The Big Trip

This morning Whitney and I walked to the University of Granada Campus and located the “oficina de deportes” (office of sports). I was able to speak with Jordi, the swim coach. I told him I was looking for a team to practice with while I am in Spain. Thankfully, he spoke English and was very nice. He said I am welcome to come try it out, so when we return from Italy I am going to practice with them on Monday. Hopefully this will work out well because it would be very difficult to go four months without swimming before summer league starts.
Orientation classes ended yesterday and our level test was this afternoon from four to about six thirty. I was not too concerned about this test because I placed comfortably into the Language and Culture Program (level 2A) from the placement test at the beginning of orientation. I would have had to move up two levels to 3B to place in the highest program Estudios Hispanicos. Susana (grammar lady) had told our class that moving up one level was very difficult, but two would be impossible. Well, I definitely tested into Estudios Hispanicos. Now I have to choose four classes, instead of three, from a better selection of courses. The main difference between the two programs, besides being slightly more advanced and having more class choices, is that I only have a required composition class instead of a required composition and grammar class. I was very surprised at my results of the test since I did not feel like I learned that much during orientation and I definitely did not even consider studying for the exam. Oh well, I am still pretty excited about it; this means I must be better at Spanish than I think. At the very least I am gaining more confidence and initiating more conversations. I was able to have a fairly intelligent conversation with “mi familia” at dinner tonight.
We are leaving in a private bus at 8:30am tomorrow morning for about a 5-6 hour drive to Madrid. Right after arriving in Madrid we will go to the Museo Prado, which has many works by El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. This means I will get to see in person many of the paintings I have studied in previous Art History classes. (Even more in Rome!) Sunday we are going to the Teatro Munoz Seca to see thhe play “La duquesa al hoy y la viuda al bollo;” Veronica, our program director, said it is a comedy. Monday we will see the Palacio Real, where the Royal Family lives. Then Mitch, Whitney, Cassandra, and I are on our own for another night in Madrid and fly to Rome Tuesday afternoon.
I am so unbelievably excited to go to Rome; I have always wanted to visit Italy. I can’t wait to go to the Vatican museums, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, and see my favorite piece of art (ever!), Michelangelo’s Pieta. We will be there until Saturday when we fly back to Madrid. Then we will visit Toledo and catch a bus back to Granada on Sunday. Classes for the semester will start Wednesday, February 11th. Not a bad way to spend the break, huh?

Travel Time!

Tomorrow is the last day of orientation classes and we take our level placement test on Friday. Saturday our program is taking a weekend trip to Madrid; I think it´s about a five or six hour bus ride. We are done with Madrid on Monday, but our classes for the semester don´t start until Wed. Feb. 11th. So two other girls, a guy, and I have planned a trip during this week off. We will stay in Madrid another night and fly from there Tuesday afternoon to Rome, Italy. In Rome we will stay in a hostel, which I´ve never had the experience of doing yet, and tour the city. We will fly back to Madrid Saturday morning and either stay there another night or catch a bus back to Granada. I am very excited about this trip because I love the art and architecture that Italy has and will be able to add another country to the list of places I have traveled!

Alhambra!

Today we visited the Alhambra, began in the 11th century and completed by the 15th century. It is a city itself with numerous palaces, streets, and gardens. We took a bus up there, (thankfully!) as it is atop a mountain. We saw three main parts of the Alhambra: Alcazaba (where more of the military lived), Palacios Nazaries (palaces), and the Generalife (gardens). We started with the Alcazaba and saw stairs descending into the ground where a dungeon was, ancient soldiers’ quarters, and climbed a tower with a gorgeous view overlooking Granada and the Albayzin. We were able to see the lookout point on the Albayzin mountain that we climbed on Wednesday to look at the Alhambra. Then we went through Palacios Nazaries, where each room was more beautiful than the one before. Most of the rooms had fountains with water running through them. The architecture was fantastic, very heavily Muslim influenced; it made me excited that I registered for an art history of Spain class this semester. Our tour ended after that and we were given the option of returning to Granada or walking through the Generalife and its gardens by ourselves. My friends and I had asked our señoras for “bocadillos” (sack lunches) so we ate lunch together in the gardens. They are so gorgeous, even in the winter, I can’t imagine what they look like in the summer when everything is in bloom. We didn’t stay too long in the gardens because it began to rain. We decided to take a bus back into the city rather than walk down a mountain in the rain. I think the 1.20 Euro was definitely worth being dry!

Orientation classes

Orientation is well underway. This week we meet Mon, Wed, Fri at 10am for excursions. Today we went to Albaycin, a gorgeous town overlooking Granada and across from the Alhambra (which we get to tour this weekend). To get there we pretty much hiked up a mountain, but it was worth it, some of the pictures I got are amazing! Then Whitney and I went home for lunch, stopping to buy "bufondas" (scarfs) on the way. Lunch was awesome, as usual. We had soup with "carne y patatas" (meat and potatoes), queso (cheese), and una naranja (orange). In Spain the dessert is always fruit, we´ve had pineapple, pears, and oranges. We ate lunch at 1:30 with our senora and she told us how she wasn´t use to eating so early! It has taken some time to get use to the different eating schedule over here.
We have our meetings with the program director, Veronica, at 2:30pm and then classes from 4-7pm. During our meeting today we had a presentation on the four day trip to Morocco we will be taking in early April; I am very excited about going. The best part is that this trip was included in our program cost so I don´t have to pay anything extra. The group I tested into has a grammar class from 4-5:30, not my favorite because the professor is kind of scary! But then we have about a 15 minute break, where sometimes I go to the "cafeteria" for a "cafe con leche" because its difficult to focus in class so late in the day. Then we return to class with a different professor (much nicer and more fun) for a conversation class until 7pm. This is pretty much my weekday schedule until the end of orientation.
Yesterday we got out of class early and went to the "Salon de Actos" (a large classroom upstairs) and watched the inuaguration of Obama live. It was really cool experiencing this moment in history in a different country. At the end we all stood for the national athem, which was pretty cool. During the middle of his speech we looked out the windows and saw that it was snowing! Small flurries that didn´t stick, but it was still "increible" for Spain!
Monday night a few of us from the program went out for "tapas." It was fun getting to know new people, since I came here knowning absolutely no one, as well as getting to know Granada by walking around. Last night we found an American bar and met other American students in different programs. Tonight we plan on getting together for "churros con chocolate," I can´t believe we haven´t experienced/tasted this awesome Spanish tradition yet!

Where's the internet?

Today we officially started orientation with a tour of the City Center of Granada. Whitney, my roommate and I, then walked home (we live about a 20 minute walk from the program site). On the way home we bought some postcards to send home to people. While we were writing them Isabel, our senora, made lunch. We had pasta with ham, bread, and cheese; there is always so much food at lunch! It is their biggest meal of the day. We ate at about 1pm, which is pretty early, lunch is usually between 2-2:30pm. We left the apartment at 2 to walk back to the school for our 2:30 meeting, where we were given our student handbook. At 4 we took a test; ugh! I was very tired at this point; probably from jet lag and lack of a siesta today. This test is to place us in the appropriate level for the orientation groups/classes; then at the end of orientation we take another test for placement into classes for the rest of the semester. Our home does not have internet, which is frustrating, I'm realizing how dependent I have become on my email, facebook, etc. But last night Whitney and I found an internet place that has computers and WiFi for about a Euro an hour. Hopefully we will get usernames and passwords at the school soon so we can get free internet there. I don't have to be back at school until 2:30 tomorrow, so I'm going to try to mail some letters at the post office, look into some of the gyms around here, and maybe do some shopping before then. Tonight we're going out for tapas!

Granada!

Made it to Granada! I had no problems with customs, security, making flights, and my entire luggage made it; virtually nothing went wrong! Thank you God! My flight to Newark was a little late but I still had 3 hours before the next flight. The flight to Madrid was only half full so we were able to spread out. I was able to have a whole row (three seats) to myself. I was able to spread out and sleep pretty well during the overnight flight. After landing in Madrid at 10am (my body thought it was 3am, still on Texas time), I got off the plane and straight into the LONG line for customs. The line went fairly quickly though; I was there maybe only ½ hour (it probably helped that they had many different lines according to citizenship). When I got to the window I gave the official my passport and a form the flight attendants had given us on the plane to fill out. He was very friendly, simply asked what I was here for and how long I planned on staying, then stamped my visa and I was off.
I still had about five hours to my next flight but I wanted to go ahead and find my terminal and gate, just to be ready. This was a good plan since I had to change airlines from Continental to Iberia and the Iberia terminal was a few miles away from the main airport. After asking around I found a shuttle that took me to the correct terminal and hung out there until my flight. There were many different shops there and the first one I went into was playing John Mayer “Waiting on the World to Change!” Yay! This made me feel so much better and less stressed about life. One thing that was frustrating was that the listings of Departures didn’t tell you what gate your flight was at until about 30 minutes beforehand, you only know what terminal. However, I was able to check on my laptop and the gate was listed a few hours before then. As I was sitting at the gate a few minutes before boarding time a large group of students rushed up and were yelling, “is this our flight?” Recognizing English finally I went and asked them were they were from. They were about 15 students in my program, going exactly where I was headed!
We were all close to each other on the flight and went to get our baggage after we landed. A few people had their luggage lost, but thankfully I was not one of them. I had looked at the Granada bus schedule online while in Madrid and saw that one of the stops was right next to our hotel (our program started Sunday at noon and we had to stay at a hotel Saturday night). After getting luggage and making claims about lost luggage we found the bus (only three Euros!) and got on. Driving from the airport into the city was cool; the mountains are gorgeous. At our stop we got off and walked a block to our hotel. After showering, our group got together and just went walking through the city, and we bought slices of pizza from a little shop for dinner. At about 10pm I pretty much crashed for the night.
This morning I got up and went down to the hotel lobby to see about breakfast. It was ridiculous! 17 Euros for the hotel’s breakfast, no thanks! One of the girls and I decided we could find something cheaper and went walking outside. Not much was open since it was Sunday morning but we found a café and I was able to get a croissant and bottle of water for only 2.60. At noon we met our program director and all the other students, and we talked a little about what to expect these next two weeks of orientation. After only an hour we met our host families! I am living with another student, Whitney. She is from Central College in Iowa and is one of the girls I met last night; I think we will get along great. Our host mother is so cute! Here name is Isabel and she is about 60. She greeted us with a kiss on each cheek and started talking right away in Spanish. We both understand her pretty well, so that is encouraging! She told us we were going to wait on her friend that lives near her and was also getting two students.
The six of us then walked, with all our luggage, to their homes. It was about a 15-20 minute walk, but not to difficult to get to. Whitney and I will be living in a third floor apartment and the other two girls are on the first floor. Isabel showed us the room we are sharing and said we could start unpacking while she went to fix lunch. We ate at about 2:30pm; salad, bread, chicken, fries, and oranges. It was delicious! Now we are resting for “siesta.”

2 days to go!

I'm pretty much done packing, made my last (hopefully!) Walmart run today to get some extra stuff. (Thank you Elise for all the helpful hints!) Now I am pretty much just sitting around waiting, excited and nervous. My flight leaves Friday at 1pm for Newark, NJ; I'll travel from DFW to Newark to Madrid to Granada. I should arrive in Granada Saturday evening (late morning here in TX, 7 hours different) and stay in a hotel that night. The program's orientation begins at the hotel at 12pm on Sunday. I'll get to meet others in my program as well as the family I will be staying with that afternoon. We have a two week orientation period which includes a visit to the Alhambra and Madrid before classes start at the beginning of Feb. Hopefully all goes fairly well with getting there, pray that it's not too stressful!
- Christine