Granada and Salobreña

I must begin this particular blog by stating that, in the exact moment that I'm sitting down and writing this, I am also eating the very first meal that I have cooked here in Spain, in my very own apartment. It consists of tortellini, grilled mushrooms, grated cheese, olive oil and herbs, and it is absolutely fantastic in my skilled opinion.. I am also of course drining wine that was about 3 dollars a bottle (an average price here it seems) at my local grocery store. I'm pretty proud of myself! But in my apartment we dont have an oven or a microwave, so I have to learn to not make too much of things that I would want to re-heat, such as this pasta. I will just have to eat the leftovers cold I guess.

But anyways. Since my previous blog I have (1) Moved into my new apartment, (2) Traveled to Granada and Salobreña with my two American friends, and (3) bought Spanish groceries. So after I spent my last night in our Hostal, I recruited Will and James to help me drag all my stuff down the road a few minutes (everything is down the road a few minutes in Priego) to my new apartment. But because my new roommate Maria prefered to play a game to assign rooms, I couldn't move into any rooms until she got there. She kept insisting that to "not cause any roommate problems" we should just play the game, which basically consisted of me writing the numbers 1 and 2 onto different sheets of paper, assigning the numbers to a room, giving them to Magda (since she already had a room) and having her switch them up behind her back and hold out her fists and us choosing whatever number was in the fist. But before that happened, I just hung out with Magda for a few hours, and she ended up making me lunch, for which I was extremely grateful!! She cooked up some chicken (YES!!) with herbs, and also grilled some veggies with the same herbs, and it was MOUTHWATERING. This Polish girl knows how to cook! After lunch she asked me if I wanted tea, and of course I said yes. She told me that she had to bring the tea all the way from Poland, because she had heard that Spaniards didnt drink tea. So I asked what kind of tea it was, expecting it to be some sort of amazing Polish tea, but she instead brought out a box of Lipton tea! I laughed to myself a little bit and she asked if I wanted sugar and a lemon in mine, and of course I said yes to that as well... it was delicious! And until Maria got home, we clasically started showing each other our favorite music, though surprisingly I already had what she considered was her favorite song on my iPod :)

So FINALLY Maria got home, we played the game and I got to unpack in the room I had been hoping for (It had a bigger closet, if nothing else!). When I was done, I went to throw something away and saw that Magda and Maria were out on our patio thing cleaning without me (my dad will laugh here and say, "Typical, even in Spain she avoids chores." haha)! So I jumped in and began sweeping and then moping, and this is when I learned that there are CERTAIN ways to clean here in Spain. Maria then did a demonstration of appropriate cleaning, where when you mop, you first go over the floor once get it very wet, and then you go over it again with a more squeezed out mop to get it drier, and then you let it sit until it's totally dry. And then I had to help her clean the bathroom, which to me was already pretty clean... she was very particular in her cleaning and reminded me of Laurie ;) The most interesting thing about living with people who all have different first languages is that we are constantly learning and switching between languges. They usually go something like this:
Me: "Maria! Tengo una pregunta..."
Maria: "Dime"
Me: "A que hora sale un bus a Granada"
Maria: "I dont know..."
Me: "Tienes que tener un... ticket the day before?"
Maria: "No, you can get it el dia que sales."
Magda: "Where... are you go? Going?"
Me: "A Granada."
Magda: "Are you going... (struggle)"
Me: "On a vacation? Yep!"
Maria: "Que bueno! A lot of fun."
Magda: "Okay, I'm going now. I'm going to.... turn the lights?"
Me: "Turn OFF the lights."
Maria: "Turn off the lights..." (repeating to herself)

Maria really likes to explain things to me first in Spanish and then in English. Not because I need the clarification, but because she wants to practice her English. I'm the English expert, Maria is the Spanish expert, and we end up finishing each others sentences when attempting to speak in the other language and exchanging words or phrases, like "This is how you say ____ in English/Spanish." I wouldn't doubt it if I learned something new every day!

Anyways, after I got done cleaning I was invited out by Magda to hang out with her Spanish friends, who are girls around our age. They were really nice, but the spoke so fast that Magda and I were pretty much left behind... at least I could understand some things and participate a little bit when they spoke directly to me, but poor Magda said she could only understand words! But she's picking it up.

The next day I went to the bus station with my backpack that I bought before I left for Spain (THANKS MOM!) and bought a ticket to Granada. It was about an hour and 45 minute ride, and the entire time I was just STOKED. I have always wanted to go to Granada, almost since I decided I wanted to go to Spain in the first place, so I couldn't believe I was sitting there all by myself like a grown-up on a bus to a place I've always wanted to go in a foreign country. I arrived about 5 hours before my friends Ashley and Kelly, who were coming from Cordoba, so I decided to take a bus to "el centro" (the center of the city), where I was sure I could find something interesting to do and see for a few hours. So I left the bus station so I cuold find a but heading into town... and I ended up staring at the board for about 10 minutes, just trying to figure out what the hell all the colored lines meant. Finally I looked over and there was a guy standing next to me, so I first asked him if he could speak Spanish, and he looked at me blankly, so then I asked him if he could speak English, and he replied to me in a heavy German accent that yes, he could.
"Do you know what this board means?" I asked.
"Um... No. I dont know."
"Well... I think that if we take the number 3 or 33 we will get to the centro?"
"I think that you are right."
"Should we go together?" I asked.
"Sure!" He said. So we got on the bus and hoped that we were heading in the right direction. Sure enough, we saw the cathedral on the right side of the road, so we got out and began the hunt for the hostal he was staying in. Since my fiends and I hadn't pre-booked a hostal yet and basically knew nothing about the city, I followed him and we ended up at a really great hostal! I looked into the prices and it was only 18 euros for a bed, so I booked 3 of them. The reception guy told us that we had 3 of the 4 beds in our room, so we might be sharing it with someone, but I figured this was completely fine. I did buy a padlock though to put on our cubby thing. The street that the hostal was on was absolutely amazing! It was tucked away and really cute, full of Arabic tea houses and hookah bars with deep reds and yellows everywhere, and a bunch of Arabic shops selling brightly colored clothing and jewelry and tea. I felt like I was in Aladdin! The hostal itself was really old looking and quaint and comfortable. So until Kelly and Ashley got there, I walked around and sat in a bar, drank wine and read my book for awhile.

After they arrived, we dropped our stuff off at the hostal and went to dinner at one of the Arabic tea houses we had passed, and had the most amazing food I had had in Spain yet, and since then. It was DELICIOUS. We shared all the dishes, so we had lentil soup, this eggplant salad, moroccan tea, and this mouthwatering chicken that fell right off the bone and had been cooked with grilled onions in some sort of honey... it seriously tasted like apple pie but in chicken form... my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it! After we oohed and ahhed at the amazingness that was that meal, we headed up the hill to a place that one of the people in our hostal said we should go. The walk up was beautiful, paths weaving between white washed closely placed houses and buildings, gardens, etc. when we got to the top, I was completely blown away. We were at a church that had a big plaza on one side of it, and it was completely open and we were high above everything. But the most breathtaking sight was the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a huge palace/castle where the Moorish royalty lived before Isabel and Ferdinand re-conquored Spain and kicked the Moors out, and it is also where they lived after the Reconquista. And it is absolutely kick-me-in-the-stomach, feel like crying a little bit, fantastically awesome. I couldn't stop looking at it. I think we sat there on that concrete half-wall and stared at it for about 45 minutes, barely even speaking. It's on this hill across a ravine-type thing so its just there, above everything, absolutely majestic in every way. Eventually the sun started going down and lights turned on to shine in it, and it was beautiful and mystical and I can't even explain. The most amazing thing I have ever seen.

We eventually decided to go back to our hostal, so we walked back down the hill in the falling darkness and went to our hostal bar for a free drink. There we met a whole group of new people, from all over the world. There were some people from Australia, the UK, Sweden, Germany, and even Malasia, but they all spoke great English and were in their 20's. We sat down and immediately started laughing with them as they included us in their conversations... although being Americans, eventually politics comes up, and this is something I've found that I actually like to talk about. Not specifically politics and politicans, but world events that I've learned about in school, such as Afghanistan, the Marshall Islands and nuclear testing, 9/11, Bush/Obama, gun control, ignorant Americans, etc. I really enjoy intelligent conversations about these things, because I love to hear what other people from other countries have to say about them and I like giving my own opinions as well. I think that if we could all just open our minds a little bit, the world would be much more accepting and less ignorant. So anyways, after I got off my soap box about how some Americans are dipshits, but then again there are dipshits in every culture that ruin it for everyone, we all headed out to some tapas bars. We had a great time with these people, but the only thing I'll say more about that night is that I do NOT like marijuana.

I have found out that I don't like the clubs in Spain. Well, I dont like the places people go BEFORE they go to the clubs because I've never actually made it out to the discotecas, as they open around 3 am, but people don't really start dancing until 5 am. But anyways, these bars that people go to are JAM PACKED full of people... there is NO maximum capacity, so people are just squished in there and it's almost impossible to make it to the bar for a drink, and the music is so loud that you can't even talk to these people you're pushed up next to, and of course there is some groping involved. I would much prefer sitting at a bar and being able to talk to people over that crap. It actually made me miss the Peacock... how crazy is that? At least we could go sit down and talk if we didn't want to dance at home, but here there is NO sitting and NO talking and there isn't even DANCING because it's not the time for dancing yet, so they're all just standing around like chumps staring at each other. Maybe I'll get used to it with time, and maybe I'll actually make it out to the clubs at some point, but I really have to brace myself for that.

We went back to the hostal that night and passed out... in the morning we woke up and there was someone else in the empty bed in our room!
"Umm... Andrew?" Ashley asked to the still passed-out person.
"Ghrauffw... no... David"
"Oh David! Hi! How was your night? Did you go to the tapas bar?" Remembering him from last night.
"Mmmm..."
"Oh I'll leave you alone now." Strange, having a random guy in our room with us.
"No, ugh, let me put on my pants." HA HA HA.
Because our hostal was booked that weekend, we had to find another hostal that day. Ashley started calling all the hostals in town, and finally found one. It was the same price as the one we had stayed in before, but it was APARTMENT style... like we had our own apartment with a kitchen and bathroom and 2 bedrooms and everything! We even had a balcony that looked out onto a plaza. So we moved in and the rest of the day we basically spent on a tour of the Alhambra. It's beautiful, especially the palaces, in which EVERY SURFAC is covered in intricate and elaborate designs carved into the marble, and mosaics.

I feel like Spaniards really have life figured out. EVERYONE gets dressed up in the evenings, especially on the weekends, and goes out and walks around, from children all the way up to the elderly. When we were walking around on our last night at about 10 pm, there was a random concert/dance in the plaza in front of the city hall... There was a singer and band on stage, and people of ALL AGES were dancing in front of it. There were a ton of people! There were couples dancing, and moms teaching their kids to dance at the back of the group, and grandfathers dancing around with little kids. People here really love LOVE too. There are teenagers kissing in the streets, old couples holding hands, couples on the beach kissing and holding each other in the waves... when I was at the bus station this girl was sitting there, and suddenly she saw someone and she got up and ran to him and jumped up into his arms and kissed him, and the didn't stop kissing right there for a couple minutes... people here are not ashamed of showing how much they love each other in public.

The next day we sadly had to say goodbye to Granada and we took a bus to this small beach town that everyone in Granada had told us to go to... Salobreña. Basically all we did here was lay topless on the beach, drink tinto de verano and wine, eat tapas, look for sea glass on the pebbly beaches, and sleep. We also toured the castle that was on the top of the hill and sat on the terrace at our hostal and drank wine and watched the sun set. It was extremely relaxing, at least until the last day. Our hostal guy said that it probably wouldn't affect us much, but it definitely did. There was a "huelga," or "strike" that day... a transportation strike. So we attempted to buy a bus ticket back to Granada that morning, but the guy at the station said that there MIGHT be a bus leaving around 3-3:30, but he wasn't sure. We felt a little desperate to get home by now, so we thought about renting a car or taking a taxi, and SERIOUSLY considered hitch-hiking to Granada (it's only 45 minutes away by car), but we decided that our parents would absolutely KILL us if they ever found out we had done that. This taxi driver who we had talked to earlier finally pulled over and said, "Just get in, I'll give you a 10 euro discount, you guys have been walking around here all day." So we all paid about 20 euros and got a ride to Granada, where I found out that the only bus going to my town that day was leaving at 6:30 pm, which meant that I got to sit around in the bus station for 6.5 hours. I hated that strike.

FINALLY I got home and basically unpacked and passed out. Today I got up and went grocery shopping, where I found out that Spain doesn't have cesar dressing or unscented laundry detergent! They put VINEGAR on their salads... which I'm not really a huge fan of. But I ended up buying all my produce from a stand rather than a supermarket. I got 3 peaches, 1 nectarine, 1 tomatoe, 1 mushroom and 3 oranges all for less than 3 dollars! Food will be pretty cheap here... thank goodness because I've been spending TOO MUCH MONEY as it is!

I start at my school tomorrow, but it's only a sort of introduction day, where I'll meet all the teachers and introduce myself to some of the classes, and then I really start work on Monday. I'm pretty excited to finally have something to do here, though I really had a fantastic time on our pre-school vacation :)