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!