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.
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