Seriously.

If you were buying a giant statue/water fountain to place outside of one of the most famous sites in Spain (Alhambra), wouldn't you walk around the whole thing? Just to make sure someone won't take pictures like these to giggle at and post on their blog?

Costa Del Sol (Y Lluvia)

This weekend I rented a car and hit the road! After a couple of weeks of feeling like I'm not really making the most of my time in Spain I decided to use my weekends to the fullest. La Costa Del Sol (Coast of Sun) is super close and the weather reports SAID it was going to be sunny and in the 60's. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans...



I started out with a loose itinerary of Malaga and the various small beach towns scattered around it. Malaga is about 45 minutes away and one of the larger cities on the coast in Adalucia (...the part of Spain I live in. They are responsible for the fast-talking, lispy Spanish I find so hard to master). I visited Malaga, Marbella, Mijas, Torremolinos, Antequera and another town I can't recall. I only had two days so for the most part I blew through towns using my gps to get me to the scenic spots. I didn't get to any museums or cultural hotspots- seeing the beaches was my main goal. Most of the towns on the coast are touristy (like, Brits) but very lovely. Each beach was a little bit different. The prettiest was Marbella (for me) but it was getting dark when I got there and the pictures of the twinkling lights on the horizon don't show up on film very well. I did enjoy a solid hour of sitting and watching people fish, gather wood for bonfires and listen to the pounding surf. Sigh.



Bored yet? Should we get to the slide show? Ok! *Beep*



Uh. This is the town I can't recall. I think it's Neja. Or Naja. Something like that. But look at that church! All through Spain there's this very orderly countryside with trees in even lines and green plots of crops, rolling over shallow hills and then every now and then POW, you get a grouping of these white houses on a hill with a big church in the center. It's very pretty but doesn't photograph well. Just get in my head and pretend to remember it, k?



It was nice to see that Black Angus is just as popular in Spain as it is back home...

Old stuff and blue skies...

Break time! I know it's weird to think an Ikea is like a little slice of home, but those meatballs taste JUST the same here as they do back in Seattle. It was nice to be somewhere familiar, if super different, you know? Plus I got some stuff for my place, like a blanket for 2 Euros so I can stop using my sleeping bag. I know it's awfully indulgent, but...

Did I mention I decided to sleep in my car? For some reason everyone thought this was crazy but I didn't want to blow 30 bucks just for a bed. Sleeping in your car for a bit is just like taking a nap while someone is driving but you're not actually moving. I just found a safe little neighborhood and snoozed. I did wake up in a dreamy panic that I was running out of oxygen at one point and rolled down the windows for a second to let fresh air in. It was raining super hard and I was paranoid about having an open window while I slept so I groggily waved my pillow around like a maniac to try to bring in as much fresh air as possible before I going back to sleep. All was well in the morning, though.

If wet.

Sunday was all rain, all the time. Also lots of fog, so my pictures aren't as great.

Fuengirola, I think. I had breakfast here and got to watch the Olympics for the first time this season. Granted, it was in a Euro tourist restaurant. I've looked and it's not to be found on Spanish TV. My roommates looked at me like I was asking when Bunny Rabbit Boxing was on. Winter Olympics: Not a big deal in Spain.

My rental car. I sure do like Volkswagons.

Antequera. More churches! More white houses!

And very narrow streets that a Volkswagon just fits through. Phew!

Laguna de Fuente de Piedra and the HIGHLIGHT of my weekend!!

A flamingo refuge!!!!! Seriously, I squealed the whole way into this place. This is one of Europe's two main breeding grounds for flamingos. I regret I won't get to see the chicks hatch in April, but seeing these lovely pale pink birds in person was awesome. In Spain! Who knew??

The grounds:
The birds:
So cute!

It was nice to have a weekend to drive around wherever I wanted to go. It's been two months since I've driven. I miss being able just to go.

Next weekend is the big one: Morocco! It's my birthday present to myself. The nice girl from my class (Angela) and I are going to go. Did you know the tip of Africa is a mere 9 miles from the bottom of Spain? It'll be nice to knock one more continent off my "been there" list. Plus, MOROCCO!

Another "Adventure" In Spanish Living!

Yesterday we ran out of butane for the water heater, apparently. I came home and my roomie was filling up the bathtub with water from the stove. So, I had an old timey bath last night that took more than 30 minutes to make. I filled the three biggest pots with water from the stove, dumped the hot water then ran the 50 feet back to the kitchen to do it all over again. Three trips later I had a very (non) lovely bath in 3 inches of hard-earned hot water.

The butane guy didn't come by today. I'm debating the "French Bath" with ice-cold water or do I just wait? How long would you go without a hot shower? (And yes, I did the cold shower thing in Cambodia but this is totally different. It's 50 degrees in the house alone.)

Now I'd like you to go to your shower right now and THANK IT for being hot all the time. K? I'll wait.

Translation Not Found: "Hangover"

I write you from my deathbed.

Ok, not really, but I can tell you I feel awful. Moments like these I wonder WHY I thought it was funny to ask for the "mas peor" rum the bartender had. My brain feels to big for my head and I wish I could make my insides stop moving.

What got me in this state, you ask? I made some friends! Yay, me! And they are all in their early twenties and then can all adjust to "Spanish time" easily and convinced me to go out on a school night resulting in Krista dragging her 33-year-old butt home at 5 am. (Soon to be 34-year-old butt! Consolations, spare Euros and gifts of peanut butter-related products can be sent to: Krista Meyer/ Calle del Hidalgo 2, 2A/ 18008 Granada/ Spain)

Anyhoo. I was doing what I do best here in Granada (wandering) and I ran into a girl from my class, Angela, and two other gals doing the same program as us, just at different levels. They were going for tapas and invited me along. This was a first! The tapas were crappy (potato chips? really?) but it was nice to have some people to talk to. Oh, and they were being really good and speaking only in Spanish but the kind of Spanish I speak, with lots of pauses and "um"s while trying to find the right word instead of the mile-a-minute Spanish my roommates expel. One of the girls (A mere 21 years old. Lordy!) and I started talking about music which led to discussion about a club she liked where some bands I like had played recently which led to her suggesting we all go to this club TONIGHT. I hemmed and hawed until I reminded myself that yes, I have to get up early tomorrow but I'm in Spain and this is a rare chance to socialize and dance and see some nightlife and pretend I'm in my 20's still!!!! So I said yes.

We started out at Alexandria's (the 21-year olds) for some good old fashioned pre-funking. We sat around her living room table * chatting and having some cocktails. We slipped into English once we exhausted our Spanish vocab. We left around 1am (so late! but so early here!) and after 20 minutes of Alexandria saying it's just up ahead, one more block, it's just around the corner, it's just over there... we found the club. It was packed with a strange mix of Spanish hippies (sans perros o flautes), Senegalese gigalos, gringa chicas like us and the kind of people you'd expect to see on Spanish "Big Brother". The music was great, though, and we boogied until 4:30 or so to a mix of funk, soul and dance. I learned that, much like Thailand, there is no toilet paper in Spanish clubs. Apparently it gets stolen. I hate drip drying. I also learned that pot is on the "no big deal" list here and likely received a contact high. Poor 21-year-old showed her age by getting too drunk, too fast and needed to be taken home.

I had the silly idea that I could sleep for two hours then get up for school at 7:30 but nooooooooo. My alarm may or may not have gone off and I may or may not have desperately scarfed one of every item in my cupboard to try to tame my tummy (would milk help? ok. hm. what about bread? bread is good, right? no? don't like that? how about a cookie? no? a slice of ham? that'll do it, right? lemon soda? jelly? work with me, here!)

I'm glad I went, though. I wish I had some pictures to share but... on the other hand... thankfully there is no proof of my patented Dance Moves To Make You Laugh. But I can tell you what I looked like when I woke up. (Not for the faint of heart...)



* Another weird Spanish thing: So, nobody seems to have central heat but they all have these heaters that go under your dining table. Then you drape a big fuzzy blanket over the table, drag it over to your sofa and sit, cooking your legs under the massive heat-tent. It's heavenly when you're cold, it's just... well... different. We have one in my apartment, too. I prefer to use my space heater to bake my legs while reading/studying/wasting time on the computer. It reminds me of my days at the office with my "not to code" heater blasting year-round. (Until Gwenn told me I could do permanent damage to my legs by "cooking" them and that those little red patches below my knees wouldn't go away if I kept it up.)

Seville

Ah, Seville. Was it so great because I had such a lovely hostess? Perhaps. But a city where orange trees are abundant and the homes have touches of my favorite color wherever we went... magic!

We lucked out because the weather was great. Sunny and surprisingly warm. Sela was an excellent tour guide and taught me some very important things, like, the term "perro y flaute" which is a term for hippies, since they always seem to have dogs and flutes. Ha!

The sights were lovely!


Sela and I enjoyed many tapas and drinks. I especially enjoyed what I think now was wine and Fanta.

Hanging in her high school haunts. These crazy Spaniards drinking in high school! Sheesh!

Some ancient grafitti?

And across the street, the ubiquitous Starbucks!

Pictures of famous bull fighters on the storefront.

The neighborhood where you should see Flaminco... not that I did.

Did you know oranges start out green and lumpy? Like green cauliflower? I didn't!

The river. Lovely day!

Sela teasing me because I tried to ask for another fork and instead ended up holding up the fork and saying (in Spanish) "Again?" instead of "Another." What a nerd I am!

Sela's girls. Sela (junior) is trying to hid the mess she made of her room while playing dress up for me. The first hour or at Sela's place the kids just stared at me. Like I was a unicorn. They'd never seen an American before, I guess! In no time they warmed up and rattled off Spanish that was far beyond my comprehension. They are lovely, lively, fun and sweet girls. And you could not give them enough bread. What is it with kids and bread?

Sela, trying to get Chloe out of the picture. I love the look on Chloe's face. (That's what too much bread does to you!)

Chloe, all dressed up as a Fairy for me. :)

Saying goodbye to Sela was bittersweet. It was so great to see her and catch up. We made each other giggle to the point of tears. I miss that! I was making her laugh with my attempt at Spanish, combining phrases to make new ones I thought were usefull. Like, "Please sir, would you have my shit?" (You had to be there, I guess...)

There aren't very many people in my life who knew me when I was in high school. Sela is one of those few. It was great to see how her life has turned out and just reaffirmed for me the sense that everything that is supposed to happen is exactly what will happen. She made an agonizing decision in the past that ended in heartbreak (as myself and so many of my friends have done) and now she has a wonderful husband who she knows was meant just for her and two adorable girls in a house close to her family. And also reaffirmed that you have to choose happiness and make your life what you want it to be. (Maybe those two ideas conflict... hmmm....)

Anyway, my trip to Seville was lovely and seeing old friends was even lovelier!

Granada, Part Dos

She lives!

Man, my brain has been so fried with all this Spanish all around me, I've had a hard time mustering the will to write. Plus, since I'm learning so much I keep confusing words in my head. English and Spanish blend together. Now, don't go thinking I've mastered the language or anything. I am still speaking at a remedial second-grade level but I'm feeling pretty good about my progress. Sometimes.

Did I mention I got a place? Did I mention it doesn't have heat? (Just space heaters.) Did I also mention it snowed here yesterday. Yeah... I'm COLD. What the French??? I though Spain would be warmer than Seattle. And it's been raining here non-stop. They keep saying it'll get nicer in April. When I'm gone. Just my suerte! The BEST part of this apartment is that the water is heated by gas and if you leave the gas on all the time the big tank will run dry quickly. So, when I get up at 7:30 every morning I get to run through the freezing house to the kitchen, turn the tank on, then go out to the laundry room and light the pilot of the water heater then wait for the water to heat up so I can shower. Good thing 'm reading a book set in the 1700's, so every inconvenience seems like a luxury in comparison.

I share an apartment with two other girls, Juani and Tania. They are 23 and 25, which means I don't get much sleep with their giggling, drinking and tv-watching until the wee hours of the morning. (This place also has thin walls, too... Am I painting a pretty picture?) BUT! Their penchant for... well, being in their early twenties also means they'll take me out dancing! Which is exactly what happened on Saturday. We stayed in the apartment, chatting and drinking some strange 20-something concoction (I didn't have the words yet to ask what it was) until 1:30. How strange to go out when you are usually coming home! But, when the clubs are open until 9am, I guess this is what you do.

The club was huge! Twice as big as the biggest club back home. We danced to Spanish music until 4am when "Abuela" (Grandma, as one of them called me) decided she was ready for bed. Every time I tried to leave they'd pull me back into the dancing circle, singing along to me and making me cha cha cha with them. They are really sweet girls, even if they are a bit loud. (Listen to me: "girls" she says! I am a Grandma!) Thankfully, they can't believe I'm 33 and, thankfully, I only have to act my age during the week. Oh, and the club was full of people of all ages. The young and the old. Even older than me. (That made me feel a wee bit worse for pooping out "so early".)

School is going well, for the most part. I still have days where I feel like, YEAH! I've got it! and then other days when I feel muy tonto and look around to see if my classmates are as lost as I am. Trying to think and speak in another language is really taxing. I'm still watching movies in English on my computer because your ears just need a break every once in a while. Yesterday I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona (which was great!) and it so made me 1. excited for a summer in Spain I won't have (wah wahhhh) and 2. excited to go back to Barcelona and see all the things that were on my list that I booted for more time on the beach.

What else can I tell you about Spain? They love their talk shows. There's one called "Salvame!" that's a panel of 10 people or so and they seem to just watch gossip news and comment or yell at each other for three hours. I still don't get why that's so popular. Oh, and all the TV ladies have awful plastic surgery where their eyes look pulled or the nose is all to one side. THAT part is entertaining. It's just shy of Jocelyn Wildenstein. (Look her up!) They also love Xena (did you know that was still floating around???), Lost and Terminator: The Whatchamacallit Chronicles, all translated to Spanish. I'm assuming the "good" programing is on after I go to bed at 11. (You know Spaniards are just getting home from dinner at that time...) I did get to see some of "Gran Hermano" (Big Brother) which is super popular as well. My roommate was watching "Grey's Anatomy" on her computer (subtitled) and I was excited to relate her favorite show to my favorite city (home!). (Well, even though the Seattle in "Grey's" is nothing like the Seattle in Seattle. Icicles falling off and impaling people? Really? Come on now! That doesn't happen in Seattle! Slipping on wet cement into the Elvis pose and skinning your knee to all hell while the kind people of the city watch you, bemused... those are the kind of accidents we really have. NotthatIknowanythingaboutthat.)

Oh, and also in Spain (as in France) there is "mierde de perro" everywhere! I don't know what these dog owners think is going to happen when they leave those loads in the middle of the sidewalk... Needless to say, you have to watch where you walk here.

Man, my time away from blogging has led me to use a lot of punctuation. ("!!") I must be making up for lost time. And now, some pictures!

Lots of churches!

Lots of fountains!

Lots of grafitti!

My commute to school. Va a pie!

I'm hoping something is lost in the translation here...


And, finally, my little room. Notice my Spanish/English dictionary, the diet coke on the nightstand to keep me going and the ever-present glow from my space heater. Oh, and the sleeping bag in addition to the blankets to keep me warm at night. NOW I'm glad I hauled that thing all over Asia and Europe.

I'll try really hard to do something interesting soon and write about it. Promise.

Granada

So, I have to say I'm not as enamored with Granada as I thought I'd be. It's just very different. I shouldn't have had great expectations after Barcelona - surely no place is like Barcelona- but it's just so... so... different. There are cathedrals (check!) and lots of old buildings (check! check!) but there is also graffiti everywhere, I've had the darndest time finding a grocery store, it's super spread out and every neighborhood kind of looks the same to me.

I've wandered just as much as I have in every other city and have found far less to be excited about. I'm trying to change my mentality and find one thing every day I love about Granada. So far, I found a square that fills with birds at dusk. Hundreds of them. I don't know if they are swallows or finches (little gray bellies) but they chirp and chirp and chirp. It's really kind of magical. Yesterday I did see a poor fellow get pooped on. I think the trick is to walk on the outside of the square, away from toilet-range.

And here's the thing about Spain: everybody speaks SPANISH! Fast. I feel like a bumbling idiot trying to put a sentence together. I'm looking forward to getting to a better place with that. I understand a lot. It's Spanish only in my class and I do comprehend most of what she's saying. It's when it comes to speaking that I freeze up. If I could pause, compose my thoughts, then present I'd be fine. I feel like when someone says something to you and 5 minutes later you think of the perfect comeback but the moment has passed... all the time. This gypsy woman grabbed me yesterday and even though I said No No No she insisted on giving me a bit of rosemary she ripped of some tree and telling me my fortune. When I gave her back the rosemary and told her I had no money for her she got mad. 5 minutes later I thought of several Spanish phrases to say that I hadn't ASKED for her stupid fortune and that SHE grabbed ME even though I tried to get away. Instead, she just got to tell me off and I just stood there and took it.

Anyways. How about my class? I go from 9 to 1 every day. Yesterday there were about 9 students and today there were 14. People are still shuffling around as they decide if their assigned class is too easy or to hard for them. There are 3 other girls from Seattle in my class, if you can believe that. There is also one girl from England, one guy from Canada, another two from New Mexico... I'm not sure about the rest. The girl from England is really nice. She's trying to help me find a place since I'm still in a hostel. Since I don't have a phone it's hard to call on every place (it cost me 4 euros to make three calls today) but I'm hopeful everything will work out.

Today our assignment in class was to speak to each other and find out what similarities or differences we had. All in Spanish, mind you. I found out the primary difference between me and my classmates is the ten years I have on them. Thankfully they all think I look much younger. (Tosses hair back. That's right. Chubby cheeks mean youthful good looks. Right? Right?) When one guy was trying to explain that he and another classmate both don't like a popular musical artist the teacher gave him a look like she didn't know who the artist was. He tried to explain in Spanish, "Uh... Mujer Gaga?" It funny. I'm still laughing about that one.

There are moments in class that remind me of the David Sedaris story where he describes being in French class and trying to explain what Easter is (in French) to the teacher. Surely some of our conversation sounds like that. "A party for the little boy of God, who call his self Jesus. And then he die one day on two morsels of lumber." "The rabbit of Easter, he bring the chocolate." If you want to hear his whole, hilarious story, here it is:



The best, best, best thing about this week is that I get to go to Seville this weekend to see Sela! For the few of you who don't know who Sela is: My step-brother married a lovely woman from Spain when I was in high school. My whole family loved her to death. She was smart as a whip, funny, sweet and a treasured addition to our dinner table conversations. Shortly after I left for college, they divorced and Sela moved back to Seville. I don't think any of my family had contact with her after she left. When I decided to go to Spain, she was first on my list to try to track down. The Spanish have 7 or so names and I thought there would be no way I'd find her. I Googled her (how much do we love Google?) and found her! Miracle of miracles. And she remembered me and was super excited to see me as well. So, that's where I go this weekend.

Ok. Off to do homework! I bought myself a Spanish/English dictionary and am reading a page a day, trying to learn some new words. You know, useful ones like: "la enfermedad de las vacas locas" (mad cow disease) and "embarazo" (either pregnant, obstruction or embarassment. Depends.). Wish me luck!