A que estoy escuchando

Lucio Battisti - E penso a te

So this song is actually Italian.  My Italian professor played it for us they other day in class because it uses a lot of the vocabulary and grammar we have been learning in class. Believe it or not,  I can actually understand what this song is saying!!!  Well most of it.  It about being so in love with a woman that you can't eat or sleep or work, all you do is think of her. This is actually a pretty old song, I think it's from 1970 or 1971.

Enjoy!

La Casa de las Locas!!

So it has been brought to my attention that, after being in Spain for almost 2 months, I still not blogged about the apartment I am living in.  It's a pretty wild and crazy place sometimes.  Greta, my "roommate", and I live with a single 60 year old woman named Carmen, which seems like it would be a pretty calm place but oh no.  Between the grandaughter, the daughter, niece, nephew, sister, and all the other visitors we have all time, it get's a little crazy in our little apartment.



Greta and I did get very lucky, and we each have our own rooms, though they are very small rooms, just big enough for a bed and a desk.

We also have a little kitchen, where we eat our meals.  The kitchen isn't big enough for a table so we eat at a little bar with stools.

It's a little cozy, but it's perfect for just the three of us

A comer mi nina!

Chipirones en su tinta

While I was in Málaga I just had to eat seafood and I wanted to try something new so I ordered up a tapa size portion of Chimpirones en su tinta or Cuttlefish in its ink.  I honestly chose to try this because I saw an episode of the Travel Channels show, Bizarre Foods, when Andrew Zimmer goes to Spain and ate octopus in its own ink and I wanted to try something similar. When the dish came out I got to admit, it looked pretty gross. Kind of like a baby squid swimming in tar or oil.  But it actually it was delicious.  It tasted a lot like calamari and the ink didn’t really taste that much like anything, it just had a very strong seafood, salty flavor. I would definitely  get it again sometime.

Rain in Granada??? Just doesn't seem right.

So it has been raining...for the past three days.  Saturday morning when I woke up for my morning jog there was something wet falling from the sky.  It took me a little while to realize it was actually raining.  Then Sunday I got woken up around 10am (after being out until 4am) to a thunderstorm.  Yes, a thunderstorm. Of course, being the heavy sleeper I am, I basically just acknowledged the sound and went back to sleep for a few hours. And yet again, today has just been a drizzly, cold, dreary day.  I'm starting to believe that October might actually be the start of the "rainy season" in Granada.  It has also been quite chilly compared to what we're use to here. I might even have to buy a coat sometime.  The weather change is actually kind of nice.  It's really getting me into the Halloween mood.  The stores here actually have Halloween costumes and Halloween candy. This weekend, because the weather was so gross, Greta and had a little movie fest.  We watch Nightmare Before Christmas, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Misery. And now that I have my Halloween pillow cases, I am really set for this holiday weekend.

A que estoy escuchando

Anni b Sweet

Well, since I just went to Malaga, why not talk about a musicain from Malaga. Even though she's Spanish she mostly sings in English.  She's a relatively new artist.  She just got signed to Subterfuge Records (Spain's largest idependent label) in 2007. 

This is her song Lalala. 

Cathedral and Royal Chapel

Today I took a little walk through the Cathedral and the Royal Chapel with a small group from ISA.  The chapel is where The Catholic Queen and King, Isabel and Fernando are buried.  They are called the Catholics because they were the first catholics to have control over all of Spain.  They took control of Granada from the Moors in 1492, the same year they sent Columbus to find a way to India.  The Chapel and tomb are extremely elaborate, what else can you expect from the first official Queen of Spain.  It's pretty unique that they are buried in Granada.  Almost every other King or Queen of Spain is buried in El Escorial en Segovia but Isabel wanted to be buried in Granada.  Sometime in November, I'm going back to both places with my History of Art class to focus more on the architecture and the art work in the Cathedral and Chapel.

Malaga and Ronda

This weekend we went on an excursion offered through ISA to the cities of Ronda and Málaga.  Our first stop was Ronda.  It was about a 3 hour bus ride from Granada. We didn’t have a lot of time in Ronda, just a 2 hour walking tour and about an hour and a half for lunch, but the walking tour gave us a pretty good idea of what the city is like. Ronda is a smaller city surrounded by mountains and vineyards.  Like every city in Andalucía, it was at one point under Arab rule and got taken over by Isabel and Fernando so there is a huge Muslim influence and most of the important buildings like the Cathedral, were originally constructed by the Muslims.   We ended the tour by going to see the old Muslim baths.  We watched a video about the whole process of bathing and it was really interesting because they literally spent hours bathing.

After lunch we got back on the bus for an hour or so and went to Málaga.  Málaga was much more my style because it’s a coastal city that actually reminds me a lot of Charleston, SC. Once we got there we just had free time the whole night so my friends and I went to the beach for a while and went to a few bars for tapas. The next morning we took a tour of the city.  My favorite part of the whole weekend was going to the Pablo Picasso museum.  Picasso was born in Málaga and the have a pretty good museum of nothing but Picasso painting, sculptures and drawings.

A comer mi nina!

Animalitos

Our typical Friday night dinner is what Carmen calls animalitos.  They are animal shaped chicken nuggets or fish sticks.  Greta and I both agree that the chicken animals are better than the fish.  It’s pretty funny because most of the time these animals don’t look anything like animals.  Like the big blob shaped chicken nugget in the lower right hand corner of the plate….That’s suppose to be an elephant.

Something New

My new classes started this passed Thursday.  I had some trouble getting my schedule to actually work out but now I finally got a working schedule with all the classes I wanted.  I have 5 classes and each class meets two times a week for 2 hours.  I have class every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and some Fridays (basically when we don’t have class for because there’s a festival or a holiday then we have to make it up on a Friday). The classes I’m taking this semester are Spanish literature through the 18^th century, History of Spanish Art, Grammar, Speaking and Writing, and Italian. So far everything is going great. The professors are all pretty nice and the classes don’t seem too hard. I'll definitely be a little more busy than I was before but it will be nice to have more to do.

A que estoy escuchando

Bebe - Malo

So from what I hear, Spain has a huge problem with domestic violence. In 2010, 73 women were killed by their sposes.  Bebe is a Spanish actor and singer whose song "Malo" is about domestice violence.  It is sung from the perspective of a women in an abusive relationship.  Some of the lyrics translate to : You appeared on a cold night smelling of dirty tobacco and gin. The fear returned to me while I crossed my fingers against the door.

There is the video if you would like to check it out.

Quite Weekend at Home

This past weekend was a long weekend for us here in Granada. Our intensive month classes ended on Friday and our other classes just started today.  So pretty much everyone decided to go to cool places like Rome or Paris, but because I decided to take an Italian class and those classes started a week earlier than the rest, I stayed in Granada. It was a pretty quite weekend since my roommate went to Madrid and the rest of my friends were in Paris, but I found ways to keep myself entertained.

Saturday I did a bit of shopping at some of the more popular stores in Spain like Zara and H&M.  I even bought a pair of green pants.  Colored pants are a very popular style here so I decided I would give it a try.

On Sunday in Spain, pretty much every store is closed because it's Sunday and you should stay at home and rest, So I took a little walk around town to see some of the sites.  I went to the Cathedral of Granada and paid the 3.5 euros it cost to go in and look around.  It was totally worth the price.  It was so pretty inside.  After the cathedral, I went for a walk in the Albayzin, which is the oldest part of the city.  It has skinny streets that there are some street that I (even with the short arms on my short body) can touch the building on both sides of the street.

That's pretty much all I did with my weekend, besides reading and knitting.  Classes started today so I'm going to be a little bit busier now.

A comer mi nina!

Pizza!

So Greta and I have started to notice a pattern in what foods we eat on which nights.  Wednesday night is pizza night.  It's just a frozen pizza but it is really delicious.  Usually we have a Bacon(jamon), cheese and mushroom pizza but sometimes we get some other types of veggies or meats. 

One Month

Well, I’ve officially been live in Spain for a month now.  Half of me can’t believe that I’ve already been here that long and the other half feels like I’ve lived here for much much longer.   This month is just the start of my time here.  I still have 8 more months left.  At the beginning of the month, when I told people I would be here for a year, I got a lot of “Seriously, how are you doing that, aren’t you going to miss the State?” Now when I tell people I’m here for a year, I get “You are so lucky, I wish I could be here for a year.”  Honestly, I feel pretty lucky.   When I went through the program’s orientation, I was told horror stories about people getting culture shock 2- 4 weeks into their time here and people missing America so much, they actually go home early.  Well, I’m still waiting to meet this mythical “Culture Shock”.  I have settled into the culture and lifestyle of Spain extremely well.  There are a few things that are still going to take a little getting used to but for the most part I fit right in.

Things I’ve grown to love in my first month in Spain:

1.       Siesta- In America I only slept during the day if I was extremely tired.  In Spain, I take a 30min-1 hour nap every day no matter how much I slept the night before.  However, if I sleep for more than an hour I tend to have really weird dreams.

2.       Walking- When I first got here, I was told it would be a 15-20 minute walk from my house to my school. It’s a 40 min walk.  At first, I hated having to walk that far but now I really enjoy walking to and from school.  Basically every day I spend about 2 hours just walking.

3.       Staying out late – In America, I was always home by midnight, usually in bed by then too.  Well, in Spain, most of the bars and clubs don’t start getting exciting until about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.  I think the earliest my roommate and I have gotten home on a weekend   is 1 o’clock.

Things I still need to get used to:

1.       Mopeds – The people on mopeds here seem to feel like they always have the right of way because they’re cute and little and speedy.  They will even drive on the sidewalks if they feel like it.  That just seems a little dangerous to me.

2.       Dogs without owners – There are little tiny stray dogs running everywhere in the city.  I pretty much trip over one every day.  One of my teachers told me that a lot of the stray dogs in Spain are dogs that people have just left somewhere because they can’t afford to keep them anymore. Isn’t that just sad????

It’s been a great month and this is only the beginning.  I still have 8 great months to go.

Is it really October???

When I picked Granada as the place I would study abroad, a big deciding factor was the weather. It doesn't really get cold in Granada and while that is something I really enjoy, I am kind of missing fall weather.  If I didn't just look at a calander I would think it's August here.  About this time of year in Kentucky, I would be pulling out my sweaters and scarfs and hats and all those things I spend so much time knitting.  Here, I am wearing tank tops and sandles.  It's kind of uncomfortable to be wearing sweaters when it's 85 degrees during the day.  In fact, it might not even be the weather I miss, but the clothes.

Another Fall time thing I'm missing is football.  And I mean American football, not "futbol". The first thing I do every Sunday morning is walk down to the internet cafe and check the football scores from the day before.  It's probably a good thing I don't have internet in my house because if I did, I would probably spend all Saturday night in front of my computer watching football games online instead of going out and actually experiencing Spanish nightlife.