As I sit here eating my Cuban banana (it’s legal here! though odd to think of fruit this delicious being illegal in the states) looking back, it’s been a pretty eventful week. Third week of classes, getting used to new schedules and also to the fact that I have less than an hour’s worth of homework for all of my classes combined. This is something I could get used to. I’ve now been to a couple of Kung Fu classes as well; they’re odd to say the least. Imagine the stereotypical zen, calm, fit guy you would expect to be teaching a martial class. Now make him Argentinean and ninja, that’s the teacher. Though no matter how ninja he may be, he’s very patient which is appreciated considering my knowledge of the art is zero. There were some great failures that first class fumbling around trying to manage crouching, balancing on one foot, and kicking with the other all at the same time. Fail. I have never been and will never be that coordinated though it was nice that he thought all of us were. I’m also the only girl in the class, the youngest by about ten years and the only without past experience. How do I get myself into these situations? I love it. Kung Fu kicks aerobics’ butt anyday. (pun very intended)

Over the weekend a girl, Sarah, I knew from Art of the Book last semester decided to come visit me from London where she is studying abroad this semester. It’s always fun being translator and tour guide to a place that you love so I spent a few days joining in on all of the touristy things again. Saturday my friend Ruth came along as we explored the Alhambra again and took way too many pictures in the gardens nearby. In typical fashion, we got ourselves into a bit of shenanigans climbing up walls in the palace of Carlos V to pose in the alcoves like we were statues. Best part? Two minutes later a group of Spaniards comes by, laughs at us, then moves to the next alcove to do the exact same thing. Ten points for trendsetting. The gardens which we moved on to next are absolutely gorgeous. Created in Romantic style, they engage as many senses as possible and have surprises around each corner to create for great walks that could last hours. These gardens in particular are on top of a hill and overlook the city proper so there were some great views along with the flora and peacocks. Yes, peacocks. They just walk around like it’s completely normal for them to be there, like they own the place which in a way I guess they do. At one point I tried playing hide and seek with one of them because I wanted a picture, fail. A five foot, colorful bird is about as inconspicuous as I would be if I were in China.

Along the way we may or may not have snuck our way onto an island in the garden that we weren’t supposed to be on, hiding out in a tower as other tourists came meandering along. We also might have found our way into some centuries old aqueducts, climbing all the way across through some pretty impressive sludge only to find that the incline on the other side made it impossible to do anything but trudge our way backward. All hypothetical of course. We also might have dueled in the lower gardens with some fifteen foot fallen palm fronds, respectively acting as Inigo Montoya and Darth Vader, but that would just be ridiculous. I try to keep my life pretty average; adventure free is the way to be.

Saturday night was my first flamenco show! Amazing!!! I wish I could have taken a class but now I see that I really wouldn’t have been able to learn much in my stay here. The dance itself is intricate and passionate; I’ve never seen anything with as much strong emotion expressed in such a short time. The guitarist, singers, and dancer just absolutely express passion and it was thrilling to watch. http://www.deflamenco.com/videos/verVideo.jsp?codigo=FLA|3116 A link if you’re interested.

Oh, and I got told off by a gypsy woman. She was trying to scam some poor guy so I helped him out because I knew her tricks, earning myself a nice scolding from her. Ya, I’d rather not repeat what she said.

Laurel: very good question, it’s not so obvious of an answer.

Today, I had the best waffle of my life. Is it possible to bring a bakery back with me?

Hello wonderful people. Happy Valentine’s Day! Little late but…better late than never right? Everyone have a good weekend? I got sick again so I spent most of mine sitting in bed being pathetic. But hey, I got to watch season five of How I Met Your Mother (ALL of season five, you’ve created a monster, Mo) and a bit of Dorian Gray (awful, read the book) while staying in. Mom hasn’t found out that I was sick either(!!!)--I’ve had to put all my acting skill into that one but it was worth it, saved me a lecture and I’m still able to successfully leave the house without five layers plus scarf.

Throughout the beginning of February there’s been a classic movie festival that happens every year in Granada where they focus on one actor/actress/theme and show the movies in theater. This year, Humphrey Bogart was the star and they put out a huge red carpet down a pathway to advertise the event along with posters of movies that are being shown. Valentine’s Day was well spent watching Humphrey alongside Katherine Hepburn on the BIG SCREEN in “The African Queen” from 1951. So amazing!!! They’ve got some special affects to put Transformers 2 to shame (note sarcasm). Classic movies are a win every time though honestly. There’s no way to beat the well crafted story lines or incomparable acting. Oh Humphrey. I have a crush on a dead actor, is that weird? One odd thing about Spanish theaters: assigned seating. When you buy your ticket they tell you where you can sit, it’s not a free-for-all like in the states. My friends and I still sat wherever because the theater was only half full; such rebels, I know. Even though internet died which meant I couldn’t talk to Lisa via Skype as we had planned it was still a good day. Not romantic, like all of the over-affectionate Spanish couples walking down the street but hey, I’m loved more than I could ever imagine by the only one that really matters which beats having a boy any day.

Classes finally started up this past week, bringing with it a crazy schedule I’m excited to start. Five classes (all completely in Spanish), exam prep, cooking class, Kung Fu, travelling and teaching are going to be more than enough to keep me busy. Oh yes, teaching. I get to teach an English class!!!!!!! It’s for immigrants trying to get jobs here in Spain where having a cursory knowledge of English is required for even entry level positions. My friend Jamie and I had our first lesson today covering “My/your/his/her/their name is___”, “How are you?”, and the alphabet. Extreme basics. It’s so rewarding though! I absolutely love it. To think that I could be a part of helping to get my students jobs after they’ve had trouble with unemployment since moving to a new country. Amazing. I’m grateful for the opportunity. After only an hour lesson I came out of the classroom excited and ready to turn teaching into a career. Who knows, I’ll probably be kicking myself for saying it later but teaching is most definitely an option on the map of “Possible Careers for Jen Who Really Has Absolutely No Idea What She Wants to Do.” Kung Fu starts tomorrow. Have I mentioned this is going to be a disaster?

Cure for homesickness: Oreos. No joke, magic is the secret ingredient of that weird white stuff in the middle.

Shout outs:
Desta/Heather: Let me know how the rest of the weekend at the convention turned out! And if you found any more men, Desta you man-magnet :]
Elaine-FRANCE! Please let me know when you’ll be there dear as spending days with you in Paris would be phenomenal
Lisa-I would never ditch you to dance. Ever. Unless you were in on the dance party, hehe. That’s actually yet to happen because now that I come to think of it, I’m always the only one dancing.
Kate-you are wonderful, don’t ever forget that
Laurel-Carnival costumes are out and I saw a Cruella de Ville one, thought of you <3

I promised myself I wouldn’t be an obnoxious, overly updating blogger so sorry about this. But…today was awesome!! My friend Jamie and I took an impulse daytrip to a random pueblo and ended up in Middle of Nowhere, Spain—aka Guadix—knowing absolutely nothing about the town except that it has caves. Now that’s what I call the start to an adventure. We spent awhile finding our way there but in a town roughly the size of a large closet, it wasn’t overly difficult. Set geographically in a place similar to the Grand Canyon, the inhabitants of Guadix long ago lived in caves they dug for themselves in the sides of canyon walls. In present day, 75% of these have been long abandoned, giving us ample opportunity to explore and go a bit beyond city limits. We climbed up a mesa and had lunch looking out at the view of miles around from our little perch and decided that because some of the caves were just so darn creepy that we should make a horror movie based off of them. Some in particular were pretty awful. For some reason or other, people came in and put institutional-looking doors on already dark, creepy caves, making them look like a setting straight out of Blaire Witch Project or something. We shot a bunch of footage for the heck of it in and around the caves, if it ever gets turned into a movie maybe I’ll end up posting it. It’ll be pretty horrific, that’s for sure. Not only is it low budget (ok fine, it was free), but it’s about two girls that get attacked while exploring. Original right? Either way, we had tons of fun making it and our legit (note sarcasm) acting will make it funny.

Jamie and I headed back to town after a while to explore and check out a cathedral we had seen from our mesa. Sadly, the cathedral was closed for the day after the morning masses so we wandered around, opening random doors and checking out whatever was available. Along the way we found a sketch looking fence keeping people from getting into a door about six feet above ground with the only method of reaching it being to climb over the pile of rubble built up in front of it. Tempting, very tempting. Especially if you’re a broke, adventuresome vagabond with a friend and nothing else to do. Sneaking past a policeman close by, we somehow managed to slip under the fence and run up the pile and through the door, having to jump into an open area beneath as the door wasn’t on the floor level on the other side either. The patio it led to was nothing special, so we decided to go up the sketch looking ladder to the right to see where it would lead. I love Europe, really I do. The ladder led up to a field with white flowers and an abandoned 15th century castle behind. We had the place completely to ourselves as we explored and climbed up all of the towers to get a look around at the city, caves, and snow capped mountains beyond. We left our mark on the castle and eventually headed back to the city proper, or what exists of it at least.

All in all, day very well spent. Hope you all have fantastic Sundays as well!

Love from Europe!

Alliterations seem to be the theme this week. So along with this week being fun, fantastic, and (f)gorgeous…shoot, that last one didn’t quite fit in. The last three days were spent travelling with the school ILACA group, it was fun getting the whole group together again and getting to know everyone better after being in different Intensivo classes throughout January. Wednesday we spent the day in Cordoba primarily to see the mosque but also spent some time at an Arab bath house. The mosque was interesting even though the tour guide wasn’t. I’m getting thoroughly sick of tours so maybe it’s not all his fault though he did seem to talk endlessly. But it was cool getting to see firsthand a place that’s overly represented in pictures of southern Spain and of religious architecture. The place is pretty iconic. I’m posting a picture with this post of the place, though without a tripod (not allowed, though I don’t have one here anyway) the darkness of the mosque keeps it from being the best picture ever, it’s still enough to get an idea of what it looks like. The Arab baths were cool to actually get to swim around and hang out in the same rooms and pools that people hundreds of years ago used as well. Got my first massage too. Why have I never had one before?! They’re so relaxing! Except for the random butt grab (not so much a fan, and neither was anyone else I talked to who had the same lady) I could happily go back to the place for…ever. A bath a day keeps the stress, and dirt, away.

We headed that night to Seville, one of the bigger cities in Spain. It’s interesting to get to go around and compare places and really get a feel for the country in general. Seville itself has more greenery than Granada and is a bit more spaced out with buildings and such, making everything look more open and inviting. It is also home to Europe’s biggest cathedral: my absolute must see and first place I headed to during free time. From the outside, it looked nice and gaudy as any gothic cathedral should. But on the inside, oh my. I took a first step into the main section of the cathedral and my jaw dropped instantly, it was like time stopped for a second. I’ve never felt so incredibly small. It would take about ten people holding hands to make a ring around just one of the pillars, and there were about a dozen of these things in a line along with a few deep. Like any respectable cathedral, there were also dozens of stained glass windows and paintings hanging around (no pun intended) though it was the architecture that captured attention to the point of exclusion. A friend and I also hitched ourselves up 35 (I counted) flights of stairs to see the bell tower to see the city. Almost better than being able to see everything was looking out the windows on the way up to get a closer glimpse at the intricate details and gargoyles decorating the building. So much detail work was put into this thing it’s ridiculous.

Our group went later on to spend time in the palace next door. That’s one thing I’m loving about Europe, castles and palaces are everywhere. One friend commented that they’re like the acne of the continent though I’d like to think they’re something more pleasant like seeds sprouting up everywhere or whatnot. We got to see where Isabel, THE Isabel that gave permission to Columbus to go discover America, lived and where she spent her days. Like the Alhambra, it was an icebox, but it was an absolutely gorgeous freezer of a palace. The gardens alone were enough to convince me to want to live there. Some friends and I spent a good hour just traipsing around the orange tree filled pathways and taking pictures of everyone and everything. With the rain that day everything felt a bit more like home in Washington and the colors popped against the grey, I absolutely the way that overcast skies make hues more vivid. Got some pretty great pictures too :] I’ll have to put them on flickr later.

The bus ride back was one of my favorite parts of the trip. There’s got to be something wrong with me, I enjoy the act of travelling almost as much as actually being at the destination. Stick me by a window any day any time and I’m happy as a clam just to sit and watch. Give me rolling scenery of gorgeous, endless green hills with miles of olive trees set against a setting sun and you’ve made my day. There were only eight of us returning as most people decided to stay for the weekend or leave for another trip. With fewer people it was easier to talk and move around so we had fun just hanging out and pot-lucking food around for a few hours.

After so much travelling and walking, my feet protested any idea of more exercise so today was spent at home hanging out with my host sister that normally lives on her own. We watched “My Best Friend’s Wedding” in Spanish, odd. I somehow found out she had never had a real chocolate chip cookie (only packaged which doesn’t count), was flabbergasted and decided to fix that. The supermarkets here don’t quite have the same supplies though, as I was about to discover. Vanilla extract isn’t sold and there were thirteen (thirteen!!!) different types of flour. It was a blind this-one-looks-nice choice and I headed home with a bunch of baking supplies in my bag just like the beginning of last semester. Thankfully though, this time it was considerably less than twenty pounds worth. From the start, I was a little worried about everything working out. It didn’t. We ended up with a bunch of puddle cookies which I felt pretty bad about because she was so excited about eating American cookies. Considering we were using scales to measure everything, had different supplies, and most likely had bad flour choice it’s not surprising though I’m going to chalk up most of our failure to bad baking soda. At least I think it was baking soda, it was some random thing with “alkdf;alksl soda” in the title so I figure it would work. Turns out “kfakjaskjf;akj” doesn’t mean “baking” in Spanish. Oh well, they tasted fine even though they were perfect little puddles. What really matters is that Elena and I got to spend time together and had a fun afternoon. Hopefully she’ll let me in the kitchen again soon.

Sitting here after an amazing week--writing, listening to King’s Singers, and just got off Skype with Lisa-- life is pretty wonderful.

Welcome to February! With the start of the new month Melissa and I decided that we would get serious about learning Spanish and force ourselves to get fully immersed in the language. Once midnight rolled around on Sunday everything changed to Spanish: conversation, phone, ipod, facebook, computer. Well, funny story about the computer. I decided to try and change the language on it, turns out it’s rather difficult unless you download some whatnot (that’s the technical term) so I settled for changing everything else to Spanish instead. Two days later, I still haven’t figured out how to insert a question mark because everything has all been switched around. Jen moment at its prime.
This past weekend was amazing! I finally got to go dancing quite a bit and hang out with people that have a good time Without having to be drunk. Finally. Anyway, the club we went to on Saturday was gorgeous, set on top of a hill overlooking the city night lights along with a view of the Alhambra all lit up. Hours just seemed to slip by and before I knew it, it was 6am when we started walking back, totally worth it. The next night I found a salsa club too! Ah! I forget how much I love it sometimes just because salsa places are so hard to find/get to. Watching them, it seems like the Spanish came out of the womb dancing, it’s a tad intimidating but fun all the same. Staying out late and being about the town is something I love and am frustrated with about Spain’s culture. On one hand, it’s fun to be out dancing til all hours of the morning and embrace that side of youth culture here but on the other, I have no idea how they survive it! Two nights out in a row was enough to put me to sleep instantly. Totally worth it though. Where and when else would I be able to dance at such amazing places?
Spain has made me break one of my rules about dating; I won’t give everyone a chance. No way. Men here are far too aggressive and I’m going to be gone in four months anyway. I did get a boyfriend though! His name is John, he’s a great guy. Ex-wrestler/street fighter, 6’5’’, made of pure muscle, the jealous type, and is always ten minutes away from where I’m at. He’s also imaginary, but the guys that ask don’t have to know that. I’m beginning to enjoy the sudden look of disinterest once I say I have a novio, it’s kind of funny and gets me out of conversations if I can’t understand the way they speak (some people speak waaay faster than others). If I end up travelling alone at the end I’ll probably just buy a ring to wear and marry John to be safe, but who knows at this point, it’s awhile away.
What’s happening now is much more interesting than vague plans anyway. Today we got to visit the Alhambra! It’s an Islamic fortress from the twelfth century, is the most visited landmark in all of Spain, and is absolutely gorgeous (and freezing). The scope of it is just enormous, and everything in it is in Muslim decorative style with intricate, detailed murals covering most of the walls along with fountains and gardens everywhere. It’s guaranteed I’ll be heading back in spring once flowers start popping their way into the world, can’t even imagine how beautiful it will all be then. Stepping inside the palaces was stepping into a piece of history. Having recently learned about the past of Granada and the fortress itself, walking where Carlos XV and Boabdil once lived was a step back in time and humbling to compare my short lifetime within the bigger scope of history. I don’t envy them living there though. However beautiful the palace may have been, being made completely out of marble keeps it roughly the temperature of an icebox. All hail the popsicle kings. Bunny got to come out and start seeing Europe though :] I got a few weird looks along the way, especially from some German tourist. Oh well, that’s just all a part of the memories.
Off to Cordoba and Seville tomorrow, time to get some sleep!