Morocco!

Armelle, Kelsey, Kelsi Bennett (a girl also from our program here in Spain) and I went on an awesome Morocco Exchange program through which we were able to visit multiple parts of Morocco and learn a ton about the culture there. The program is provided for American students all over Spain and all we had to do was find our way to Algeciras, where the ferry took off, and from then on our flat fee covered everything, all transportation, all meals, even bottled water.
While the students from Madrid weren’t so lucky and had to take a 9 hour overnight bus to Algeciras, Granada is only 3 hours away. Still, we had to be at the dock at 8am so to be on the safe side we left the day before and spent our first night in a hotel in Algeciras. We thought that it would be a great opportunity to get a little more traveling in and see more of Spain, but it turns out that the only cool thing about Algeciras is the port itself, and there wasn’t much to see. We walked around a little and got tapas for dinner and it was definitely a pleasant night.
Also, I found this awesome marble ramp that was slippery enough I could slide down it super fast! It was awesome.

The next day we woke up early and accomplished a mission—getting us all out of the hotel without the hotel manager realizing that we were sleeping three people in a two person room in order to cut costs. Kelsi Bennett was in her own room so we didn’t have to worry about sneaking her out, so Kelsi, Kelsey, and I went to the front desk and checked out, conveniently blocking the view of the front desk, and Armelle sneaked out while we were there. It all worked out quite nicely and I was very proud of us.
The port was only a 10 minute walk from our hotel so we made it there and found the rest of the group with no problems.
From now on I will write about the trip itself, using the itinerary as a base!

Day One
Morning:
- Meeting at 8am in Algeciras (which I wrote about already!)
- Boat journey across the Mediterranean Sea from Algeciras, Spain to Tangier, Morocco
Me, Armelle and Kelsi being very excited to be on the ferry to Morocco

The ferry was super cool, it was a little stuffy inside which was mildly uncomfortable, but out on the deck it was amazing! There was a super strong wind and it was really fun.


On the ferry we met the rest of the students on the trip (surprisingly we were all girls, including our trip leader) and we got a quick introduction to the program itinerary.

- Conversation "Cultural diversity in Morocco" about Arab, Berber and Jewish coexistence in Morocco, with Moroccan students from L’Ecole Superior du Traduction in Tangier (one of the best schools for translators in the Arabic speaking world)
-We got to Morocco and we were so excited!!! Once off the ferry we made it through customs and onto a tiny little bus that would be our transportation for the rest of the trip. After a short drive we reached our first destination, a Women’s Center in Tangier. We got a tour of the building, which included classrooms of all sorts, some traditional style where women are taught traditional Arabic writing, some where women are taught different trades to help them succeed economically. The center’s goal is to take advantage of the laws in Morocco that give women equal rights as men by helping women to be educated enough to step up and be equal. An example of one of the trades is this room full of looms.

Here they teach women traditional weaving. In another room they had a set of new sewing machines where they teach women to sew as a skill set for working in factories.
After we got a tour of the Women’s Center we got our first taste of Moroccan tea, and had a very interesting discussion about cultural diversity, and about being a woman in Morocco. The tea was delicious—green tea with fresh mint and a LOT of sugar. The conversation was great too, we got to hear first hand perspectives from three girls who study translation at the local university. What was most interesting to our group and to me in particular was their treatment of the traditional headscarf, two of the girls wore one and the other didn’t, and they all seemed to be getting along fine. They explained to us that covering your head is a personal choice and it’s up to you to decide how devout you are going to be. At the same time, the one without the scarf was 5 years younger than the other two and still in high school and unmarried, and admitted that it is generally accepted that once you get married you do adopt the covering in respect for your husband and family. It was a very interesting contrast to what I know of Iranian law, where you have to cover your head no matter what, because even though by law it is not required, and they were proud of the fact that it was a choice, they still revealed that unwritten cultural laws suggest that they do maintain that sign of devotion to their religion.
This is the gorgeous view from the terrace where we held our discussion

After our discussion we had our first Moroccan food! Couscous with chicken and vegetables. It was delicious. This is us waiting impatiently for our food/taking the opportunity for photos

-Drive to Asilah and walk through the Medina (old town) to the Atlantic Ocean
-after lunch on our drive all of a sudden we pulled off to the side of the highway. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on because I had been settling down to a nap but when I looked out the window I got really excited! We were on the coast and...are you ready for this? There were camels!!! So we got to ride them. And it was awesome. Once up on the camel the ride is pretty gentle and boring, but the camel has to kneel forward to get up and down and when it does you get pitched forward really fast and all of a sudden your face is a little to close to the sand! But it was a super fun experience.

-we continued on our drive, which turned out to be relatively short anyway, and walked through Asilah. It was beautiful! All the Moroccan architecture was sooo pretty. It reminded me of the Alhambra.
All of us walking

Example of prettiness

-eventually we reached a lookout point on the ocean

Afternoon:
- Drive along the Atlantic Ocean to Rabat (3 hours)
Evening:
- Meeting of the home stay families (Two or three students will stay with one family.)
-Armelle, Kelsey, and I got to stay in a home stay together which was really awesome. Our family was a mother who spoke no English but was super sweet and got really really excited when we tried to speak to her in Arabic, her daughter who was 18 and home from university for the weekend and spoke perfect English to us, her son who was 14 and didn’t say a word or make eye contact the whole time, and a younger daughter who was 12 and also really shy.
- Dinner with home stay families
-Moroccan food is amazing!!! AND they don’t use separate plates or silverware. Food is served on big platters and everyone just eats off of it with their fingers. We had appetizers to start out with, some meatballs, bread, and pastries, then a dish that was chicken in amazing sauce with french fries all over it. It was delicious. Then for dessert we had pomegranates and oranges.
-that night we slept in a room that I’m really not sure what it is, but that most Moroccan homes have. It was I guess like a living room, but it was really just a room with benches all around the wall. So we moved the pillows aside and each claimed a piece of bench.

Day Two RABAT
Morning:
- Breakfast
-we ate breakfast in the patio of the house, which was brightly lit because the entire roof was a skylight
-for breakfast we had tea, coffee, bread, and these yummy crepe-like things with honey on them
Armelle and I at breakfast—very very early

- Facilitated discussion “West and Arab worlds - images about each other” with Moroccan students from Rabat University and Professor Zaki
-in the same room where we had slept that night (thank god we had the good manners to clean up all our bedding before breakfast!) all the rest of the group came and met with some Moroccan students to discuss stereotypes between our different cultures. The discussion was interesting, especially because a couple of the Moroccan students disagreed about points and created some tension in the discussion, but to me nothing particularly notable was said.
- Visit of the Roman ruins Chellah, the Mausoleum Hassan II and the Main mosque.
-the ruins were really cool! The stone was this really awesome deep red and the weather was sunny and clear which made it even better.




Afternoon:
- Lunch with home stay families
-lunch was soo good, once again! We had pasta that again we ate with our fingers from one main dish. It was different than any pasta I’ve had before, and super tasty.
- Exploration of Rabat’s Andalusian houses in the Kashba and the street life in the medina market. Individual options: to spend time in the art museum or gallery, at the ocean or in the gardens of the castle. (This afternoon will be spend in small groups to create space for authentic experiences of the place and for personal connections. Two American students will be accompanied by two Moroccan students from Rabat University)
-Armelle and Kelsey and I ended up choosing to do a little shopping, Armelle found a really pretty hamsa necklace, which is the hand of Fatima, and then we sat and relaxed and drank more Moroccan tea.
Evening:
- Social time: Conversation in the patio of a family with Peace Corps volunteers about living in Morocco as a foreigner
-we got to talk to both a Peace Corps volunteer, and a Fulbright grantee about what it’s like living in such a different culture. It was really awesome to hear how both of them started out with some doubts but now are living comfortably in Morocco.
-Optional visit to the Hammam
-The Hammam is a public bath, something that is common everywhere in Morocco. But there aren’t actually any baths there. It’s basically a huge tiled room with faucets coming out of the walls with cold and hot water, and drains in the floors. You get a big bucket of water that you can make the right temperature for yourself, and then a smaller dipper, and you basically create a shower by dipping water out of the bucket and over you. The room got really steamy like a sauna and it was basically the most relaxing and cleansing experience ever. Our program leader told us that even though to us Americans it seems like a treat, like going to a spa, but to Moroccans it’s merely functional. It’s a way to get clean that they use about once a week.
Kelsey, me and Armelle feeling shiny and clean after the Hammam

- Dinner with home stay families
-once again dinner was amazing!!! I actually can’t remember exactly what we ate this night…but I’m sure I loved it.
Day Three RABAT - RIF MOUNTAINS - CHEFCHAOUEN
Morning:
- Drive to Akchour, Rif Mountains through rural areas of Morocco (3,5 hours)
- Break on the way (more tea! Yum)
- Short walk through a valley in the Rif mountains
-this walk was super pretty, through the mountains with olive trees all around us
Afternoon:
- Picnic and time to relax
-we ate around a table cloth on the ground, nice and simple and really good couscous!

- Conversation with Abdeslam about education, simplicity of life and economic challenges of rural areas in Morocco. Abdeslam himself was the first in his family to receive an education. He finished a degree in literature while his older brothers had no schooling for economic reasons.
- Drive to Chefchaouen (30 minutes)
- Guided walk through the medina of Chefchaouen with background information about it’s Moorish and Jewish inhabitants and it’s historic link to Al Andalus
What I found most interesting from this tour was that all the buildings were painted blue because originally they were green for Islam, then the Jews that were expelled from Spain came in and painted them all blue, and the area became known to tourists as blue and therefore never got changed back to green, despite the fact that it is now a fully Muslim area once again

- Settle in Hotel Andaluz
Evening:
- Time to explore the medina individually (good place to buy some souvenirs)
-I bought some awesome blue Moroccan slippers!
- Special celebration dinner in the Medina of Chefchaouen
-once again, delicious food. I had beef tagine and it was amazing
Day Four CHEFCHAOUEN - CEUTA - ALGECIRAS
Morning:
- Morning walk through the awaking town to a hill outside the city gate
- Drive through mountains, fields and cities to Ceuta (2 hours)
- Breakfast on the way
- Crossing the Moroccan - Spanish border
Afternoon:
- Boat journey across the Strait of Gibraltar
we were so exhausted from the trip that at this point we just slept the whole ride!

- Good bye in Algeciras, Spain
Then one more 3 hour bus ride, and I was home and sleeping in my own bed, dreaming of Moroccan food and recovering from an amazing adventure.

internet

IT'S TAKEN THREE WHOLE MONTHS BUT I FINALLY HAVE INTERNET IN MY APARTMENT!!!

Sevilla and Halloween

Sevilla
When I decided to study abroad for an entire year, one of my main goals was to travel as much as possible and see as many places I could. Traveling, unfortunately, takes a lot more planning than I realized so spur of the moment trips aren’t really very common. In the case of the trip I am about to describe, however, planning was not involved at all! On one random Wednesday my friend Kenneth sent a text to a bunch of us telling us about a trip to Sevilla that Erasmus (Europe’s continent-wide study abroad program) was putting on that was only 40 euro and was a short two day trip from Friday til Saturday that weekend. At first I discounted it because it seemed so soon and I didn’t know what I had to do that weekend but that night at dinner I brought it up and although Kelsey couldn’t go because her mom was here in Granada visiting from the states, Armelle said she would go if we could still get tickets. So the next day on my way home from class I stopped by the Erasmus office and bought 2 of the last 5 available tickets! So on Thursday, I bought tickets to Sevilla that had us leaving by bus at 7:30am the next morning.
When I woke up on Friday to walk to the bus I almost regretted my decision to go to Sevilla on a whim—it was sooo early it was still dark out, and it was freezing cold to boot!
Armelle and I were still excited to be going to Sevilla though.

I walked out of my apartment and seeing that the elevator was in use grudgingly decided to take the 7 flights of stairs down. Upon reaching the ground floor I realized that the elevator wasn’t just in use, it was stuck about 3 feet above the ground! There were people inside so I went closer to see if I could do anything to help and suddenly recognized the voices coming from inside the elevator. All three of my roommates were inside. You know how I wrote about how a late night in Spain is really an early morning? Well there was proof right in front of me; all my roommates got stuck in the elevator at 7am on their way home from a night out. They had already called the elevator technician so there wasn’t anything I could do to help and I had to leave for Sevilla hoping that they’d be helped soon. Luckily they were all in funny moods though so what could have been a disaster was just a good story for everyone to tell the next day.

As I was talking to my roommates through the elevator door, Armelle joined me at my building and soon the two of us were off on our way to the bus! A cold 15 minute walk later we cursed the Spanish sense of time since even though we were only 5 minutes early, the rest of the group leaving wasn’t at the meeting point yet and the bus was no where to be seen. But eventually the bus did come as did the rest of the kids going on the trip (who were all foreigners like ourselves, but from Europe since they were part of Erasmus). The bus ride was uneventful since we napped the whole time, except for a half hour potty break where Armelle and I had a lovely chat on some red phones we found at the rest stop.

When we finally arrived in Sevilla we went to the hostel Erasmus set up for us which was a crazy cramped building with lots of stories. They didn’t have our rooms ready for us yet, so we sat in the sun on the terrace on the top of the hostel for a while. Once we got our rooms Armelle and I decided it was time for some exploring. Sevilla is a gorgeous city, with the river Guadalquivir running right through it.

We ended up wandering around a beautiful university building, walking up and down the river, and exploring some of the city streets before deciding it was time for some café con leche. After our espresso (which, by the way, I have totally become addicted to) we went back to the hostel for some paella, one of the most classic Spanish meals you can come by. The paella was really good especially since they used chicken instead of seafood, something that made it better for me but worse for all the seafood lovers there.
The next day we did touristy stuff planned out by Erasmus including a tour of the Cathedral and the Alcazar of Sevilla.
Here's a pic of me with the view from the top of the Cathedral's belltower

Armelle and I at the Alcazar (Which was basically just a really pretty garden)

Overall it was a short trip but it was really fun. I got to see another beautiful piece of Andalusia on just a moment’s notice!

Halloween
Even though I didn’t see any little kids trick-or-treating, and the extent of my candy intake was one lollipop, I was excited to find out that they do indeed celebrate Halloween here in Spain! We went out two different nights and one night I was a pirate, the other I was Zorro.
Pirate, Guapa, and Hippie:


Zorro, Mannequin, and Leopard:

My Awesome Zorro Mask:




Soon to come—a really long blog about my trip to Morocco!!!

Barcelona! (Por fin...)

Life in Spain has settled down a bit and I love it. Sorry I haven’t written in forever! The trouble with normal life is it often seems silly to sit down and describe it. But I have done some interesting things since I last wrote so first I will tell you about my trip to Barcelona!

The ILP Spanish classes I was taking ended and finals were finally over and we still had a week until real classes started, so we all scattered to the winds and traveled where we could. 5 of my friends and I decided that it was a good idea to stay within Spain since it was our first big trip, and that Barcelona sounded really cool, so that’s where we went. The trip started out rather stressful because our flight was really early and at first we couldn’t find our bus stop since online it gave us a street name but no intersection. So at 6am the big group of us with our large backpacks was wandering around the street Gran Via looking for a bus stop that said aeropuerto (airport). We ended up getting super lucky though because we saw the bus from about a block away and even though we still hadn’t found the right stop we were able to wave it down and it stopped and let us on (I think it was my good bus driver karma kicking in since I would occasionally let really desperate passengers on even if they weren’t at exactly the right stop). Things went smoothly until we were just about to get on the plane, we handed the flight attendant our boarding passes only to find out that we were missing a crucial stamp we were supposed to have gotten outside security! So all six of us literally ran back, got the stamp (which just verified that our passports and boarding passes matched) and nervously waited in line to go through security a second time and sprint to the gate to get on our plane. The plane ride was really short and soon we were landing in Barcelona! We made it to our hostel with no problems at all, enjoyed a grocery store lunch of bread and fruit, and took a really long siesta. That night we took the metro further into the city and had a traditional Spanish dinner of paella, basically rice with seafood (I cheated and had steak instead of sea food though). We walked around a little bit and went to bed early (which is midnight here in Spain).
The next day we went and did some sight seeing and walked all around Barcelona. The thing that struck me as the biggest difference between Barcelona and Granada physically was that the streets were sooo wide there! I mean, they were really normal-sized by American terms, but they were always at least twice the size of Granada’s streets. The other thing was the metro. They have an amazing metro system that takes you all through the city in no time at all! It was really cool to be able to get around so fast. I must admit, however, that I really love that I can walk from end to end of Granada in just an hour, so I don’t ever really need public transportation to get around. We saw some amazing plazas with giant sculptures and even climbed up onto some huge lions and took pictures! That was probably the highlight of my day. Later we went to see Park Guell, designed by Gaudi. I’m not really sure what I would call the structure, it was kind of just a really beautiful platform with a pretty park up behind it. But the entire thing was covered in the most amazing mosaics! At the top we got to see a great panoramic view of Barcelona that was the perfect end to the sightseeing experience.
That night was the one night we decided to go out and see how the night life in Barcelona compares to Granada. I’m not sure if I have or haven’t gone into depth about the strange schedule we keep here, but it is very important to understanding the way life is here so I will explain. Early morning is 9am, and, for example, landlords still apologize when they ring the doorbell at 10am. Breakfast is small, usually a café con leche, which is what they call a shot of espresso mixed with milk, and a tostada , which is a small loaf of french bread cut in half and toasted, with something on top like tomato, butter, jam, pate, or salchicha (smashed up smearable sausage). At about 2pm it’s acceptable to start eating lunch, and the entire city (except restaurants and cafes) shuts down also. Lunch is really big and can be as big a variety of foods as in America. Siesta continues until about 5-6pm, and then many of the stores open again until 9 or 10 at night. Dinner doesn’t happen until 9 at night at the very earliest. After dinner it’s common to go out to tapas, which is the free food you get with your drink, and usually you sit and chat there until at least midnight and more often much later. Then if it’s a normal night you go home and get to sleep by 1-2am. If you’re going out that night, however, you go to Botellon, a giant parking lot that is outside of the city limits of Granada (but is really like a 15 min walk from the city center) where it is legal to drink in public. There thousands of student aged people save money by drinking their own alcohol rather than paying the often exorbitant prices in bars and clubs. At about 3am, but absolutely no earlier than 2am, people start going to the clubs. If you go to a club before 2am there will be almost no one there and it is really no fun to dance in an empty club. Even when you get there at 2am the club doesn’t get really full until about 3 or 4. Then people dance at the club until 7am when it closes, and finally go home to sleep.
So since that is the way things go in Granada, we were expecting the same from Barcelona. It wasn’t the same. We went to dinner at a restaurant-bar around 11pm and by midnight they were packing up the chairs around us! In Granada that would not happen until 2am at the earliest. So we ate quickly and started walking toward the club we were going to go to, and the streets were empty! There were no people at all and all the shops and bars were closed. I am pretty sure I have never ever seen empty streets at night in Granada. Maybe during siesta things become pretty dead, but between 11pm and 7am there are always people walking around. And bars and restaurants are always open at midnight! So it was definitely a shock for us. We finally found a bar that was open and hung out there for a couple hours before going to Razzmatazz, the club we had heard was the best. The club had 7 stories and each level was supposed to have a different type of music but really it was just a different variation on techno, so I was fairly disappointed. Still we danced and had a good night and made it home to bed by 7am.
As you can imagine the next morning we slept in and didn’t actually get up until afternoon, but then we went to the beach! The beach was really nice and the water was wonderful. It was about the same temperature as the water at Salobreña so it was perfect to swim in and be refreshed but not cold. The best part about the beach was that there were real waves! It was really fun to play in them in the earlier part of the day, but they ended up getting big enough that an announcement came over a giant loudspeaker in four different languages telling everyone that it wasn’t advised to go in the water at that time. A group next to us had a soccer ball, which we borrowed for a while and kicked around, but really it was just a super relaxing day laying in the sun and enjoying the beach. That night we managed to find a Mexican food restaurant with really really good really really non Mexican food. I got a burrito that was triangular, had to be eaten with a knife, and didn’t taste much like a burrito, but was really tasty anyway, and some of the others got burritos like me or hamburgers that were similarly delicious.
Our last day we spent on some more sightseeing and saw Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. It is a giant church all designed by Gaudi that is still yet to be finished. It was really pretty and reminded me of a giant sand castle made in that way where you drip sand from your hand instead of packing it down. Later we walked around more, spent some time at the harbor admiring the big ships, and ended up at a pretty cool fountain show. There was a giant fountain with lights and water streams that changed in unison to make pretty choreographed displays and a bunch of people were there crammed onto the steps in front of it to see the show. I thought it was really really pretty but after about half an hour I was pretty bored…and we stayed for another hour and it still didn’t end! But it was still cool because they played music while the show was going and one of the chunks of music was old songs that I remember being on the radio when I was little and that we all sang along to. Our flight home was at 6am so we didn’t book a hostel for the night to save money on our trip. So after the fountain show we got on the metro and made our way to the bus station where we hung out until 3:30 when the bus came to take us to the airport. It was a long night but we managed to entertain ourselves by making up ridiculous sleep-deprived stories so overall it was fun.
Barcelona was a gorgeous city and I really loved the ambience, the proximity to the beach, and the fun things we did there but over all it really made me appreciate living in Granada. Here things are cheaper, the city is the perfect size, the city stays alive all night long, and most importantly people really only speak Spanish. In Barcelona every other person spoke English to us! It was horrible. I much prefer struggling through my sentences and learning more about the language than having English as a constant easy crutch to fall back on in any situation. Here in Granada I feel like I am truly living abroad as a resident of a foreign country where as in Barcelona I felt like no matter how long I stayed there I would always stay a tourist.

After getting back from our trip to Barcelona, classes at University of Granada started (as a side note the university is call UGR for short and in Spanish that sounds like oo-kheh—ehr—reh). We were told to sign up for 6 classes and drop two, so our first two weeks of school were mostly centered on figuring out which classes to drop. What was kind of difficult about that was that two of my professors didn’t show up to class the first week! And one of them still hasn’t. So I ended up deciding to drop a history class that I wasn’t really interested in, and the class that the professor never showed up to. Which leaves me with Literatura Española I, which is the first class in the lit series here so it deals with medieval lit, Cervantes, a class that deals entirely with Don Quijote, Los Judíos en España, a history class about the history of Jews as it pertains to Spain, and Literatura Española V, which is the fifth class in the lit series and deals with the Romantic period in Spanish lit. So far all of my classes are interesting and I enjoy learning about what they teach, but it takes a huge amount of concentration to understand everything the professors say! Luckily though I have found that when I do make the effort to focus throughout class (with a little help from a café con leche occasionally) I am understanding the majority of the lectures, something I was a little worried about before classes started.
As I said at the beginning, life here is starting to settle down. A typical night for me is usually going over to my friends Armelle and Kelsey’s piso (they are both from UCSB and live together about a block away from me and are in two of my classes and we’re really good friends), cooking dinner (which usually involves a lot of really yummy vegetables with some spicy chilis thrown in since there is nothing hot in Spanish food), eating dinner (which so far has been beyond delicious every single time), and then drinking a cup (or two or three) or tea and chatting for a while (in English and Spanish depending on the mood).
Things are going well, I feel comfortable, I love Granada, I love my friends, and I love my lifestyle here. I often miss people and things from home and I even more often think of them and smile, but so far life here has been fun, exciting, and relaxed enough that I am absolutely positive that I made the right decision in coming to Granada to study abroad for the year.

y no puedo olvidar los fotos!

the beach we went to

all of us at the beach

hanging out and singing with guitars

fedoras!

a few of my friends at the festival part

the stage at el zaidin


photos of the alhambra!






my artsy pic in a room full of mirrors in the catedral

the catedral is almost too big to fit in a picture!

Hola!
Sorry it’s been so long since I last wrote! Time goes by really quickly here! I feel like I just flew in yesterday and I truly can’t believe it’s been a whole month. I just finished taking finals for ILP, the courses I’ve been taking the last 4 weeks, so the last week or so has been super busy with studying for finals and getting ready to move into our apartments. I have three cool events that I want to tell you about though!

El Catedral
-Granada has a super beautiful GIANT cathedral that we got a really cool tour of.
-I was most impressed with the number of rooms/parts of the cathedral there were, it seemed like I kept getting to the entrance where we came in but instead we just went into another room!
-The cathedral was really beautiful but there was some history behind it that was mildly discomforting
-All throughout the cathedral there were Capillos which were basically giant shrines to different saints, and one of them was a shrine to San Matamoros. The name is the scary part because mata means kills and moros means Arabs, so basically his name means “kills Arabs.” Our tour guide told us that the church made him a saint because he did kill so many arabs in the reconquest of Granada from the Arabic caliphs, and that in making him a saint they made the reconquest a religious act, sanctifying and condoning the killings of non-christians
-there was a room where we weren’t allowed to take pictures that was a museum of sorts and there was a replica of a severed head on a platter! Our guide said that that was because the story of that particular saint was that they sent his head on a platter to the Christian kings...but I don’t accept that as an excuse for such a gruesome sight
-at one point we were sitting listening to our guide talk about the history behind the cathedral when a choir started to sing! and i was super excited because it was super pretty so i ended up listening to the singing instead of the speech. then we walked on a little farther and i couldn’t hear the choir anymore and i got really confused because if there was really a choir singing i would have been able to hear it all over the cathedral so i walked back really quick and found out there were speakers camoflauged on the pillars and i was really horribly disappointed

The Alhambra
-On Friday the 11th (Happy Birthday Mom!) we went to see Granada’s biggest tourist attraction--the giant fortress built by the Moors that the Christian conquerers liked so much they left it almost fully intact as it was in the height of the Arabic rule.
-If the Cathedral was big, the Alhambra was giant! We walked around for five hours and still didn’t see everything!
-Every wall was covered in intricate sculpture of Arabic writings from the Qu’ran and flowers and stars and all sorts of geometric shapes
-the palace walls are almost all white now but you can see remnants of color that hints at the past when every inch was covered in bright yellows, blues, reds, and greens
-I feel like I can’t even describe how pretty everything was! Words aren’t good enough. I really can’t imagine what it would have been like to live in such a huge ornate palace

The Concert at el Zaidin
-The same night as the Alhambra (after a long siesta) we all hopped on a bus and went to the Zaidin district on the outskirts of Granada for a festival
-Every year in September during exams (in Spain if you fail finals at the end of the semester you are allowed to retake them in the fall) there is a huge festival in el Zaidin that reminded me of our county fairs. The streets were full of booths of random things and fair foods for sale, there were rides and jumphouses for kids, and there was really loud music playing everywhere
-There was a booth with really awesome five euro fedoras and we all fell in love and bought them and looked super super cool walking around all wearing our new hats
-At the end of the streets of fair-ness there was a giant soccer field with floodlights and a stage for a rock concert. The main headliners were “Los Delinquintes” and we got to see them play but they didn’t get onstage until 1am! And we were really tired from traipsing all over the Alhambra so my friends and I left earlier than the rest of the group


Overall things are going amazing here and I’m having a great time! Tomorrow I will move into my new piso so I will tell you more about that and about my roommates and location etc in my next post.
Hasta Luego!
Hanna

P.S.

1. I have a new cell phone number! +34622512170
2. If you click on the pictures they get bigger so you can better see what I'm talking about

photos of things i've mentioned before!

before we got internet in our dorms the connection was too slow to upload photos, and then once we finally got it i forgot i could! but thanks to lisky and kirs i have remembered. so here are some pictures from the things that i have described to you! i didn't remember to take any at the beach but soon i should be able to steal some from a friend so i'll put them up later. now that i know how to post photos i will try my best to include some in each new entry! but for now here are pictures in order from oldest to newest:

the colegio where i've been living


my room--note the bright orange bed!



the view from my window


Granada at night


my foto de carnet


plaza del torro, a bullfighting ring!


more of this beautiful city


a bunch of us americans being super touristy as we walk up to sacromonte


a view of granada from high up in the sacromonte zona


an example of the streets of sacromonte


the alhambra!


jill and i feeling super ready to hike


the group hiking along the side of the mountain on a stone wall


and having to duck under outcropping mountain stone and squeeze by where the mountain made the path narrow


the hike was so pretty!


one of the rickety bridges we crossed


the girlies i've been spending most of my time with!


Yay for pictures! More to come soon.
Adios,
Hanna