oops...it's been another month :)

(Rooftops of the Albayzín near dusk)

Hello to my hundreds of loyal readers :) I know you've missed me quite terribly. You've probably wondered, where did Laura go? Did she get eaten by Spaniards? Well, the answer is, I have been either too lazy or too busy to update the blog in quite a while, and have had lots of untold adventures since I last wrote (Madrid, Córdoba, beaches of the area, Emilie coming to visit, and chilling in Granada).

(Inside the Gran Mezquita [Great Mosque] of Cordoba)


(EMILIE BRADY in Granada!! It was awesome.)

(Visiting the beach...Punta de la Mona, near La Herradura)

As the semester progresses, I am falling more and more in love with Granada. I love walking down the street in the morning and smelling fresh-baked bread, and walking back at night and smelling kebabs. I love the fact that I walk everywhere, and basically have hours of people-watching built into my days as I meander around the city or rush to my classes. I of course love the free tapas in bars...someday I'll have to take pictures of them for you. I love my internship and talking to my co-workers and the fact that we eat breakfast every day together. I love the history of all of the buildings and learning about the architecture.

(A gateway in the Alhambra palace.)

There are lots of things that I miss, too. A lot of these things are food items, because it's me. For example, ketchup. (I had a huge craving for something with ketchup today, and I don't know why.) Also, tortillas that are not omelettes. I miss being able to cuddle with my sisters and call my friends and family whenever I need them (or they need me) and not having to think about the time difference.

I'm happy in Granada now, though, especially since it's been beautiful and sunny and pretty warm for the past week or so. I decided that the rain was a good thing, because without it, I wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the sunshine.

I'm about to embark on a week-long adventure with Betsy and Randi to England and Scotland, so I'll try to update you all on my adventures post-trip!

One month!

It's hard to believe that I've been in Spain for a month and that it's almost March...I feel like I just got here and that I have so much more to learn. However, I'm definitely getting into a routine and am getting used to daily life and knowing what I'm supposed to do, which makes me feel more Spanish and less like a bumbling tourist all the time.

(Part of daily life...Negrita sitting on things that are important and looking defiant.)

My classes are going well thus far, and currently my favorite class is Islamic Art and Architecture. At first it was really overwhelming, both because of the professor's accent in Spanish and because of the sheer amount of information we were receiving, but now we've had a few weeks to adjust, and I love learning about the architectural features of buildings and then actually seeing them up close and personal. We're going to Córdoba next week to see the mosque there, which is one of the oldest still standing mosques in the world.

I've also started my internship at the Hospital Universitario Virgen de las Nieves, where I am working in the Palliative Care/Pain Management units. I go there every Monday and Wednesday for 5 hours and work with the psychologists and social worker...thus far, I've mostly been observing, listening, reading about what they do in the unit, and asking a billion questions. The people who work there are all very friendly and have been great about answering and encouraging my questions. Yay!

Other than that, life's been pretty normal over here. It's finally started to warm up a little bit and the sun even came out for a couple days this week! Yesterday I think it was around 60 degrees for part of the day, which was lovely, since my umbrella is starting to rebel against all the rain by sticking out at funny angles. Yesterday evening, I also went to karaoke night at Hannigan's, which is an Irish pub in our neighborhood. It was a lot of fun, but quite the interesting experience to hear what American songs the Spanish people decided to sing (for example, Mack the Knife is very popular. What?). My friends convinced me to sing with them eventually, so we did a rousing rendition of "My Girl" for the audience. I'm not sure if they cheered at the end because they liked us or because we were done, but it wasn't as terrifying as I thought it would be, and we got a free drink out of it. Smiles all around.

Stay tuned for future updates on my weekend in Madrid (I'm leaving in a short while), my first hostel experience, and the exploits of the Spanish!

The rain in Spain, old clothes, and Humphrey Bogart

Although I went to sleep last night without any specific plans, today has been a fascinating and very unexpected day. I woke up this morning when the phone rang at about 9 a.m. I didn't really think anything of it, and fell back asleep until about 10:30, at which point I got up and went to say good morning to Hortensia. She was in the living room-type area with my roommate, and they had just finished listening to a radio interview with Marcos Ana, a famous Spanish poet who had been a political prisoner for 23 years. To our surprise, Hortensia informed us that Marcos Ana had actually been imprisoned with her father, who was a political prisoner for 16 years during Franco's rule in Spain. "From the time I was little" (she indicated with her hand measuring the height of a small child) "until when I was about your age, my father was in prison." He was a university professor, but also played the violin, and Hortensia showed us photographs of her father in prison and also a drawing that was done of him, with a poem dedicated to her inscribed on the bottom. It was pretty amazing to hear about that and to see the pictures of her father, and kind of put my petty concerns into perspective at the time.

After we ate breakfast together, Lauren and I went to a museum down the street from our apartment, which is called Casa de los Tiros, which roughly translates to "house of the shots" or "house with the guns." The name came from the fact that the building used to be on the outskirts of the city, so the owner of the building (it used to be a house) put guns on the top to protect himself from robbers. The museum was mostly filled with art and artifacts from Granada's lengthy history...my favorites were the drawings of different parts of the Alhambra and photographs of people in Granada's neighborhoods.

When we got back, Hortensia had cooked us a dish that she called "ropa vieja," which means "old clothes" in English. I thought that was pretty funny, but it's kind of like the American concept of leftovers, with a twist. She took parts of two dishes that we had eaten the day before (chicken and chickpeas/vegetables) and combined them with more vegetables to make a new dish, which was delicious. One thing that I've noticed about Spanish culture is that there is very little waste, with food, water, garbage, etc. For example, instead of throwing away orange peels and nut shells, Hortensia burns them to create a sort of potpourri, which smells really good.

After a relaxing afternoon, I decided that I wanted to go to see The Maltese Falcon (they called it "El halcón maltés"), which is a Humphrey Bogart film that was part of the classic film festival that's been going on all week. The movie was in a cinema in the shopping mall across town, so I braved the rain (which has been happening for about a week...so much for the supposed drought) and walked over. I got some yummy popcorn (which is called "palomitas" here, which translates to "little doves"...I'm confused) and watched the movie, which was in English with Spanish subtitles. It was cool to see how things are translated, or not translated, from one language to another and the reactions from the audience, and that Humphrey is popular over here, too.

Now I'm back at the apartment, eating lemon yogurt and a peanut butter sandwich, and contemplating what to do this evening. Despite the rainy coldness of the past few days, I'm truly in love with this city and how, in the same day, I can witness so much history and so much innovation. It's pretty incredible.

La vida diaria (Or, How my Spanish is "getting better")

So, as of today, I've been in Granada for two weeks. I'm already starting to feel like I know the city, and have been exploring more every day, whether it is a different neighborhood or street or a new cafeteria or bar. I have yet to meet a lot of Spanish folk, but I have been trying to talk to people in Spanish, and succeeding some of the time. Yesterday during lunch, my señora, Hortensia, told Lauren and I that she could already see a lot of improvement in our speaking, which made me pretty happy.

(This is my street! On the right is a well-known theater, Teatro Alhambra, and on the left is possibly a school. I'm not sure.)

I started my IES classes on Monday, which have been going pretty well. I'm in an advanced Spanish class, an anthropology course titled The Experience of the Other, and a course called Islamic Art and Architecture of Spain and its Impact. I'm pretty excited about these classes, because they both involve using Granada as our classroom and visiting several sites in the city. I will also be taking a course at the University of Granada, which won't start for another week and a half, and I'll be interning at a hospital here and taking an internship seminar (more updates to come on the internship soon...once I find out for myself)!

This past weekend, I went to Sevilla and Ronda with IES, which was a great trip. In Sevilla, we got to see the Alcazar, which started as the old Moorish castles and gardens and was eventually taken over by the Christians (like pretty much everything else here...go figure), as well as the Cathedral and the Museum of Fine Arts. I also went with a few other students on a bike ride around the city and along the river - the highlight of my day was definitely seeing the rowers on the river...it made me miss my crew team!! We were lucky to have gorgeous weather in the mid-60's, and it was cool to explore a new city. In Ronda, we saw the old bullfighting ring and explored the old part of the city, which was amazing, since it was built on a cliff and thus a very important city, strategically, to control in the past.

(This is a picture of part of Ronda...I didn't get a great picture of the gorgeous bridge, but you can see the big drop-off there...wouldn't want to fall out of one of those windows.)

I had a lot of fun traveling, but I was definitely glad to get back to Granada. I love it here, and I am really happy I chose this city in Spain. It seems like there are a lot less touristy areas here, and less American influences (although I hear American music all the time and there is a super-nice Burger King in the main plaza...). I'll keep you all posted on my encounters with the Spanish and my misadventures in the city (most of them so far have involved our angry cat and my slippers). Os amo desde Granada!

Los primeros días

(Above is a view of the Alhambra palace. Below is a view of the city - I took both pictures from lookout points in el Albaicín, which is an old Arabic or Moorish neighborhood)



Well, I've been in Spain since Monday, and since my internet at home now functions very well, it looks like it's time to update you all on my life! I landed in Málaga on Tuesday morning, and despite the rather miserable flight (think lots of turbulence and nausea) getting out of the airport with all of my belongings was surprisingly simple. The customs people hardly even looked at my passport, and my bag was one of the first ones out. Maybe that was to make up for the rocky last few hours...

Anyway, we got to the hotel in Málaga without any issues (in my second-ever taxi ride...interestingly enough, both taxis that I have taken in my life have been in foreign countries) and did some business-y things, like buying a European cell phone (which feels like a Barbie phone. Seriously. The buttons are all squishy and it's super-lightweight). We walked around the city a bit, but at that point I had been awake for about 30 hours, and I was ready to crash, so after dinner that night I went right to bed.
(This is the view from my hotel.)

On Wednesday, after some brief orientation activities and a whole lot of information about Spain, we took three buses to Granada. Although I had been feeling a little bit iffy about Málaga, the ride to Granada turned me completely around. The city is located in the middle of the Sierra Nevada, a large mountain chain, and the drive there was through the mountains and little towns in the hills with farms, and since it was rainy the clouds around the mountains made it look so beautiful and majestic.(On the road from Málaga to Granada - from the bus window...)

We met our host families once we got into Granada, and after that we went home. Thus began the first adventure of my stay in Spain: Hortensia (my host mother) was very worried because her apartment hadn't had electricity for the day because someone had hit the transformer in the neighborhood and knocked out the power. Sure enough, when we got to the apartment, there were no lights. This made carrying our heavy suitcases up the stairs very interesting, but we made it without dying, fortunately, and got a brief tour of the apartment by candlelight.

Since we couldn't see anything in the apartment, Hortensia took us out for some tapas and dinner. It felt kind of funny at first to go bar-hopping with my 65+-year-old señora, but it's part of the culture here to enjoy a drink and food and talk to people in the neighborhood. At the second bar that we went to, we had a conversation with a couple of the people that were there (it was before 10, so the places were pretty much empty), and despite my rather broken Spanish, I think that we managed to communicate pretty well.

We started orientation classes yesterday, which are based on language level and involve an interesting mix of language instruction, a crash course in Spanish history, politics, geography, and culture, scavenger hunts, and walking around the city with our professor, whose name is Fabiola and who talks really fast. At first I couldn't understand anything she was saying, because granadinos (people from Granada) have a distinct accent that I had not heard before, but today I felt more confident and talked to her a lot about the area and also about Maine, since she had visited before.

Anyway, there's a lot more to tell, but I'll save it for another post. Based on my first impressions, Granada is a beautiful, fascinating city with a lot of places to explore. One thing that I love already is that it is a walking city, meaning that at any time of the day, there are people walking along the streets, talking with their neighbors, and enjoying being outside. It's considered weird and unhealthy to shut yourself in your room when you could be taking a walk (like I'm doing now...oops). I hope that I'll be able to explore more, meet more Spaniards and granadinos, and report back to you all frequently!

Os amo muchísimo :)

Housing assignment!

So, after biting my nails for a week and probably complaining to too many friends, I got my housing assignment for Granada today! I will be living, along with another IES student, with Hortensia Peñarocha Mingorance, who lives in the old Jewish neighborhood in Granada with her cat. Barring a massive power struggle between the cat and me (which, historically, has been problematic, since cats tend to dislike me and I tend to be equally wary), I am really excited to meet my señora and my roommate and see the area. I did some investigating on GoogleMaps (the best website ever!!) and it looks like I'll only be about a 10-15 minute walk to the IES center, where I'll be taking most of my classes, and am not too much farther from the Universidad de Granada.

That's pretty much the only update I have, other than the fact that I am leaving in five days (yikes!) and am equally excited and freaking out. I have internet access at la casa, so I'll post another update when I'm actually in Spain and not in Maine.

Two weeks!

I'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing, so forgive me if this post is very silly.

That being said...

Hello! I'm Laura! And I'm about to head to Granada, Spain for the spring semester. I'll be studying with IES Abroad as well as at the University of Granada and staying with a host family, whose identity is yet to be determined. I'm leaving for Spain on the 25th of January, which is very, very soon. At this point, I'm wicked excited to go, but have a whole lot of stuff to get done before I go, mostly involving figuring out how to fit my entire life in a suitcase and a backpack.

Anyway, I wanted to start this blog to keep you all updated on my whereabouts, the adventures and misadventures that I may or may not get myself into, and to keep in touch with people if phone lines are not always feasible methods of communication. I'm hoping to post about once a week, but I don't know about the Internet availability quite yet, so I'll do what I can.

I hope you enjoy this and don't think that I'm too crazy! I love you all, and keep me posted on your lives as well!