Week 1 in Granada

Mercedes

The bus ride was long and we were all really tired by the time we got to Granada. We pulled up, and our host families were all waiting there for us. Ours was this little old lady named Mercedes, and she seemed super excited to see us. She helped us get our bags in, and we saw that we both had our own rooms, and a balcony! Then we had dinner. There was so much food, and she basically just set out everything and let us take whatever we wanted. She asked us what we wanted for breakfast the next day and we bonded over the fact that we are both zombies when we don't have coffee in the morning. She promised me that she always made coffee anyways, so it would always be there. She loves to cook. She used to be a nurse but now she lives alone and her only job is to host American students, so she really enjoys the company. I knew right away that living with Mercedes was going to be nice.

Breakfast the next day was good as well. We get to take whatever we want from the pantry and fridge, and there's always cereal, milk, chocolate mix, tea, coffee, bread, butter, jam, yogurt, fruit, cheese, and more. Basically living with Mercedes is perfect because of the food situation. We know we won't ever go hungry!

First day

The first day of class was pretty slow. We didn't do all that much, just started talking about sustainable development in Spain. However, Kelly, our professor, was super cool. She is really sweet, she seems to want us to enjoy ourselves while we're here, she's happy to recommend tapas and more, and she lets her students call her by her first name which isn't something I'm at all used to.

Monday after school we started the project that would be due Thursday, knowing that the rest of the week would be a lot busier. This meant talking to our host mom and random Spaniards about the economic crisis, which was a bit too much of a throwback to those Mexico documentaries for my taste. However, it was smart of us to get started, because I didn't realize just how busy the rest of the week would be.

Alhambra and Flamenco Show

Tuesday morning we went to the Alhambra instead of normal class. It was a Muslim piece of architecture that was later used and slightly changed by the Spanish Catholic kings, like Charles V. It was impressive, but not as impressive as I had built it up in my head to be. The patterns on the walls and ceilings, and the tiling around the palace, are all very intricate, but at the same time when seen from a few steps back it is all very much the same in its patterns and coloring. I won't say I didn't enjoy it, but it was very, very hot, and the thought of not being able to come home to air conditioning was making me sad. We learned quickly the first night that in Granada, they don't agree with the idea of air conditioning. Our host mom walks around in night gowns made from bed sheets and they open up all the windows and doors, but air conditioning is expensive and they believe it makes you sick. As a result, most people who live in Granada leave during the months of July and August for the beach, which our host mom will be doing after we leave. Anyways, I digress. I did enjoy the Alhambra, but my favorite part was the Generalife, and my favorite part of that was just the pretty gardens leading up to it. The pictures are below.

That night we went to a Flamenco show and dinner. We had these amazing friend eggplant things and I absolutely must learn how to recreate them. The show was in a cave, which made the whole atmosphere really interesting and neat, and the dancers were really really good. That being said, my favorite part was the lead female vocalist. She had a deep, gravelly voice. It wasn't beautiful in the way I would normally imagine, but it was one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard. There was only one male dancer, and he was pretty entertaining. He was very talented, but it was funny to me to watch him making eyes at the audience during the whole performance. Most of the dancers other than him didn't try to smile or look any particular way. Their facial expressions never looked forced. Sometimes they looked like the intense movements they were doing hurt. Sometimes they smiled but it was natural. And sometimes they looked sad. It was like they could hear things in the music that the audience couldn't hope to hear.

Intercambio

Wednesday we had to listen to some professors talk about the environment for a reeeeally long time for part of the day, but we also did something kind of fun. We had an "intercambio," and exchange, with some students studying English. We had the chance to ask them questions for our project, and they got to ask us questions from a list from their teacher. It just made me so happy to hear students on about the level of English as we are with Spanish. Yeah, they weren't fluent, and neither are we, but it reminds me that we aren't all that bad. 

That evening was pretty boring, since we just had to finish our project before it was due on Thursday. For a two week class, two projects and a test was kind of a lot, but it wasn't as bad as Mexico, just busy with the traveling on top of that.

Off to Morocco!

Thursday all we had to do was present our projects in class and then listen to a bit of a lesson, but then we got to go home and get ready for Morocco! Unfortunately, we also had to turn in our papers from Mexico, and lots of people hadn't finished. There was no end to the complaining in our Mexico Groupme, and while I don't blame them for being bummed about having to do the essays during the next study abroad, it was also surprising how many people just completely procrastinated.

Weekend in Pamplona

First I believe I have to finish telling you about last week. I didn't blog on because of the tests we had. It was our last week in Madrid, so we had a quiz on Wednesday and a test on Thursday. The one on Thursday was the important one, and our professor for the one on Wednesday literally told us not to study for it. It was very easy, with subjective questions like "listen to your heart and mind, and define what Spain is to you." Kind of a joke to be honest. The one on Thursday was a bit harder, but I wouldn't actually call it hard. It was nice to finish it though, and know that we are done with the course. 

Thursday after class we had a Flamenco lesson, which was very basic (of course, we wouldn't have been able to dance at all if it hadn't been) but extremely fun. The instructor was this very energetic lady with dreadlocks and a long flowy skirt, and she seemed to understand that none of us would actually be good at dancing and therefore the important thing was to just enjoy it. 

On Thursday night I was super exhausted and therefore didn't plan to go out to a club, but we went to a tapas bar after dinner for drinks and tapas. The place is a favorite of ours because if you all just order a drink for three euros, they just keep bringing out plates and plates of delicious tapas for you! We had like four plates of tapas among our small group, and we could not even get close to finishing them all. It was fantastic. Then, after that I was of course way too awake and excited to go to bed, so I decided that maybe going out wasn't such a bad idea for the last night in Madrid. I usually am kind of on the fence about clubs. They can be fun, but sometimes they're too hot and crowded, or the music is bad, or they're just nothing special. This one was, I kid you not, the most fun club experience I have ever had. It was 7 stories high, with the first three or four being more like balconies or terraces looking onto the main floor and stage/DJ, and the higher up ones being their own separate little parties. There was a cocktail bar on the fourth floor with the best pina coladas ever, and at one point we went on to one of the reserved balconies on that floor and watched the performers and the crowd dancing from up there. We could see our friends who were already down there, and it was pretty neat to be up above the crowd. We eventually made our way down to the main floor, and we stayed there for a long time. There was AWESOME music, and, at different points in the evening, a DJ, a really good violinist who played popular songs, dancers, and people going up on stage. It was literally the club experience that you would see in a movie.

Friday morning, bright and early, we left for Pamplona after 3 hours of sleep.

Pamplona

I slept like a baby on the train. We were exhausted but everybody made it. The ride to Pamplona was relatively short, only three hours. We arrived and stepped out to a bunch of people in the typical San Fermin white outfits with red scarves and bandannas. Everybody was smiling, it was sunny, and the air was cool. We took some cabs to the apartment we were staying in. We walked in to see completely white walls, no furniture but the beds, and no sink or anything but an oven in the kitchen area. Apparently the guy had just bought the place, and it wasn't furnished or set up with anything including wifi, which was a difficult prospect. It was two to a bed, with two bathrooms for the 12 of us, and the beds weren't made yet. We all put our stuff down and laid down on the floor for a solid 30 minutes, just to rest before we went to explore. Then we went to a cafe to connect to wifi and let the people who might be expecting to hear from us know that we wouldn't have it. Then we went to go explore. We decided the best option was to walk the course that the bulls would be running, and go to buy white bandannas and scarves on the way.  

We saw parades with tons of the big gigantes (giant puppetlike people they hold up over their head) and saw people in the street drinking, laughing, and singing. We saw where they keep the bulls, and we saw so many pretty views. We also got to walk by a Hemingway statue and a restaurant that has something to do with him.

Later Mandy and I went to walk some more. We saw a monument, several churches, and lots of cute buildings and houses. There were live bands playing, people crowding the streets to sing songs about Pamplona, and big groups eating and drinking at tables. We were taking pictures by the cathedral when one group started messing around, posing and talking to us. They just started asking us tons of stuff about where we were from and how we liked Spain and San Fermin, and offered us food and drinks without even hesitating. It's really amazing the attitude towards strangers in Spain versus in America. Of course, we declined sitting with them and continued our walk. We tried to go to the cathedral but it ended up being closed at that time, but the walk was well worth it.

The view near our apartment

Live band!!

Running of the bulls monument

People filling the streets to celebrate

Cathedral!

You can see the different flags, which was a big controversy this year

Rainbow houses

Friendly people

We finally got to this wall, past this little fairy like section of houses, where the view was simply amazing.

Me in front of the cathedral

Cute houses tucked away in some back streets

That view...
 

We eventually went back for showers and naps, then went out to dinner with some friends. We all just wanted to sit down, rest, and eat some not Spanish food, so we found an Italian place, ordered a ton of food, and devoured all of it. It was exactly what we all wanted. We went back to the apartment after and changed to go out later, but that didn't exactly end up happening. A few of us sat down on the bed and started talking, and before we knew it there were six girls in the room, we were all cracking up, and nobody really wanted to go out. Plus, we had an early morning the next day. We would have to leave by 6:30 to get a good spot for the bulls. That was a moment of the trip when I was perfectly happy to be without wifi. 

We woke up bright and early with a lot of grumpy people. We got dressed in our all white outfits with our scarves and bandanas and headed out to go to a cafe for breakfast then to the encierro. I got coffee and a croissant, but a few crazy people in my group decided to do as the Spaniards do and start on sangria even though it was 6:00 in the morning. We walked over to a good spot on an elevated part of the road, where we could watch the start of the event without getting stuck behind a crowd of people. The streets were so thick with people that you couldn't see road. There were police kicking out people that were too drunk to run, since nobody sleeps during San Fermin and they all just stay out partying. The whole city smelled terrible, like beer, red wine, coke, pee, and sweaty gross people. There were people that had gotten to the course at 5 am to get a good view. It was overwhelming and crazy, but I'm still glad I had the experience. We all crowded together to watch the bulls, and the energy of the crowd was pretty impressive. I honestly would have liked it better if it wasn't so darn early, but I know it's a pretty once in a life time opportunity and I am super glad I saw it. 

By the way, somebody remind me to post the picture of us in our outfits when my friend sends it to me.

That being said, I was happy to leave the crazy city. There's not much to do in Pamplona when it's not San Fermin, and then all there is to do is party and sleep. We didn't really want to spend a whole weekend just doing that, so after the race we went to San Sebastian, a city an hour away by bus. The bus tickets were only $7 so it was well worth the trip. 

When we got there, we took one look around and changed our tickets to be an hour and a half later because we immediately knew that 12 to 5 wouldn't be enough time. We decided we did the weekend wrong: we should have stayed in San Sebastian to do the fun sightseeing, relaxing on the beach, and eating that we wanted to do, then took one of the special buses into Pamplona for the encierro. Since that isn't what we did, we squeezed every last little bit of fun out of our time in San Sebastian.

Tziquiteo

That is my new favorite word, because it is a beautiful and wonderful concept. It is the Basque word for "tapa hopping," that is to say, literally going from one tapas bar to the next to have a huge variety of different little tapas. This is a thing that people do in San Sebastian, and the thing that I was absolutely the most excited about there, other than the award winning cheese store. Since there is tough competition between the very good tapas places, the hot tapas are set out on platters on the counter to entice customers, and you can pick and choose your favorites for a pretty good price.

We went to see the market first, then stopped by the cheese store to get four different types of cheese and some bread for about 15 euros among 6 people. That was for a picnic on the beach a bit later in the evening. Then we started our Tziquiteo!!!

I'm just going to rant about how good the food was for a quick little paragraph here because you all know how I feel about food. At the first place, I had a mushroom wrapped in bacon. The dish looked a little weird but sounded good, so I ordered it. The reason it looked weird, I found out shortly, was that the mushroom wasn't cooked. I found this out when they tossed the bacon wrapped mushroom casually into a vat of some deliciously seasoned hot oil. When it came out it was crispy and juicy and hot and really, really good. At the next place, I had a piece of lightly toasted bread with goat cheese and apricot marmalade. This was agreed on by everybody to be the best tapa out of the evening. The flavors were more than amazing together, the bread wasn't too crispy, the marmalade wasn't too sweet, and even my friend who doesn't like goat cheese liked it. After that I had a little bread thing with some sort of shredded salad and a piece of shrimp on top. Probably my least favorite of the evening, but still great. I tried Mandy's salt cod. I don't like fish usually, but San Sebastian knows how to do it. Finally, at the fourth place I had the house special of soaked bread and mushrooms, and a glass of Rueda. By then we were stuffed and ready to go do something else, but oh so satisfied. We picked up a 2 euro bottle of wine for our picnic, and set off towards the beach.

Oh wait let's just climb this mountain first

We were going to go to the beach for the picnic, but then Mandy and Kesha saw the start of a trail up a mountain to this castle. We decided it would be fun to climb it before we went to the beach. This was a very casual decision and I was wearing a skirt and carrying a lot of stuff. It wasn't hard, but it wasn't super easy either. It was a lot of stairs, which are harder in my opinion than an actual hill. That being said, it was super worth it when we got to the top, and the pictures below are why. 

We found a good picnic spot overlooking the water at the top of the mountain so we decided to eat there instead of the beach. We passed around the cheese and wine, and everybody literally had smiles glued to their faces. I think we all agreed that it was the best moment of the trip so far. 

After the mountain, we went to the beach. We walked all the way along the coast to see what was on the other side, and we swam out to diving platforms with slides and diving boards. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip, but we weren't quite ready to leave when it was time to find a taxi and go back to Pamplona. 

We had all planned to go out on Saturday night, but the sunshine and climbing left us exhausted. We went to get food at Wok to Walk (we are all happy to find breaks from Spanish food, if not too tired of it yet) and then Mandy and I just chilled at a cafe with WiFi until bedtime. We had to get up super early today to go back to Madrid. Finding taxis was a hassle this morning, and two people missed the train and had to take a bus back which was really upsetting for them for obvious reasons. I was more tired than I've ever been. It feels like in Spain we don't sleep, we just nap once at night and another time during the day if we're lucky. I fell into a deep sleep on the train, and when my friend woke me up and I stood up my legs were sore and shaking just from lack of sleep. It was lovely to get back to the residence, take a two hour nap in a bed by myself, get up, drink some coffee, get ready, pack, not have to share the bathroom with 8 other people... 

The bus ride to Granada today was about 5 hours. I cannot wait to tell you about it tomorrow though, because our host mom is absolutely incredible and our room situation is the best out of all the places we've stayed this summer. However, due to the whole no wifi thing, this was the first day I've had the chance to tell you about Pamplona and it has taken me quite a while. In fact, it's about 2:00 am right now and I have class tomorrow, so I have to call it a night. Get excited to hear about tomorrow's first day of class and first day in Granada!