Finalmente! Descanso!

Sunday is my new favorite day. I have been in my bed all day, except for lunch and a shower and I think I will stay here until I go to sleep, leaving only for dinner. On Sundays, the Spanish sleep very late (2pm) and absolutely nothing is open. Lots of people go to Church in the evening -- even I might be Catholic if the churches in the US looked as beautiful and ornate as the cathedrals here. (That's actually a total lie, but the point is that the cathedrals, and pretty much every other building too, are incredible.) Besides mass, it seems like most granadinos just stay at home. My host father (Rafa) went to visit his grandsons and pick olives to make olive oil. That's how adorable he is.

Yesterday we went for a 11km hike (about 6.6 miles) in La Alpujarra which is a national park in the Sierra Nevadas. It was beautiful, but the drive there had so many switchbacks, I was constantly afraid the huge bus we were on would topple off the road. A stray dog (whom we named Blanco because he was black -- haha irony in Spanish!) followed us all the way over the mountain and helped lead the way. We thought about stealing him and buying a flute and going to the caves in the hills to join the hippies, but decided against it. After a short rest, my friends and I went out bar hopping (we hit 4 I think?), and enjoyed free sandwiches, free beers (what can we say? bartenders like us...) and caramel liquor shots all around. Que buena!

Tomorrow we are going on a scavenger hunt and my roommate and I are going to go to the supermercado to buy some snacks to keep in our house. Keep your eyes peeled for updates on Spanish grocery shopping.

Las tapas y karaoke y desayuno extrano

Some Spanish observations of worth:

1.Most of the bars in Granada have tapas served with any drink ordered. This is fantastic because tapas are plates of appetizer-like food that basically are free.

2. There is a very hysterical Irish bar where they have American songs to sing karaoke on Thursdays. And if you sing, you get a free shot! Last night my friends and I sang I Want it That Way. And not to be super cheesy, but I want it that way all the time -- fake Irish bars are wonderful.

3. I had apple-flavored yogurt yesterday for breakfast and today I had pinapple-flavored yogurt. Es muy extrano, no? Neither yogurt really tasted like its flavor, but both had legitimate pieces of the fruit in it. Not as bad as you would think. And yesterday for lunch we had bread and cheese and I was SO HAPPY. Thank you padres for knowing me so well even though I cannot speak your language.

4. Yesterday, after walking around a neighborhood with some amigos, we all went to a street with tons of teterias (tea shops) and it was BEAUTIFUL. Tons of strange and colorful clothes and the tea shops are very ornately decorated. I had Earl Gray (of course) and also a crepe which was delicious. Basically all the streets in Granada are these winding, beautiful cobblestone roads which are filled with people and stores and the typical antiquey Spanish architecture that makes every house and building look like the cutest country cottage ever. Maybe one day I will fit in here and it will not be glaringly obvious that I am American.

Side note: The Spanish people actually think that exchange students are given North Faces when they enroll in their programs because every single person has one. Needless to say, I am very self-conscious of my red fleece (although it is from L.L. Bean, not North Face. See how European I am? haha)

"Agua, agua, eh, eh, eh"

Estoy en Granada! Since finally leaving PHL, I have been to Madrid (briefly), Malaga (for one day), and Granada (since yesterday). It took me a grand total of 25 hours to get to Malaga from my house on Vashon, and I definitely almost missed my flight from Madrid to Malaga, but I did safely arrive. The Madrid airport is SO BIG that I actually had to take a bus on main roads and highways to get from terminal 1 to terminal 4. It took maybe ten to fifteen minutes. How absurd is that?

Upon arriving in Malaga I got lunch and a cellphone. This took hours. All of the lore about the Spanish taking long lunches -- it's true. And now I have a very odd cellphone as well. It has such weird commands and options -- I have a directory (address book), profiles (volume settings), in order to answer a call you must press "options" and then "answer" and everything is in military time. The following day (yesterday) we had orientation which was boring, but important I guess, and then went on a bus to Granada! Meeting my "parents" was quite fun! My roommate and I went back to their apartment and it's very cute! Que linda. We each have our own room and we're about 20 minutes from the Centro (the IES center, where my IES classes are) and also close to the University of Granada, though there are many "faculdades" (departments) that are located in different places. My Spanish is already improving, but is still nothing compared to my roommate. She is a brilliant Spanish speaker comparatively. This is extremely helpful for me because she helps me understand our padres (Conchi y Rafa, short for Rafael) and takes off pressure for me to formulate grammatically correct thoughts constantly. Brava Leah!

My family is extremely nice and wonderful, though. They are so supportive, always telling me I am so good at Spanish (lies) and that I have good pronunciation (truth). I can roll my "r"s so that helps a lot. Today, Rafa started singing Umbrella in Spanish (abajo de mi paraqua, aqua, aqua, eh, eh, eh) which was the most hysterical thing I have heard in about a year. I was in tears. He was also trying to do the macaraena because he thinks that´s what we do in America. He is very silly and jokes a lot -- very similar to a small, amiable child. Conchi is very nice and understanding, speaks slowly and is taking classes to learn English. She is so wonderful! And also la jefa (the boss) haha.

I have to go hiking with my group in aa neighborhood in the hills that overlooks the Alhambra and much of Granada which I'm sure will be beautiful and thankfully now it is warm and not 40 degrees like this morning.

The Philadelphia International Airport

It is my lucky pleasure to spend a lengthy four-hour layover in what I consider one of the worst airports in the country – PHL. Not only is there NO COFFEE (I have literally walked the entirety of the B and A concourses and there is not one coffee shop), but there is NO WIRELESS INTERNET. There is some (extremely unappreciated) irony in my technological isolation in the international concourse, the newest part of the airport.

So I am told to go to concourse B. I definitely didn’t JUST come from concourse B where there apparently is wireless and it for sure did not take me a full 20 minutes to walk to my gate (A26) at the very end of concourse A. But I have four hours to kill so, sure, why not carry all my luggage 20 minutes back to concourse B? Upon arriving at B3, I take my computer out, plug it in (score!) and look for wireless. No luck. I move to B5. It appears as though there is wireless, but nonetheless absolutely no pages will load after minutes of waiting. Let’s try B16. Now probably 25 minutes from my gate (and roughly where I disembarked my flight from Seattle), the wireless page finally loaded. I enter my credit card information since I did not just spend all that time and carry all that weight to not go online. It’s overpriced and at this point I’ll only have about two hours, but whatever. It refuses to read my credit card information. Twice. It’s a sign.

Extremely pleased, I decide to spend my time perusing the “PHL Marketplace” (read: a Sbarro, a gift shop creepily called Wisteria, and Borders). The bookstore actually does lighten my spirits and I decide to buy I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell because it seems like an easy read that might actually get me through my long flight. Why did I not bring any DVDs?

Now I am back at the lonely hole at the end of this godforsaken airport where there is only a McDonalds (possibly the last place I want to go after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma during my SEA-PHL flight). Still 1.5 hours from take-off (assuming, optimistically, that we leave on time) and twelve hours from Malaga.

Still stateside and stalking bunnies

One of the great joys of life is cute bunnies so I thought this was a good thing to share before I have any actual Granada pictures to post.

I will refrain from posting more pictures of other cute animals (penguins) or other obnoxiously adorable photos I have found while stumbling away my time.

LESS THAN THREE WEEKS LEFT IN THE STATES! Leeeettttssss goooooooooooooooooo.