Single File Please!

I am sure my readers are wondering what my title to this blog means, it is actually pretty funny, but considering my stories are never funny when I try to tell them, they end up being stories that you had to be there for. Anyways, yesterday we were roaming around with our group and we were heading to the bar for Flamenco dance. Our coordinator was trying to tell us to get in one line so the cars won't hit us and didn't know how to say it in English until he asked. I looked up and our coordinator Julio was strutting around in the street yelling "Siiingle Fiiiile Please!" while snapping at us and with a very sassy attitude, my roommate and I died out laughing because of his attitude and how he said it with his Spanish accent. Our whole group has grown pretty close with Julio, and he might not act like he likes us but he does! He just gives us a hard time, below is a picture with Julio, Liz, and my roommate, along with a lot of photos. It surely has been a long two days, but I feel like my time here is flying by so fast.

Yesterday, we had to get up and be at the school at 9:00 for orientation, now most of you think that you get see what the school looks like and hear about it...nope! We were put straight into a class from 9:00 to 11:30 to review material. We got a 30 minute break and then had to be back for class till 2:00, I got pretty tired by the end of the day. This school is so different that any school I have ever visited in the United States. If you have noticed all the close buildings from my pictures, the school is squeezed into these buildings just like any store or restaurant. The school is not all together either, it is spread throughout the town, but in the same area. I will have to get a picture of the building I have been going to orientation in. Tomorrow, we take our exam to see what level Spanish we will be taking, I described it in a previous blog. I am pretty nervous, but I think everything will be okay, the review the past two days has helped. After we got home from class, Ellie had yummy food for us! She made chicken paella which is like the vegetable paella in a previous blog, but this time with chicken and twice as good! Of course she had pan (bread) on the table, my favorite! Mom and Dad I promise I didn't eat the whole loaf, figured that would be rude. She also had the salad we had the night before the dinner on the table, but we were so full from paella and bread that we couldn't eat the salad. Ellie also poured us some really good red wine to go with our food and watermelon for dessert. Here, the women of the house usually goes to the market every day so everything is SO fresh! The watermelon was amazing! After lunch, Heather and I practically crashed and burned on our beds for a nice afternoon siesta! By the time we woke up it was time to meet our group to take a tour downtown and then go see Flamenco dancers! Downtown Granada was beautiful and we walked a long way. To get to where the Flamenco dancers were, we had to walk up this huge hill on cobble stone, definitely hoping that I am losing weight by walking everywhere and up and down hills. The Flamenco dancers were so interesting! If you are a dancer and know that tap dancing can be a little difficult to master, this is twice that! It was so cool to watch. After the Flamenco dancing, a group of us roamed around the city and some got ice cream. We then decided to go get a drink at a bar and some free tapas! It took us a while to actually find a place and on the way there these men were selling knock off designer bags. When I saw the Louis Vuitton knock off doctor looking bag, I couldn't help myself to try and bargain with him and get it for 35 euros. I am pretty excited, but probably won't wear it here in case a gypsy tries to steal it with all my belongings in there. All of us were pretty tired so we left the bar at 11:30 and headed back home to go to sleep. Sleeping with the balcony door open and hearing all the people, cars, and vespas is starting to sink in and I can fall asleep a little bit faster now.

Today, was a good learning experience day, but filled with lots of walking! We had to go back for orientation today from 9:00-2:00. When we were done, we got to eat our sandwiches that our families made for us, mine would have been delicious if Ellie had not put mustard on it. I gave it a try and ate about half of the sandwich, but the mustard just did not sit well with me. Heather and I are going to tell her if she has to make us another lunch on the go that we don't like mustard. After we got done eating, we started the treacherous walk up to the Alhambra. Keep in mind, I live down in the city and the Alhambra over looks all of Granada. It was a nice long hike up there, I just hope the hiking and walking will end up paying off. We toured Alhambra for 3 hours, or maybe a little more and we all were exhausted after.  If you are not sure what the Alhambra is, here is some quick background information. The fortress was once red that the Muslim rulers built. Eventually some Christian rulers took over some of the Alhambra where King Charles resided. The Spanish eventually took over and painted the Alhambra white so the sun reflected off so the soldiers that guarded it did not get so hot. The pictures below show a lot of the inside of the buildings, it was built with mathematics and great symmetry. It is truly something for people to go see if you ever get the chance. On our way back home we stopped for some ice cream and to rest our feet for a little bit. We made it home and fell right to our beds and then Ellie came in to tell us dinner was ready around 9:00. She made us homemade bacon pizza, it was delicious! I also had a salad and since they do not really have salad dressings here, I put olive oil on top. For dessert, Ellie gave me an apple to eat, it was so delicious because it is so fresh! Now I am about to hit the books in preparation for my exam tomorrow. Prayers would be very helpful! I must get into the level in order to get my 6 hours credit or they will not transfer and coming over here to take classes and get my hours is the whole reason I am here. Will keep you posted on what is to come! We have not decided what to do on our free weekend yet. A group of us have about 3 options: Hike the Sierra Nevadas, go to the beach, or take a bus and go to some city close by like Malaga. Enjoy the pictures!

while roaming the city you find a lot of graffiti on the buildings, it was pretty cool

in front of the fountain downtown

flamenco dancing

she was my favorite!

alhambra from down below

walking around granada at night

it is sad to say that when a group of us walked around the corner and found this statue, we all had to look again because we looked at it the wrong way haha

this is Julio!

the fountain!

my rooms

the beginning of a lot of the pictures of the alhambra

Finally in Granada

Greetings from my new home for the next 4 and half weeks! Granada is beautiful! When we arrived this afternoon, you could see the snow slowly melting away on the Sierra Nevadas at the top of the mountains. Our coordinator told us up until May 15th they had the slops opened so people could go ski. It is too bad I didn't come the beginning of the summer to get to experience my first ski adventure here in Spain! Even though there is still snow at the tops of the mountains, it is muy muy calor en la ciudad (very very hot in the city). I continue to try to use Spanish as much as I can now that I am with my host mom, Ellie, because she does not want us talking in English, which is really hard ha. I am almost positive Ellie speaks little to no English so this should be a great learning experience to continue to speak in Spanish. I now live in a flat or also called an apartment. I am sharing a room and it has two single beds, two little desks, two vanity dressers, and a nice balcony for us to go out on, there is a picture posted below. Once we got here, we unpacked all of our belongs, I cannot tell you how nice it is to not live out of a suitcase anymore. I was hardly able to find all the clothes I brought because they were all stuffed in my big duffle bag. Ellie does have air conditioning but she has control of the remote for our unit in our room so she turns it on when she wants to since it is very expensive. Right now we are in our room and I am pretty hot! It reminds me of when I worked at Camp Ozark last summer with no air conditioning in the cabins but I had two fans to keep me cool at night. Here, I have not seen a fan yet to buy, but if I find a clip on fan that can go on my bed I will probably have to invest in one.

After dinner with Ellie, I am pretty sure my group is planning to meet up and go out for ice cream and explore the city a little bit. When we arrived at our home today, some girls from Colorado State were still here, but leaving tonight to go back to the United States. She gave us a bunch of pointers and all about where to go. She said that people might go to a bar till midnight but then at 2:00 AM everyone will start to go to the discotecas. That is insane to be going that late, since I am usually heading home around 2:00 in the United States, but this trip is all about adapting to another culture and trying new things. Pretty tired tonight and still adjusting to being in my home, so my roommate and I probably will stay in tonight and get use to the city before we go out and about. Tomorrow we are meeting our coordinator at 8:40 in the morning to head to the campus for an orientation and classes from 9:00-2:00. We will do the same on Thursday, but on Friday we have to take a placement test to actually be placed in the classes we are suppose to be in. The test will be 3 hours long and there are 4 parts: multiple choice, writing, listening, and a 1-on-1 interview to see how well we communicate. Lets cross our fingers that I do well, I am pretty nervous! Then, we finally start classes on July 4th! Our group is already planning on finding an American bar to celebrate independence day ha! Will keep my readers updated as the days go by, I am pretty excited for tomorrow, after classes are over we come back to our homes and have lunch and ask our families to pack us a picnic dinner and meeting with our group at 6:30 to tour downtown Granada. Then we get to go watch a Flamingo Dance! I am so glad I will get to that! Enjoy the pictures!

view from my new home

the other side of my view, where I can see the Sierra Nevadas

Our room

walking around in Granada. Lots of clothing stores on this road, even an H&M! Definitely going to have to go in there one day!

walking around Granada again!

This clothing store is across from our flat, it has my initials!

and we finally experience our first bump in the road

To say that the last 24 hours has been interesting is an understatement. Let's begin at dinner last night, a group of about 10 of us decided to go eat about 9:30 and someone suggested Italian. We get there and were seated and the waiter asked for our food orders first rather than our drink orders. I ordered a pesto pasta, which I had never had before and it was delicious! Then 3 of us girls decided to order some wine and my eyes lit up when I saw Moscato on the menu. If you are ever around me, you know that is my favorite wine. I talked the other 2 girls into getting it so we ordered a bottle and some of my other friends ordered red wine and such. The waiter then came back out and said the moscato was hot and could be chilled but he didn't want to serve it to us hot, so we decided to just order a spanish red wine. Now I am not a big red wine fan at all, but this trip is all about having adventures and trying new things so I went with the flow. He brought the wine out and it actually tasted pretty good! It wasn't to die for, but it wasn't gross or anything. My other friend decided he would wait on the moscato to chill and once he got his bottle he let me have a taste. To all my friends in Starkville who drink moscato, this one is about 10 times better than Barefoot! It was amazing! It was called Moscato DOMX, I do believe. Then our food finally came and we ate and enjoyed our wine. After dinner it was about 11:00 and some of the group wanted to change before we went out. So 3 others and I decided to go sit somewhere and just have a beer while we waited instead of going back to the hotel. The beer I chose was Cruzacampo, which was pretty good! It tasted kind of like a Coors Light. Finally at about 11:30 we met up with everyone else and decided to find some clubs to go to. Except most of the clubs don't open till 12:30 or 1:00, I started laughing at that when I heard that because in Starkville the bars close at 12 on week days and 1 on weekends, not open then ha. We roamed around Madrid and finally found a bar that no one was at and had a very good price on drinks. We walked in and they started playing techno music and had blue lights and such and we were the only ones in there. At this bar in particular, when you order a drink they give you a shot to go with it. I decided to order Desperados, which is a beer a lot like a Corona except this had tequila mixed it in. It was really good! We all were having a good time, still getting to know everyone, and finally some locals came in. These 3 men introduced themselves but thought we would be offended if they greeted us with a kiss on the cheek, but we said we wanted to learn the proper way. When you greet your friends or family you start with the right cheek and then go to the left with a little peck. One of the guys could speak English, but the other two did not know any English, it was interesting trying to communicate with my asi asi(so-so) Español. Eventually we decided to go see if there was another place we could go and just kind of see how each bar was. We found one and we walked in and everyone was dancing, two guys pulled me and my roommate to dance and we both wiggled away to go hang out with our group and the two guys like followed us to try and dance still, but the boys in our group are pretty protective of us girls and helped us out! Spanish men are very flirty and they have an impression of American girls, but we stood our ground! Finally, it was getting pretty late so we decided to head back to the hotel and go to sleep since we had to be in the lobby to leave for Toledo at 9:00. I really enjoyed going out and seeing how night life was in Madrid, pretty fun!

Here comes the fun part...(cue the sarcasm). We fell asleep and knew we had to get up and shower and eat breakfast and such so we set our alarm for 7:00 AM and I remember looking before I fell asleep that it was set. I hear the phone ringing when I wake up this morning and my roommate goes what?! it is 9:30. Oh great.... we were just woken up by our coordinator who said they couldn't wait any longer and were going to leave us if we didn't hurry up. I FLEW out of bed and threw on clothes really quick and barely got to brush my teeth, my roommate and I were just shoving our stuff into our bags and getting out as fast as we could. We get downstairs and the bus is not in front of the hotel, my heart dropped! But then we remembered when we unloaded the other day we were around the corner so we practically ran over there and low and behold the bus had waited for us! The coordinators were not too happy with us but luckily two other girls had the same problem as us. I figured I was just in such a deep sleep I turned the alarm off and fell right back asleep and I just don't remember it. If we had been left we would have taken a taxi to Toledo but our check in was not until 4:00 in the afternoon so we would have had no where to put our luggage. As for tonight, my roommate and I are setting our two battery powered clocks and my phone, we won't let that happen again! Being late to important things get me all worried and anxious so if you could only imagine what was going through my head this morning when that happened, but everything ended up being okay.

We made it to Toledo and I cannot describe how beautiful it is here! Madrid is pretty but it is also a big city and more modern, Toledo has the old architecture and the city is nestled by this river. I will post pictures below because it is something to experience, especially in person. We took a tour around the city on the bus and then got out and had a walking tour. We went to the Catholic Church that is gorgeous and had a tour guide tell us all about it, in spanish of course! Then we continued to tour a museum with another one of Greco's paintings and important buildings throughout the city. Finally at 2:00 we were released to get some lunch and roam around the town. Shopping is pretty good here! I decided not to buy anything and wait till Granada where I will be living. Now we are at the hotel, relaxing before our meeting tonight about our families and what school will be like and such. In our meeting our coordinator mentioned that we could get someone to book a plane ticket for 35 euros for a nonstop flight to Rome for the weekend, a bunch of girls and I decided we would LOVE to do that! I meet my host family tomorrow!! I am pretty excited, but just hoping my spanish is good enough for her, I guess it will be okay if I am at least trying. Will try and post a blog tomorrow night if my family has WI-FI!

ps-to all my delta gamma sisters, there is a girl in my group from California who goes to San Diego and she is a fellow sister! ITB

The beer in Madrid

Toledo

Toledo is such a beautiful city

The river in Toledo

Catholic Church, so pretty

inside the church

view from the back of the church

garden in the middle of the outside of the church

again

in the streets in Toledo

so pretty!

about to get into the shopping area in Toledo

my hydration for this trip with it being hot and walking everywhere. water is not free here in spain like at a restaurant