The Beginning

IT’S BAAAAAAAACK!! The Monday Massive that is. However, from now on this weekly update of sorts will forever by dubbed the “Monday Missive” because, according to my father, it’s much more literary. (and yes I know it’s not Monday today but I started writing this on Monday and these will normally be sent on Mondays I just had a hard time finding internet.)

Hello!

ALL PARTS of the little piggies…

So I’m finally back! Back in Spain and boy does it feel good. I left today, well yesterday Boston time but around midnight Spain time.

Taking off from Boston the most prominent thing you notice in the twilight is baseball. Don’t think I’m crazy. For miles and miles you can see the three distinct of lights that surround home base on baseball diamonds. From the sky, there seems to be one every few blocks. Nice reminder that I’m heading to the land of fútbol…

Nothing eventful from the flight. I fell asleep right when we took off, around 6:30 Boston time, and woke up around 5:00am Madrid time face flat on my tray table.

When I got to the airport in Málaga I could barely stand on my own two feet. I got through customs and went to wait for my bags. The day before I left I got luggage straps with rainbow patterns on them. Asides from keeping my entirely too full bags closed they were supposed to help me find my bags in the seas of luggage. Only problem is that apparently everyone had the same idea. I swear, every other bag had the rainbow strap around it. I was tired enough now I was seeing double.

Twenty minutes of standing at the baggage claim and I started to feel nervous. My bags weren’t coming. I was actually too tired to convince myself to walk over the claim area. I honestly don’t think I could have made a claim (in Spanish or English). The following moment I am about to share is one of those moments when you think, “wow, I have no brain.” So I turn around against the wall I’m sitting against (which happens to be clear glass, by the way) and low and behold there are my bags, sitting neatly to the side of a conveyor belt with all the other oversized bags.

I got to Granada Sunday afternoon in time to move into my apartment. It’s very cute. Two bedrooms with a small (read: tiny) kitchen, bathroom, and living room. We have a small terrace that wraps around the corner of the building and it looks out onto the main street. My first afternoon I loved the location because I’m basically right in the city centre. However around three in the morning the big staircase that leads from out building up to the main street is apparently a popular hang out spot. There are always around twenty or so people singing and playing guitar. Great musicians but hard to sleep.

I bought earplugs today.

They work well.

My roommate is really great. Her name is Lorena and she’s also eighteen and goes to the University. She’s from Soria in Spain. It’s about three hours north of Madrid in the mountains. She studies tourism. We get along really great even if we don’t always know what the other one is saying.

Granada is an AMAZING city! It’s a totally college town so there are thousands of international kids here from all over the world. There is definitely a solid American population here and it’s a ton of fun to run into other Americans at night and talk about how everyone ended up here. There is about 240,000 people who live in Granada and 80,000 students at the University. It’s huge!! There isn’t one main campus but instead different buildings and departments all over the city.

On the weekends little shops and stalls appear out of nowhere in the tiny alleyways in the city centre. On Sunday after move-in I was walking around with one of my friends, Sara, and she was grabbed by a woman (who we found out later was a gypsy). The lady grabbed her hand and started reading the lines saying things like, “you travel a lot” and “you will have a long life.” After she stopped with the hand she rubbed my friend with a sprig of rosemary. After this she demanded that Sara pay her money. Sara tried to explain that she didn’t have money and the woman just screamed, “Off with your head!”

This city has a deep history in Arab culture. It was the last Moorish hold out in Spain until it finally fell in 1492. A lot of the architecture is very Islamic. The famous Arab castle that overlooks the city from a hill is called the Alhambra. (Google it and look at the pictures, it’s absolutely breathtaking.) If you want to see the city take a look at this video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgTWkHPmK00&mode=related&search=

I pretty much get lost here every other hour. The city has very old, windy streets and millions and millions of alleys where cars cannot go. Those are the most confusing because there aren’t signs. There are barely street signs here either. They are on the side of buildings and they’re made of ceramic tile so as to blend in with the building. Very difficult to see.

Sunday, the first day I was here, was the day of the patron saint of Granada (the Virgin Mary) so there was a huge procession through the streets and tons and tons of tourists and shop stalls in the town centre. The procession lasted for hours and hours. Different marching bands would walk through the streets. I think each band did a loop of the city and then a new band would take over when they got back to the cathedral. I ended up seeing about three of the bands. The music was eerily beautiful. It was mostly horns and drums and the horns sounded as if they were crying over the steady march of the drums. Behind the bands people formed lines and followed silently with lit candles. The lines went on and on. Many women who followed in the procession didn’t wear shoes, which apparently means they had made a prayer for someone in their family.

While we were walking through the streets I saw a graffiti on the outside of a building that was a picture of Bush with a bloody knife through his head and around his face it says, “Old jokes never die.” It’s odd being here because when people find out that you are American there is always a mixed reaction. No one wants to insult the government to your face but you can tell that no one is crazy about our president.

So I’ve decided that my landlady is the craziest person on the planet. She is much older but she lives by herself with a dog and a million cats. The cat always ends up on our terrace and if we leave the door open, in our living room. The dog is perfectly quiet except for around midnight when it enjoys yapping up a storm. So the landlady’s name is Maravilla (which means marvelous) and she has more energy than anyone else I‘ve ever seen in my entire life. She doesn’t stop talking. Whenever she feels like it she just sticks her key in the door and walks in a starts talking. She also has a very thick Andalusian accent and she gets very excited and starts speaking very quickly and I can barely understand what she is saying. My roommate’s classes are all in the afternoon so yesterday after Lorena left Maravilla comes bursting into the apartment saying that my skin is too pale and I need to go sunbathing. She basically pulled me out of the apartment and down the street. Apparently she owns the top floor of a building that used to be a hostel so she took me to that flat in order to show me the big terrace where I should be sunbathing. I did at least get to meet the kids who live there. Maravilla owns a bunch of little apartments and things and she only rents them out to students. There are six kids who live in that flat: three from Vienna, Austria, one from London, one from California, and one from Vera Cruz in Mexico.

So Monday morning I had to take a Spanish placement exam of sorts. That was a ton of fun. It started at 8:30 in the morning and went until nearly 1:00pm. Our classes don’t start until this coming Monday so we have this week to remember Spanish and get to know the city.

I registered for my classes today. I only have one required class, which is basically a Spanish for foreigners class that mainly focuses on speaking and oral communication. Because of my four hour long Spanish exam it turned out I had more options in all my electives than I thought I did when I pre-registered a few months ago.

Along with the required Spanish class I’m taking a beginners French class in order to review and practice for next semester. The French class is taught in Spanish so that is going to be interesting. I’m also taking an Art History class, which begins with the Baroque period and goes up through modern art. That should be cool because there are a ton of museums around here that we take field trips to. I’m also taking a history of Spanish music class and a history of Spanish cinema class. I’m really excited about both but especially about the cinema class. At the moment I’m signed up for five classes. We’re allowed to take a minimum of four so I was told to sign up for five so that if after the first week I don’t like one of the teachers or the class seems boring I can drop a class and still be fine.

The greatest part of all my classes is the schedule. I have no classes on Fridays and I only have one class on Thursday, which ends at 12:30pm so that is when my weekend starts. I also have no classes before 10:30am. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

So one last tidbit about the city: the author García Lorca was from here and grew up here. His literature is all about Granada and Andalusia. He wrote things such as Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba. There are buildings and parks all over the city dedicated to him.

So another thing that you might find interesting: here they like their pig. I haven’t seen any of the actual animals but I’ve already eaten my fair share of pork. Unfortunately, no matter how much less picky I am than five years ago, I still can’t bring myself to eat something if I know what it was, especially if it still has eyes. You all might remember my octopus story from my last go around in Spain. The interesting fact is that they eat the whole pig. I mean eyes, ears, blood, feet, and of course the usual sausages and pork tenderloin. To keep these emails G-rated I’ll just allow your imaginations to think about eating ALL PARTS of the little piggies…

Okay, until next Monday…I miss you all!

Kate

PS. At the moment I have to use Internet cafés. Pictures are to come when I get my computer set up.