Granada!

I’m finally in Granada! We woke up early and bussed to Toledo, which was about an hour away. The city is encompassed by walls and inside the city walls there are 80 churches. It was freezing cold and rainy and no one dressed/prepared for the weather, so the 3 hour outside tour was close to unbearable. Had it been warm, I would have loved it I think. We left around 3 and bussed the 4 hours to Granada, and got here when it was dark.

Four girls from my program are living in a dorm right in the center of Granada, awesome location. When we arrived, the 50 or so Spaniards who live here (only four boys!) were SO EXCITED. They were as nervous as we were, and they sort of just stared at us at first, taking us in. We got a quick tour and then ate dinner with about 20 of them. They were all super nice and more than willing to get to know us better. I spoke with a girl for most of dinner and she tried to use her English at times and I tried to use my Spanish. They understood most of what we said, and at one point I was struggling a LOT with a sentence, so about four of them asked me to say it in English, and after about ten words they all were like “whoa whoa whoa, ”. I now understand that it’s not just the Spanish who speak to fast for me to understand, but everyone has to talk slower when speaking to someone whose second language is your own. They were all very interested in learning and practicing English and getting better with us, so we will all be helping and learning from each other, pretty exciting.

Tomorrow we start refresher courses that last for a week and a half or so, for 3 hours a day. I have to go shopping and get adapter outlets, boots (everyone is SO incredibly stylish here), a straightener, and tons of other stuff that I just couldn’t fit in my two huge suitcases. My roommate Leah and I got the biggest room in the place! (one per floor, 7 floors, VERY lucky). It is about the size of 3 dorm rooms and we have our own bathroom and 2 closets, it’s great. Everyone smokes in the dorm. They can smoke basically anywhere in it I think. As we were sitting in the tv lounge, everyone on their laptops, all the Spanish people were smoking and studying for their finals which are for the rest of the week.

That’s all for now, I keep trying to put pictures on Facebook, but they fail EVERY TIME, super annoying. I will keep trying. I love it here, I miss American Television, but we get more than our fair share of American Music. In the restaurant last night, a nice restaurant that was sort of dark and had nice tablecloths and nicely dressed waiters, Smack that by Akon came on along with some old school 50 cent, pretty strange.