Lovely Days, Lovely Nights.

While my title is a little misleading since we´ve had rain every single day except Friday, I am not too bitter about it like I am in Ohio, because come on, it´s Spain!  Everything here is better, even the rain.  To preface my post, I am still loving this place and am so proud to say that all is still going well, no breakdowns yet and I have completely fallen in love with the idea of traveling the rest of the world after college.  There is something indescribable about living in another country and while I realize not every place is as nice or comfortable as the one I´m in now, nor will I always have a program of people watching out for me, there are so many wonderful new things to learn in a foreign country that books alone cannot, cannot, cannot convey.  I just wish everyone could have the opportunity to experience these new things.  I have already learned so much about myself while only living here for about a month, and I know this will sound like a cliche, but I feel like I will go home a different person than the girl who first came here in February.

Well my week began Sunday with a family meal, my host mother´s sister, niece and grandniece all came over for Sunday lunch and not unlike my own family, stayed for hours just sitting and eating around the dinner table.  I think they probably thought I am mute since I hardly said a word.  But it is terribly intimidating trying to speak around a bunch of Spaniards when you cannot even make out the syllables or letters of their words.  I´m starting to feel frustrated by the Spanish because I think I´m doing so well in school and at home, but then once I get around actual Spaniards, and they talk with their Andalusian accent of cutting off the ends of their words and talking so fast they sound like the person calling the prices at a cattle auction!  Needless to say I just sat there with an empty look and enjoyed watching their passionate conversations.  They did apologize for some reason about how passionate Spaniards are when they are with their family and how long they just sit talking, but I said I though it was nice and made me feel like I was at home, although I have to say my family doesn´t yell at each other about politics over lunch.  Well any who, it was a nice experience and gave me more insight into my family, who I still feel I do not know too much about.

Another part of my week was saying goodbye to a guy I met here, the Norwegian I wrote about earlier.  His friends gave him a going away party on Monday night since he was leaving Wednesday, so most of my friends and I went to enjoy Tapas with him and a ton of his other Erasmus and Spanish friends.  I must admit I grew to like him more than I thought I would, and I was sad to see him leave.  But all good things must come to an end and I am just thankful I got the chance to meet someone as interesting as him.  

 
As stated in my title, this week has been lovely despite the crazy amounts of rain we´ve had.  I was told before coming, that Granada never got any rain. Well out of these nine days in March, we´ve had 7 rainy days.  But I cannot complain too much because walking in the rain in Granada is so much better than walking in the rain in anywhere in the U.S.  Tuesday, it poured and I of course woke up too late to take a bus to school, so on my way to school, during the light morning drizzle, my feet were soaked through.  My little red shoes were no longer their normal color and they were about a whole shoe size smaller!  I chose to wear those shoes because my other ones were still drying from the day before.  When I actually got to school I thought "well at least it wasn´t pouring."  However I spoke too soon....  Our school, like most here, have an outside gate in order to access the main door, well I thought I had saved myself just in time to escape any torrential downpour, but soon discovered that someone had locked the door.  So while I was able to get into the courtyard I could not actually get into the dry building.  So of course what happened?  It began to pour.  I stood there banging on the door to the school but of course knocked in vain because the rain was coming down so hard no one could hear me.  Well, what do you think I did?  Like most wet and cold people I was more than a little irritated and verbally expressed my feelings to no one at all, and could only stand there under the gutter as I banged on the door, gutters tend to pour even more water on you than the sky itself.  So after standing out there, my feet and legs completely drenched one of our professors arrived to let me in.  Luckily someone had started a fire in our common area and I was able to put my shoes near the fire and sit there before class.  While I thought I was the most wet out of everyone, one of the guys in our program arrived after riding his bike to school!  With no umbrella obviously.  The minute he came in, we all pretty much broke out laughing at the lack of any inch of dryness on him.  Two of our professors, being typical Spanish mothers, immediately looked him up and down and said "no no no," his state of wetness would not do.  While they conversed in Spanish about what to do, and I heard them say something about getting someone else´s dry pants from around the office, I could not help but laugh.  I didn´t actually think they were serious but, no they were, they ordered him to take his pants off right there and gave him a blanket to wear all day while his pants dried on the radiator.  We took several pictures of it.  The next day I almost found myself in a similar situation after doing my laundry.  Since Spaniards line dry their clothes, from one side of the building to the other, I found myself in a jam because of the rain and had to settle with drying them inside which takes twice as long.  So Thursday when I woke up and discovered none of my pants were dry, I sort of panicked.  Luckily I had a pair of tights that were half dry, and a skirt, so I didn´t have to go to school without pants thank goodness.  Oh, just one of the adjustments over here, not having a dryer.  But it makes the experience all the more authentic don´t you think?  

Another eventful day of this week was my first two sessions at my community service!  This was the element of the program that attracted me to chose this particular study abroad.  Our professors find our interests and place us in community service centers around town in order to practice our Spanish and contribute to this wonderful community we live in.  My placement is at a children´s center that is for children who have either been taken away from their parents, have an abusive family life or just many problems at home and so they come here to work on life skills and community integration.  I absolutely love the organization and feel so blessed to work with this particular NGO that heads the site.   While many of the students also live at the site, some just come here in order to interact with other kids in the same situation and have aid from counselors and share-vent their emotions through sports and other activities that make a kid a kid.  My role on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons is to play sports with them and help with any other activities the teachers have for them.  My first day, when I arrived I was not prepared to play soccer like the kids expected and they immediately called me out on the fact that my shoes were not appropriate for what they wanted to do.  Let me say, they are not shy at all.  One girl on Thursday asked me for money for a trip and when I told her I had none, she got a little irritated with me and made the comment that if I could wear something different than what I wore Tuesday, I had money.  She was right, I had money with me, but wasn´t going to give it to her.  The kids, like any other kids who experience problems at home, are itching for attention and for the most part are good kids, but everyone has their bad days.  I must say I was slightly overwhelmed on Tuesday when we had to stay inside because of the rain and do other activities which caused irritation since all they wanted to do was play soccer.  Therefore, they acted up, jumped on the furniture, a couple boys started to punch each other, and the majority of the time was spent taking one kid after the next outside to try to get them to behave.  The poor teacher told me that they were usually much better but the rain made them act out, which of course is the same at every school for every kid.  For the first hour I was with the 12 and 14 year old kids and the second hour with the little ones, around 5 and 8 years old.  They were adorable on Tuesday and they all asked my name, where I was from and shook my hand the "American" way and asked me to speak English to them.  One even offered me his chocolate from his snack!  However, Thursday was a different situation and I suppose the rain affected them more than I thought it would.  Ohhhh, it was crazy!  The kids literally looked like monkeys, jumping on the chairs, running around the stage, hiding in the stage curtains and hitting each other for the heck of it.  While there was a moment where the two teachers left me inside in order to discipline some boys outside, one boy began hitting another little girl and I had to pull them apart and all I could say was "no" and to "go sit down."  I was trying to think of how to say "stop" in Spanish as a command but couldn´t, needless to say I went home and made a little list of words that I think will be useful at this place.  Although, it was an overwhelming day (most likely because of the rain) I am still so excited to work here and I just hope that I can become a friend to some of these kids who just need someone to listen to them.  Thursday I did get to play sports in the inside gym and realized that obviously sports is the way to get to know them. Along with my service experience comes another little "rain" anecdote, my walk to the community center is about half an hour from my house, so there is little point in taking the bus since over here it´s faster to walk everywhere. Well Thursday on my way back home, it of course began to rain (what´s new I know)  so I thought I would be okay because I had my rain jacket and umbrella,  I was SO NOT safe from the rain.  While walking down the street in a torrential downpour and high winds I was yet again a little irritated from being wet and cold, when I realized that I was the only person actually walking on my side of the street.  All the Spaniards had ducked up onto the steps of the doorways of stores and apartment buildings.  So once I realized I should probably do the same, I was able to save my feet for a few minutes from soaking up more water than they had in the last five minutes.  One Spanish woman joined me on my doorway, laughed, said something about the rain in Spanish.  Well although I was terribly cold and wet, I felt better about being such a pitiful sight because I felt I had one of those "I´m doing what the Spaniards do" moments and something as sensible as ducking into a doorway to hide from the rain made me feel more part of this culture rather than just living side by side with it.  I know it sounds rather cheesy, but that´s because I cannot really describe it, I just have so many moments where I feel I belong to this culture and have not experienced that feeling of being an outsider.  Granada people are so welcoming and sometimes unless I actually speak, I think I pass as being Spanish (there are many American looking Spaniards, even blond haired Spaniards).  Well I love those moments when I discover something new about Spanish culture - Granada and I hope I continue to have these moments up to the day I leave.


Friday, was the beginning of one of the few free weekends we have left here in the program.  From now on, our weekends are booked with excursions since Semana Santa is only in 2 weeks and we get a whole week off from school and the third weekend in April we go to Morocco.  So a few girls and I met up on Friday afternoon to do some shopping but ended up getting side tracked by policemen and noise that seemed to indicate a strike.  Strikes are rather popular over here and happen often, if not once a week.  To my surprise it was not a strike but a march and small parade for International Women´s day.  I  cannot begin to say how cool it was!  There was a girl´s drumming group doing an awesome routine, jugglers, people walking on stilts, and hundreds of people following this march with signs and banners advocating women´s rights.  The energy of the people was incredible and so many people who were out and about like us stood to watch and clapped the parade on.  We even joined the march till the finish!  All I kept thinking was only in Spain would a city be okay with shutting down the roadways for a good hour and a half to have a march for a day that not many people are even aware of.  While I have stated before that the whole, "let´s take a vacation whenever and for whatever reason" is a little difficult for me to understand, moments like those where Spaniards truly show their infinite capabilities to be laid back are quite impressive.  I just kept thinking how disruptive this would be in the U.S and furthermore that this would NEVER happen. Here is just a quick clip of the procession in its beginning stages, it got even bigger than this by the time I saw it.

Like I have said a million times, I absolutely love Granada and honestly it´s been the mental vacation I think I´ve needed for a long time.  It is absolutely impossible to worry about anything here because Spaniards never worry, so why be the only one?  This coming weekend I go to Sorvilan which is a rural community in Andalucia and we are going to learn about the agricultural side of Andalucia.  I am so excited!  Then I cannot believe it, but we have one week until Semana Santa when all of Spain pretty much takes a vacation.  Semana Santa is a huge deal here in Granada and thousands of tourists come here to watch the magnificent processions and celebrations.  My mother is coming on Palm Sunday to stay for the whole week and I am very excited to see her and share all the wonderful things I have discovered about my new city!

The day it snowed we had a Puente (school break), so my friend and I walked up to the Sacramonte (the barrio of the Gypsies) and went to the Sacramonte Abbey.

Sacramonte Abbey, it reminded me of the Sound of Music Abbey!

In the Sacramonte there are a ton of flamenco restaurants and bars that are known for their famous Flamenco dancers and singers. There are many paintings like this one on the walls along the road.

Part of the Abbey 

The view of Granada from Mount Valparaiso

La Alhambra

Time to study.  I have my first exam tomorrow morning and it has been incredibly hard to motivate myself, it´s been sooo long since I had to study for anything.  Other than the regular reviewing and homework we have not had any tests.  I know it´s kind of mind boggling for Americans who are used to the "American academics", but the way to learn here is not though exams but rather involvement and participation.  So it´s a tradeoff between formal academic learning and pushing yourself to be brave and actually participate in your learning experience.  I much prefer the latter!