Última fin de semana en Granada

So this weekend was officially my last weekend in Granada.  :'(  Cue crying and sad music.  Given as it was our last weekend pretty much everyone in the program decided to attend El Camborio's giant "Goodbye Americans" party on Saturday night.  El Camborio is that really awesome club that I've talked about before, with the amazing view of the Alhambra by night.  So me and some friends decided to go over to a tapas bar before we went to El Camborio.  We went down towards Plaza Nueva, which is close to El Camborio and went to a fun tapas bar called Babel.  I had some amazing fajita tapas and a few glasses of wine with my four good friends here, Abby, Jen, Jessy and Bree.  We stayed at the tapas bar till about 1, after being highly entertained by the people watching the apparently important futbol game going on on T.V.  There were even two younger boys there who started shouting "tonto, tonto" (silly/stupid) at the screen when the player didn't get a goal.  I also learned that the mark of a good bar is when you see napkins all over the floor, because that means the bar is so busy they don't have time to sweep the floor.  I was told by Abby, who's POE professor taught them that putting our napkins on the tapas plates is aggravating to them and they prefer to roll them up in little balls and throw them on the floor.  Neat huh, so we did, and then I noticed there were napkins all over the floors.  We're Spanish, oh yea.

So by about 1 we decided to walk over to the club because you could get in for free before 2.  We got there and spent the night dancing away.  Jen, Abby, and Jessy had never been there before either, so they were really impressed with the view and how cool the place was.  The place is rather small, but not too bad, and when we got there they still had free sangria/beer.  So we pretty much all got a free sangria, which in all honestly is more like Juicy Juice and found our little corner on the dance floor to stay in all night long.  After 2 trips outside to cool off and fending off the guys encroaching on our dance space we were finally ready to head home by about 4:30.  After all, we had been on our feet dancing for almost 4 hours.  We said goodbye to our friends still there and walked back home, which was a long walk, but totally worth it.

Overall, last night was one of my favorite nights here.  I actually teared up when they played Time of my Life because I really did have the time of my life here in Granada and with some of the most amazing people I have ever met.  The music was amazing, the club was awesome and my friends made that night amazing.  I don't think I could ask for better friends here.  :)

On another note, Thursday night me and Bree met with our Spaniard friends again, and we plan on meeting one last time this week before we head home.  We just couldn't bear to say goodbye when we still had days left when we could meet.  But Manolo and Maria took us to a really awesome seafood tapas bar called El Barco del Pescador (The fishermen's boat).  The outside looked like a boat, which was really cool, and inside the had a model of a boat too, where I think people could go up and sit on when it's much busier.  The place wasn't too busy, but it was great to sit outside and chat with them for a while.  All the tapas were seafood, of course, and I even ate octopus!  It just tasted like regular fried fish to me, but it was yummy.  And I finally remembered to bring my camera to take pictures with our two favorite Spaniards!  So finally our friends are revealed to you all.  They are the nicest couple and it's so fun to talk to them.  It's interesting to get their viewpoints on some things, and we often talk about a lot of grammatical things about both languages and colloquial words.  Either way, it's always a blast, and they're thinking of coming to the states in a year or so, hopefully!  So I may get to see them again, which would be amazing.  But here's a photo for you of Manolo and Maria with me and Bree!

I just realized I'm going completely out of order in this post, but that's okay.  You catch my drift here.  Friday night we had our goodbye party (Fiesta de la despedida) for AIFS and pretty much everyone went.  It was at a flamenco show and dinner place up in the Albaicin and was so much fun.  We got two free drinks about about 6 or 7 different tapas throughout the show, along with an amazing dessert plate.  They had performers dancing Flamenco which was really fun and we got to chat the evening away.  They had two Flamenco dancers, a guy and a girl, who actually danced separately for the most part.  But it was really intense to watch, because most of the music is really serious and their faces are really serious.  Unfortunately my pictures aren't very good because it was pretty dark in there.  But the show was fun.

After the show Paula decided she wanted to make us all sad and made a little speech.  She told us how great we've all been this semester and also delivered some sad news to us.  One of their Staff, Inma is leaving the Granada staff.  We were all sooo sad when we found out and shouted "nooo".  Inma is the sweetest woman and she is so fun to be around.  But, we can't be that sad for her because she's moving on to the be the Resident Director of the AIFS program that's not opening in Barcelona!  So we're excited for Inma to have this new and great opportunity, but very sad that she's leaving us.  I feel very blessed to have had her on staff while I was here.  Consequentially, Edu, our fun young guy who was just a third part time staff member will be joining the team and taking Inma's place, so we're excited for him as well.  Edu is a very fun guy, young and knows how to connect well with "us kids" :P  So while some changes are coming up for AIFS Granada, we're so happy that we got to meet everyone.  I feel so blessed to have gotten such a great staff while I was here.  So of course, since we were all dressed up most of us decided it was time for a picture with our AIFS family here in Granada. 

Inma, me, Paula, Carmen (intern), Edu

These people were such amazing people, and Paula truly was like a mother away from home for me.  She helped me through so much here and helped me grow as a person.  I am so honored to have met them and am truly going to miss these people.

So that's my sappy post for today.  Either way, this weekend was amazing and now I suppose I should start studying, especially since I have two finals on Monday....:(  I'm going to miss this country.

Until next time, love you all!!  <3

El última día de clases

I can't believe that this is real.  Today I ended my classes for the semester.  Now granted, I still have finals to take, but really, this is it.  It's all coming to a close.  Mon/Wed I have four classes in a row from 8:30-2:30.  But today was the last time I had to deal with that madness.  My last classes mostly consisted of reviewing for the final or learning about things like the kind of music they listen to in Islamic countries.  It was very interesting.  I also got to get out of my very last class early.  We walked into class and asked our profe about what would be on the test, she told us and then proceeded to ask us if we would like to stay and talk or if we'd like to go downstairs and enjoy the festivities that the CLM put on for us.  Of course we said we want to leave!!  So we got to leave after about 15 min of class. 

The CLM was having a small fiesta for the closing of the semester.  They were giving out awards for all sorts of stuff, including a photo contest, the photos were pretty cool.  They also had a local street artist/graffiti artist come in a do a graffiti painting for us to see.  He's called El Niño de Las Pinturas (The boy of the pictures) and he has a ton of street art all over Granada.  He's actually really well known in general all over Spain and Europe.  I actually have a picture of this graffiti piece, it was on my way to school during my intensivo course.  All of his art is so good, and it's all over Granada.  Here's some more of his.




We got to watch him do a painting on a canvas that the CLM provided and it took him over an hour to do that I think.  Unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me because I had just been in class, I didn't think to bring it with me.  But he did a really cool pieces of a guys face and it was really awesome.  I left before he was finished so I could eat lunch on time, but it was sick, especially to watch how he created something so beautiful.  That's one thing I really appreciate around here.  There's so much street art, but it's almost all really nice street art, not graffiti with gang symbols and hate signs.

So the rest of the day I just took my time doing stuff, starting study guides, packing up my gifts in my carry on/second checked bag and hanging around the house.

Yesterday I finished up my practicum/internship (finally).  It's been a great experience, but I'm so glad to get out of there.  The influence the culture here has on the school system is just something I cannot deal with very well.  The kids have zero respect for me, well the younger ones at least, so it's extremely taxing just to try to get them to listen to me and actually do what I tell them.  Discipline is the hardest.  But I'll post about my internship later this weekend when I'm trying to study and start procrastinating.

It's been pretty hot here lately too.  So we've been sleeping with our windows open all night, despite the noise all the neighbors might make.  Well, tonight Julia noticed that we've been keeping our window open and offered to "quita la ventana para más aire" (or something along those lines) and we were like sure...not really thinking she actually meant to take away the window.  She just walked over and took the glass part right off the frame, both parts.  So now we have a giant hole in our room to let more air in, which is nice because I actually feel a little bit cooler and feel a breeze.  But it's kind of awkward, especially since they don't have screens...it's just a hole.....  And there's a guy across the street screaming "goooooooooooalll!!!" very loudly about every 5 minutes who we want to punch.  Oh the city life in Granada.

But that's pretty much my update.  Tomorrow I'm meeting with Manolo and Maria again, hopefully not for the last time, but we'll see.  Then Friday we have our tour of the Sacromente and our Goodbye dinner with Sacromonte.  From then on it's finals week...shoot me.  They shouldn't be that bad though, I feel pretty confident, especially since I did well on my midterms...all two of them... :P

Until next time, love you all!! <3