Life in Granada

Well, it has been a while since I've blogged again and I apologize for that! I'm going to have to think back to everything because so much has happened in this past week. Let's see I last left off where my host mom made me empanadas which was last Saturday! They were delicious by the way. They had tuna and well I just liked them. Anyway, later that night I went with a few people to this bar near our hostel which is the center of the city pretty much called Tantra bar. It was actually really cool, I liked it a lot there. It's a little bit small but not terrible, and it's darker. There were some people from Spain but also others from other countries and stuff. I went home early because the next day we all had to wake up because we were going on a tour of La Alhambra, this massive fortress/palace/city in Granada that was for the Sultan and military and stuff. Our whole program met our program director at 10:30 to hike on up there. It literally is basically a vertical slant up to walk all the way up to it, because it's a lot higher than the rest of the city.



This is only like.. a SMALL portion of what it actually looks like haha. The tour took about 6 hours to see all parts of it, the palaces, and Generalife which was the summer palace of the Sultan. It was gorgeous and really cool to see. Most of it was based on Islamic relgion and stuff so the architecture was focused around that, but in the middle of this massive Islamic city there were some Christian churches and stuff which was really weird. It's interesting because Islamic architecture is a LOT more intricate there than the Christian architecture was. It was very cool.

After La Alhambra, I went with some different people to go get CHURROS CON CHOCOLATE at Cafe Futbol, apparently the best restaurant for it in Granada. They literally are churros, fried dough (sans cinnamon/sugar) with a cup of this hot chocolate but its not like the stuff you drink it's really thick almost like melted chocolate stuff. Absolutely delicious. After, I went home and just hung out and stuff with my host mom and relaxed and stuff!


Monday we started classes at Cegrí! The school is pretty much in the center of town kind of, close to Café Futbol. it's inside of an older looking building ( I will take a picture of it soon I promise). They had this rather inefficient system of telling us what classes we had by posting all of the different classes/times and who was in them, rather than giving us individual classes. The options for times classes could be at were 9-1030, 11-1230, 1-230, 430-6 or 630-8, and they would be two times a week. Of course, I was originally assigned to have 2 classes at 9 am so thus I would have class Monday through Thursday at 9 am. Not happening. I switched one of them to an 11 am class, so I have class Monday and Wednesday from 9-1030 and then again 1-230. Tuesday I have class 11-1230, and again 630-8, and Thursday is 11-1230, and 430-6. I'm taking Spanish Culture, which has been REALLY interesting I really like it and the teacher, Oral Spanish, Culture of Islam, and Spanish Art History. Spanish Art History is awesome too because every Thursday we take "field trips" to different places around the city to see different things we learn about. All of the teachers are really great and I am actually really interested to learn the stuff we do. All of our classes are in Spanish, but I think that all of our teachers do a really good job of talking to us at a level we can really understand. So in between classes I walked around and stuff and found some stores and recharged my phone and other random things. We had class again, and then I went home to eat lunch con mi familia! Everybody stops working around 2 or 230 and goes home to eat, so my host father, Sebastián comes home and eats with us everyday. My host mom made crayfish, which were delicious! She showed me them on Sunday night and I actually gagged because they still had the heads on them, but LUCKY for me, she cut them off and I didn't have to do that myself. I wouldn't have haha. It was delicious though. I can't remember what I did later that night but I think it involved trying to plan out some trips and stuff.

Tuesday I had class again, and at night (the eve of my birthday) I went out with Karrah and Audrey for drinks and tapas. We have been going to different places that were suggested so we can try a bunch of different places.

Ah okay we're eating lunch BUT I will be back and will post more!