Yarn Store!

I found a yarn store! Knitting isn't really a popular hobby in this area of Spain because it never really gets that cold so I was extremely happy to find this little store. I found a pattern for a scarf I want to make for my friends Tony and Josiah so I walked in today after my class was over and I got to say, the whole experience kind of crushed my confidence in my Spanish speaking skills.  Knitting terminology is something that I never thought to learn in Spanish and then with the difference beween the metric system and the needle sizes, I was totally lost.  It took me a good 15-20 minutes to figure out how to tell the man working that I needed needles let alone what size I need.  Thankfully he was really nice and helpful and I eventually got all the supplies I needed.

A comer mi nina!

Jamon, jamon, jamon!


Ham is really big here.   I'm pretty sure that Carmen calls anything that comes from a pig, ham.  Last night we had eat this for dinner:

It's pork, tomato, and onions all on top of mashed potatos. It was quite delicious.

We also eat soup at the beginning of every dinner.   It's pretty much always a chicken broth based soup with some type of shaped noodles and vegetables.

Italiano - Italian

This semester I'm taking a class in Italian along with all my Spanish classes.  Italian was suppose to start today but it is at the same time as my intensive month class, that doesn't end until Friday, so I'll have to miss the first 2 days of class.  I will actually be taking my Italian class in Spanish so that could be a little challenging but I'm sure I'll be able to work it out.  I've always wanted to learn Italian, having sung in Italian many many times, but I would never have to time at UK.  Here I have the time, so I figured why not go for it.

Italian is also a lot more useful in Spain than it is is America.  There are a lot of turist from Italy who come to Granada. About a week ago a man stopped my friends and I and asked if you spoke Italian and if we could tell him how to get to the cathedral.  Italian and Spanish are similar enough that we could at least point him in the right direction. 

Bull Fights are NOT Vegan

Yesturday I went to a bull fight with Greta.  All our guy friends chickened out so it was just us.  It took us about 40 minutes to walk over to the Plaza de Toros and our tickets were 5 euros each. It was definitely worth it for the experience.

I don't know how much you guys know about bull fights but they aren't exactly the most animal friendly event and the are definitely not for the sqwimish. I won't go into all the details but I will say it is quite bloody.  I spent a lot of time in my high school Spanish studying bull fights so I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.        I can't really say the same for the girls around us.  I've actually talked to people who didn't know that the bull is killed at the end. You can imagine how shocking it would be to think that you're just going to watch some men in funny suits wave a cape in front of a bull and then...well like I said, the bull is killed. I was the calm and collected person who was like "It's going to get gruesome now, you might want to close your eyes."  In my opinion, what made this bull fight particular harsh, is that the matadors were not professionals yet and they were really inexperienced.  If you are watching a really good matador the bull dies so fast that it barely has to suffer.  The matador we saw had to stab the bull 3 different times and that just causes even more unnecessary suffering for the bull.

While a bull fight isn't exactly something you say you enjoyed,  I did actually kind of like it.  It's a really interesting tradition to me.  For followers of bull fights, it's considered a fine art and not a sport.  I don't necessarily agree that it's an art, but I think I know enough about the history of bull fights that I can at least appreciate them for what they are.  Bull fights go back to a time of bull worship and sacrifice.  It is suppose to be considered a great honor for the bull to die in the bull fight.  I would definitely spend money to go see another one.  I would really like to participate in the traditional audience roles.  Traditional audience members have a panuelo blanco or a white handkerchief and at the end of the fight, if they liked the matador they wave their handkerchief.  The amount of handkerchiefs being wave determines the price the matador recieves. They either get nothing, one ear, both ears, or both ears and the tail.

Here's a little video you to watch if you want a taste of what a bullfight's like.  This matador is Cayetano Ordonez.  He is one of the most famous matadors currently.  He's also an Armani model.

A que estoy escuchando

David Bisbal - Ave Maria

So my teacher only really showed us this video because she thinks it's funny.  According to her this guy is really popular in America, but I've never heard of him.  She also says he is a huge sex symbol in Spain.  I let you decide what you think.

Rain?!?

So of course the day after I post a blog about how great the weather is and how it never rains, it's going to be a overcast and actually rain.  Greta and I were going to go sit in a plaza and use internet there that is not only free but we don't have to buy a drink to sit there, but as soon as we left the house it started drizzling and now I'm sitting in a cafe eatting churros and chocolate. Well I guess it had to rain sometime.

Hace bien tiempo todo el tiempo

The weather in Granada has been absolutely perfect...all the time.  My title translates to "It's good weather all the time".  This morning I saw the first cloud I've seen since I got here. I actually read in the new paper yesturday that it hasn't rained in Granada since June 7th, or 105 days.  It's part of the reason that water prices here are so high, but I am willing to only take a two minute shower if I can have weather like this all the time.  Carmen told me that October can be pretty rain, but I don't really believe her.  It gets pretty hot here too, like mid 30's for celsius or mind 90's in fahrenheit.   It is starting to cool down a little though. Tomorrow it's only suppose to be an nice fall like  28(82) degrees.  It's almost time to break out the sweaters.

A que estoy escuchando - What I am listening to

I have a teacher who plays us a different CD every day.  I've really enjoyed learning about all these different Spanish artist and O've really liked everything she played for us.  So I think I'm going to try to write a weekly post about one of the artist we heard that week.

The artist of the week is a band called Macaco from Barcelona. Most of their songs are in Spanish or Catalan but they also sing in Portuguese, French, English and Italian. This song was pretty famous here a few years ago.  I really like the video because it features a lot of other famous Spanish speaking people like Javier Bardem and Juanes.

La Alhambra

Last Wednesday, I got to take a tour of La Alhambra when I came to Spain in high school, Granada was my favorite city out of the six we visited and the main reason it was my favorite is La Alhambra. It is this incredible palace that was built in the mid 14^th century by the Moors, who had control over this area of Spain at the time.  It was conquered by Isabella and Ferdinand (the same ones who gave Columbus the money to sail the ocean blue) in 1492 (when Columbus sailed the ocean blue).  Two of the most important parts of La Alhambra are The Hall of Ambassadors and the Court of Loins.  The Hall of Ambassadors is the room in which Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand gave Columbus their support to sail to the New World.  The Court of Loins is probably the most famous part of La Alhambra.  It’s a large patio with a fountain that has 12 lions surrounding.  In Spain, lions are very symbolic of strength and courage.  Loins are pretty much everywhere here. The fountain is being renovated right now so we couldn’t see it so I took this picture from Wikipedia.  The walls of the palace are covered in stucco carvings.  One Arabic phrase is repeated many times throughout the whole palace. It means “No winner besides God.”

It’s really hard to describe the feeling you get when you walk through a place like La Alhambra. It’s just like to think about everything that has happened where you are standing makes you feel so insignificant and really lucky at the same time. The first thing that ran through my head was “Wow, this building is 700 hundred years old and I’m 19.  That’s like 30 something times my age.”  I really never felt so young and inexperienced in my life.  Then the next thought I had was “I am so lucky to be here. So many people will never get to experience this.  I am standing in the same place as Christopher Columbus!!!” I feel like I am the luckiest person in the world to be here.

One of the first nights I was in Granada I was walking around the city with some friends and someone asked if we would ever get use to living in a place like this and one of my friends said “I don’t think I’ll ever get use to beauty.” I made so much fun of him when he said that, but I get it now.   I went into the Alhambra tour expecting to be a little bored because I’ve already seen, I have the pictures, I know the history and I was completely wrong.  I learned so many new things that I didn’t hear last time and the beauty of a place like La Alhambra is something that you really don’t ever get use to.  Pictures can never even begin to show how beautiful it really is.  I will probably get use to living here eventually but I will never get use to the beauty of Granda.

A comer mi nina!

Every meal, Greta and I get called to the table by Carmen yell "A comer mi nina." I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned that Carmen is an amazing cook, but I going to say it again.  Carmen is a really really good cook. And her food is pretty healthy too.  We eat a lot of vegetables, chicken and eggs.  I am going to try to do a weekly post called "A comer mi nina" with some pictures of what we are eatting. We'll see if I can remember to do that.

This is mine and Greta's favorite meal so far.  We've eaten this for lunch at least once a week since we've gotten here.  If I remember correctly it's called Pixta.  It's zuchini, onions and poblano peppers.  She always serves it with a fried egg, but I'm not really sure if that is the traditional Spanish way of eatting this dish or if that's just a Carmen thing. She seems to serve fried eggs with just about everything we eat for lunch. It is really good with bread dipped in it.  I have already started writing a list of all the recipes I want before I go back to the States and this is definitely on the top.

I think I also mentioned that Carmen really likes her fruit.  We have fruit for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And we take a piece of fruit with us to class as a snack.  Everytime she goes to the grocery store, she comes back with 3 grocery bags filled with different types of fruit and I always think that there is no way we will be able to eat all of it before it goes bad, but we alway do. 

If you give a 2 year old a camera...

My host mother, Carmen, has a two year old grand daughter, also named Carmen. Baby Carmen spends every week day at our little house while her parents are at work so every day when I get home from class she comes running up to me say "Juega conmigo Grace, Juega conmigo" or "Play with me Grace!" Her favorite thing to play with is "plati" or playdoh.  She also really enjoys taking pictures and playing with my Ipod.  I played her this song and now she just wants to listen to it over and over again.  This is what happened last time I let her play with my camera.

Desayuno - Breakfast

Breakfast in Spain is extremely different than in the States.  In America, we learn that “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” In Spain, if you eat breakfast at all it is really small. Most people just eat toast and coffee and sometimes fruit juice.  In class the other day, we were talking about the biggest differences between Spain and America and every person in my class said breakfast is the biggest difference.  We all said that bread, juice and coffee is just not enough food for breakfast. To that, our teacher said “But bread, juice and coffee is a huge breakfast.”

My breakfast everyday consists of packaged, premade toast with Nutella and coffee.  Sometimes I eat a piece of fruit but most of the time, no.  Nutella is very popular is Spain.  In America there’s commercials advertising Wheaties with fruit and juice and milk as the breakfast of champions.  In Spain there are commercials that advertise bread with Nutella and coffee as the breakfast of champions.  Carmen bought a box of Corn Flakes so we could have cereal for breakfast but I prefer the toast.  It was a little hard to eat that little for breakfast at first because we don’t eat lunch until 2:30 and I was getting hungry by 10:30 but now, I’m use to it and I actually prefer a smaller breakfast.

La Dia de La Virgen

This past Thursday, I didn't have class because of the festival of the Virgen of Granada. On this day, the whole city shuts down and everyone goes to the church and brings flowers as an offering to the Virgen.  Greta and I took a little walk over there to check out the festivel but we decide not to offer flowers to the Virgen because the line to the church was literally half a  mile long.  It was actually kind of funny because on our walk to the church, we so no one. Ever store and restaurant was closed and there was seriously nobody around us.  Then we turn on the street the church is one and it was completely packed.  There were flower stands everywhere.  The only stores that were open that day in the whole city were the flower stands and the ice cream stores on the street of the church. It was really interesting to get to experince something like that.  This is a video of some of the music they have to celebrate.

Vamos a la Playa - Let's go to the Beach

Sorry, I haven't posted for a while.  I've gotten a little busy and I just couldn't find the time this week.

This past weekend, I took a trip to the beach with some friends.  We went to Salabreña which is an hour bus ride away from Granada.  The beach is on the Mediterranean.  I don’t know if any of you have been to a beach like this, but it was completely different than any beach I’ve ever been to.  First off, the sand is rocks, like little pebbles that, yes are beautiful but kind of dig into your feet.  It wasn’t that soft powdery sand we had on the Atlantic.  But the uncomfortable sand is really my only complaint about this beach.  The water was absolutely gorgeous.  It was bright blue and completely see through.  I just kept thinking of the Charleston beaches and the murky brown water that was there.

But the biggest difference I saw between Spanish beaches and American beaches was the people.  The Spanish women are so much more confident with their bodies the American women are.  Pretty much every single woman, no matter their size, wears a bikini.  There were women, not only 3x my size but 3x my age wearing bikinis.  On top of that, most women go topless and they act like they aren’t over exposed at all.  It’s just a completely normal thing.  I think that’s one of the reasons I find Spaniards so attractive.  It’s not like they are really that much better looking than Americans (well, some of them are) but every single person in Spain walks around like they are the most beautiful person in the World and that is almost enough to make it true.  The way they just accept who they are and what their bodies look like without trying to change themselves is incredible to me.  It’s a very nice change from America, were it seems like every other commercial is for Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem or for some pill to make you skinny.  I have not seen one ad for weight loss products while I’ve been here. 

So on that note, I’ll leave you with a music video that my friend Josiah showed me.  This song is actually pretty popular in Spain right now.  It’s on the radio and I actually heard it in the discoteca the other night. I personally  think it’s ridiculous.

Pasapalabra

Well, I've already found my favorite Spanish television show.  My host mom, Carmen, pretty much always has the TV on. Her two favorite shows in the afternoon are Salvame and Pasapalabra.  I would say that Salvame is like the Spanish Jerry Springer, but they talk so fast, I've never been able to understand a single thing they say, so I could be completely wrong. All I understand is that they fight a lot.  Pasaplabra comes on at 8 here and I think I might be becoming addicted to it.  It's a game show that has like 5 challenges that the contestents need to complete.  My 2 favorite challenges are La Pista Musical and El Rosco.  In La Pista Musical, a few seconds of a song is played and the players have to guess what song it is.  If they can't figure it out, they can have up to five "pistas" or hints. El Rosco is the main challenge of the show.  One person from each team is chosen to play and they have to guess 26 different words that all start with a different letter of Spanish alphabet and if they guess all the words then their team wins the money thats in the pot.  The pot is a lot like the lottery in American because every day that no one gets all the words right, the pot gets bigger.  I think right now, it's up to 822,000 euros which is $11, 470, 913. My Spanish vocabulary has improved so much just from watching this show.  Every night I sit in front of the tv with my little pink notebook writing down all the words I don't know so I can look them up later.

Here's a youtube video of El Rosco. This guy is really good. Most people either get a word wrong or say Pasapalabra after 3 or 4 words.

Los Primeros Dias en Granada - The First days in Granada

Plaza de Isabel la Catolica

I can’t believe I’ve been in Granada for 5 days now.  It’s such an incredibly beautiful and laid back city. Granada is in the Andalucía region of Spain, 30 minutes from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and an hour and 30 minutes from the Mediterranean coast. While I’m here I will be staying with a Spanish woman named Carmen.  Carmen has been absolutely great so far.  Life with her is going to be so different then what I’m use to.  Carmen never wakes up before I leave for class so she lays breakfast out for me at night so it’s ready for me when I get up.  Breakfast in Spain is really simple. Just bread with Nutella and coffee.  Then I come home for lunch around 2:30.  Lunch is like the main meal here and Carmen is a great cook.  The first day she made paella with chicken.  After lunch is siesta time.  Carmen always says “Siesta es obligatorio.” I haven’t really gotten use to sleeping during the day yet but it’s definitely growing on me. Then dinner is at 9:30 and that’s usually a little smaller than lunch and is usually something like soup or frozen pizza.  Carmen is a really laid back person and as long as we don’t mess with the typical daily schedule, she pretty much lets us do our own thing.  She actually wants us to go out, drink the wine and just have a good time.  The only real downfall to this family stay is that there is no internet in our apartment so we have to go to either the ISA office or an internet café to get online. This is going to make things like Skype nearly impossible because I can online get online in pretty crowded places.

As far as the study program goes, they really wasted no time in starting classes.  The first day we were in Granada we had to take a placement test to see with classes we can take. In order to get credit at UK for the classes I take here, I need to take them in Spanish and in order to do that I needed to get a level 4 or higher on the placement test. I ended up in level five so I’m pretty happy about where I am. The day after the test, classes started. Right know, we are in the intensive month of language class so I’m technically only taking one class that lasts from 9am-1pm.  The class is 4 hours long and I have one teacher for the first 2 hours and another for the last 2 hours.   My class is also really small. There are only 9 other students.  It’s a big change from UK where my smallest class had 30-35 people.  So far I really like my class.  The other students are a lot of fun to talk to and the teachers.  It’s kind of hard to judge the work load for this class right now because we’ve only had 2 days of class. But then again we only have like 20 days left.

Hasta Luego!

Toledo

This morning, we woke up around 7:30 to leave Madrid for Toledo by 9. The drive to Toledo was only about an hour and a half.  As soon as we got there we went on walking tour through the city.  My favorite place on the tour was the convent because we learned a lot about the history of Queen Isabel and how she came to power.  The way I understood the story is that Isabel’s brother was the king of Spain and he had had a wife for about 10 years and they hadn’t been able to have a child.  The way the tour guide said it was “Su pene no funcionó”.  So the king divorced his wife and married again and this wife got pregnant…with someone else’s child.  So then he was dying and he had no heir so he changed the law that said there could not be a queen of Spain and Isabel became the queen.  

 Something else we learned that I thought was pretty cool is that there are two places that are thought to be where marzipan was first made.  One is like Northern Germany or something like that and the other is Toledo.  It’s said that the nuns at one of the convents in Toledo need to cook something to eat but all they had was sugar and almonds and when they mixed it together it reminded them of bread dough so they called it maza pan which is bread dough in Spanish.  I did get to try a piece at one of the most famous Mazapan stores in Toledo and I actually really liked it.

Another little fun fact is that the flag of Toledo is really really bright fuchsia and in Spanish it’s pronounced fuck-sia.

That night I went out with six other people from the group.  We first went to a nice restaurant and shared tapas and sangria.  We didn’t really know what to order so we asked our waiter, Esteban to pick four things that he thought we should try and he picked so really incredible food for us.  We had a ton of chorizo and potatoes.  It was a very good meal and priced well too.  50 euros divided by seven of us.

After dinner, we took a walk around the city to see it at night.  We ended up walking up this hill that was more of a residential area than the city. At first we were a little worried that we might not be in the best area of the city, but then we came across a group of women sitting outside eating dinner together.  We stood and talked to these women for about 30 minutes and they let us try a little bit of their food.  It was really interesting to hear about their lives and why they love Toledo so much. Most of them had lived in Toledo their whole lives and they are completely content with never leaving.  But of course, it’s such a beautiful city, I feel like if I lived there, I would be pretty happy to stay too.

Hasta Luego!

El Segundo Dia - The second day

Ok so it's really been about a week since I've been in Spain but I'm really behind and there is so much you need to know.

The second day in Madrid started at the Museum of La Reina Sofia. This is a pretty large museum of modern art.  The building is an old sanatorium for TB patients and it kind of has that old hospital look to it.  We had a tour guide who took us around to show us the most famous paintings by three very famous Spanish painters, Salvidor Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro. My favorite painting was La Guernica by Pablo Picasso.   

Picasso painted this during the Spanish civil war as a response to the bombing of a small town called Guernica.

After the Museum we went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).  The royal family doesn't live there any more but they still sign important documents and have important parts and stuff like that.

After the Palace, we had free time for the rest of the day. A group of friends and I went to Plaza Mayor, just to walk around.  I took the by a cute jewelry store that I remember going to the last time I was in Spain.  It's really cool to see places that I've been to before.

Well I'm still not really caught up to whats going on right now but I'll get there eventually.

Hasta Luego!