Last weekend :(

It's my last weekend in Spain. How sad. But, fittingly, I'm actually spending it in Granada--my first weekend here :P However, the majority of my group is currently in Morocco, so I am also spending it alone. Yesterday I went to the arab baths with my roommate and then watched the game. The arab baths are kind of like a spa, but very spain style. Basically you can buy all sorts of packages, but my roomie and I bought the basic bath package plus a 15 minute massage. The premise is that you walk in and there are 7 baths (pools)--1 in the middle all lit up that is a cold bath (literally goosebumps cold) and then 3 on each side that are varying degrees of warm to hot. You are supposed to spend 10 minutes in the hot bath, and then progressively move to the cold bath in 10 minute increments. The interesting part is that it's not water. Or at least not entirely. It's supposed to be healing water, so there is definitely other stuff in it--oil, salt, etc. It felt strange, because the water had increased resistance. Like, if you made a wave, it would really sway you. And I floated like crazy. You really have to force your limbs to stay underwater. The massage was amazing though. I've decided I need to treat myself to a massage more often ;)

For those of you who don't know, which i'll assume is all of you, Spain beat Chile last night. Yay! That means we move on to the next round. It was a decent game, the first half was awesome, and our two goals were pretty sweet. I highly recommend you youtube them :)

Today I slept in and then did a little homework (aka I tried to watch this movie online in Spanish and didn't understand a word of it. Poor audio quality makes the task soooo much harder). After lunch I went to el Parque de las Ciencias, which is this huge interactive science museum. It wasn't quite as interactive as I hoped it would be, but it was still really cool. Plus the museum has a tropical butterfly exhibit, so that was pretty sweet.

After that I went to the movies and saw the Blind Side in Spanish. It's just as good and SJ is just as adorable :D Plus I understood almost everything that they said. Because I knew the basic premise of what they were supposed to be talking about, I was able to understand all the specific words better. Then I got Burger King to celebrate :P You know what I think is interesting here is that, as far as I can tell, Burger King is a bigger deal here than McDonald's. I found it kind of surprising, but just in the part of Granada that I regularly traverse I know two excellently placed Burger Kings and no McDonald's. Interesting indeed.

So I realized today something I'm really excited for when I come home--soda. It's strange, because I don't really drink very much of it when I'm at home, but I don't drink ANY here. The supply is very limited. It makes sense with their culture, since casual, social drinking is much more common here, even in the middle of the day, but it still kind of sucks. When you walk into a grocery store in the states, there is an entire aisle devoted to soda, and you can find 30, 40, 50 different combinations of brands and flavors. Here, I can literally name every option on two hands: Coke, Coke light (not diet), Fanta Limon (lemon fanta), Fanta Naranja (orange fanta), lemon Nestea, and sometimes Sprite. I have also seen offbrands of fanta limon and fanta naranja, but i have not seen offbrands of coke. So 6 choices. And since I don't like cola, 4 choices. It's just not the same though. The fanta, for example, is good, but it barely tastes like soda because it is soooo sweet. There is no artificial sweetening in it, but it's got about 400% of your daily intake of pure sugar. That thing will give you a sugar high within SECONDS. Although it does make a great tinto de verano ;)

Anywho, tonight I'm hitting the hay early. I have to write up a project tomorrow and start studying for my finals. Ugh. Only 5 more days here in Spain!

Abrazos y besos,
Meredith