Doing some navigating...

So as I keep writing this post I'm realizing it's a little confusing to follow and may not make sense. I'm going to post it anyways because I wrote it but it's not that well written and for that I apologize!

With my roommate gone for the weekend I've taken to walking around and exploring on my own more. Last Thursday I had a placement exam to see if I could take an Arabic Language course while I'm here in Granada and no one else in my program was going so it was up to me to find the place. I had gotten tenative directions from one of the ISA staff but even she wasn't exactly sure where this building was. She explained that this was the first year that they weren't holding the exam in the Center of Modern Languages where I have class everyday. So it was my job to do a bit of exploring....

Granada is an amazing city to just wander through. For me it's been incredibly easy to navigate. Virginia, my language partner, likes to question me every now and then to see if I know where we are in the city after walking a while. She always seems super amazed when I get it right but for me for the most part it's really easy to find a quicker path than to backtrack through where we already walked.

The reason I think this city is so easy to navigate is because it has some pretty important land marks and characteristics that help you to navigate.

 Basically if you feel yourself starting to walk up hill and there are lots of stairs in your site you are heading towards the hills and that means the Albaycin neighborhood. That's the easiest to figure out. If you want to head towards the center and you find yourself going uphill most likely you're going the wrong way.

To find the center is also pretty easy too. You walk downhill and find a main road. The center is like a major intersection of all the main roads in Granada so find one of them and head in the right direction and you'll get there. One of the bigger main roads is Gran Via Colon or something of the sort and it's a pretty distinct road. The street lamps are these weird cube like structures that almost look like ice cubes stuck together to make a really big ice cube if that makes sense. If you see those you basically know you're on Gran Via. It's also pretty simple to see straight down this road so if you're not sure at which end you're currently standing if you look down one way you can see the buildings that you wish to head towards and you'll be able to follow the road there.

Also for some reason it's pretty simple for me to tell which neighborhood or area I'm in by the buildings that I'm surrounded by and just the vibe in general of the people walking around me. For example where my class is it's very hipster and there's a lot of younger people walking around that aren't just speaking Spanish--my school building is like the center for international students. The center is more full of modern looking buildings and the granite you walk on is nicer. Plus it's where you'll find the most heladerías. Where I live is a lot of businesses but none that are super commercial and they're all basically businesses that a full time resident would need--like a paint store for example. It's really not touristy and you basically only see locals walking around.

Basically Granada isn't a very complex city EXCEPT for the backstreets. I can't tell you the amount of times that I've known I'm heading in the right direction but there's a street that ends and I can't continue to go straight and I have to sort of go on a round about street in order to get to the other side of the line of houses that are blocking my straight path. It's a little frustrating but sometimes it just adds to the walk and makes it a little more fun. But there are definitely sometimes when I wish the path was way more direct but I think it's because the streets are sometimes so windy that you can't see a road is about to end until you at that end point. It almost seems to come out of nowhere.

Randomness

So here's some just random pictures I've taken that I feel like deserve a little bit of background information. 

I snapped some food pictures because I got asked what food is like here. It pretty great. So below you see beer and tapas. All I did was order the beer and they bring you the tapas for free! It's something that happens all over Granada. If you buy beer, a glass of wine, and even a soft drink they'll bring you some sort of tapas. This one consisted of Russian Salad (bottom right dish in both pictures) this is basically their potato salad that taste a little bit different because the mayo here taste different. It's got potatoes of course, peas, carrots and sometimes olives and eggs depending on who has made it. The most left plate in the bottom photo is basically ribs I think. I'm not sure and I didn't eat any of it because it wasn't that great. The middle plate is toast with kiwi and mayo plus like something similar to bacon but it looked uncooked so I passed on that. And then of course there's some bread. The tapas you get varies depending on which restaurant you go to. Also at some restaurants you get to pick the tapas you want. 

 Now these next two photos are great. I mean they're terrible quality but what they're pictures of is great. The top is the park as I'm walking home from class. There were about 30 kids (ages 8-12) riding horses through the park. It was great!

And then this picture is of some adults on their horses. I didn't get a picture but later on there were some guys dressed in like old Spanish dress but they were too far away for you to even see them with my phone. There had to have been around 50 horses in the park. It was so cool!

This photo I took while I was walking to meet with Virginia--my language partner. There's this festival in Granada that's called the festival of the Virgin and this church that's like a ten minute walk to my house sets up these flowers to celebrate. They hang them and then throughout the week more people bring flowers to put in front of the church. We just happened to walk by as  they were setting up all of the flowers.

The picture with the tents shows where people were selling flowers. As we walked past each tent owner was shouting out their price and trying to be the loudest. Within a few hours all the tents were taken down, all the flowers were put in the flower wall, and it was as if nothing had happened. This last picture is of the crowds watching the flowers get put up. There was music playing and it was hard to even walk down the street. Young and old had come out to celebrate and watch--I suspect gossip too! I just love the two old ladies in the bottom right corner!

Virginia and Pastries

So far the schedule I've had this month hasn't actually included a very strict routine. I think once my real classes start in October I'll be able to get a routine so my blog posts aren't so random and spread out. My goal had been to blog at least once a week if not twice a week and I haven't really been keeping up with it. Anyways things have been pretty good here.

I did get a cold because of the 30 degree temperature change from night and day but I've been told that's a very Spaniard thing to do so I feel better about it. Although it was terrible to run out of Kleenex brand tissues I found a pack of ten here for a euro and they're actually pretty soft and smell like Vicks! I'm finally able to breathe for real and I'm ready to do some exploring!

For the first time since I've been here I woke up at a decent time (8:15) and I feel like I'm going to do a lot today which is always the best feeling!

Oh let me tell you about Virginia--pronounced Beer-He-knee-ah (hopefully that makes sense....). But anyways she's the close to 60 year old women who started learning English in her late 50s!!! I mean amazing. I happened to be in ISA office with my roommate one afternoon and one of the staff asked us if we were interested in having a language exchange partner. This was one of the things I had planned to do during my time here in Spain so I jumped on this opportunity. The staff member proceeded to tell us that the woman was in here 50s in way that made me think this is a deterrent for most people but I just thought it was awesome that she wanted to practice her English. My roommate and I went together to meet with her two days later and let me just tell you this lady is amazing. She speaks English almost perfectly and only messes up with some sayings that are very much American English. And she is just beautiful. Think sophisticated European woman and that's her to a T. She dresses simply but with a lot of style and dies her hair a brilliant purplish red--She told me it's a powder that she gets from one the Arab shops you find as you walk up to the old moorish neighborhood. In all honesty I'm really jealous of the color and contemplating getting some of the powder she uses (Sorry Mom and Dad....) Anyways so that first evening we just sat and had a beer together--she wouldn't let us pay dang it! And she kept telling us how beautiful we were and how happy she was that we were there speaking with her.

She told us all about herself and walked us by where she lives and told us both that it's our home too now. She and her husband are both retired and her son and daughter both got married this past summer--in June and July. Her son lives in Madrid and her daughter lives in Granada. She's originally from Granada and was a teacher for most of her life. She is just amazing and has a view on life that I want to adopt. She told us she started to learn English and have a language exchange partner because, "Why not? I have time to do it and it's something I've always wanted so I'm just going to go for it. Life is short so enjoy it while you can." I love this! The entire time we were together she just kept telling us to enjoy everything. I made a comment about not wanting to eat a lot of sweets while I'm here and she goes 'Oh go ahead and do it! You're young and you can lose weight when you get back if you want to. Don't hold yourself back!" I've been letting myself do more of what I want and just enjoy this once in a lifetime trip. Below you can see the pastry I bought myself after class because I'd been eyeing them since I'd gotten to Granada.

It was amazing and perfect and the right thing to do. I'm really glad I did it.

But yeah so Virginia has been great and I ended up meeting up with her the next day on my own and she took me to see some absolutely beautiful churches here. We talked as we walked--her in English and me in Spanish. She's amazing about correcting my errors and I already feel like I'm improving ten fold just talking to her. She also told me that she's always here if I were to need help or anything which makes me feel great. I already love her and would want to just come back to visit her. She also told us that since emily and I both like shopping one day she'll take us shopping. She's really excited to show us her city and I can't wait to see all of it!

From tourist to local...hopefully!

So I realize it´s been a while since I posted. It's not like I've been busy busy but rather just lazy. I have been taking pictures more often for those of you who feel I wasn't taking enough *cough mom cough* You can check them out on Facebook. Also this post is going to be a little scattered because it's been so long since my last post. I'm just writing things as I remember them so hopefully you'll be able to follow.

Most days I just can't believe I am living here in a completely different country. I mean as soon as I walk out of my room and hear rapid fire Spanish it kind of hits me in the face. But even though it's been only 2 weeks that I've been here it's still amazing to walk around and I tend to just be in awe of my walk.

So far the hardest part I think is the weather. In the morning it'll be around 55 degrees when I wake up at like 9:30 and then it almost seems to get hot with a snap of the fingers. When I walk to class around 3:30 I am sweating buckets even with the cool breeze. It's been pretty much stuck around 85 degrees and walking up hill the entire time with the sun beating down on me is pretty painful for me--especially since I feel like I have to sit through 4 hours of class in my own stink. Thankfully I know the temperature is supposed to go down soon so it won't be as suffocating.

That right there is my only complaint. Everything else is pretty amazing.


Most amazing thing that's happened was yesterday (Friday). I was walking to class and I got stopped by someone who was asking for directions. One thing on my wish list for this trip was to be confused for a local. Sadly I don't know Granada well enough to be able to help the family but they still thought I lived here so yay! It was a pretty amazing moment for me and basically I was smiling the whole rest of the time I walked to class. Now I've changed the goal to being: Getting asked for directions and being able to give proper directions--completely in Spanish. Here's hoping!

The good thing is I'm already feeling pretty confident making my way around the city. The main roads are way less complicated than Pittsburgh's so that's a plus. The problem is that there are so many tiny roads that just make random turns out of nowhere. It makes it a little harder to navigate through side streets. It really helps that it's a pretty easy city to roam around. There's like next to no chance you'll end up in a bad part of town because there really aren't bad bad parts of town. There can be some when it's night time but I don't make it a point to go exploring at night so I should be safe. There hasn't been a moment that I've felt scared because the city is just full of people walking around so I haven't ever been the only one walking down a street. There's also way less homeless people/beggars than Pittsburgh believe it or not.

Today was a good day for exploring. Instead of eating the muffins for breakfast like we usually get we both decided we wanted go out for breakfast. We ended up at this place near one of the main roads. It was farther than we'd walked before but we just walked through the park new our place and along the river and eventually ended up at this restaurant. I got a piece of fresh bread toasted and I dribbled olive oil over it and then drank a cafe con leche. The total for my breakfast was 2 euro and it was so good! My roommate had a coke and a tortilla española (think quiche without the crust and with potatoes and onions. It's seriously amazing!) for only 4 euro. She was stuffed too. The restaurant is located in a pretty busy part of town but mostly because it's right across of a grocery store and on one of the main street of Granada.

Everything about this city draws me in--well except for the massive amounts of dog poop on the sidewalks. It's a bit ridiculous how much dog poop there is left on the sidewalks. Somedays it's like walking through a minefield. When we first arrived in Granada I saw a sign reminding you to pick up your dog's poop but I just thought it was like a friendly reminder....now I see it was more of a necessary command....Despite the dog poop Granada is a pretty clean city. There are street cleaning and sidewalk cleaning vehicles out daily. Below is a picture that I attempted to take to show you the dog poop reminder and the street cleaning vehicle. Excuse the poor quality...I literally basically ran behind it to be able to take these pictures....

But yeah they're out there daily...but I mean the dog poop they can't really do anything about. There are just so many freaking dogs--I swear like every 5th person on the street is walking with their dog. It's great! I saw the most adorable big dog today. I have no idea what breed it was but I wanted it haha It had long hair-like fur and floppy ears but was huge. It was the coolest looking dog and I'm so made I didn't take a picture because It looked really well behaved.

Anyways. Granada is beautiful despite the dog poop and I am loving it here minus the seemingly drastic temperature changes....

A pomegranate without tax and Bob the Builder

I know this is super late but this week ended up being one thing after the other so here's what my first couple of days in Granada were like.

You may be wondering about the title of this post. Well I'll explain. So pomegranate? The word granada in Spanish actually means pomegranate. If you check out the seal of Spain that they have on their flag you'll actually see a small pomegranate at the bottom. Remember Fernando and Isabel? This is actually their combined seal that was created after they joined their two kingdoms when they married. If you see their seal on a building that was finished before 1492--for example the cathedral where they were supposed to buried in Toledo--you won't be able to find a pomegranate. They added the pomegranate to their seal after they conquered the Arabs in the city of Granada. It's pretty cool. Although ironically I have yet to even see a pomegranate here in Granada....

Anyways, the without tax part? There's no tax! If the sign says that a scarf costs 1.95 euro the store clerk gives you back .05 euro. It's a beautiful thing. I'd say it basically makes up for the euro to dollar difference for the most part so I guess in a way it's kind of like there is tax since I'm American. The cool thing though is that a lot of things are way cheaper than in the US. I don't know....just something to think about...

And Bob the Builder. This has to do with my homestay. So my piso--that's an apartment in Spain--is not really that close to the center of Granada. It's kind of like south east of the city center I'd say. It's anywhere from a 20 to 30 minute walk depending on where I'm going or how fast I'm walking. The nice thing though is that I'm mean it's Granada so it's a beautiful walk no matter what. About 5 mins away from my homestay there's the gorgeous park that goes for about a half mile or quarter mile--I'm terrible at distance--but it's just there right along the river that comes from the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Right now since there's no snow on the mountains the river is almost non existent but soon it'll start running like a real river. So as I'm walking to class I could just walk through this park full of orange trees, shrubs, and benches. At night parents bring their kids because there's a part that has a jungle gym. So as I walk home from class I see kids and dogs without leashes running around in the park and having fun. It's great. Oh but I forgot Bob. Okay so where I'm living a lot of the buildings look extremely similar and I've almost attempted to enter a couple of apartment buildings that aren't mine UNTIL I finally realized that where I turn to go into my building there's a sign for what I think is a welder that has this handyman cartoon on it that looks exactly like Bob the Builder....So now I know to look for Bob and I'll know I made it home.

My apartment building doesn't actually face the street where its address says it is but it's part of the building that does face the street. The actual apartment that I'm in is surprisingly modern. I'm here with my roommate from Michigan. We share a room with two twin beds and a bathroom. The family that is hosting us consists of a mom and dad in the early to mid fifties, a 18 or 19 year old daughter, and a 24 year old son. The parents are so nice! The dad was actually the one to pick us up from the bus stop and then show us around Granada so we knew where we were supposed to go the next morning since we had our placement exam the morning after we arrived in Granada. He's a pretty funny guy and made more than a few jokes as he walked us through the city.

So far so good here in Granada!

Ta-li-do Toh-lei-do

First off I LOVED THIS CITY!!!! Toledo is absolutely gorgeous!
This post is going to be mostly a picture blog since you know I actually took pictures this time....

But here's just an intro while I wait for all my pictures to load so I can choose which ones I'll use.

Toledo is a super cool city. At one point it was the capital of Spain well the capital of wait there was of Spain. The Catholic King and Queen lived in this city as they worked to unite the different parts of Spain that were under the rule of many different people--at this point there were still Arabs in the Iberian Peninsula. Granada was still controlled by the Moors as some people say. So in Toledo there's a palace and a cathedral that was built especially for the Catholic King and Queen--Fernando and Isabella. What I believe is the most interesting thing about this city is that when the 'Nando and Isabel decided to move their residence to Madrid this city basically got abandoned and because of that it got stuck in the past. So walking around this city you really feel like if you were wearing different clothes you could be walking around in the 14th century or something like that--I don't remember the actual years there were there but it's old feeling. There is so much cobblestone and teeny tiny alleyways that it's absolutely gorgeous. There isn't a lot of commercialism either so if everyone dressed up like the proper time period it would totally trick your mind to thinking that you got transported back in time....

So to start out your picture tour I've got a picture from the bus of the view as we're driving around the outskirts of the city.

Yeah it's a little blurry....sorry....

But then our guide let us get off the bus and take some pictures....this was my attempt at a panorama but you know not actually put all together and stuff...

I hope the gorgeousness of this view translates well enough.... We got back on the bus only to get off again a less than a mile later. Below is the view from where the bus parked us....

 We eventually walked over the bridge and I just thought the plants below looked strange so I snapped a picture....in the picture they don't look as strange I'd say...

 It was a pretty short walk to get to the cathedral where the pictures below were taken. It was a pretty cool church and there were lots of details all around. It was built for the Catholic king and queen because they wanted to be buried there--they're actually buried in Granada--so there are a lot of symbols that pertain to them. You'll see the letter f and the letter y everywhere for their names--Isabel spelled her name Ysabel back when she lived.

 The courtyard in the middle of the church is acutally a Moorish style. Many homes in the Arab world have this type of courtyard to show wealth or something like that. This one had orange trees which I thought was awesome.

 The walls on the interior part had all different carvings like the two below. I personally thought the top one was cool so I took a picture. And then the bottom one our tour guide pointed out to us and explained it as a monkey, wearing a monkshood, taking a dump, reading a book. Those were his exact words since he said it in English. He though it was hilarious and I mean it does look pretty silly....

After the cathedral we went to a building that was built as a synagogue using Arab style architecture but then was forced to become a church in medieval times and then became a museum and is referred to as a synagogue. Did I lose you? Yeah I had trouble typing it out too so don't feel bad. I didn't end up getting any clear pictures so unfortunately you don't get to see this building but it wasn't super super cool so don't feel like you're missing out or anything. 

After this synagogue thing we walked on...

 This is the royal seal of the catholic king and queen above.

 My attempt below at being cool and artistic...fail...

 Below is a picture of my group's tour guide. He was pretty cool and knew a lot of stuff. His voice though was like an announcer's voice but that could be because he spoke so so slowly. I think I have a video of him speaking I'll post...

 These next few pictures are pictures of the royal palace. It's pretty cool looking in my opinion.

 At lunch we had beer that is made in Toledo. It was actually pretty good and the bottle looks pretty cool.

 At that ends my trip to Toledo. After the tour we got on the bus and went to the hotel. Since our hotel was so far from downtown we didn't end up leaving it and just ate dinner there before leaving for Granada in the morning.