Granada, mi amorrrr!

Hello again friends, as predicted I just got back from Granada and I have tons of good things to say. First of all, we started our regular session classes today, so I had my first three classes, Spanish phonetics, Contemporary Spanish Literature and also Spanish Film. They all seem like they'll be really interesting and not too hard so I'm pretty happy about that. Also, tonight I had my first meeting for my interest group which is human rights and we go on a four day trip to Morocco and it looks beyond cool. We go to three different cities and a village in the mountains and we also get to ride camels, which was my only question haha. Its gonna be 130 euros but that really isn't bad at all for three nights and four days which includes everything. Warning: this entry is epic-ly long and probably more than you care to know. Just a heads up.

Now for Granada...where do I begin?! I guess I should start off by saying it was definitely the best weekend I've had since I've been here. On Friday the day before we left for Granada, some friends and I went out for what was supposed to be only a few hours but I didn't end up going to sleep until 3:30 and I had to get up at 7 to get to the bus. Thankfully I didn't miss it or anything, but I couldn't sleep on the three hour bus ride there, so I was pretty tired when we finally got there. But when we got there, I never wanted to shut my eyes again. One of the coolest parts was when we were still on the bus and getting into the mountains...the views were unbelieveable. As the bus climbed up the mountain you could see over the edge at the whole town below with snow capped mountains as the backdrop. Don't worry, I got pictures :)

We stayed in a nice hotel and it was four people to a room and I roomed with my friends Amber, Janelle, and Sarah—(Sarah and Amber both go to Madison and Janelle goes to Penn State...fyi haha.) and we hung out in the hotel room for the painful hour before lunch. I don't know if it was the mountain air or the lack of sleep but we were all in hysterics about everything and just laughing to the point of crying about the bidets and shitty sheets and drafty (open) window and everything else...it reminded me of being with friends at home and just having one of those days where you can't stop laughing, so much fun. At lunch it was the same way and people thought we were on drugs. They had these ice creams in single serving containers and it was a buffet so we all just loaded up on the ice cream and made a tower of empty packets. Maybe you had to be there but we were crying with laughter when the guy came to clear our table.

Anyways! After lunch we went for our tour of La Alhambra, which is the most famous thing in Granada and definitely one of the most famous things in Spain. We got really lucky because the group that went the weekend before us had rain the whole weekend and we had beautiful weather for the most part. Back to the Alhambra. It was nothing short of amazing. (I really need to get new adjectives to describe things here but there isn't any other way to describe it!). We walked through the first part which is a garden called the Generalife (not pronounced how it looks for all you Ameerricins out there), which was added later on or something...I really need to brush up on my history, I was a little absorbed in the beauty of the whole thing and didn't listen as intently as I should have. The garden was pretty and had great views of the city below, but it would have been so much cooler to see it in the spring time with all the flowers. My friends and I really want to make an effort to go back at some point before we leave. After the garden, we entered La Alhambra, which is the last Muslim palace in Spain that wasn't completely destroyed during the Reconquista when Isabel and Fernando forced everyone to become catholic or peace out or get killed. The arquitecture and detail and pure beauty of it all was just indescribable. The most noticeable part of the palace was the element of water...it was always everywhere you looked; fountains, pools, little river things, really beautiful. At the end of the three hour tour we went through the military part of it where the ruins of the military barracks were and we climbed this tower and on top of it you could see evvvveryyythhiinnngg for miles and miles. It sounds so cheesy but standing up there and seeing the city, the mountains, the palace, with the sun on my face just brought my heart into my throat and gave me that feeling like...this is my life, after dreaming of it for years, I made it. I know I sound like such a loser but if you saw it, you would feel the same way.

Also while we were at the Alhambra there were tons of kitties around and one of them let me pet it but the others ran away from me. I chased them down any chance I got though. Oh and Kim, I think I found your female soulmate because my friend Danielle said it is her dream to “punt a cat”, in those exact words. I thought you would enjoy that hahaha.

After La Alhambra, we went to a Teteria, which is a tea shop. Also something about Granada is that, just like the Alhambra, it is heavily Muslim-influenced and very hippy-like so there are tons of hookah bars and tea shops and cool African looking things all around haha. We were all zombies drinking our tea in the dimly lit place, but it was really cool nonetheless. And I got some sweet pictures, artistic of course. Haha another thing is they had like an American soundtrack going that was playing Titanic music, The Last of the Mohigans, and Boondock Saints. I thought it was kind of funny...“like god damnit...the Americans are here, get out the American mixtape.”

After that we walked around a little bit to all of the cool shops. I didn't buy anything except postcards because I kept telling myself they would have the same stuff in Morocco for cheaper and more “authentic”, but now I kind of wish I had.

So, mom, I hear you are editing and printing these off for Omi, so here starts a segment you may want to omit completely. Also, after reading through this next segment, it's kind of an obnoxious play by play that isn't even that interesting, so for those of you with little time or interest, you may want to skip it haha.

So! Being from Wisconsin, (and Penn State), we were all used to the whole pre-gaming deal before we go out so we don't have to pay for drinks when we got out. Some may call it alcoholism, we call it economical. So before we went out we all (the roommates mentioned above), drank and got ready. Remember, nothing in Spain starts until like midnight, so we were chillin for awhile. When we left around 11:30, we stopped at the desk and asked them where we should go. We had planned on going to Granada Diez which is the big club there, but they told us to go to this other place and called us a taxi. Well the taxi ride was like 15 euro (split between four but still!) and we are crossing the highway like thinking...where the eff are we going....? We finally end up at this club that's in a mall, and no one is there and you have to pay 10 euro to get in, so we got another taxi which took us to Granada Diez, but we hit up a couple bars before going in because, like I've said before, no one goes to the discotecas until like 2am. Oh, I forgot to mention we brought some booze with us in a water bottle, (again think economical! And Carli—there were lots of trips to the bathroom, quite reminiscent of our rendezvous at Crave....:)), which will explain future events. The discoteca was a bllllasssstttt. They played great music all night and me and my friends just danced our hearts out. All of my novios (boyfriends) were there too (none of them know they are my novios, they are all guides and I just stalk them from far away), but I didn't really talk to any of them except Antonio who now definitely thinks I am a wack-ass-crazy effing American lol, but that's a story for another day...We danced until like 5am, I have no idea where the time went, it is all a blur of dance and sweat and lights and music. Fantastico!!! I have lots of pictures from that night too though, which were fun to look at the next morning. They were one of very few good things about the next morning in fact....so around 5:30 we were so tired and so we go to collect our coats from the coat check, and I can't find my ticket to claim my coat. I try to explain to the girls behind the counter that I can't find it and they tell me I have to wait until 7 when they close, to get it. We have to be up at 8:30. Even my spanish friends tried to get it for me and couldn't. But around 6:30 I tried to make myself cry and talked to them again and finally got it.

So we got back to the hotel at like 6:45-7. you can imagine my face at 8:30 when the alarm went off. I put on the clothes nearest to me and my glasses and went to breakfast. I wanted to die all day longggg. I don't even think it was the hangover as much as the sleep. Remember the night before I slept for three hours, so in 48 hours I had 6 hours of sleep at best. I have never felt worse in my LIFE! I didn't even realize until we were half way home on the bus that I had never even changed out of the shirt I was wearing the night before. Good times.

So on Sunday we walked through a well known neighborhood in Granada that I think is called Albacin? I don't have my papers with me now so I'll have to look it up. But it is a really old quaint neighborhood, which was really pretty but it reminded me a lot of Sevilla. We stopped at this one place that has (another) amazing view, and the sun was shining and this hippy Spaniard was strumming While My Guitar Gently Weeps by the Beatles on his acoustic guitar...*sigh*:) After that we walked to a church/museum where the tombs (and remains) of Isabel and Fernando (the catholic king and queen who gave Colombus permission to go to America, and a lot of other stuff that basically changed the history of the world), and Juana la Loca and her husband Phillipe and their son Enrique, lay. We saw their actual coffins below the church floor. It sounds weird but that was definitely one of the coolest parts of this experience so far. To see the place where two of the most important people to the history of the world once lived and walked and died...I can't even describe it. Every time we go to any of these historical places I think about all the people who once walked where I'm walking and were here...I think about the idea of time a lot, but when I'm somewhere really ancient like that church or la Alhambra or the ruins in Italica...its like a collision of the past and the present, a really eerie feeling, but so interesting at the same time.

Even though I suffered miserably the whole day due to lack of sleep, I still enjoyed (almost) every minute of it. The bus ride home of course I passed out hard for, and felt a tiny bit better afterwards, but I still slept 11 hours on Sunday night and took a 2 hour nap on Monday (today) and plan to sleep for hours and hours tonight. Hopefully I'll regain my personality by tomorrow.

Future plans...me and my friend Amber were planning on going to Madrid this weekend coming up, but now I think we are going to Gibralter for the day of the 14th and play with monkeys. It is snowing in Madrid right now so I think I can hold off on that for a different weekend! I bought postcards in Granada and I'm hoping to send them tomorrow or some time soon. Be on the look out! Well that entry should fill you for awhile, hopefully I'll have pictures up soon, they just take forever and a day to upload so I need a lot of time on the computer, which I never have. Keep checkin the 'book! As always, love you guys, miss you to death, don't forget about me!