Fantastic Flamenco

The Alhambra

Yesterday (Saturday) I explored the area of Granada called Sacromonte.  It’s in the hills of Granada where all the gypsies live, many of them in caves. In the morning I went on a walk through the area with my program and we got to see some of the cuevas–caves– that people lived in and still live in today.  Once again, we had a spectacular view of the Alhambra.

       Cuevas 

Last night I returned to the area with 4 other girls to watch a flamenco show.  Before the show started we stopped in a bar to get some sangria and tapas.  The sangria was awesome, but the best part was that the bar was in a cave! It doesn’t really feel like cave except for that the walls were not straight and had no corners and it was a bit chilly.  

   Cave Bar

  Sangria

 The walk up to the show venue was unbelievable. We had an amazing view of the Alhambra, which is always lit up at night, and none of us could get enough of it. Neither pictures nor words can do this view justice.  The show was in a building that had a wall of windows, designed so that the Alhambra acts as a backdrop.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the Alhambra from our seats, but the show was still really awesome. There was one guy playing the acoustic guitar (my favorite), another playing the bass and a third playing the drums/percussions.  There was one woman singing and clapping and another who danced.  It was really amazing the way this woman could use her feet to add to the music! Overall, a great show and a really awesome view. I have a feeling we are going to be up in that part of town a lot once it gets warmer!

Alhambra at night (can't really see it, but it's there!)

This Land is Our Land

Time is flying.  I have been in Granada for two full weeks now, and while it seems like I still have a lot to learn about the city I feel so comfortable here.  This weekend was a great one! On Saturday morning I went on a walk/hike with my program up into the hills behind the city and it was gorgeous! We started out in the main plaza in the old part of town and after walking for only about 5 minutes it seemed like we had traveled so far outside of the city.  We walked up through a little “forest” that is right outside the walls of the Alhambra and continued up hill away from the city.  

After not exercising for a while the hills were actually a great workout! Our hike took us past some really pretty orange trees (although you can’t eat the oranges!), through olive groves and up to the top of a hill above the Alhambra.  We had an amazing view of the Alhambra, a breathtaking view of the Sierra Nevada–pictures could never do it justice–and a great look at the Sacromonte.  The Sacromonte is the barrio where the gitanos-gypsies-live, and some of them actually live in caves. We are told that its probably not the safest area to visit, so I’ll stick with just looking at it from afar. The Sierra Nevada mountain range is beautiful–it seems almost out of place right outside the city. The peaks seem to come out of nowhere, and because they are so big and snowy they are an awesome contrast to the city.  Granada is a city situated in a valley, so while it doesn’t actually snow much here, the mountain range is only about an hour outside the main part of town.

            

 On Saturday night my friends and I made it our mission to “go big or go home.” We decided that while we had stayed out until 3 or later many nights, that really wasn’t doing it the way the Spanish do. When in Rome, right? Anne and I decided to be economical and bought some wine at the Mercadona (the main grocery store here) to drink before we went out.  I knew it would be cheap, but when we saw the prices even I was stunned. 1 euro for a bottle of wine!!! We both felt like it had to be some sort of joke, but we never got to the punch line. I guess miracles really do happen! Anyway, we left our house around 12:15 and met up with some friends at a relaxed tapas bar. We hopped around from bar to bar until about 3:30 or 4 and finally made it to the discoteca.  I think we got home a little after 5.  We went big!!! Although, I think we can go bigger…

On another note, WE HAVE A NEW PRESIDENTE!!! Yesterday a bunch of people from my program went to watch the inauguration ceremony and it was really awesome. We were in an Irish bar with a bunch of other Americans and I was really glad to be able to watch the ceremony in English! It was a unique experience to watch such an important historical event in another country–it gave me a whole new perspective on the power and prominence that America has throughout the world.  We bought a drink called El Presidente just for the occasion! After the ceremony was over the bar’s “resident America troubadour” whipped out his guitar and started singing “This Land in Your Land” and everyone started singing along. It was one of those awesome spontaneous experiences where everyone comes together and is happy! 

Pictures!!!

My sister is brilliant and figured out a way to get pictures on my blog! I am uploading them to facebook (for some reason that works, even though it doesn't work here) and she is going to upload them onto my blog from her computer. Yay! So scroll down to see a little bit of what I've been up to...

Tapas, Class and the Albayzin

I have officially been in Granada for one week! If everything continues at this rate, I think I’m going to get to know the city and my family really well in no time.  This weekend we went out for the first time to explore the nightlife in Granada.  There ended up being about 10 people from my program all trekking around in one big group. I told my brother that it reminded me a bit of Freshman year–a huge mob of people wandering around together, looking lost, all trying to find a place to party! Once we actually got out, though, it was a really good time. We hopped around from place to place starting at a chupiteria (a shot bar) and ending at a discoteca. Anne and I left a little after 3 and that was considered early!!! It’s definitely going to take some getting used to.  It does help, though, that we usually probably won’t even leave our house until 11:30 at the earliest.  One part of the Spanish culture that I already love is the fact that they go out for tapas! Tapas are, más o menos, hours’ devours but you usually eat them a few hours before dinner, rather then right before.  Here is Granada (I don’t think it is like this in the rest of Spain) many bars give you free tapas with each drink you order! A wonderful idea, in my opinion.  Yesterday (Tuesday) Anne and I went out for tapas after our afternoon class and it was a great decision! We each ordered a drink called tinto de verano, which I think is kind of like the cheap version of sangria– it’s red wine mixed w/ some sort of bubbly sprite-like soda.  Not only was the drink super delicious, but we also ordered a tapa that was amazing–a toasted piece of bread w/ a slice of brie cheese covered in warm honey. I recommend that you all go to the store right now and get some brie and honey so you can try this!!

 Sunday morning, I went on a tour of the barrio Albayzin, which is the oldest part of the city.  It’s like the neighborhood I described earlier (called barrio Realejo, by the way), but even better.  The whole area is built into the hills surrounding Granada, and when you climb up to the top you get the most spectacular view of the Alhambra (if you google pictures of the Alhambra, that’s the view I had).  All the churches in the area (and there are many) are really old and different from anything you would see in the US.  Originally they were Muslim mesquitas (mosques) that were later converted to Catholic churches.  The bricks from the mesquitas were retained, but the front entrances are now all made of stone and are adorned with statues of saints and what-not. It’s really interesting to see such a blending of cultures and religions all in one building.  Like in the barrio Realejo, the Albayzin is a maze of white houses and winding roads.  Each house has a ceramic plaque on the front gate saying the name of the house.  The houses are called “Carmen ____”, the blank being the last name of the family that lived there.  I’m not exactly sure if those are the names of the original owners or not, but it’s pretty cool regardless.  It would be sweet if we named our houses in America! The Albayzin is definitely one of the coolest areas in Granada, and I’m going to have to go back there soon to explore a bit more in the coming weeks and months.

At school on Monday Anne and I met a girl who was nervous about the English oral test that she was about to take.  We talked to her for a bit and learned that she speaks 4 languages!!! She is a native of Portugal, is in Granada to learn Spanish, knows a fair amount of French and is near fluent in English.  There is another girl in my grammar intensivo named Guru (awesome name!) who is from Norway.  She is only 19 but has already spent a year in American learning English and has been in Granada for a little more than 3 months. She didn’t know any Spanish before coming to Spain and already speaks it really well. When I meet people like them, I wonder why I am not fluent in Spanish by now! It makes me really respect the European approach to learning languages–I think it is an important skill to have, but when our schools don’t stress it, few people are inclined to learn a foreign language.  

More about school– I’m half way done with my first week, and so far everything is going well.  We have 4 hours of intensivo in the mornings, 2 hours w/ one teacher and 2 hours with another, and it is generally pretty laid back and interesting.  I’m learning a ton of new vocab every day, but the hard part is going to be remembering it all.  I think the intensivo is a good way to ease into taking content classes in Spanish.  Because I got placed in a high enough level, I won’t have to retake the placement exam in order to take the content classes, but I still have to pass my intensivo classes, which I imagine will be easy enough (although our program director tells me that my teacher María Angeles is one of the hardest intensivo teachers there is).  Because of the program we are in, we have to take an additional class in the afternoon that prepares us for the DELE (like the TOEFL in the US).  I already can’t stand that class–it’s like taking an SAT prep class, but for and hour and half every day for 3 weeks.  All together, we have about 25 hours of class each week, which is way more than I would have at GU.  Luckily, once these three weeks are over I won’t have nearly as much class (who said I came to Spain to study??).  

a bit about the food

We eat our meals at the table in the living/dining room, but instead of all sitting on kitchen chairs, Anne and I sit on the couch, the grandpa and dad both sit in big armchairs, and the mom and all the kids sit on regular dining room chairs. On top of all this, we put the tablecloth (its more like a thick blanket, though) over our legs b/c the only heater is beneath the table.  Even though the rest of the house is pretty freezing cold, during meals we get to warm up! Another interesting routine is that the TV is always on, and during meals we all watch whatever program is on.  Usually the routine is to eat w/ the TV on and after we finish eating (both lunch and dinner) everyone hangs around for a bit (at least a half hour, but sometimes several hours) and watches TV.  Not my favorite life style, but it was a good ice-breaker, at the very least. 

We eat lunch around 2:30 or 3 every day, and this is the most important meal of the day for the Spanish.  We usually either have one big course, like a pasta dish or a hardy soup, or a two course meal that starts with soup and ends with fish or meat.  Dinner is not usually as big as lunch, but it is still a pretty good sized meal.  As I’m sure most of you know, we don’t eat dinner until much later.  On school nights we eat around 9:30 but on weekends we don’t eat until 10:30 or so.  It was definitely a little strange at first, but I actually kind of like this schedule.  The only problem for me is that breakfast is not a big meal here, and I am usually one to eat a pretty decent breakfast.  At first, Anne and I were getting really hungry between meals and we thought it was just because we are Americans and are used to eating a lot, but turns out it is customary for most people to go to cafés in between meals and eat little snacks during the day. 

The food that our mamá had cooked has been amazing so far! We had croquetas on the fist night here, which are kind of like bite sized mashed potato and ham things that are breaded and fried (I think?)—not a very good explanation, I know, but they tasted great!  My favorite meal so far has been the tortilla española. It’s a shaped like a big pancake, but much thicker, and then is cut into pie slices for everyone.  It’s mostly made out of eggs and potatoes, and I’m not sure exactly how she makes it or what she puts in it, but it tasted amazing!  And almost everything our señora cooks is made from scratch and is generally pretty healthy.  After every lunch we have a piece of fruit and after every dinner we have a yogurt (but I think they are richer than the yogurt we have in the US).  Really, those are two great ways to eat something sweet after dinner w/o being too unhealthy.  So far, there has yet to be anything that I dislike, and most of what we eat is new to me.  

my new home!

Arriving in Granada was wonderful. It was strange to think that this city is where I will spend the majority of my time until the end of May. We easily made our way from the train station to our host family’s apartment and started to get to know our surrogate family. La madre, Isabel, is very friendly and is good about speaking clearly enough so we can easily understand her. He husband and father are much harder to understand…they both mumble a lot! However, it has been less than a week here and I can already understand much more of what they are saying. I had heard about the Spanish lisp, but here in Granada the most noticeable characteristic of their accent is that they drop the “s” at the end of words. So instead of saying “más o menos,” they say “ma o meno.” It is really interesting to hear the difference between the Spanish of Andalusia and that of Mexico, for example.

Back to the family… there are three kids in the family– Isabel is 15, Antonio is 13 and Fernando is 10. They are super awesome kids, but they always act their age! Fernando never wants to finish his dinner, Isabel texts with her friends, and Antonio seems pretty chill most of the time. Its nice to know that no matter the cultural differences, siblings interactions are fairly universal (“Fernando! Get your things of my bed!!!”). Despite the fact that there are 8 people living here, including Anne and me the apartment is very small. Anne and I definitely have the largest room, besides the parents’ room, and it is by no means a big room. Isabel and Fernando share a room, and in order to save space, their beds fold into the wall. Antonio shares a room with the grandpa and there is only one shower in the house, though so far this hasn’t been a problem. There is something tucked in to every little corner, and there is certainly no wasted space.

So far we haven’t been out and about too much in Granada, but we have explored the city a bit. Our program took us on a guided tour of the area surrounding the school and this coming weekend we are going on a tour of the Albayzin, which is an old Arab neighborhood. We walked a bit up towards the Alhambra on our tour and even though we only saw little parts of it, I can’t wait to go back. The neighborhood that we walked through was up more in the hilly part of town, and it was closer to what I had pictured Granada to be like (the area we live in isn’t the most beautiful–tall apartment buildings and just more urban looking). The old houses are just so picturesque and look like what you would imagine a typical Spanish house to look like. There are white buildings with tiled roof tops and almost every house has some sort of cool looking wall or gate. The streets were clearly built before cars were an issue (or carriages, for that matter), for they are super narrow and don’t seem to have much of a planned layout.

One of the other main events was the cabalgata de los Tres Magos. In Spain Christmas is celebrated until the 6^th of January, and kids don’t open their presents until that day. On the night of the 5^th, there is a huge parade that goes throughout the city (there is one in every city in Spain I think) that celebrates the Tres Magos (the Magi–in the Spanish stories they take the place of Santa Clause). At this parade, all the different people involved have bags and bags of candy and toss it out into the crowds. I think there was somewhere between 12 to 16 thousand kilos of candy (I’m not really sure what that is in pounds though). It was really awesome to be here for something that is such a big part of the cultural traditions and to have the opportunity to be with a Spanish family during all of this.

We met with our class for the first time on Monday, but classes don’t really start until tomorrow (Friday). We took a placement exam today, which tells us our level for the intensive grammar course that we will be taking for these next three weeks. The levels are divided a lot differently here, but I ended up in the level that I thought I should be in. I think it’s going to be a difficult enough that I learn and improve, but not so difficult that I feel lost. By the end of January, we will be done w/ that and after a weeklong break we will start our actual classes.

After walking around the city a bit more, I feel like I’m definitely starting to know my way around. I’ve been to a few different cafés and had many cafés con leche (yum!!!), which are a great way to warm up in the cold, gone in some shops looking for boots (none yet) and explored some of the street markets. I can’t wait to get to know this area better!

san francisco to madrid

First off, sorry it has taken so long for me to update my blog! Since arriving here, we have not had very regular access to internet, and until today we had to pay for it at internet cafes and in our hostel. But that’s enough of that.

Getting to Madrid was not particularly difficult, but the flight was really long and I wasn’t able to sleep very comfortably on the airplane. Once I got to Frankfurt, I never got lost, but it is seriously the biggest airport I have ever been in. I felt like I walked a mile before I found Anne (luckily, I had no luggage with me!). Seeing Anne was a huge relief because I knew that if anything were to go wrong, at least it would go wrong for both of us! The flight to Madrid was short and easy but the fun didn’t really start until we got all of our luggage and started making our way to the Metro. The Metro in Madrid is a great system; it only costs 1 Euro to go anywhere and all the stations are interconnected. The only downfall (and it is a big one) is that it seems like there are a ton of pointless staircases–I felt like we went up and down, up and down way too many times. That was NOT fun with so much stuff. But luckily once we got off the Metro finding our hostel was really easy and there was an elevator up to the floor that the hostel was on!

After dropping off our stuff, Anne and I went out to explore Madrid a bit. The hostel was located really close to the Palacio Real, which is one of the coolest buildings in the city. It really made me feel like I was in Europe while we were walking around the plaza listening to a Christmas choir and looking at statues of old kings.

The next day we decided to go to El Museo del Prado (so we walked there in the pouring rain­–thank God for umbrellas!), which is a huge art museum filled with pieces by El Greco, Goya and Velasquez, among many others. Not surprisingly, it seemed like nearly all the painting were either of Jesus, a saint, or a member of the royal family. Definitely some awesome stuff, but you can only look at so many paintings of saints. Later that night, after a long and very necessary nap, we explored the Puerta del Sol, the main part of town, and sat for a while and drank a beer (legally!). There are always tons of people in Madrid, partly because about over 3 million live there are partly because the area we were in was really touristy. The only time we could easily walk on the sidewalks was when it was raining. Overall, Madrid is definitely not my favorite city, but I think it is certainly worthwhile to spend a couple days there. The next day, our last in Madrid, we pretty much only had time to get up and make our way to the train station, which proved to take longer than we thought. We got there in time (barely!) and were off to Granada!!!

(the internet is going really slowly, so i will add pictures later!!)