Granada!

This post is a little late - but I am so exhausted from our weekend trip that it had to wait.

Courtney, Grace and I planned a trip to Granada basically about 2 days before the trip actually happened since the bus website wouldn't let us buy tickets online for some reason.  Things got off to a rocky start since we were almost late to the bus at 8:00am.  Let's just say I had a flash back to my short time in the Madrid airport: boots, heavy bag, speed-walking....for about a half hour to the bus stop.  Luckily, we all got there on time and the bus was less than half-way full so we could sprawl out and relax on the 3 hour ride.

We got to Granada early Friday morning and got settled into our hostel.  It was a good deal considering we paid 15 euro/night and booked only 2 days in advance.  We got free breakfast, the room to ourselves and pretty clean room/bathroom so there wasn't much to complain about.  After we got settled in, we walked around the city and got some tinto de veranos (wine spritzers) and free tapas.  The best things about Granada are that the city is amazzzzingly beautiful and you get free tapas when you order a drink :)  

Since our tour of Alhambra was at 8:30am the next morning (we had also heard that it takes 4 hours to walk through), we decided it would be a better decision to chill for the night and have a few drinks in our hostel.  Woke up bright and early on Saturday, ready to take on Alhambra.  Since it was so early, it was a bit chilly, but nonetheless a great experience.  Alhambra is a palace city (literally a walled city) and is considered one of the "treasures of Spain".  

After Alhambra, we went on what seemed like the world's longest search for some food.  Since we had breakfast around 7am, after 5 hours and lots of walking and picture taking, we were pretty hungry.  This is where things got irritating.  Since it was 11am, most places were only serving coffee and toast (my understanding is that in general, Spaniards wake up a lot later than we do in America).  We went to numerous places in the search for food but couldn't find anything except gross "ham" (the quotations are because we're still not even sure it was ham - you couldn't bite through it) sandwiches.  This is when we all got frustrated because we were in a foreign town with no knowledge of the area and having to ask people for directions/other general questions gets really old, really fast.  

So, we were all tired enough to take a nap without eating anything and were to worry about hunger later.  We woke up and decided to walk to a supermarket where we had the excellent idea of making our OWN dinner in the hostel!  This was a cheap way to get the food we wanted - and was a nice change from not having any say in the meals we eat.  We made Mexican - chicken fajitas with chips, salsa, guacamole and of course dessert of strawberry cheesecake ice cream.  

We were in a better mood and started to get ready and make drinks after that.  We played circle of death and planned on going to the discoteca, Granada 10.  I have heard from numerous people that this was the place to be come nighttime in Granada.  We met some people in our hostel and walked to Granada 10 together.  The night ended up being very fun - 5:30am came MUCH too fast!  The club was packed, the drinks were delicious and the dancing was icing on the cake.  

The next morning, we woke up to an alarm @ our check out time.  Luckily the hostel owner was cool with us staying a little late.  We ended up checking out 2 hours later only to be "homeless" in Granada until our bus departed at 3:30.  So we chilled in the sunny, 60 degree weather until we went to the bus station to get lunch and depart.  Slept almost the entire 3 hours back to Sevilla and called it a weekend.

All in all, it was the perfect place to have as my first weekend getaway.  Not too far, not too expensive and taught me that more planning may be required for future trips.  That's all for now...be expecting a post about LISBON, PORTUGAL next week :) 

Cádiz

And another end to another great weekend...

Went out with the girls on Thursday night...celebrated (maybe a little too hard) the end of the first week of class. Our program allows us to not have class on Fridays, so Thursday night marks the beginning of the weekend.  Thus, Thursday night was a night of botellon-ing and chupitos.  Fun night which made for a fun Friday morning... :-/

We had our first program trip to Cádiz on Saturday, so the majority of our program stayed in/chilled on Friday night.  We had to meet at 9am on Saturday to depart on the 2 hour journey to this peninsula city.  Almost completely covered by water, Cádiz is located in Southern Spain.  

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day.  It was a chilly start, but it warmed up to 70 degrees and sunny (I also heard it warmed up in Wisconsin as well...not quite as much though :D).  Once we got to Cádiz, we had a bus tour, followed by a walking tour, followed by lunch and free time.  Cádiz is pretty small, there wasn't much to see besides beaches and the Catedral...but nonetheless beautiful and a great time.  We got to go to the top of the Cathedral and take pictures from the top of the city which was breathtaking.  Then we walked through El Centro and El Mercado.  The market was kind of like a farmer's market - outside, lots of vendors and lots of fresh (literally) fruit and seafood.  

Saturday night was a fun night as well.  Met with my intercambio, Carmen and her friends.  We got dinner at the Spaniard-favorite restaurant, Coloniales and went to a bar to listen and dance to flamenco music.  Carmen and her friends are really good at Flamenco dancing...Salima and I, not so much.  She tried teaching us...we kind of caught on but mostly just milked it to make it look like we knew what we were doing.  We also thought about teaching them how to Dougie but didn't think the Flamenco band would know how to play the song :(

(My intercambio, Carmen)

Found out a good piece of information yesterday.  I have been wondering about how difficult it is to send packages here - I had heard that packages usually have to go through customs and the recipient has to pay an absurd amount of money to pick the package up.  BUT, a fellow program participant had her mother send her peanut butter and chocolate - she received the package within a week from when it was sent in the US and didn't have to pay anything.  So here´s my address, just incase you need it ;)

Michelle Fleming

Calle Juan Antonio Cabestany 22, 4-2

41018 - Seville, Spain

(also, you can see my apartment if you put this address into GoogleMaps.  It's a big brick building on the right.  The door is an arch-like shape with black bars)

Now, off to walk around in El Centro - anything to avoid reading the 70 pages I'm supposed to have read for the suggested due date this past Friday.  Good thing it's only a suggested deadline.  Adios amigos <3 

Culture Crash Course

Somebody slow me dowwwwwwn!


Intensivo has been done for 6 days and I guess it holds true that things are much more enjoyable when it's done. I have had such a pleasant week, I'm almost sad to say it's over!  But then that would mean I wouldn't want the weekend and of course, that would be a lie.


First off, went for a run (the first time doing any sort of physical activity while here) and it was so relaxing.  It felt great to just burn some steam while absorbing the beautiful city around me!  It didn't even feel like I was working out (the next morning, unfortunately, not so much).  I also got to know the city in a more big-picture way which hopefully means no more getting lost for me!  Also, the weather is amazzzing here during the day (65 degrees!) so it was perfect running weather. 


Secondly, met with friends to start planning our European excursions.  Items on the list:

1. Paris, France
2. Italy (Rome, Florence, possibly another city)
3. Prague, Czech Republic
4. Brussels, Belgium
5. Munich, Germany
6. Spain - Granada, Madrid, Barcelona

This little meeting with friends was extra pleasant because I let my sweet tooth get the best of me and ordered a Tiramisu and got a free coffee with it!  Probably more sugar in this one 2-hour period than I've had this entire time in Spain put together...

Thank goodness I found out from friends that there are free dancing lessons all of February.  So, in effort to get out of the house and self-fulfill my prophecy of being able to do more fun things once intensivo was over and burn off some of the coffee-induced energy, went to a free SALSA dancing lesson at 10:30pm.  It was a ton of fun and I might just go again :) 

Now, going to an Espanol cooking class in my neighborhood.  The class is held at an actual Spanish home (sounds kind of sketch but our program was the one who sent it out) and we will be learning typical Spanish recipes.  I'm secretly hoping for Lenteja (a lentil soup), Tortilla Espanola (basically potato quiche) and Verdura (a veggie recipe) - my 3 favorite things my senora has made so far!

Aaaand classes.  My classes will be bearable for the most part - the hardest being International Marketing.  The professor (we like to call him the human form of the Devil) requires that we write papers and prepare a presentation almost EVERY week. Each week, somebody will be chosen at random to present on the topic.  Thus, we have to prepare EVERY week as if we will present.  Other than Satan himself, I have one particularly boring professor (finance class but I won't complain, since it will be much easier than taking finance at Madison) and 3 legit, fun professors.  My "Image of the US in Spain: 100 years of myths and stereotypes" will probably be my favorite - the professor is a hoot and we basically get to hear all the good/bad perceptions the Spaniards have about America.  God Bless America.

Excellent weekend ahead:

• Day trip with our program to Cadiz (small town in Spain, west of Seville known as the oldest city in Spain and famous for it's beautiful beaches)
• Intercambio fun:  The program assigns us an "Intercambio" which is essentially a Spanish student who is there to be a friend, lend a helping hand, help adjust to the city, etc.  My Intercambio's name is Carmen and I like her a lot!  She has had exams for the past 3 weeks, so on Saturday she invited me to go with her and her friends to have dinner in El Centro and then go to a bar to listen to some good Flamenco music.

Feliz finde (happy weekend)!!

Super Bowwwl

Dear Readers,


Haven't posted in a while, mainly because nothing too exciting has been happening due to the last week of our intensive class.  This whole week was basically going to class, walking around the city a little (which is crucial because otherwise waiting 3 hours for lunch is unbearable), eating lunch, doing homework, eating dinner, doing homework, going to sleep, trying to recover from being sick and repeating.  Thank God that is done.  There were a few fun things in there - shopping, meeting friends for coffee, Ruinos Romanos en Italica (Roman ruins), etc.

The Ruinos Romanos were really cool - it was the remains of a city built by the Romans that was preserved from 200BC.  It was also really cool because most of it was underground, but somehow they dug it up so it would be above ground.  It was literally the ruins of a small little city - we could see the remains of houses, the streets and the stadium where the warriors fought to death (the winner was only declared once his opponent was dead).

Everything was original except for the statues which are in a museum in Sevilla and there were really detailed mosaics that were preserved.  We were literally walking through the remains of the city and were told to imagine the parts that weren't there.

So being done with the intensive session was cause for a huge celebration this weekend.  The Packers being in the Super Bowl was also cause for a huge celebration this weekend.  We discovered that the Spanish word for "pre-game" is "botellon" - where people just buy bottles of wine/booze and drink them on the street.  Good thing about Spain is that you can buy a bottle of Franzia-like wine for .69 euro.  We learned in class that the wine here is cheap because Spain has the most vineyards out of any country in Europe but it still the 3rd country in exporting wine (after Italy and France).  Spain also receives money from the government to stimulate wine exportation.  So we got a few bottles of wine and headed to Buddha - a 4 story discoteca.


The lack of eating sweets is getting to be more and more of a problem as the days go by.  Spanish households do believe in having something sweet after every meal - except that usually means fruit or yogurt.  Donde esta el chocolate?!  The smallness of the coffee servings is hard to get used to as well.  The coffee here is very strong so you are only served a little bit.  If you order a "coffee with milk" at a cafe, you basically get a shot of espresso with milk in it.  So for those of us who like to drink coffee not only for the caffeine - problema.  


So now, just resting until PACK ATTACK TIME.  I am VERY sad that I can't be in Wisconsin, let alone America for the game.  I'm so glad they have a venue for me to watch the game at with friends (rather than streaming it online in my room all alone) but it just won't be the same :(  The game starts at 12:30am here - so the first day of regular classes tomorrow should be a fun time.  And of course, Packer gear is one of the two things I forgot to pack...failure.  


I'll probably have more to write now since there will be more time to chill with friends and explore.  Hasta luego amigos!