Most of the girls in my group and I go on these one day diets, that usually start on Sundays after a weekend of gorging on yummy tapas, late night shwarmas, pastries, ice cream, … and the list goes on. But we tell each other that we really should enjoy all the different food and eat all that we want because we wont be around all of this deliciousness when we go back to the States. I am writing this entry as I’m sipping on my Cafe con Leche and nibbling on a doughnut from Dunkin’ Coffee. Dunkin’ Coffee is really Dunkin’ Doughnuts but we decided that they changed the name because Spaniards probably can’t pronounce ‘doughnuts’. We still haven’t figured out how Spaniards have fit or at least petite considering how and what they eat. The Spanish eating schedule is commonly known to be different than it is in the States. Light breakfast in the morning, large meal for lunch between 2 and 4 (past 3:30 at my home stay) and then dinner between 9 and 10. Bread is served in the morning, with lunch, and dinner and is eaten very often. Spaniards also do a lot of social drinking and I see more families eating ice cream, churros, and other snacks here than in the States. Not all universities have gyms, and gym culture isn’t as big here. The only factor that might contribute to the Spaniards not gaining 20+ pounds a year is that they walk every year is perhaps that they walk every year and if that’s the case then we will continue eating all that we want since we also walk every where.

1*Tapas:  Practically anything from a chunk of tuna, cocktail onion and an olive skewered on a long toothpick to meat with sauce served piping hot in a miniature clay dish. They are served day in and day out in every bar and café in Spain. So much a part of the culture and social scene that the Spanish

2*Shwarmas:Middle Eastern Arabic-style sandwich-like wrap usually composed of shaved lamb, goat, chicken, turkey, beef, or a mixture of meats.

3*Churros:  Fried-dough pastry-based snacks, sometimes made from potato dough.  Normally eaten for breakfast dipped in hot chocolate.

March 1, 2009
One of my courses in Spain is called, ‘Islamic Culture in Spain’ and in that class, I’ve learned a lot about the Islamic influence on Spain past the 10th Century. Living in Granada and being within walking distance to one of the dynasty’s palaces of that time makes the information much more interesting and easier to picture.
In mid February a group of us in my program bought tickets to see the Alhambra. At that time I did not know as much as I do now, so I was simply in awe of Alhambra’s beauty and breath taken by the amazing views it offered. Our tour guide should have an entire post dedicated to her. She was quite an interesting character. I think her name was Maria Louisa, but we call her Nazi, behind her back of course. I can’t really find the right words to describe her to say exactly how she was. I can’t count the number of times she made our group laugh, not because she was making a joke or being funny but because of how she talked to us and her manners. She talked to us like we were in the army. Every time she finished talking to us (in Spanish) she would ask us (again in Spanish), ‘Did you understand? NO you didn’t!’ and although we nodded yes, she would march off ahead of us and say something under her mouth and end with an evil laugh. Weird! And since Spaniards don’t always pronounce ‘h’, the laugh was more like ‘kha kha’ rather than ‘ha ha’. At the beginning of the tours she handed us our tickets and repeatedly said not to lose them. We were all pretty scared of what she might say or do if we did. Five minutes later, when we had to show our tickets to enter Palacio de Nazaris I had lost my ticket and was anticipating Maria Louisa to go crazy. Instead she got very close to me and said ‘To kill or not to kill’, in Spanish, so it took me about ten seconds to process what she had just said. Then she gave me another ticket and did her wonderful evil laugh, ‘Kha! Kha! Kha!’.
I don’t want to bore anyone about details of the Alhambra as you can click on the two links on this blog to learn more, but after a second trip to the Alhambra later in February and also through my class I have learned a couple of interesting facts. The Nazaris were the first and last dynasty from Andalucia. Also after a victorious war, in response to the people’s extreme approbation, Alhamar the king at the time, declared “Wa La Ghalib Ila Alah” which is Arabic for “There is no victory without God”. This has become Granada’s slogan and is the phrase engraved almost all over the Alhambra’s walls.
It is evident that the Islamic invasion of 711 has left its marks on Andalucia and here as well in Granada. Besides the obvious constructions, and art there are words and phrases used in Spain today that are rooted in Arabic. For instance, “Ojala”, meaning I wish, comes form “Oh Allah!” meaning oh God.
Washington Irving an American author wrote a book called, “Tales of the Alhambra”, that I have just begun reading. I am already very interested in reading more as the first few pages describe accurately some of the streets in Granada that I live very close to. I look forward to visiting the Alhambra again, perhaps late in April, when I know much more about the history of the palace and its people.

February 22. 2009

On Friday, we had an organized day trip to Málaga.  Like Granada, Málaga  is an Andalusian city and is located along the southern cost of Spain and is home to ‘costa del sol’.  The weather wasn’t warm enough nor did we have enough time to spend time at the beach but, Málaga is less than a 2-hour bus ride from Granada and we have plenty of time to come back.

It’s very easy to make compare everything and everywhere we go to Granada since it’s the only city of Spain that most of us have been to.  Málaga is said to be coldest in the months of December and February, the weather was perfect though.  There was enough sun to keep us warm and a small breeze every now and then.

Once we arrived to Málaga we were divided into two groups to visit a small museum of Pablo Picasso’s work, and his childhood home, “casa natal”.  Visiting homes of such influential people is one of my favorite things to do.  It was great seeing where Pablo Picasso started making some of his wonderful art.  The tour of the house was in Spanish so I didn’t understand as much as I wanted to.  Outside of Picasso’s home, was a plaza that was Picasso’s playground as a child.

After that we visited the Alcazaba, which is a Moorish fort.  It had a very interesting history and resembled the Alhambra in Granada.  Later we visited  Málaga’s beautiful cathedral that was built on the site of former mosque.  The cathedral is called La Manquita meaning “one armed woman”,  because it was not completed due to lack of funds.  Our guide said although the cathedral’s completion was possible

We then had two hours of free time, my group of friends and I decided to eat and shop around.  Although the idea of visiting the beach seemed great we thought there would be better, warmer days to do that, plus we were very determined to find an H&M.  Since it took us over thirty minutes to get to H&M, we took a cab back to where our meeting point was, it only cost us 1.5 euros each!

February 17

I’ve been in Granada for over a month now, and although I no longer walk around with a map in my hand, I look at everything around me like a tourist and find something new to be fascinated by everyday. My route to school is very pretty. There are several ways I can get to school, my favorite route is the one that takes me through two plazas with pretty fountains, two herb stands, the Cathedral, and the rosemary ladies! I don’t like the rosemary ladies. We were warned about them during our orientation. They are older gypsies that stand around the cathedral and make people take rosemary from them. If you’re not from here or if it’s your first time being approached by them you’d think it’s free, but they cost 1 Euro. I wish they could remember my face so they would stop asking me every day. Sometimes twice in a day. They follow people and say ‘Toma! Toma!’…

Everyday after our classes, there are people standing outside the doors of our school handing out fliers for events going on that night or sometime in the week. I think it’s impossible to be bored here. There is always something going on, and the clubs are open m-s. My favorite thing to do here though is going out for tapas. I had read about tapas before coming here, but of course being here and trying them is much better. Tapas are small portions of food that come with drinks for free. We are always on a mission to find the best tapas place. So far it has been one called, ‘Beauty and the Beast’. They serve very large portions with any drink, and drinks normally don’t cost more than 3 euros.

Being a foreign student here means you will certainly make a trip to Dolce Vida at least once through out your stay. Dolce Vida is a place that I will probably never go back to. It’s a place to ‘pregame’ I suppose and it’s filled with Americans and other foreign students. Even the bartender, Kevin, is American. I don’t plan on going back because I’d rather go to places where the locals like to hang out at.
The night scene in Granada, and the rest of Spain is quite different than what most of us are used to in Louisville, Kentucky. Spaniards don’t leave home to go out until after 12. And even then they don’t go to the clubs. They start with chupiterias (shot bars), bars, or Botellon! Botellon is a name given to the tradition of drinking in a public area with a large crowd. I’ve been to one Botellon, and at the end made my way home unlike the Spaniards who went to a club afterward.

For Valentine’s day my friends and I went to a club called Mae West. It was extremely crowded but definitely fun. So far, Mae West has been my favorite club. Probably because of the type of Spaniards there, they were ‘well behaved’. At Mae West we met a group of friends who hung out with us for the rest of the night. One of them was blond and so they called him ‘rubio’, also if you’re black or have darker skin it wouldn’t be odd to be called, ‘negra/o’ or ‘morena/o’. It was around 4:30 am when we decided our feet can no longer make it, we could not believe what we saw once we went outside. A line of over 100 people waiting to get in! At 4 AM!

Granada means pomegranates, and walking around the city I see a lot of pomegranate designs on buildings, the ground, and other places. I haven’t seen any pomegranate though, just very pretty orange trees everywhere. I picked an orange to try several days ago and it was very sour. I have heard though that it is completely fine to just pick and eat the oranges from the trees in the city.

Speaking of oranges, I was a bit surprised on my second day here when Yolanda handed me an orange to slice while I was helping her with the salad. Orange in salads is fine, but that was with olives, onions, tomatoes, and lots of olive oil. But I tried it and loved it. I actually have loved every salad that Yolanda has made. I need to bring home some her recipes. Ever since school started and my roommates arrived, our days at home follow a routine.

Breakfast in the morning sometimes with Yolanda and sometimes without, which usually consists of yummy toasts (we don’t have a toaster, so our host mother toasts the bread on the stove), butter and marmalade with te con leche (tea with milk). If we’re in a hurry we’ll just have cereal and milk. Trying to have conversations in Spanish during breakfast is quite hard, so I normally just don’t talk because if I were to put together three sentences it would take roughly 10 minutes Lunch is the main meal of the day and unfortunately it is served between 2-3. I say unfortunately because I have classes at 3:30 on M&W and at 4 on T&Th and have to rush and eat fast almost all the time. Now imagine trying to speak Spanish and eat fast at the same time, it’s hard. Sometimes I rehearse things I want to talk about during lunch, it’s funny I know but if I didn’t I wouldn’t make it on time to class. I have classes in two buildings, one is a 20 minute walk and the other is a 30 minute walk. Classes normally don’t start right on time, so that helps. It’s very Spanish is to be at least 5 minutes late to everything, except for important meetings and such. Ahmed, if you’re reading this I’m sure you’re thinking ‘how nice!’… haha.

I can’t talk about school and leave out our wonderful cafeteria man. It’s not really a cafeteria, more like a tiny coffee shop, and the barista has become one of my favorite people in Granada. The first day I went in to get coffee he asked me whether I want whiskey or beer! I didn’t realize it was a joke at first, and he got a good laugh out of it. He loves to joke around and be funny about everything, and he corrects my Spanish every chance he gets, even when I say things correctly he jokingly says ‘no! no! no!’. Understanding Spanish is a challenge let alone when what you’re trying to understand is a joke. But going to visit the barista (I don’t know his name yet, it’s probably Jose or Juan though like most other Spaniards) is one of my favorite parts of the day.

My professors also have interesting and distinct characteristics. My grammar professor is a middle aged lady with pink hair. She’s intense. And she picks on us, a lot. My professor for Islamic Culture in Spain is probably the most unique out of all of them. Sometimes I wish the class was in English so I could understand everything he says because what I do understand is hilarious. He has these tics that are very funny too. Since the students in our class don’t speak Spanish as their first language he uses charades to explain some things and that is also very hilarious. Oh and before every weekend, he tells us to go and get drunk. Then I have my conversation professor who is from east of Spain and sounds like she’s French. She pronounces everything different. We are still getting used to the difference dialect being spoken here in Granada like instead of saying ‘mas o menos’ they say ‘ma o meno’ or ‘hasta luego’ is ‘a ego’. My econ professor is not as cool as the others, but I should say that even though the class is supposed to be taught in English, his notes, assignments, and exams are in Spanish, fun! And then there is my European Union professor. I absolutely love him, and his British accent. They other day in class he said that Germany had been a naughty naughty boy, of course in a thick British/Spanish accent. It was so funny!

Luckily I was not the only to arrive an entire day later. There were others who had been stranded in Scotland, and England. I was also not the only one to not have my luggage, and that was a relief. So, CEA provided a second round of orientation, walking tour, lunch and etc… for us.
Along with basic information about our program and other details, our program coordinators told us about some things to keep in mind specially if we are staying with a host family. For example Spanish family members tend to have their designated place where they sit in the living room and that it is extremely important to make sure we ask where we can sit. Slippers! They are quite important as well. Shoes are normally not worn inside the house, but slippers are necessary. We were told to take quick showers, no longer than ten minutes! We were also told not to talk about hot topics like religion, and politics but that has been the majority of what Yolanda and I have talked about. Oops? She actually started talking to me about such things, and the other day she asked me what I think about abortion. Hmmm… that one I wasn’t too excited about discussing. But I answered without really answering. Like the majority of the people here she is pro life, but she is also against the death penalty. My roommates said that they talked to her about gay rights and that she believes they should be able to have the same rights as other couples, but they shouldn’t be able to adopt children. In Spain, gay marriage is allowed, however adoption of children is quite controversial.
Later they gave us some random, but important information. For example, it is illegal to purchase alcohol in stores after 10 PM. This is because before going out to bars and discos Spaniards would gather around in all parts of Granada and as we say ‘pregame’* in the streets. A lot of neighborhood communities filed complaints because of the noise and the rowdiness and so the government then selected designated times and locations for pregaming. Spaniards call this a Botellon, and tonight I will experience this very Spanish trend. I’m very excited, I plan on telling you all about it. Also another important information is to definitely carry around toilet paper as there will be none in public restrooms past 10 PM. This one is interesting, Spain’s law about Marijuana, commonly referred to as Maria, is that you can use it and grow it for your ‘personal’ use, but you may not sell it. I think that’s quite confusing. So I asked what happens if a person is arrested on the street because of position and we were told it will come down to the amount that he or she is carrying. Interesting. The first couple times that I saw people rolling joints my eyes widened and my moth dropped, but now it’s become a bit normal. And they left us with one final thought, that if we don’t already smoke, the chance of us picking it up the habit is high. I’m not too sure about that but I know that it took my poor lungs a while to get used to the smoke everywhere.
It took about a week for all of us to get our luggage back. During that week, my friend Dawn and I enjoyed having a daily allowance of 50 Euros to spend. We just had to fill out a lot paper work to be reimbursed. We spent lots of money on necessities so hopefully there wont be any issues with getting our money back. The daily shopping also helped my vocabulary although the bulk of what I’ve learned are only related to sizes, and etc…

While I was in the taxi from the airport I started worrying about my host mother, Yolanda, and how she would be, whether she speaks English, and etc… And now I can say that I absolutely love her. That night she was waiting for me, and once I walked all the way up to the 6th floor (7th really but the ground floor doesn’t count here) I was greeted with another double kiss on the cheek. She gave me a tour around her apartment and let me choose between three rooms. I chose one of the rooms that was closer to the bathroom, (My two roommates are here now and we’ve decided to switch our rooms at least once). She is so nice, and so kind to me. She speaks English very well compared to other people from Granada but of course we speak Spanish and only when I’m completely clueless about what she’s saying we speak English. Host mothers here clean our rooms, make our beds, cook for us of course and do our laundry, but I try to make my bed and keep my room clean so Yolanda doesn’t have to.
Yolanda is a middle aged lady who’s been separated from her husband. She works with an organization in Granada that helps homeless people and others in need. Her job is such an exact reflection of her personality and lifestyle. From our talks so far, I’ve gathered that she is so concerned about other people’s well being, equality, scarcity of food and water, humanity, and life. I find a lot of things about her very interesting, like her curiosity for different people, places and her deep interest for languages. My roommates and I repeatedly say to each other and others how lucky we are to have her, but I specifically am so thankful for the conversations I’ve had and will have with her. I think it was about two weeks ago after one of our very intense conversations that she said to me, “Sana, I feel like I’ve known you all my life.” Being extremely touched, and flattered along with my lack of Spanish really didn’t help in trying to formulate a response to what she said. So I just smiled really big and thanked her for saying that.

Yolanda’s apartment is on a street named, Carril Del Picon, which is conveniently located close to school, correos (the post office, which is our meeting point for everything), and the CEA office. Although I have been here less than a month, I have gotten to know most of the vendors, specially the one at my favorite Pasteleria (pastry shop). As I mentioned we live on the 6th floor, so we normally squish ourselves into the tiny elevator unless we have treated ourselves to a tasty piece of heaven from the Pasteleria… like today on our way back from school. I will try to add a couple of pictures from the neighborhood and our apartment soon! It’s lunch time now, hasta luego!

I have finally found the time to sit down and write a detailed email about Granada thus far.  I’m not so sure where to begin, perhaps I can start with my eventful 3 day trip to Granada.  On Monday I arrived to London and as all other flights, my flight to Madrid was canceled because of the snow storm.  There were plenty of people in all terminals running around trying to figure out what to do or where to go.  I don’t want to talk about how stressful everything because looking back now, I actually think it was an interesting experience.  Many of us were told to stand in a line to rebook our flight.  The line that most of us thought would only last an hour ended up being 13 hours!!!  The first three hours were terrible, the next even worse but towards the end we had accepted the fact that we were going to be there for a while.  Luckily I met Denise, Mikael, and Alex, three students from Germany, Netherlands, and Australia.  We helped each other out a lot, we played games while standing in line, talked, and etc…  It was specially helpful to know someone in line for times when we had to go to the bathroom, get food etc…

13 hours passed and we were able to rebook our flights for the next day.  Since our flights were so early we ended up spending the night in Heathrow.  It was quite loud, cole, and extremely uncomfortable but we managed as the airport started to hand out free food, drinks, and blankets.