More Spain Traveling!

Hello all,

Trip season has begun for me. I went to Madrid this past weekend with my program. Madrid is the capital of Spain and is a 5 hour bus ride from Granada. Before we arrived in Madrid, we made a planned stop in Toledo. This city, like every city in Spain, is beautiful and scenic. It is a very medieval themed city because of the castles and history of its origins. There were plenty of shops that had swords and knights armor displayed in the windows. They were also available for purchase, not just for show. We also saw the 3rd largest cathedral in Spain. While there we took a quick bus tour on the outer parts of Toledo where it was the most scenic, and then did a small walking tour through one part of the city. I can speak for two thirds of my group when I say that we can't remember too many facts that the tour guide told us because we were too busy focusing on his good looks. Even our director, Veronica, falls under that category. She bragged that she has his number. Toldedo was a great little trip. It was different than most other Spanish cities I have seen this far. I hate to be repetitive and say how these places are beautiful and picturesque because that doesn't do places justice. I wish you could have heard the birds chirping and the rushing of the river. I wish you could have felt the breeze coming over the mountains and the sun glaring down on my back. I heard a quote once that I really like: A picture is worth 1,000 words, but it takes 10,000 words to describe it.

Then we were off again for Madrid. Madrid is a heavily populated area with a population of 3,273,049 (10 times the population of Granada) and at any given time the streets are full of people. Here is what I remember most about Madrid: eating, hanging out, and the people.

Eating. I went to a Mexican place in Friday night with a couple of friends for some real Mexican. Contrary to popular belief, Spain is not a place to feed your spicy food cravings. There is no space in salsa, chicken, cheese..nada. Unless they put jalopenos in something you're not getting spice. Which is really unfortunate when you get the craving. For this reason, we went to get Mexican hoping to satisfy our lack of spice. It was a very good try and that was all we were expecting. Saturday I had lunch in the park with Roseanna and Shannon. We stopped at a cafeteria, got some pasta and went to a gigantic park to eat and enjoy the sun. That night we went to a Chinese buffet to satisfy our Chinese cravings and you can bet your midwest behind that we satisfied it. Orange chicken, noodles, fried rice, wontons, some other kinds of chicken, sushi, spring rolls, more orange chicken, riblets (yes riblets), and of course the dessert buffet. Chocolate, caramel, chocolate chip, and strawberry ice cream, topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. Let's just say we had to sit and let the food digest for about 30 minutes after we were done eating. Sunday I had Kebap for lunch. I don't know the origin of this food, but it's yummy and greasy and really bad for you. You can get chicken or beef in a think soft shell with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, mayo and ketchup. Also between every meal we got ice cream basically every chance our stomachs opened up some space. Not to mention the breakfast buffet was great! Mini chocolate doughnuts, bread and jam, mini muffins, fruit, hot chocolate, and so much more. I consumed so much unhealthy food this weekend and I loved every second of it.

Hanging out. Both nights we were in Madrid we had planned to go out to a night club, but ended up not going out either night. Instead we hung out in the hotel rooms and played card games. We never get the chance to do this because we have no where to go in Granada. Our apartments are not available to have friends over. In the hotel, however, we could have 8 people together playing cards. Friday night we got a cheap bottle of red wine and lemon fanta and made our own tintos del verano. Much cheaper than the bars! I enjoyed hanging out with some good friends over going out. Makes me miss my friends back home and just hanging out at a house.

I mean we did other stuff in Madrid as a group, but that's not what was fun about the trip. We went to el Palacio Real which is basically a small Spanish version of Versailles in Paris. We went to the Prado Museum which was just another art museum. I'm sorry, I appreciate art and all, but I am museumed out for like a year. We also went and saw a play which was actually really cool. There were only 3 actresses throughout the play. It was kind of hard to follow, being in Spanish and all, but I got most of the jokes. It helps that there were visuals with the script. It was also kind of hard because they referenced cultural things from Spain that I don't know about. Even our director didn't understand certain things because she is from the far south of Spain and Madrid is in the middle but more northern. One aspect that I noticed about this play was that they don't have barriers like the US does. There was a scence in which one woman was going to the OBGYN. She was given a sheet which she used to cover her front side as she removed her skirt and underwear. To make this scene humorous she flashed her butt to the entire audience. Then she had to get onto the table to lay down. I was not in the audience facing the front end of the table, I was on the back end where she laid her head, luckily. I don't know what they saw over on the other side. The other actress had to put her head under the sheet that was covering her. Obviously she didn't actually do anything, but man talk about an awkward scene. You just wouldn't see something like that for a normal play in the US. It was a hilarious play and the actresses were amazingly good. Top notch.

I don't have much else to report about Madrid. It was a fun time, but there are better cities in Spain. I also don't really like the big city feel. Unfortunately that goes hand in hand with the touristy spots though. They are not places for a nice relaxing weekend trip.

I leave for Dublin this Friday! Dublin, Galway, and London! Bring it on! Plus changing it up and going to places that speak English will hopefully be a nice change of pace.

I'd also like to take this time to give a shoutout to my loyal followers. Specifically Miss Connie at Weitz! Thanks for reading, Connie! I hope to continue the laughs.

Warning for future lack of posting:

This weekend I head to Madrid with my program. I´ll make sure to get a post in there about my trip.

Then it´s off to Ireland for spring break (March 30-April 5). School doesn´t start back up till the following week so I most likely will not have internet until then. More specifically here is my spring break trip:

March 30-April 5 (Dublin, Galway, and London)
        More specifically March 30 leave Granada, bus to Malaga, flight to Dublin
        April 1 bus from Dublin to Galway
        April 3 bus from Galway to Dublin, flight to London
        April 5 flight from London to Malaga, bus from Malaga to Granada

So when I get back, like I said, classes will start up and I will be starting a new level. Well I´m skipping that Thursday and Friday to go to Rome for 3 nights (April 12-15).

Well I´m going on a trip for my niece´s birthday (March 30), I figure it would only be fair to go on another trip for my brother´s birthday (April 12). Only makes things fair, right?

So there will not be very frequent posting in the near future, but you can bet your arse (It´s Irish, just getting ready for the lingo) that there will be plenty to read when all is said and done.

Córdoba

Córdoba was a spur of the moment trip and very quickly planned out. My friend, Shannon, said she really wanted to go, but no one to go with. So right then and there we booked our hostel and bought bus tickets that night (Wednesday). So Saturday rolls around and we leave in the morning to go to Córdoba. We get there too early to check in so we decided to roam the city and go eat our sack lunch by the river. On the way we run into the Catedral that the city is basically known for, and an attraction we came to see. And by sheer dumb luck we happened to book a hostel within 5 minutes of the Catedral and pretty close to the bus station. We did not put any effort into planning our trip until late Friday night when we decided to Google where our hostel was located in reference to the bus station.

Now all of Spain is beautiful, but I think Córdoba is the prettiest I have seen thus far. It´s gorgeous. It´s nice to get somewhat away from the city feel and Córdoba was less city and more spread out and spacious. Kids had parks to go to with fountains and real grass. Some streets were 6 lanes wide all together which is unheard of in Granada. It has a very nice, relaxing feel to the city. Again, it was a beautiful day with the sun and cloudless sky. I did not take next to any pictures of Córdoba because it gets tiring taking pictures of everything. This was a mini vacation from tourism.

Saturday was relaxing, but Sunday was my favorite for one reason...we went to the ZOO!! This zoo is a lot smaller than even the Des Moines zoo, but it was still really neat. They of course had lions and tigers and bears, ____________! You fill in the blank. But! They also had elephants, donkeys, wolves, eagles, monkeys, zebras, deer, porcupines, emus, a hippo...wait what? They had deer?? Yup, it was definitely a strange sight that they had deer an an exhibit. In Iowa we hunt them, we look for them in wooded areas, we hit them with our cars, why would people care to see them? Oh right, they don´t really exist in Spain. We Iowans take them for granted apparently. They also had this animal called a mara. This is such a strange animal because it is from the rodent family, but it has the body shape of a pic (but furry), a face like a bunny, and legs like a deer. According to wikipedia,  maras may amble, hop in a rabbit-like fashion, gallop, or bounce on all fours. They are a weird little animal, but they are cute! The zoo was a lot of fun, especially in the morning when no one was there. At about noon, it started picking up with families and their kids. However, I did not mind, cause there were a lot of cute looking kids!

Córdoba wasn´t too exciting , but that´s perfectly fine because that wasn´t it´s purpose. It was a very relaxing and calming weekend in a beautiful city, with a good friend. I enjoyed it very much.

Just Another Weekend Update

Classes started again this past Friday. I passed the final exam by the skin of my teeth to move on to the next level. You don´t really believe that do you? No, I had very little trouble passing that exam. I´m unsure of what I received on the final exam but I know that I easily moved on to the next level. I was very excited to be able to switch things up a little. However, as it turns out, I have class at the same exact time, in the same exact classroom, with the same exact two professors, and with mostly all same students. A few students were only in Spain for February and did not continue and one student is leaving halfway through this month because her program ends. I´m with practically the same people for 20 hours a week again. The only thing in my power was to change where I sit, so that´s exactly what I did. I had to change it up a little. I like how I get all of my classes done by lunchtime, but this makes me miss college style classes where you have a different group for 50 minutes for 5 classes. I´m really looking forward to getting back to Central in the fall. Something about being in Spain makes me not want to spend my time in a classroom. Funny concept, right?

Saturday my program had an excursion to the Alhambra. Which is what? Well it´s a type of beer here in Granada. Oh, and it´s a place where the king used to live. It was it´s own city separate from Granada. It´s not currently used but a lot of the structure is in it´s original state. It is situated on the top of a hill so that it can overlook the entire city of Granada. The view was absolutely beautiful. I personally thought my view from Albaycin was better, but I think that´s because it was my first time seeing the city of Granada from that height. The first time was breathtaking, and I think the view from the Alhambra had less of an impact because of this.

After the Alhambra I got a personal pizza and my friends and I split a box of ice cream cones while we sat by the river. Saturday was a beautiful day. We all had t-shirts and jeans on and had the sun beating down on us. It was really relaxing and fun to chat with people in my program that I barely see anymore due to classes and schedules that never match up.

After being in the sun all day I was drained. I got home at 5pm and it was siesta time for me. I also needed a siesta because my friends and I made plans to go to one of the clubs here in town. So I took a 3 hour nap, got up, ate dinner, and got ready to meet up with my friends. The club doesn´t open up till midnight so we went to a couple bars ahead of time to kill some time. We ended up at one bar that specializes in shots. People were handing out coupons on the street for this bar, which gave us 15 shots for 5€. There were 7 of us and we split them amongst ourselves. Dad, you can roll your eyes, give a loud sigh, and shake your head. Now is an appropriate time. Since the bar specializes in shots, they had a lot of good ones to choose from. My first ones were kiwi and lemon/lime flavored, and my second round was with carmel vodka and whipped cream. Later Tesla and I decided to split a liter of a Margarita. With this we received free shots. These were apple flavored with whipped cream. For future advice- whipped cream seriously makes shots taste so much better. Delicious!

Then we headed to the club, El Camborio. This club is in Albaycin and has an amazing view of the Alhambra all lit up. It´s free charge if you write your name on the the Facebook wall and there is free beer and tinto del verano until 1:30am. So it´s a pretty sweet deal. I was really excited to finally go to a club after living in Granada for over a month. Clubs really aren´t my scene because I hate crowds, sweat, and being around a bunch of people I don´t know. Oh and that whole slutty girls and creepy old guys thing. We got there early so we had a lot of room to enjoy our circle of friends and dance. Then it started filling up and our space got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until I could only move my knees and do a little bounce move in order to dance. Literally my imaginary bubble became as tight as snake skin. I couldn´t even even put my elbows out if I wanted to. This got to be too much for me. I cam to dance because I actually really like to dance and have a good time. I couldn´t do that and it was a huge bummer. We finally left the club around 4am, but non of us were tired. We just wanted to stay and enjoy the night but it became impossible. I had a great time while it lasted though.

Relating back to the American influence on the world thing, especially in the music depatment, this was very prevalent at the club. I would have to say that 90% of the music played was from America. Artists ranged from Eminem, Adele, Snoop Dogg, Pitbull, The Offspring, Whitney Houston, LMFAO, and plenty more. Hell they even played part of the frickin´ Barbie song! Not even kidding you. "Come on Barbie, let´s go party. Ah ah ah yeah". It was strange, but at the same time I personally enjoyed it. Reason being that I want to dance to music I know, but I definitely forgot I was in Spain until I heard people talking. It was quite the experience, and that´s what I´m all about right now. You´re only young once, right? Actually that´s not true, people are young for many, many years. Eh, you get what I´m saying though.