so about a week after my last post i went to granada with my program for the weekend. its a 3 hour bus ride from sevilla. it was a gorgeous city, right on a mountain, so the entire city was hilly (the exact opposite of sevilla which is all flat). the city is filled of narrow roads that cars wont fit on, walled with houses/apartments with potted plants in the windowsills. we got to go to the cathedral where ferdinand, isabella, philip and juana are buried. our guia (guide) told us the "true" story of juana la loca (the crazy). this is how i remember it (but its been a month, and some parts are probably a little wrong): ferdinand and isabella were king and queen when their daughter, juana married philip el hermoso (the handsome). when ferdinand, isabella and their son died, juana was the next to rule spain. her and philip ruled together for a while until he died suddenly. juana's son was very ambitious and wanted to be king so he told everyone that his mother was so in love with philip that when he died she became crazy. he sent her off to a monastery to be imprisoned until she died...pretty cool right? so anyways we got to see their tombs and walk underground to where they are buried and it smelled horrible lol. that night we went out to a popular night club and didnt get home until 530AM! it was horrible because we had to be up at 830 to go to Alhambra. once i got past being tired la alhambra was pretty cool. its this HUGE (many acres) fort/palace. you can see a lot of arabic influences in the architecture with the mosaics and fountains in the courtyards. and i can imagine that during the summer it is beautiful with all of the gardens....my memory of granada ends here!
what else have i done? i started my regular classes! i am taking a class about "spain and european integration" aka about the EU. the concept of the class is interesting but my professor is pretty boring. we went over the same information for 3 weeks straight: european communities the pillars of the EU. that information could be hard, but we are barley skimming the surface. it just gets old pretty quickly. but my other classes i really like. "spanish for business" is my favorite! my teacher, antonio, is great. he is so energetic and add that he moves all over the room all the time. and its information that i want to be learning. it is exactly like my IB (international business) class in the states, just in spanish. we are learning business terms, how to conduct business in the spanish world, and the global financial crisis (in spanish!)! another class is "contemporary spanish film" but "contemporary" means all of film because in reality, cine (film) hasnt been around for that long. so we are learning about the early spanish films, films made during francos rule and the censorship, and how the industry changed after franco died. my last class is "flamenco" (but about the history and culture, we dont actually dance). its pretty cool to learn the origins: gitano (gypsy) andaluz (andalusian) and otros (others). i just had all 4 of my mid-terms today. for the most part i think i did ok, but the spanish grading system is completely diferent from the US, so who knows how everything will turn out...pray for me!
im still taking flamenco dance lessons with maria rosa. its very fun and we are getting better. we are preparing to dance during feria (end of april) and its good taht there are 3 boys in our class because then we have someone to dance with! and the other day maria rosa made me try on all her flamenco dresses and she picked one out for me to wear during feria and she kept saying "que guapa, como una modela" (how pretty, like a model). its great living with her because everytime jacquelin and i leave the house she always tells us how guapa (beautiful) we look...such a confidence booster haha.
ok last thing before i sign off!
andrew and i went to barcelona weekends ago. our friend who is studying in rome, randi, was on her spring break and traveled there, so we thought it would be a good weekend trip for us. we flew there, took the train and the metro in to our hostel. it was our first real traveling experience (becasue everything else has been with our program) and we were pretty impressed with how well we did. so we experienced the barcelona night life, which is a lot more expensive than sevilla. we had to take taxis everywhere (which we never do in sevilla) and pay 2-3 euros for beer (when we normally pay 1-2). lol we are so cheap. we went to this one bar named chupitos (shots) where there were over 200 different types of shots, may of which involved fire!! i had one where the bartender lit my finger on fire then i put it out in my mouth. another was called the "boy scout" where they set the bar on fire and you roast a marshmallow and use it as your "chaser" to your shot. it was a fun night.....anyway....we got to see gaudi's casa batiló which was amazing. definitely has to be the coolest place to live in. and we also saw gaudi's sagrada familia (his cathedral) which is still under construction. and the last thing of guadi that we saw was park guell with all of the mosaic animals. the best part about barcelona was being able to see my roommate from psu Randi. she is studying in rome and was on her spring break and went to barcelona, thus was the whole point of my trip to barcelona. it was sooooo nice to be reunited with one of my girlies and also horrible to say goodbye to her again :(
ok....really the last thing now:
last friday my friends and i were feeling impulsive so we bought a bus ticket to cádiz (1 hr away) and went to the beach for the day. it was so nice to hear the ocean and lay in the sun....dont worry i used protection!! i love that 30spf! we were there from 9am to 9pm so we got a full day of relaxation.
ok now im going to relaxxxxxxxxx
besos!! steph
Very nice! Thanks for the long update!
ReplyDelete