I went hiking. Say what?

Hola everyone!

So this week was pretty anti-climatic.  I didn't do a whole lot, I actually did a whole lot of sitting in my bedroom reading or watching T.V with my senora.  For some reason I was pretty lethargic this week and wasn't really up for any shenanigans around the city, much less a late night out this weekend.  This week was also the last week of our intensive courses, so I was doing a lot of "studying" for my test.  Overall the test went well on Friday, and I see no reason for me not to pass the class and all.  Here's the grading system is really different too.  The best you can get in a class is a 10, however it's very rare that people get 10's, even an 8 or 9 is pretty rare.  Most people get around 7's or so, and that's pretty decent and average, sometimes even good for a grade in a class.  So I think I'm going to get around a 7 based on the grades I saw and my oral exam that I had today.  I'm not terrible concerned because I'm just glad I got through it, and I know I'm not going to fail it.

So this weekend I hiked!! Yup, me, the person who hates hiking and camping and all those such things...I hiked.  It was a lot of fun, and the views were incredible, but by the end of the hike I was pretty much done with hiking for a while.  I think I can safely say that my legs almost died from the hike.  I got up around 7:30 to get ready for the hike.  I already hit my first kanundrum though the minute I woke up....I had no idea what to wear.  It had rained the day before so I knew I wasn't gonna wear jeans, much less something nicer than that.  I  realized I had like no hiking sort of clothes and ended up going with some leggings, a cami, a short sleeve shirt, a long sleeve shirt and a jacket.  I had no idea how cold or warm it would be.  I knew I'd get hot if I was doing a lot of uphill and such, but I didn't know how cold it would be.  So I went with multiple layers, and it sounds like a lot of layers, but trust me, it wasn't.  I was comfortable the whole time though, so I guess it was a good decision.

The hike was really pretty.  It started off nice and easy, and we were all like "oh, this is easy, Paula made it sound like it would be a lot worse...", little did we know that it would get harder.  We started off going up to the Alhambra and stopping to use the bathrooms, since there would be none once we started hiking.  When we were done there we went on our way, up past the Alhambra and headed towards what we'd be climbing.  As we started getting higher it began to look really pretty.  We could see the Alhambra from where we were, which as very pretty.  We could also see some other buildings and the city. 

The views were incredible, and these picture hardly do the views justice.  So unfortunately I didn't take as many as others, but I think the ones I have are good enough.  So this one on the right is a view of the Alhambra, it was so much prettier in real life, I promise.
So after we all commented on how easy this hike was we headed into an olive grove and started going uphill.  haha wow...that's when it started to get pretty hard.  We started going up hill and it got pretty difficult.  There were times when it was easier than others.  We stopped a few times to see the different view points.  Our guide Imna is a pretty intense hiker too, so she didn't really notice that a bunch of us were huffing and puffing in the back.  It was comical though, because every time we stopped to take pictures we got about 2 minutes and Imena was like "vamos, seguimos!" (let's go, let's continue).  As we were walking we stopped at a bunch of different places.

 We continued on, hit that pretty rough spot where it was uphill and eventually got to a nice platau.  We finally thought we were going to stop...but nope, it was just a little pit stop to show us this cool sun dial.  His sun dials is huge, and all around it there's the names of the peaks of the Sierra Nevada.  Along with all the names of the peaks, it also has how high they are.  We asked Imna if it had the height of what we were climbing, it didn't but they told us we were almost 1000 meters up, about 980 meters.  That was really cool to know.

We finally stopped after we hit the sundial.  There was a really cute park with benches, fire pits, and playscapes for kids.  We stopped and ate lunch at a bench near the edge so we could look at the view.  Some other people sat on the ground so they could look out at the Sierra Nevada, which was also a smart decision.  So this is just me and a few of my friends eating lunch, or rather, eating our "bocadillos".  Mine is right in the bottom center.  Everyone's usually pretty jealous of my bocadillo because my senora packs us so much food.  I got a huge sandwhich, a bag of chips, an orange, and apple, and a juice box.  All of it is for meeeee.  I ate

 pretty much all of it and was pretty full by the end.  It was delish, and after all that climbing I certainly needed the food.  We got to hang around for about 20 minutes eating there, and then we continued on our way.  By lunch time I figured our hike was about half way over and we would start heading down...I was wrong.  They told us the hike would be done at 3:30, and they were right.  Lunch was only done at around 1:30, so we still had 2 more hours to go..and boy did we walk.  We continued onto a more muddy terrain and that's when we got to the more "hike" terrain.  It started to become single file paths, but the paths were gorgeous!!  The higher we went the further down you could see and the more mountains you could see.  They were so pretty.  The Sierra Nevada covered in snow is literally one of the most breath taking things I've seen, and I could definitelylook at them every day.

There's more pictures of me conquering this hike, and this is just one of them, with a fabulous view of beyond Granada.  I'm not sure if I'd do the hike again, because by the end of it I was literally dead.  I returned home, showered immediately and crashed in bed.  I got a nice large lunch and ended up staying in bed until around 9 because my legs hurt so much. But it was definitely worth my time and pain, because there's no way I could get those views any other way.

I went out Friday and Saturday night, but just to little tapas bars.  I wasn't really feeling up to going all out this weekend, especially since I'm going to Madrid and Barcelona this week/weekend.  Friday night me and some friends went to D'Cuadros, a really nice tapas bar in Plaza de Trinidad and just had some tinto de verano (sangria) and chatted.  We stayed out till about 1, but it was a lot of fun and I had a good time.  I went out again with the same friends Saturday night because we were pretty exhausted after our hike.  All of us just wanted to sit down, but it's pretty hard to sit unless you order food.  So instead we stood at the bar and had our shrimp tapas.  Even I had some of the shrimp tapas...at least we think it was shrimp.  Either way...it was really good.  I don't know if it was really good because I was hungry, or if it was actually really good, but I would definitely eat it again.

Sunday was pretty uneventful as well.  After Saturday I was pretty exhausted, physically and mentally.  But I got up and went to church with Jen.  It was interesting, as it always is.  You would think it's all uniform and I would be able to follow mass even if it's in a different language...but nope.  People don't like to kneel, sit, or stand when they're supposed to, so I end up guessing a bit, and pretty much the only thing I know is "y con tu espiritu" because we just switched over to that at home.  But even that is hard to catch because I have to figure out where we are in mass.  They also don't have misselettes for us to follow along with, so that makes it even more difficult.  But we found a really nice church, after already attending mass in the freezing cold, but beautiful, cathedral.

Now I'm off to pack for Madrid.  I managed to pack everything I need in my green back pack, with a little space to bring stuff home.  We'll see how this goes, but I'm pretty psyched about my trip.  We leave tomorrow at 9 am and are taking a 5 hour bus ride up there.  So the next time you hear from me will probably be after I return.

Hasta luego,
Bonnie

Poco a poco

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to give a little update.  Not much has happened this week, I've been a bit of a hermit and stayed in my room for most of the day during the week.  But it's been the last week of classes before we have our little break and go on our trips before we start real classes.  This past week has been pretty good.  Pretty much every day I've gone to bed very happy with myself.  Every day I'm learning a little bit more than the day before. so I'm pretty proud of myself.  Between my classes in the morning and chatting with my senora every night during dinner I'm definitly seeing an improvment in my speaking abilities.  Granted they are small improvements, but an improvement is an improvement in my book.  Or as they say here, "poca a poco" (little by little).  Every day something new falls into place and I can use it.  For example, for the past 3 weeks we've spent a lot of time on los pasados (past tenses) and pronombres (pronouns).  We've pretty much focused on those and phrases, and every day I have a better understanding than the day before.  Now I can comfortably use the past tenses, and use them properly when I'm speaking with my senora.  While my vocab still leaves something to be desired, I've very proud of whatever progress I have made.  I can tell that this is going to be a good experience.  I can't believe I've been here almost 3 weeks now, and luckily I haven't been terribly homesick so far.  I think it's just because I have so much to be thankful right now that I'm just trying not to think about not being home.  And right now I'm listening to some Spanish music on youtube, gotta get as much spanish as possible.

So there's just a small personal update for you guys.  I know most of my posts have been about what's been going on, but I though you'd like a look into my brain for a bit.

Just a few pictures of what I've been up to.  Here's when I went to the tea house with my roommate, and some friends.  The tea house was really fun and the tea was actually really good.  

This was our first night out for tapas.  We went to this place called Poe, and believe it or not it's run by a British guy.  It was very funny to all of a sudden have a British guy come up and talk to us.  haha.  But that's me and my friend with our Tinto de Veranos, which is pretty much the same thing as Sangria! But Sangria is more a sugarry, touristy drink, the Tinto de Verano is much better. :)

Love you all,  hope you're enjoying the lovely snow over there. meh he he he, no snow for me :P

I love you and miss you all.

Second Weekend In Granada

Hello everyone again!

Sorry it's been about a week since I last posted, but as you all know I'm quite busy and I don't always have time to sit down and write a blog.

This weekend I went to the Albaicin!  For those of you wondering what exactly the Albaicin is, it's basically the old neighborhood areas of Granada.  The houses are absolutely gorgeous, white houses with tall white walls and private gardens, super narrow streets and such.  The Albaicin is set up how you would picture a cute little old town in movies, in my opinion at least.  We met at Plaza Nueva with Paula at 11 and set off on our adventure through the Albaicin.  The first place we stopped at was a cute little bridge close to the neighborhoods.  This river is known to flood a lot during the spring time.  Paula told us that in the twenty years that she has been here the river has completely flooded, gone over the walls and into the streets, twice.  Believe me, if you saw how tall those walls are you'd  be very surprised, that's a lot of water.  It's a very pretty place and there's a saying that goes with the river, but unfortunately I don't remember it right now.

From there we headed over to what you could call the real Albaicin, with the tall walls around the houses and the streets are all wonky.  The streets are all cobble stone, which is not fun if you have something other than sneakers on.  They are also very winding and narrow, but absolutely gorgeous.  We stopped at the a school in the Albaicin where you can take all sorts of extracurricular classes.  I want to sign up for Salsa dancing with my friend, and even though all of you know I can't dance a lick, I might as well try and see how I do.  When in Spain, do as the Spaniards, right?

 

 So on the right is the school that I'll hopefully be signing up for Salsa class.

On the left is Calle Beso





Okay, so right near the school there's this really cute story about this street.  It's called Calle Beso.  Calle Beso means more or less means The Kissing Street.  The story goes that many, many years ago there lived a little girl on the street that everyone loved.  She was considered very special because she has blonde hair and blue eyes, which as you all know is very rare here in Europe, and everyone loved her.  Well one day the little girls mother went to wake her up and she was not breathing.  The girl had died and everyone mourned the death of the very special little girl.  Well, they all prepared for her funeral and said their goodbyes.  They got ready to close the casket for the last time for her burial, and the mother went to kiss her child for the last time.  The story goes, that as the mother kissed her child, the little girls eyes fluttered open and was alive.  So on this street there occurred a miracle, although nowadays the scientists like to say that the little girl was narcoleptic.  However, I like this story of a miracle much better, it's so cute.  So this street is Calle Beso in memory of the miracle of the little girl.


So after we were there at the school and Calle Beso, Paula took us through some more streets, we saw some other nice land marks.  For example there was another old church she took us to, and I unfortunately can't remember the story because I was taking pictures.  But there's a story about one church where I think someone was hosting lots of homeless and others but the guy got fed up with doing it all the time.  So one day he closed the doors, but over night some Saint opened the doors back up and when the guy woke up there were people in the house again. It was a miracle of sorts, but I really don't remember it.

There are a lot of churches or old mosques around the Albaicin, because this city was originally created by the Aarbs.  At a lot of the churches there that have old bell towers.  Well I didn't know this, but apparently a lot of the old towers did not originally have bells in them.  I guess the Aarbs were pretty superstitious about bells, believed that they were only rung for the Armageddon.  So the when the Catholics came they put a lot of bells in the towers and would ring them a lot to scare the, like if someone was trying to fight the city they would ring the bells a lot and that would kind of frighten them because of their superstition.  Also near a lot of the mosques they had a well, because they washed themselves before entering the mosque.  So there was always a well nearby.  

Well near the Mosque

Bell Tower at the old Mosque, now church

 So we saw all of these things while walking around the Albaicin, just stopping at certain places with Paula explaining cute little stories, or factoids about stuff.  We also stopped at a small little market.  We stopped there for about 15 minutes and a lot of us got some fresh fruit to eat during our walk.  After the stop at the market we walked over to the convent in the Albaicin.  The nuns and priests at the Convent make dulces (sweets), cookies, and the wafer that churches use to turn into the host, to fund their convent.  So Paula bought us all a huge bag of the host, because a lot of people have never had it.  My friend Kendall ended up with the bag and me and a few others like followed her around and just munched on the wafer the rest of the walk.  It was awesome, and the best mid-morning snack ever.  The convent was a cute little place, and I liked it.

View from the Plaza. 

 From there Paula took us to an excellent Plaza with an amazing view of the Alhambra.  It was absolutely gorgeous, you can see the whole Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada behind it.  The Alhambra with the mountains behind it was literally one of the prettiest things I have seen.  The plaza was fun too, because there were people playing the guitar and an older woman playing the castanets, and people selling things on the benches.  Ironically, it's illegal to sell things on the street, so the people selling things must have a look out because all of a sudden all the people selling things were furiously putting everything in their bags and getting out of the plaza.  Then the Policia showed up and were patroling.  It's actually kind of comical to see because they all threw their stuff together, and then there was this one guy with dreads who just put everything in a backpack and then walked around like he was a tourist.   The picture above isn't the best picture I have of it, it's very hard to capture it because of the sun.  But you get the gist.

After the short visit to the plaza we went to a little mosque right next to it, and saw the garden.  Inside the garden is very pretty and there is a really nice view from the Alhambra too.  Then when we were done Paula told us our tour was over and we were welcome to eat here and head home whenever we liked.  So we all stayed and went back to the plaza to eat our "bocadillas" (packed lunches).  We all sat on the wall and had our lunches together with the gorgeous view of the Alhambra right there.  Here's a pic of a bunch of us, that I actually took from my friend Ruth.  :)
Afterwords, Kendall, Bree and I headed home and went to the park to read and relax in the sun.  It was very nice outside and super warm in the sun.  So we all stopped by our houses, got our books and headed to the park for about an hour.  It was a very relaxing day from there.  Later Sat. night I went to Mae West, a discoteca (club) here.  We went to the club at around 1 in the morning and left by about 5.  The place was still packed when we left at 5 in the morning.  It was crazy and a lot of fun, and I slept till 11 Sunday morning.  But my Saturday was very fun and well worth everything that I did.

Until my next update, love and miss you all.

When in Spain, live as the Spainards

Main Classroom Building

Sign outside the school:  Center for Modern Languages

 Hello everyone!!

Just a few little non major things that I did this past week that I wanted to share with you.  I know so far I've shared mostly the major trips that have happened and other such things.  But there are some cute little things that happen to me throughout the week that I thought you guys might like to hear and see pictures of.

 So since we only have classes in the mornings, most afternoons I have free.  Most people take a siesta or go to the park during that time.  On Wednesday we had our cultural meeting where we got to all get together and talk to Paula about some of the differences we have noticed since we've been here in Granada.  Mostly we talked about the food, the mannerisims, their attitude towards life, and other small little things.  For example, in case you guys didn't know, their eating schedule is vastly different from ours at home.  I eat two pieces of toast and some colacoa (hot chocolate) for breakfast.  Then I go to class from 9-1 and come home for lunch at 2:30ish.  Now, lunch here is not just a small grab food and keep on going about your day, oh no, lunch is the main event.  Everyone starts heading home around 1:30, 2o'clock for lunch.   All the stores close from about 2-5 and everyone is home eating lunch with their family.  The main news is on at 3, so you usually eat lunch with the news on, around the table, that is situated near pretty much in front of the couch.  Also, under their tables there's like a small little fire thingy.  It's not a real fire, it's just a little heater.  So you sit down and tuck the table cloth over your legs and have nice toasty warm feet and legs during your meal.  Here they don't heat anything that doesn't need to be heated, so the heater is very nice to have during meals.  All the floors are tiled and you most definitely have to wear slippers all the time, otherwise you will freeze your feet off.   So everyone coems home for a full fledged, three course meal for lunch.  Generally it's a soup of some sort, served with bread of course, a meat, and then some fruit for desert.  I'm always very full after lunch and have to either take a siesta or at least sit in my room and digest for a bit.  Sometimes my Senora's nieta (granddaughter) and hija (daughter) come over for lunch, other times it's just me and my roommate is Julia (my senora).  The food is very good though, and today I ate it all, so I was very full afterwords.  Then people generally just rest, go to the park, run errands, go shopping, you know the drill.  Then people will either head out for tapas around 8ish, tapas is a small little appetizer, that is usually free when you buy a drink.  Or people will go home and eat dinner anywhere between 9 and 10:30 here.  Mind you though, dinner is very small.

So aside from just describing the bizzare meal schedule here, which I have surprisingly already gotten used to, like it doesn't even phase me that it's about 4:30 and I won't be eating for another 5 hours.  So, back to what I was saying.  On wednesday we had our cultural meeting and just talked about differences.  After the meeting me and a few people decided we wanted to hang out and just chat for a while.  So found a nice place around the corner, sat down outside because it was gorgeous outside, and ordered ourselves some churros, icecream, coffee, what have you.  I know I'm not in the picture, but this is the group of girls I went out with after the meeting.  After we were done eating we went across the street and took pictures at the very pretty fountain/ Plaza.  There a ton of Plaza's here, and all of them are different with very pretty fountains.

So here's some pictures of me at the fountain outside, and a pic of the fountain.  On top of the fountain are pomegranates.  Pomegranates are actually the cities good, and Granada also means Pomegranate, which is pretty cool.  So all on the streets, in the little side streets where there's poles designating a sidewalk have pomegranates on some of the poles.  It's pretty cool.  While we were in the park talking pictures Bree, Allie and I were just standing around talking to each other when the cutest little kid came up to us and asked us what language we speak (?que idioma hablais?).  When we told him English he got all cute and said he knows a song in English.  Then the cutest little boy started singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  It was adorable and he and his sister introduced themselves, it was adorable and made by night.  We then made our way home and stopped in Corte Ingles on the way home.  For those of you who don't know, Corte Ingles is a huge store here.
Corte Ingles has like 5 or 6 floors and has everything you can think of.  They have food, clothes, jewlery, books, everything, including American name brands.  We just walked in and wondered around, although I have a feeling I'll be heading over there to get a magazine every now and then.

Then on Thursday I went to the park with my friends.  We just walked around and found some cool exercise machines to play with.  We walked over to the small little lake in the park.  We saw some cute ducks, and even saw the police training some horses, which was pretty cool.  We also saw a random lady dressed up in like flamenco dress with a video camera.  Actually, in the past few days I've seen some strange things over there, but it's very pretty and a very nice place to just lay down and relax, stretch out and read a book.

 So this is just two pics of me at the park with my friends.  The first one is on the day we went to the park after the Albaicin, and the other is when I went to just walk around with my friends.  Both days were very nice, it's gotten to be close to 60 here in the afternoons, which is soo nice!

That's pretty much it, just a few little things I've been doing.  Of course I could write more, but that would be overkill.  I just wanted to share some little things with you.  Now, hopefully I'm going off the plan some pretty awesome trips.


Love you and miss you all.

Until next update!

The Alhambra!

So Saturday I officially visited the famous Alhambra!!  Oh my gosh it is absolutely gorgeous.  I can't believe I live so close to it and you all should be jealous. :P  haha I know that sounds terrible, and that you are all jealous, but for real, it's amazing.  I still can't believe that I live with all this history in my backyard.  Europe makes America look like a baby with all the centuries of history they have here.

P.S. This post is going to be pretty long so I'm probably going to post in in two parts.  

Okay, so in case you know nothing about the Alhambra, or what it is basically it's a gigantic castle that was built in around the 1300's by the Aarabs and their king Momhamd ben Al-hamar lived in it.  It was served as a royal residence for the royal families, and then the Catholics captured the fortress, Queen Isabella and King Fernidado.  It was abandoned in the 18th century and then in the 19th century restoration began on the castle.  It is a gigantic complex with huge gardens, multiple houses, and Generalife (pronounced hen-er-ah-leef-eh), which is a ton of gardens.  The place is giagantic and it took us about 3 hours to see most of it, but not all of it.


http://www.alhambradegranada.org/en/info/placesandspots.asp
This is basically a link of all the rooms and place I saw.  We had tickets to access different parts of the Alhambra


For starters we arrived at Plaza Nueva at 11.  Here's Plaza Nueva:

So really Plaza Nueva is just another of many Plazas in Spain, and this is where we met up as a group to head to the Alhambra, which by the way is pronounced without the :h" (Al-am-bra).  So we met there at about 11 and then started to hike up this gigantic hill, not really hiking but it certainly felt like it.  When we finally got up there it was pretty cool, you can see why it's such a cool place, because it's pretty high above sea level, the view are amazing from up there.

So we finally get up to the mountain basically and we see that the place is huge.  Our guide brought us over to a really cool bronze map of the Alhmabra, which basically outlines the whole complex.  That's the picture of the complex.  It's gigantic and there's so much to see.  We started off there and got these cool little headsets to plug into.  They basically were wirelessly connected to our guides microphone so he didn't have to shout, because there were about 20 of us per group.  So we finally started our tour around 11:45 or noon and started walking around.  There are a ton of different rooms in the palace.  There is also only one entrance that is now in use at the Alhambra, La Puerta de Justica, the door of justice.

La Puerta de Justica

The door of justice is like the main entrance and on it there's actually a little statue up top of Mary and Jesus.  We learned that was not part of the original structure, which makes sense because the Alhambra was built by the Islams, not the Catholics.  So that is just one of many additions to this building that were added after the Catholics came to power here.

From there we entered the castle and saw most of the palace rooms.  They are incredibly beautiful and there is so much detail in them.  There was a lot of damage though and a lot of the color in the rooms and tile is gone because of light and age.  But they are gorgeous.  I'm going to stop here and start a new post though because I have so many pictures and stuff I want to write about.

Alhambra Parte Dos, Que Guay!

So I left off entering the Alhambra, the first thing we did after we entered La Puerta de Justicia was go up to the Alcazaba and you can go to the watch tower from there.  It's basically a really big tower and from there you have one of the most gorgeous views in the world.  You can see the whole Albicin from the top of the tower.  The Albicin is a very old neighborhood and all the houses are a beautiful white with narrow streets.  I'm going to visit the Albicin later this semester.

Ruins of the Baths

View from the watch tower of the Alcazaba

  At the Alcazaba you can see the ruins where all the soldiers used to bunk and even ruins of some old baths.  The Aarabs of course are known for their baths and ingenious designs for cleanliness.  They were seriously ahead of their times with their sewage systems, toilets and baths.  So the first picture is of ruins of the baths, and of course there were seperate baths and you went from a nice hot bath all the way to a cool bath.  I'm going to get to go to a bath in Granada this semester, AIFS is paying for everyone to get a bath in one of the places they have there.


This picture is a view from the watch tower of the Alcazaba.  This is the ruins of where the soldiers barracks where.










After we walked around the Alcazaba we got to walk up the Watch Tower and see the incredible view from there.  Here's a few pictures of me on top of the watch tower and the views.  There are a ton so I can't put them all up, but there's more on Facebook, of course.

 So this is basically one of the views from the Watch Tower.  The Albicin is gorgeous and I can't wait to go see it.  It's the oldest part of Granada so I'm pyshed to see it.





 Here's me at the top of the tower!! It was an amazing view.  Sorry for the hair in my face, the sun was blinding but it was the best spot for pictures.  From the Watch tower we went to Nasrid Palaces, which is a ton of rooms and courtyards, chambers, a bunch of really gorgeous rooms.  Like I said earlier a lot of the rooms have lost their original color, but there is gorgeous blue, yellow, red and green tile everywhere.  The places where the tile are still bright look amazing.  After we saw all those really pretty rooms we went to a patio area where there are twelve lions surrounding a fountain spitting out water.  They were actually under restoration for 6 years and the day we got there I think was one of the first days they revealed them.  They are gorgeous pure white marble hand carved lions, and they just hooked them back up to the water system so they are working again.  We were advised to come back to see them working but I didn't have to!

Patio of the Lions

Tiles

 Here's the two pictures, the Patio of the Lions on the left and a picture of some of the tile in a room on the right.

After we went through the Patio of Lions we went up to Generalife and saw the gardens over there.  From there we had an amazing view of the Alhambra in it's entirety, or pretty much in it's entirety.  

So this is me walking towards Generalife, unfortunately it's not the greatest picture with me and the Alhambra, but hopefully I'll get another chance to go back and take better pictures.  At Generalife there are tons of gardens with all sorts of different flowers and trees.  Again because it's kind of cold here there are no flowers so it's really just big bushes that are shaped and look really pretty.  There's so many pictures I want to show you but I can't possible put them all up here.  After we went to the gardens we were left to ourselves to wander around as we wish and eat our "bocadillos"  or our bagged lunch.  So me and my friends went off and found a place to sit and eat.  We sat near Charles V Palace and the Alhambra museum and ate our lunch.  After that we went into the Palace and tried to go into the museum but it was closed due to siesta...sometimes while siesta is well appreciated, it's quiet annoying. 

 We finally left around 3ish and headed back down to the main city.  We certainly took our time shopping in the little stores and I got two scarves and some post cards that I need to send off soon.  Sorry to anyone waiting on one.  Then Sat night I went out to a sports bar with my roommate and friends and was able to watch some good o'fashioned American Football.  I got to watch the Saints Vs 49er's game and the first quarter of the Patriots vs. Broncos game, which was very fun.  Those games were on untill around 11 and 2 here, so I was out quite late but it was a good night.  Overall I was exhausted by the end of the weekend from walking so much and I slept and did a whole lot of nothing on Sunday, which is fine because nothing is open on Sunday anyways.  

A pavillion in the Alhambra

Me and some friends at Alcazaba

Me somewhere on the Alhambra, just a very pretty photo. 

To conclude my exciting weekend I went to mass on Sunday with two of my friends, which was quite an ordeal because mass times are quite confusing to figure out.  We went to the huge Cathedral that's in town, pictures later, and it's giagantic.  The Cathedral is so pretty and huge inside.  There's huge organ pipes on your left, tiers and tiers of paintings, ornate things hanging from the wall.  It is also apparently where one of the Queens was once buried.  It's a very cool place and I felt so fortunate to be able to attend mass there.  Oh yea, and apparently the mass we went to, the Bishop decided to do.  So it was pretty cool to see the Bishop, the people go pretty excited too, they ran up to shake his hand and wave goodbye to him at the end of mass.  Unfortunately for me there are no misseletes of anything of that nature to help me follow along, so really all I could say was "y con tu espiritu" which is the only thing I know from our changes in the U.S.  It was quite the experience, but a good one at that.

I'm starting to like things here, and now that my first week is over, I guess the adventure can begin...

Until next time...Love and miss you all

Excellent Day

Hola everyone!!

I know it's been a while again, but I've been busy and tired.  It's quite a lot of work to keep updating this becuase so much happens in one day.  But today I got excellent new, I'm going to be participating in an internship here in Granada, Spain working with a teacher at a local school teaching English.  I'm super excited and just emailed the director of education to make sure I could get credit for the internship from the education program.  I just firmed up my schedule in the AIFS office for classes because I need to keep two days a week open in the morning.  Unfortunately for me that means I have classes straight from 8:30 in the morning (which doesn't include my 30 min walk) all the way until 2 in the afternoon.  And that doesn't count my POE class, don't ask me what that is because I don't know. haha So I'm going to be a bit busy learning Spanish from the wee hours of the morning and working with kids and a teacher.  At this rate I'm wondering how I'm not going to learn Spanish.  All this Spanish is a bit overwhelming sometimes but I mean it has to be at some point just drilled into your head, right?

For now I'll just leave you with a pic of me in the Parque Garcia Lorca.  The park is super close to where I live like 5 min away.  It's pretty cold now and there are no flowers in bloom so it's not as pretty as it could be, but all the tress are still really pretty, and it's a nice calm place.

I'll post another one about my visit to the Alhambra!! No worries there will be lots of pictures and details ahead! :D

Until then,
Love you all

Jan 11

Hi everyone!!
sorry it's taken so long to get another post up.  It's been crazy here and I'm so busy all the time, or really tired and hit the hay pretty quickly.  Since I last posted a lot has happened.  We started our intensive course program and I'm in level 5.  I go to class every day from 9-1, 4 hours of intensive Spanish class.  We just started so it's been good so far, but I'm starting to get pretty excited and overwhelmed from all the Spanish.  I basically get out of class and then go back to my homestay for lunch and siesta and speak more spanish.  I'm getting more confident but we'll see.  I have to remember that I'm only been in the country for like 4 day so it's going to take a while to see the improvement I want to see.

Today I got out of class and went shopping a bit down the street and got some stuff done around town like I needed to.  Oh did I forget to mention that I walk more than 30 min to class every day.  Yea, I live on Camino de Rhonda, which is basically on the other side of town from the Central de Lenguas Modernas.  So I have to be in class at around 9, that means I leave my house at like 8:20.  Yup, I walk a really far ways, all together me and my roommate figured out that we probably walk about 6 miles.  You walk everywhere here, everyone walks, that or you take the bus.

So, Granada really does do siesta time, their not kidding.  Literally everyone leaves their job or school and goes home to have a super big lunch and just hangout and talk and everything.  I get out of my intensive course at 1 and walk home with my friends for a 2:30 lunch.  My senoras daughter and granddaughters come over to her house for almuerzo cada dia and her nieta is sooo cute! It's very fun, but literally every store is closed and the streets are mobbed with people going home.

Today we went to a short meeting for classes and then shopping!  I didn't really buy anything but a pair of earings, but it's rebajas right now! Basically it's black friday for a whole month and so much is on sale in every store.  Here they don't really have sales like we do, everything is full price and then they have rebajas for a whole month and it's wonderful.  So i need to do some more shopping, but after all the walking I do I'm super tired and slightly uninterested in shopping by the end of the day.  No one goes outside during siestas time, and all the stores are closed so you have to go out after 5 or 5:30 to get things done, and then you only have until like 8:30 or 9.  It's certainly different.

But I'm liking it so far, today I took off with a friend to get her a phone and just walk around, and of course practice our Spanish.  It's nice to have friends who are at the same level as me so we can practice our Spanish together.  But I finally got my Spanish phone and here it is!! It cost me a total of 9 euro and then on 10 euro or whatever I want to put on it for the month.

Me telefono!

Pretty much that's all I really did today.  I just came home for dinner and then holed myself up in my room.  I've been in my room a lot at night because I'm still getting acclimated to it all.  So we'll see.  

Yesterday I went to a tea house with some friends.  I had cinnamon tea, and it was really good.  Here's a  few pics!

Me, and my friends!!

Me drinking my tea at the tea house, and my friend in the background. 

A picture of la Plaza de Isabella Catolica, otra vez.  It's a beautiful Plaza that I go through every day on my walk to school.  I'll take pictures of my school muy pronto (very soon) and post them. 

Una otra plaza en Granada.  Just another Plaza, because there are so many, and I thought the fountain was pretty at night.  Nothing like the whale fountain that we need to turn off for fear of people using it for a public bathroom. Ugh, Americanas. :P

That's it for now.  My senora just went to bed, which means it's my cute to go to bed too!! Wake up at 7 to walk my half hour to class tomorrow morning.  Hay hace much frio en la manana tambien.  And I'm sorry for the lack of tildes, accentos and other such spanish things, I have no idea how to do this on the internet. 

Until next time, love you all

Bonnie

First day in Spain

Hi everyone,

So today was my first day in Espana!  We had to get up at a God awful hour this morning though (3A.M) to get to the airport like 2 hours early.  Our flight left London at around 8 and we arrived in Malaga at like 11:30.  That's when we met Paula, the Resident Director, and we took our bus to Granada.  The bus ride was about 2 hours long, but it was worth it.  When we pulled into Granada at our bus stop it was so cute because all the senoras (homestay hosts) were waiting there for us.  They called us each up and introduced us to our senoras and off we went.  As expected we had to roll all our luggage through the streets to our homes, which was quite a feet, and then getting them in the elevators is even more interesting.  But here's a few pictures of my home-stay.

This is just the little living room in the apartment.  It's actually a pretty big apartment with nice furniture and a long hallway.  

And this is my bedroom that I share with my roommate Julia.  It's pretty much the size of a double in college.    We each also have a huge dresser that we put all of our stuff in. 

When we got to the house had lunch right away because we were starving after being up so early and everything.  Julia, my senora made us a really good noodle soup and some incredible chicken.  It was excellent food.  After lunch we just unpacked and got ourselves settled and from there we took a small tour of Granada and stuff that we need to know about that's important.  Not that I took much in because I'm so overwhelmed.  I was surprised with myself because I was actually not shy about speaking Spanish and chatted most of lunch with Julia, obviously making mistakes but she's been correcting me and I'm feeling much more confident than I was before.  

Here's a few pictures of the city. 

An older part of Granada that you literally have to take donkeys up or walk to because the streets are so small.

Plaza de Isabella 

City Hall

As you can see, most places still have their Christmas decorations up, it's pretty comical.  But now I'm just hanging out at the house waiting for dinner in like 2 hours, haha.  I'm feeling good, but pretty homesick too.  

Miss you all!!  

Till next time. <3

Second Day in London

So, this is my second post from my second day in London.  I'm working on how to get pictures in here so bare with me if they're not up right away.

We woke up at around 7:30 to get ready, eat some breakfast and start our 9 o’clock tour of London.  We had a bus tour but we stopped at Buckingham Palace and walked to a few places.  From there we drove around London some more and they dropped us off at a square and let us explore ourselves.  On the bus tour we saw a ton of places, Hyde Park which has some cool statues.  We stopped at Buckingham Palace and took pictures there, which was beautiful.  It was actually very cool to see the Palace and take pictures there.  From there we walked the processional route for the wedding.  From there we saw some more castles, statue of Queen Anne, castle of King Henry V, and finally we stopped at Westminster Abbey and Big Ben.  Westminster Abbey is so pretty and Big Ben is pretty cool too.  We took pictures, went to a coffee shop and got back on the bus.  After that we saw the London Bridge and a bunch of other random sites.  After they dropped us off we ate at Sorda for Italian food and ate upstairs where there was a little kids party, we were all going insane and wanted to get away from the kids. I went out and explored London after we had lunch with Julia, Allie, Jen, Shelby, and Bre.  We went to Kings Cross to try to see HP Platform 9 ¾ which is apparently on platform 1 in Kings Cross Station, but it had been vandalized and was closed off for a while. From there we took the tube back to Liecester and went to the National Gallery.  The National Gallery was soo cool.  I saw Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper and it was awesome!! I saw some Turner paintings, which I don’t really know but Jen does, so I looked at them. I saw some pretty awesome Van Gogh paintings, Water Lillies, and some of his others.  Then I saw some Money.  They had a bunch of other artists in there that I really wanted to see, like Rembrant, Michelangelo, Vermeer, and Velázquez.  But we didn’t have enough time and the people we were with were pretty tired and didn’t really care.  From there we took the tube back to our hotel, by the way, a tube ticket is ridiculously expensive, about 4.5 lbs per ticket, but a day pass is only 7lbs, so we got the day pass and took the tube all over London.  But I finally made it back to the hotel. 

Today was also a good day, I’m very happy with the friends that I’ve made, which came pretty quickly.  I guess when you’re in a different country you bond with people pretty quickly, given that you know no one and are forced to blend in and make friends.  I met my roommate today and she’s nice, we’ll see how it goes.  I’m slightly terrified though of Granada and my placement exam, but I’m trying not to think about that.  Whatever happens, happens and will work itself out.  Oh, we have to wake up at 3.a.m to get to the airport. Are you kidding me!?  So tonight I’m just going to go out to get dinner and then come back and crash and go to sleep.  

The hotel we stayed at in London

Me at Buckingham Palace

Me at Westminster Abbey

Another view of Westminster Abbey

Me with Big Ben