Well! Long time no blog :P I have been without internet for a horrifically long time, but now I'm back :)
This weekend I was travelling: Sevilla and Cordoba.
I give Sevilla a 3 and Cordoba an 8.7. It was pretty fricken sweet.
We got up at 8am to catch the bus to Sevilla and I attempted to nap on the way there. Unfortunately the weather was icky there too (it's been cold and cloudy and rainy the last 5 days :( I thought Spain was supposed to be hot!) which made it a lot less pretty than I imagine it could be. We went on a "bus tour" which legit comprised of one street on which all the plazas are from the 1929 World Fair. Then we went on a walking tour of the Alcazar palace, which was pretty, but pretty much just a lamer version of the Alhambra. We did get to see Columbus's grave though, which was pretty sweet, and we got to climb up the Giralda tower, which gave us a really awesome view of the city, so that was pretty cool. The cathedral of Sevilla was kinda cool too. It has the biggest main altar in the all of christendom and it's got tons of gold in it.
After that we had some free time to "explore the city," but most of us were so exhausted that we just went back to the hotel for a nap before the game (London vs. USA. We tied, in case you didn't know, by a complete epic fail of the London goalie. Undeserved half-victory) We attempted to go out, but we weren't in the right part of town, so we pretty much just wandered around for a while and then went back to the hotel. My roommate Laura and I stayed up and chatted for a while and then it was well-needed sleep.
After the 2 hour bus ride we arrived in Cordoba. As soon as I got off the bus I already liked Cordoba more--the first thing you see is this massive castle and bridge structure taking you to the old city. Soooo cool. The whole city was amazing. We took a tour of the Juderia (Jewish neighborhood) and our tour was in spanish, which was pretty cool. Then we saw the mezquita, which is the 3rd biggest mosque in the world. IT WAS SO COOL. The architecture is INCREDIBLE. When you first walk in there is this great hall with columns and arches for miles. The arches are red and white. I don't have the ability to upload pics right now, but I highly recommend you google it. The mezquita was built in 5 parts, and each part is a little different in its architectural style. I just couldn't stop taking pictures or whispering "oh my god..." By far the coolest thing we've seen so far.
After that we had some time to peruse the shops and get some lunch and then it was back on the bus. I was glad to be heading "home" and be off the bus, but unhappy about another week of class ahead of me :/ I really hope that it will warm up soon, because all the tan that I got on the beach is fading away :( I would love to go lay out and read in the park, but it's been legitimately chilly. So not fair.
Today, after I finished my homework, I wandered around the arabic district by the cathedral and got a couple things. It's crazy, like this little pocket of Morocco in the middle of Granada.
Tomorrow I'm booking our hostel for this weekend in Madrid and then Wednesday is the first Spain game!!!! And a party for my friend Carlos's 21st birthday. Should be an awesome day :D
That's all for now, hope all is well back home and I miss you all! Almost as much as I miss hamburgers :P
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith

De Moda

I finally caved--I went shopping. I was going to wait for the last possible moment to go so that I wouldn't spend all my money, but I had the whole afternoon free and so it was too cold to lay out, so...I caved.
You would not believe the shopping here. It's incredible. As opposed to the US where shopping consists of an endless vista of chain stores carrying the same clothes, it's all about boutiques here. Often that means that the clothes are pretty pricey, but they are gorgeous to look at. Right now I'm in love with this long black dress and pink jacket combo costing around 325 euros. The dress has an empire waist and this gorgeous print on it and everytime I see it I can't help but stop and stare.
However, there are some good deals now. It's the week after Corpus sales, and I've heard at the beginning of July there are really good sales too. Today I went to a bunch of stores but only bought one thing--really cute purple dress for 12 euros ($15) so not bad at all.
Now here's the really interesting thing about shopping in Spain. All over Europe (I'm assuming. It was definitely true in London and in Spain)American music is really prevalent. I guess I see why, since we have the biggest centers for the arts production what with Hollywood and NYC and all, but it seems really strange to me that people would want to listen to music that they don't understand. So when I went shopping today, all the stores were basically playing American pop music and I sort of chuckled inside, because here is finally one situation where I am the only one who understands what is being said and everyone ELSE is clueless :P
I will definitely have to go shopping again though. There are soooo many stores to see. Today I went for 2 hours and only made it down about 2 blocks of Recogidas (one of the main stretches) and that is only 2 out of probably ten blocks of ONE of the main roads--not even counting the other big roads and all of the side streets! I could go shopping every day and not step in the same store twice. Increible!

Yesterday was a fun evening as well. I had intercambios, so 8 girls from my group (including myself) met up with 1 girl and 4 boys from the University of Granada. AIFS paid for 2 drinks for everyone and we all sat around a big table and drank and had tapas and just hung out. It was a complete blast. We got to practice our spanish (and finally enjoy a little testosterone ;) and they got to practice their english. We taught each other funny phrases and gossiped about people in our program. The spanish boys had such personality! After that a bunch of people in my program went to this Irish pub for karaoke :) Needless to say I was a little tired in class today, but oh well.
Off to bed for me! Tomorrow is Sevilla and Sunday is Cordoba. I'll fill you in on the details when I get back!
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith

Today it fell mostly on the ground

Ay que lluvia! Everyone was surprised, especially the spaniards, when it started to rain. And boy did it rain! I actually wore a jacket today, it was quite chilly :/ Hopefully tomorrow it will be sunny again.
Before I forget, some interesting things I noticed/encountered today.
I don't know if I've mentioned her before, but my senora has a nieta (grandaughter) whose name is Pilar and she is the cutest baby EVER. Pilar was at lunch with us today, and my senora was trying to teach her how to count, and when she did it, she counted out loud uno, dos, tres (except with the andaluz accent it was more like uno, do, tre) and pointed at her fingers--just like we would. Except instead of going index finger, middle finger, ring finger, she went pinky finger, ring finger, middle finger. Que raro!
Today at lunch we had a very strange dish--a platter of white rice with halved hard-boiled eggs covered in what appeared to be the spanish equivalent of Campbell's tomato soup. Not completely awful, but strange nonetheless.
Anywho, today was a loooooong day. 5 hours straight of classes is a lot more draining than you would think. I do get a break though. From 9-10:50 I have class with Gracia, and we focus more on vocab and culture. Then I have a break from 10:50-11:10, and my friend Carlos and I (American, not Spanish :P) go to a nearby cafe and get toast and coffee. Then from 11:10-1:00 I have class with Montse. She's a little nutso. We focus more on grammar and conversation and so far it has been extremely frustrating. We're working on an area of grammar that is particular to Spain spanish and therefore very different from what I had learned in the past, basically requiring me to rethink the way I do the past tense for a month. It's very difficult and to make things worse, she is very difficult to work with. She teaches how I think I would teach (hence why I will never be a teacher)--she gets very frustrated when we don't understand, and even though she has a ridiculous fake enthusiasm on, you can tell she's getting pissed off and thinks we're dumb. Needless to say I do not often leave the class happy, but I do think I'm starting to understand it, so hopefully it will get better.
After that class I have a 15 minute break and then I have business spanish from 1:15-2:15. My professor in that class is quite the firecracker. I don't remember her name but she is taller and tiiiinny, probably weighs under a hundred pounds, with this deep spanish-woman voice that is sooo loud she echoes :P She's spunky for sure. I've been learning some interesting things too. Mostly it's just a basic business course but with spanish vocab, but today I learned about the Inditex group, which owns Zara.
Speaking of Zara, the shopping here is INCREDIBLE. It makes me wish that I'd been saving up for years for this trip. I haven't let myself go into any stores yet, because I want to make sure I have enough money for the rest of the trip but boy do I want to! Increible!
Tonight I went to la Capilla Real, which is the cathedral in which los reyes Catolicos (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela) as well as their daughter (Juana la Loca) and her husband (Felipe el hermoso) are buried. Man was that some interesting history! I would love to read more about it sometime.
Pues, tomorrow and friday is more class (ugh) and then this weekend we are travelling to Sevilla and Cordoba! Yay! And tomorrow I signed up for intercambios, which is wear 8 people from my program meet up for drinks and tapas with 8 spanish students studying english, and we practice with eachother. Should be lots of fun.
For now its deberes (homework) and maybe a little reading. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep better tonight since it's so cool out :)
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith

La comida

Food.
It's kind of a big deal.
So I'm gonna talk about it.
Before I begin, let me clarify that Spanish food is nothing like Mexican food. So you can get that image out of your head right now. Instead, food in Granada is a mix between a Mediterranean diet and a classical Spanish diet (the food up north is different than the mediterranean food, so the two types mix and create Granada's food).
Sidenote--since I'm talking about food--did you know that Granada means pomegranate? It is the fruit of the city and you can see it's image hidden all over the place--stone arrangements on the sidewalk, worked into the metal of a fence, etc. I even saw a pomegranate tree in the generalife.
Anywho, it's a very carb-heavy diet here, just how I like it. Breakfast, which begins at 8am (ish) is very casual but also very light. Usually my senora has toast available with margarine or marmalade as well as this spanish dish that is kinda a mix between a cake and a muffin. It's baked in a pan and has chocolate in it :) Also coffee or tea, but spaniards are not big juice drinkers, and I definitely don't trust the milk. It's not refrigerated very well. SKETCH.
Lunch isn't until 2:30, so by then I'm usually starving, and this is the formal, big meal of the day--our dinner. Oftentimes the family will come over to the house for lunch and it will be a big event. Lunch usually consists of a salad, sliced bread, a main dish, and fruit or yogurt (or both) for dessert. The salads are different here, usually with lettuce, tomatoes, corn, and sweet carrots, and never any dressing. The main dish is always different and I never know what it is--I just eat it. We've had lots of different things and they're usually pretty good. My favorite so far has been tortillas patatas, which is an omelet of sorts filled with sauteed potatoes. Yumm :) Usually lots of pasta though.
Dinner is at 9:30 (so again I'm starving) and is light and casual. Leftovers, burgers, salad, whatever is around, and of course fruit for dessert. Our senora always has fresh cherries from their cottage :) The burgers are mysterious though, you can't expect it to always be a hamburger like we have. So far the ones I have are definitely not made of cow, and I think Mateo said it was chicken and duck. It tastes good though, just very different.
Not all the food is foreign though--today at dinner we had Lays potato chips! Yay globalization! But get this--they were ham-flavored! Spaniards are so weird.
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith

I Like My Skin Medium Rare

Hey all! Sorry for the long absence--I just found out that we don't have access to the internet on the weekends! How sad :( Anywho I have been a busy beaver since we talked last. Busy relaxing and not doing a whole lot that is :P
Thursday was the religious procession for Corpus Christi, which was long and extremely repetitive, so we gave up on that after about 20 minutes. Then we went to one of the plazas (that's the nice part about Granada--there are plazas everywhere with big fountains and benches and stuff. Absolutely gorgeous and helps me keep my bearings in the city as to where I am)to get gelato and there just happened to be this big open-air artisan market, so we wandered around for a bit. The art here is different from the US but I love it. It's very clay and ceramic-based and VERY colorful. Beautiful. After that my friend MJ and I wandered down to the river and then to Garcia Lorca Park, which is absolutely beautiful.
Something strange I've noticed about parks in Spain: a lot of them have this...what looks like playground equipment, except it's really workout equipment. Like a grown-up playground, with work-out machines modified into metal park equipment. For example, there is on that you sit on and then you push up on these handle bar things, but instead of being connected to weights, it is connected to the seat, so you have to push your own weight up. It's pretty cool (and pretty funny) except the genius who invented these park work-out mechanisms didn't realize that METAL would be a bad idea in Spain. I'm pretty sure I legitimately burned my flesh.
Also on Thursday was the fair. Let me tell you, I kind of felt like a spoiled American after going to that fair. It was like a state fair, lots of games and rides and food and drink tents, but it wasn't anything super special, only to them, it's a HUGE deal. The feria comes once a year for one week and everybody goes. Not gonna lie, it was pretty expensive, and we went on one roller coaster and almost broke our necks from the whiplash. Needless to say the safety regulations are not the same here. We got bored pretty quick and headed home for some drinks and tapas instead.
Anywho, Friday was the Alhambra.
Ugh.
I was excited, because this is a big deal thing to visit, right? Except we had to walk the whole way there, and if you didn't know, the Alhambra is on top of a hill. A big hill. And it was HOT. Plus our tour guide had absolutely no personality, and this is a 3+hour long tour, so that made it kind of miserable. By the end we were all just really hot, tired, hungry, and cranky, but I did get some pretty cool pics :)
This weekend was a lot of fun though. Saturday we all got on a bus at 10am and drove down (about 1 hour) to Almunecar, a little beach town. The group had till 6 on the beach, but me and 5 other girls got a hotel and stayed over. We spent the day on the beach and then found a really awesome paella place for dinner and sat up and chilled in the hotel. Then we got up and hit the beach again on Sunday. It was so nice--the breeze off the ocean made tanning perfect, and when you got too hot, the water was PLENTY cold to cool you off ;)Plus there were some really cool rocks and stuff that we collected. Mainly, there were all these pieces of tile that were smoothed over from the waves that were absolutely gorgeous. I'm bringing about a suitcase-load home and I'm gonna try and make jewelry out of it.
Now I'm finally home and showered and am going to go to sleep early because I have 5 hours straight of classes tomorrow. Yikes!
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith

La Tarasca!

It's only 4pm but so much has happened already today and I wanted to share :)
Today was "La procesion de la tarasca" or the parade of the dragon. Everyone came out to see it--we even got the rest of class canceled so that we could go! La Tarasca happens every Corpus Christi on the Wednesday and is a very fun event. It is a traditional event and has the same characters every year--los cabezudos, los gigantes, los reyes catolicos y los reyes musulmanes, y, por supuesto, La Tarasca. La Tarasca (the dragon) is ridden by a manequin woman who wears a designer dress. Each year a new designer makes the dress and the style of the manequin's dress majorly affects the fashion of the women for that summer. Los cabezudos were my favorite. These are people dressed up in costumes with huge plastic heads. They walk around with balloons made out of animal intestines or something and bop people on the head with them. Los gigantes are people on stilts, and los reyes are giant dolls of the last royalty of the Muslim reign and of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Also there were two bands and other people dressed up in fun costumes swordfighting, lighting fireworks, or just dancing around. This is a big event for the people of granada and they take the opportunity to break out some of their more traditional wear--flamenco dresses, torreador outfits, etc. It was so fun to see everyone in the spirit. We used the rest of our free day to get ice cream and enjoy the beautiful day by the fountain, and tonight I'm joining some friends for drinks and tapas and a free concert at a local discoteca! The next few days are just going to be so exciting. I'm going to try and post a few pictures of the parade, and I'll have plenty more to tell you tomorrow, because tomorrow I'm using my day off to see the other traditional parade (more religious) and go to the fair!
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith

I'm a Smartie :)

Today was the placement test. It was kind of hard, but not too bad, and I ended up placing into level 6 (out of 9) which is the first level of Advanced Spanish. So go me! I know a few other people who got 6, but most got 2-5, so it was a nice boost to my confidence. I start class tomorrow and am taking two different classes. From 9am to 1pm I have my intensive language course, and from 1:15pm to 2:15 pm I take Business Spanish. It's a lot of class all at once, but then I'm free for the rest of the day for lunch, siesta, and evening festivities.
We also had an orientation meeting which was a complete information overload but it just made me even more excited to be here. This week is actually a holiday week in Granada, I don't know if I mentioned that, but it's pretty awesome. It's called "Corpus Christi" (or in english,it's the celebration of the body of christ) and there are parades tomorrow and thursday AND I don't have school Thursday or Friday. Everything shuts down starting Wednesday after siesta. A bunch of us are going to bus over to "la feria" on Thursday, which is the festival fair, with drinking tents and carnival rides and such, and then this weekend we are going down to the beach and some of us are going to get a hostel and stay the night. Should be really fun :)
Also I was talking to a girl on my trip who also wants to go to Madrid and I think we're gonna head down the weekend of the 19th and hit up Toledo on the way. :D :D
Oh, and we allwent out for a welcome drink tonight after the orientation. They had pizza (from Dominos! lol) and we got free drinks. I had a sangria, which is wine and fruit juice and a soda (Fanta Limon). Sometimes it is made with other alcohol in it too, like vodka, but it depends on where you go.
So a very full day all in all! Now I have to try and hunt down hostels and bus trips for the weekend and read over all my information from the day.
Abrazos y besos,
Meredith