Oh the life

Hello again,

A real Peacock!  It was so pretty.

I'm so sorry for my very long hiatus lately.  To be completely honest I got lazy.  But soon I will have lots more to write about  because I will now be gone for the next 3 weeks in a row.  Up, 3 weeks...in a row...traveling.  Oh the life I have.

But to update you on other things that have been going on in my life...not much has been going on.  I seriously have been mostly going to class, coming back, eating lunch, sitting around, going to the park, eating, and sleeping.  I've been doing a lot of reading and am coming quite far in my quest to watch the entire series of Friends while I'm here, haha.  But in all seriousness, it's been quite the relaxing life.

Just another gorgeous view of the mountains

One thing I have failed to talk about a lot is something that's actually quite important to my stay here, and that's an intercambio.  Now, for those of you who don't know what that is, and that's pretty much all of you, it's a Spaniard here who wants to better their English and speak with someone.  So these people are all over Granada, and they sign up with various groups, some people go through the CLM, others go through various programs.  AIFS has an intercambio program where I'm assuming Spaniards contact them and find out about these programs somehow.  So we have a bunch of names posted in our office with names, numbers, email addresses, age, interests, all sorts of information.  We can pick any of those names and contact those people that we want to talk to.  So these people are looking to better their English, and we, obviously, are looking to better our Spanish, so we can get together and talk and help each other out.  AIFS also holds Tapas with Intercambios in March, where it's about 8 of us and 8 Spaniards, we get two drinks and tapas and get the opportunity to meet people in a controlled and safe environment as well.

So I finally went to the intercambio that I signed up for about 3 weeks ago.  I met at the Ayutamiento, the town hall building basically and met with Edu, the coordinator or tapas and a few other AIFS students and some Spanairds as well.  Edu took us to this awesome bar called Pecados, which means sin.  It was very fun, and it even had a little apple on the front of it, I thought it was cute and ironic.

Christopher Columbus, why is Alex
picking your nose?

So we all got situated alternating between Spaniard and English student and started talking with the people that were there.  I was situated near a couple, Manolo and Maria Jose, and near another man whose name I unfortunately can't remember (sorry sir somwhere in the universe!).  But I was very happy, I got to practice a lot of my Spanish, and they asked me tons of questions about myself, about stuff in the U.S.  Since I'm an Education Major this guy in interested in being an English teacher here so he was asking me questions about how their school is different here from at home.  We talked about some politics, mostly just economics, not that I know very much.  And we just all sat and talked from about 9:30 to about 12:30.  It was very fun, and I decided to meet with Manolo and Maria again.  They both lived in England for a year so their English is very good compared to my Spanish.  But they are very helpful and correct me when I make mistakes (although they tell me I speak well).

So I've met with them once since then, and hopefully again this week, if I can fit it in my schedule with studying and such.  Then I leave for Morocco, and then Italy.  So I'm hoping to meet with them some more because I really enjoy it.  They are a very nice young couple and they give me a lot of feedback.  I mostly need help with saying...well...everything. haha but they are very nice.  Their English is very good, I only have trouble understand their British pronunciation of things sometimes, because they learned British English.  But I'm very excited to meet with them again.  Intercambios are a great opportunity to improve your Spanish because they're not just people who are used to speaking with foreigners and they tend to have a different take on things and different advice.  I like listening to their ideas about life here and their life in England.  It's very fun.

Another fun little thing I've done in the past few weeks was celebrate La Fiesta de Primavera (The Party for Spring).  Now, since spring doesn't officially start till tuesday, the fiesta is celebrated on the weekend.  What better way to celebrate amazing weather than to go botelloning.  Botelloning is basically when people go outside and drink in a public place.  There is only one place where this is legal in Granada and it just so happens to be pretty much right outside El Corte Ingles.  There's a large radius around and near the store where it's legal to go drink, and the Fiesta de La Primavera is when all the young people celebrate the first warm day where you can botellon.  Well, let me say that was an experience.  The youth start heading over there at around 2, and everyone brings their own alcohol.  Then they basically just stand around, hang out and drink in a large group.  Well, as you can imagine this has turned into more than just a little gathering over the years.

There's most of us at the Botellon

Me and some friends decided to go and experience it.  It's one holiday that pretty much only Granada does and in some cases people from quite a bit aways come to Granada to participate.  This lasts from about 2 in the afternoon allllll night until people leave, pretty much.  This is basically the opening of the season for botelloning, when people will go there in much smaller numbers throughout the summer and merely hang out.  However, this is simply a giant mass of people that are all very drunk in one place.  Me and my friends headed over at around 5:30 and as walking there it's quite comical.  You just see tons of people swarming to this area, with bags of alcohol, mixes, ice, I even saw a grocery cart filled with juices, alcohol and mixers.  We got there and you just saw a giant mass of people.  There were police everywhere directing the traffic of those poor people that needed to get out of the city.  And then there were just lots and lots of people.  We settled down in one area, and my friends and I opened our bottles of wine, sangria, whatever else they had.  One friend even had enough ingredients to make her own sangria.  Pears, oranges, apples, knife...juice, wine, sprite..the works.  So naturally it was very comical when she popped a squat on the ground and wiped out her knife to cut up the oranges and started mixing the drinks.  It was hilarious and made for a very good memory.  The pear came in real handy when we were all hungry later too, we all got a piece of the pear.  :)
So we hung out there until around 9 or 9:30, after making 2 bathroom breaks.  There aren't bathrooms so most of us took turns stay where we were and others popped into their houses to use the bathrooms, those of us that were close enough anyways.  I finally got home by 11:30 after a minor detour on our way home.   It was a very fun night and I'm so glad I went out and experienced that.  The next day it was all over the news and we saw clips of them uses bulldozers to move all the garbage that was left on the ground from that night.  Those poor people, but it was very, very fun.

Oh and Sunday I worked on a photo contest with some friends.  Winner of the contest gets 75 euro or a free dinner!! We're obviously shooting for winning and getting a free dinner.  So we went around on Saturday and took some pictures.  It was a fun way to see more of Granada and get some awesome pictures for ourselves too.  These pictures can be seen throughout this post.  We traveled all around different parts of Granada, post parts I haven't actually been to yet either, which was really nice.  We went to a cool garden, which is where I saw the peacock!  And this gorgeous view of the mountains.  It's very pretty over there and I definitely can't wait to return.

That has pretty much been my life for the past few weeks.  Fairly boring, not much happening, which is explains the lack of posting.  I booked a trip to Vienna to visit my sister's friend who lives there.  Free housing, I'll take it. :)  And this weekend I'm going to Morocco, next weekend I'm leaving for Spring break and heading to Rome, Florence and Venice.  Pretty exciting life coming up ahead and I'll be sure to keep you all updated on that.  I've been continuing going to my internship which has still proven to be pretty much useless other than to make my blood boil and see how how their school system works here.

Until I have another thought, love you all.