at the fact that they thought we were Europeans.  Granted, I was in the back of the group and probably barely visible among my brunette friends, but hey if I can pass as a native Spaniard I'll take it.

So far, Granada has been beautiful and overwhelming.  "Las tapas" bars have been a big hit with us American students- wherever you go if you order a drink (vino, cerveza, coke, etc.) you get free appetizers!  In total it may cost 1-3 euro, which can be less than 5$.  On our first night a group of about ten of us girls went out to explore some of these bars, yet we ended up in some sketchy hole-in-the-wall places whose appetizers consisted of something that had the consistency of uncooked bacon, and then our second tapas bar served a mushy hotdog on a bagel smothered in ketchup and mustard (so this is the stereotype of what Americans would want to eat??!).  With that unsuccessful adventure, we met up with some guys in our group at a third tapas bar called "La Bella y La Bestia", which means Beauty and the Beast for all you who do not know Spanish.  The food was excellent here, and the decor was super cute, imagine someone threw up French decor with sparkles and chandeliers, in a classy way.  Now at least we can spot out some of the not-so-great bars, even though now it seems rather self evident that our second destination, which was covered in pictures of naked fat ladies and had locals that seemed rather grim, probably didn't look like they had a 5 star menu.

Today, which I think is Thursday despite my extreme jet lag, consisted of some orientations, and signing up for classes officially.  I am taking 4 classes- art history, spanish culture, culture of islam in spain, and speech.  Tomorrow we are going on a Survival Tour and then a Touristy Tour (time to whip out la camera!), which I am really looking forward to.  So far we have all been just wandering around the city discovering things as we go along, which has been fun as well because we are all staying in the same hostel.  Saturday is when we officially meet our host Senoras and move in, and my language skills are definitely not up to a level where I even want to try to have a normal conversation with a Spanish person.  Right now I am extremely comfortable sticking to "Me pone mas vino/cerveza" (I will have more beer/wine) and "Podemos tener la cuenta por favor" (Can we have the bill please?).

Some interesting things I have already learned about Spain:
-They do not smile.  They think smiling Americans are kinda annoying- let's be honest we probably are.
-We say please and thank you. A lot.  Spaniards don't.
-Spaniards really do want to help you learn Spanish!  Even if they know some English, they want to help us students and they will be very patient while you stumble along looking for the right thing to say.
-The weather es muy bonita.
-They eat a lot of ham.  Directly off of the pig's leg that is stored directly on the bar for our viewing pleasure.
-Drinking and eating go together (comer y beber!).  There is no such thing as slamming down beers or power hour, or even shots a lot of times (los chupitas!).
-They will let you sit at a restaurant/bar for hours, and will never once offer you the bill.  You have to ask for it yourself somehow...
-You don't tip at all- their wages are already built up to include that (and they receive health care from the government- not too shabby!)


Well I think that's all I want to include for now.  My internet is very slow in my hostel, but I am praying that there is WiFi at my host family!  Buenos noches a todos!

Now I know what jet lag is...

Well I safely arrived in my hostel in Granada, Spain at around 3:30 today! The city is beautiful and has a very Mediterranean look and feel to it. Everyone has been very friendly, and I can even understand some of what they are saying to me! Adios for now though, time for a much needed nap- Granada is 7 hours ahead of Chicago. Here's a picture of the view from my hostel window for now.

Getting Ready to Leave!

Flight leaves 4:45 on Tuesday!  I should arrive in Granada, Spain by 12:50 PM on Wednesday.
Initially I am staying in Hostel Atenas Calle Gran Vía de Colón, 38,18010 Granada, Spain.

From there, I will be with my host family Sra. Mari Luz Martínez Serrano, 
Calle Nueva de San Antón 22 – 5º, 18005, Granada. 
Tel: (+34) 958 – 26 48 58 Mobile: (+34) 647 092 449

"Mrs. Martínez has got three grown up children who live independent; one daughter, who is living in Granada, visits her every day. Mrs. Martinez likes watching tv, singing in a choir, walking. She has got a little dog at home. She has got a house in the countryside where she likes to go. She does not smoke."

Wish me luck!  Cannot wait to be over there.  Adios!