Granada

So I'm finally getting around to writing about my trip to Granada which was 3 weeks ago! Yay!

So this trip I took to Granada was for the AFS mid-stay orientation, where all the kids in Andalusia met up. There's actually only 7 of us down here, and it was nice to have the smaller feel, but I also miss my orientations in Castile-Leon where it was 30 of us or more.

So on Friday, February 8th, I got on a train with another Spanish kid from Huelva who went to South Africa last year and was coming along to help lead the orientation. We lived the farthest from Granada of anyone, so we had to take two different trains to arrive. First we took one train from Huelva to Sevilla, had a layover in Sevilla for like two hours, and then another train to Granada! (So I only got to see a little bit of Sevilla, which I've heard is a beautiful city, but tomorrow actually I'm traveling there with my family! We were going to go to Portugal this weekend, but it's supposed to rain with heavy winds all weekend so we can't. )

The Sevilla train station is HUGE and so cool! Here's some pictures:

Story of a candy lover: See candy shop

Buy Candy!!

Inside the train

First view of the city of Sevilla

When we arrived in Granada, we got a call from the AFS volunteer there saying they weren't going to be able to pick us up at the train station. So we had to kind of find our way around ourselves, at 10 o'clock at night. Thank goodness I had Ricardo with me otherwise I would have been completely clueless. (And mind you, Ricardo had never been to Granada before either which to me was crazy! A beautiful city famous for it's history so close by and you've never gone?!?) Well anyways, the AFS volunteer explained the directions which weren't tooo complicated to Ricardo and we caught a bus and made it to the bar where are the students were having tapas. (like appetizers, spanish-style) When we came up to the group, rolling our suitcases behind us, it was kind of different. I felt like an outsider because we had arrived so late and I really didn't know any of the kids from Andalusia except two Americans that I knew from the orientation in New York. But needless to say, I jumped right in talking with the six of them and we became fast friends :) Exchange students are just always the best. :)

That night we went back to our hostel, which was actually a really beautiful building on the inside but I didn't think to take any pictures of it...to sleep. Yeah right hahaha. We were up till past 4, talking and listening to music. Which was okay because the next day (Saturday) we had a kind of chill day, hanging out in the hostel and talking about AFS rules, challenges and problems that people were having, cultural differences, etc... We only left for meals pretty much.

AFS

Just walking down the street...

Leaving for a walk

Off to lunch!

A buffet- pretty much like any buffet in the US, except with less food

Dessert!

I love these open-air markets

It says I <3 AFS!

One interesting thing we exchangers had to do was like this: there was a huge piece of white paper on the floor that was exactly the size so that if we squeezed together, we could all be standing on it. The objective was to turn the piece of paper over with everyone still on it; no one could fall off of the paper. They gave us time to discuss and then we had to carry out our ideas and try to do it. We had a time limit of 10 minutes, I think. Although in the end we spent like an hour on it with 3 or 4 tries of 10 minutes each. It was interesting because we saw how someone always emerged as the leader. Even in one of the tries, when we weren't allowed to talk, someone was always directing. Afterwords, we talked about how teamwork and how everything like that played a role. I mentioned how usually, I will step forward as a leader in situations like these, but if someone else wants to lead, I just let them without a problem. But with this objective, I really believed what they were asking us to do was impossible, that we were just not going to be able to achieve it. So I didn't offer any ideas because after the first 10 minutes I kind of realized to myself that it was just not going to happen. And the truth is, in the end we couldn't do it. I don't even think we were able to get the paper halfway folded over. We tried people on each other's backs, jumping, using hands, feet to flip the paper; everything. But anyways, it was a really cool activity; because it led me to see how some people have an incredible determinism even when faced with a insurmountable task.

Saturday night we went to a Flamenco show in an underground bar. Which sounds really sketchy but it's not ahaha, it was just like stairs leading down to a big area with tables and a bar, and then at the front it had a little strip of dance floor for the Flamenco dancer. It was the typical Flamenco show: singer, guitarist, and dancer. I really enjoyed it because I had heard the Flamenco music before, but never seen the dance before. (My friends are actually teaching me how to dance it, I promise I'll take a video the next time and put it up here, that should give you all some good comic relief ahaha!) If you ever come one day to Andalusia, (southern spain) you must must must see some Flamenco or Sevillana. (Almost the same, but Sevillana comes from the city of Sevilla.) It's, as they would say here "tipicalll espanishh" haha.

All of us with the volunteers

Now: Sunday!! This was the fun culture day! We left the hostel at 10 in the morning because we were going to visit the Alhambra....Click here if you don't know what it is. Basically it's a palace and fortress complex that was built over a 1,000 years ago with parts both Muslim and Christian. It's a beautiful, serene place, and somewhere I definitely recommend you visit if you come to Spain. Here's a TON of pictures:

Entrance to the Alhambra

When you first walk in, it's like a huge garden

Just walking in is an incredible experience. You can feel the history. There's little waterfalls along the sides, and trees lining the walkways with the sun peeking through the canopy of the trees.

Beautiful details everywhere

Then we entered in the actual fortress and palace part

I can't really describe it in chronological order, because we just kind of wandered around the fortress, entering the many Christian and Muslim palaces. There;s still a bunch of beautiful pictures though so here they are:

 

Called the "Court of the Lions"

This part was absolutely beautiful

Filled with orange trees

In this garden of orange trees, a really sweet, young Asian woman asked me to take her picture. I just mention it because sometimes it's amazing to me to think that here we are, two foreigners in Spain, and she's speaking English to me. I guess the experience really stuck out to me because it's incredible how many Asian woman I see traveling alone in Spain and I just think they are amazing, strong people to be doing what they're doing.

The city of Granada. So beautiful.

Thank you wonderful readers. Until next time;
Besos, Lani.

Funny little things

Hey everyone,

Random post today. :) Of things I've noticed, little bits of culture that you might not notice if you came to Spain on vacation for a few weeks, but things that are here that I've been lucky enough to discover.

The mail is delivered by a man on a motorcycle here. I just love this. Just because it's so different...the first time I saw the guy zipping up and down our street on his motorcycle I couldn't stop laughing. Culture.

Kids can't drive cars until they're 18, but with 16 years you can drive a motorcycle..so there's always teenagers (almost all boys) zipping around on motorcycles. They love to show off on them and drive on the brick streets where people walk but cars aren't allowed to go.

The questions Spanish people ask me: Do you know any famous people? Do you guys really have lockers at school like in the movies? Can you teach us some bad words in English? Have you been to New York? Which do you like better, Spain or the US? (still don't have a clear answer to this question)

Salad is eaten with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, and a sprinkle of salt. Always. There's not the whole wall of salad dressings in the grocery store with five hundred different kinds to choose from.

Like I wrote in my last post, for breakfast in Andalusia they have their special traditions. Sometimes I like to fit in with the culture, but sometimes I just go for:

CEREALS. Frosted Flakes are delicious here too. :)

This is like a smoothie in a box- I promise, yummiest thing ever.

The afternoon grind- studying...

Always.

 Here's just some pictures that I've taken throughout the month with my friends here in Mazagon. They've been so welcoming to me and so nice, truly wonderful people. I have tons of fun with these girls! :)

Birthday party!

Last Sunday we went to a surfing competition on the beach!

Not that we have huge waves here or anything...but it was still cool!!

 

 Thanks for caring about my life ;) ..,
Lani

January

Writing the title of that post was so weird. Because when I think of January, I think of cold, cold weather, and snow, and hot chocolate, and days of school...but the reality here is completely different. It's warm. About 60 degrees Fahrenheit everyday...and it's almost always sunny...and then there's always the beach. It's just so different! I think my brain is confused as to what season it is because of the beautiful weather.

Well anyways, I know we are in Febuary now- (don't worry, I'm not totally confused!) but since I didn't update at all in January this is the post for that. I'm just going to kind of throw together a bunch of random things that I've done and seen.

Supermarkets: For whatever reason just going to the supermarkets here are so fun. I don't want to call them grocery stores because for whatever reason the name supermarket seems to suit them better. They have names like Dia, Mercadona, Carrefour... and those are pretty much the big chain ones. It's just all so different. So Spanish. You walk in and head straight for the meat counter (which is huge by the way, and the poor man behind there is always swamped with work. The Spanish love their meat!)... then there is the seafood section... where the freshly-caught fish are all just laying there on their beds of ice. You could reach out and poke a fish eye if you wanted to- they're literally right there as if they were alive but not moving. I promise to take some pictures the next time I go... they'll explain it much better than I can with words.

Basketball: My team has been doing pretty well! I still feel kind of silly because these girls have been playing for years and years and I just jumped in and started 3 weeks ago...but oh well. I've played in two games and we've won both! The first game we played against a team that was not-so-good (we won 70-3), so I got to play alot! :) Because our coach realized that we were going to win anyways so she figured I couldn't screw anything up too badly and let me play almost the whole game :) Then, in the second game we only won by 2! It was super close because the other team was about our level, not better nor worse. So in that game I didn't get to play much, but the only cool thing that happened was that at one point I had the ball and all my teammates were being defended really well so I didn't know what to do.. and I was still pretty far from the hoop. Well, I just decided to shoot it anyways and it went in! Like the only basket I've ever made in a game.. but everyone was so surprised and it was just a cool moment.


In school things are going pretty well... my classes are actually pretty interesting. I don't really know what else to stay about this topic haha.. I understand almost everything and can follow along with the class perfectly now so I guess that's pretty cool! Whenever there's something that mentions the United States... in history class for example, the teachers always look at me. It's pretty funny, I actually taught the class in history about Imperialism in the US, because my teacher was just like "You want to teach?" and I was like "Ok, yeah why not?" So I did. It's realllly nerve-wracking though to talk in Spanish in front of a class of native speakers like that. My words jumbled together alot more than normal..and I like public speaking.


A typical Andalusian (southern-spain) breakfast....Toast with olive oil drizzled on top and slices of tomato on top of that. And with freshly-made Spanish bread...it's delicious

Spain

The 2nd weekend in February I went to Granada with AFS, which was a beautiful and amazing city. That weekend flew by, everything was just like a dream. My next post will be about my time there and I will include a million pictures. :)


Okay guys, thanks for reading :)
Besos, Lani