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

This weekend was super awesome! Friday we got some business out of the way by waking up early and bringing our visa extension requests to the Granada police station. I found it positively hilarious that governmental institutions hold the same stigma here in Granada as they do in the U.S. The native Granadinos standing in line with us were there with as much annoyance and impatience as is found on the faces of people waiting at the dmv. Luckily, however, we got there early enough (2 hrs before opening!) that once the doors opened it only took a half an hour for all of us to make it through the line. After that we took a siesta since we were all so tired from waking up so early. Then we went shopping! This was my first time shopping in Spain so I was very excited. We went to two stores, Blanco and Zara, which both seemed like more organized versions of H&M. I was expecting there to be really interesting Spanish fashion styles but really everything wasn’t too far off of what we wear in America. I ended up getting two really comfortable shirts that I not only love, but that enabled me to postpone doing laundry for another 2 days!
Saturday we got up really early (again!) to go to the beach. We went to Salobreña, a 45 min bus ride from where we are living right now. The beach was amazing! At first we were all a little disappointed in the sand because it was made up of little pebbles rather than the fine white sand of the imaginary ideal beach, but later I realized that the pebbles were actually a positive attribute because it was way easier to brush them off than it is to brush sand off! The weather was glorious: bright blue sky without a single cloud, and a light breeze. It got really hot lying in the sun since it was probably about 90 degrees out but the Mediterranean was literally the perfect temperature. When I tried to walk in slowly it was cold enough that I lost my nerve and went back to the sun for a while, but when I just ran in without letting myself think about it the water was cold enough to refresh and cool me, but warm enough that I could stay and float without getting chilled. We arrived at the beach at about 10am and from then until 5pm we enjoyed a lovely day of warming up in the sun then cooling off in the water then doing it all over again. At we decided that we’d been at the beach long enough and the sun was a little too hot and the water a little too cold, so we decided to head home. Our bus tickets were for 7pm though and since there were so many of us only half of us managed to make it on the 5pm bus. As you’ve probably guessed my friends and I were the ones who ended up stuck in Salobreña for another 2 hours. While at first we were a bit bummed that we weren’t on our way back with the others we ended up enjoying a really nice Spanish style meal instead. And by Spanish style I mean eating just a small tapas snack but making it last the full two hours by talking about anything and everything.
After a long, fun, and exhausting Saturday we basically just hung out and relaxed in our Colegio for all of Sunday. After going to the beach a day at home might sound kinda lame but it was actually a really nice compliment to the weekend. I ended up doing some homework, listening to music, taking a nice long siesta, and singing along while a couple of friends played guitar. Now I want to learn guitar even more than ever though! I am going to borrow my friend’s guitar a lot in the next few weeks and if my love does not diminish I might even buy a cheap guitar to teach myself!
Well that's all I have to say today but I will write more as more exciting things happen! Miss you all!
Hasta Luego,
Hanna
P.S. Happy Birthday Heather! Sorry I couldn't be there to celebrate with you!