Cordoba

Sorry I haven't written in so long everyone, I finally caught the cold everyone had, didn't do anything fun this week other than school. Then the internet was out on Saturday which was horrendous, but I made it through, obviously. Today was fun, I went out to Cordoba (apparently the most concentrated area of olive trees in the world) to see the Mezquita with Claire and 35 other people from the CLM. We stopped first at the Medinat Al-Zahra museum which just opened in October. The Medina was the city of power under Islamic rule in the 8th century, but was later destroyed, so all that is left is the excavation site. What they have recovered is in the museum and we were able to view.

Afterwards we drove the rest of the way to Cordoba, walked through the Jewish neighborhood and saw a synagogue and the artesian plaza where leatherworkers and jewelers were. We learned Cordoba has an extensive system of water drainage or plumbing of clean and dirty, the most advanced of its time.Then we had lunch, Claire and I stopped on the outside of the Mezquita wall. We walked around a bit to some overpriced tourist shops, and met up with our group for the tour of the Mezquita interior. The decoration is vegetational, based on the idea of the tree of life, which I believe has to do with Cordoba being the center of power. The Mezquita is basically made up of pillars with red and white stripes. The red part is made of a flexible material that expands and contracts in the heat and cold. The pillars are really beautiful, overwhelming in multitude. There is also a Catholic area that was designed later under the Catholic kings. Check out the videos and pictures I put on facebook!

Afterwards we walked around the center of Cordoba to the plaza de potro (a place Cervantes describes briefly in Don Quijote), and plaza de corredor, the main area, where bulls are set loose to run. Then we drove about 2 hours home, had some alfredo soup for dinner. It was a fun day, but very exhausting. This is the final week of the intensive language course for me, and then we'll be going to Paris and Rome this Saturday. Very excited about that as well! But I cant bring hardly anything since we didn't want to pay for carry on luggage. I will be wearing all seven days worth of clothing on the plane. Love you all

Alhambra

Saturday Jan 16th we went to the Alhambra, named as such because "hambra" in Arabic means red, the color of the earth and is the most important color in Islamic religion. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Kathleen, Liz, Claire, Megan and I went through the CLM (school - centro de lenguas modernas) and had a tour guide who teaches there. We entered through the Puerta de la Justicia, one of four entrances to the Alhambra. On top of the door, there is a small drawing of a hand, facing as though you put your right hand palm facing yourself, so your thumb points to the right. This is because the hand represents the five pillars of the Islamic religion, and the most important part is the thumb which means, "there is only one God, Muhammad is the prophet", points to the east, toward the Mecca. The other entrances are the Puerta Militar, Puerta de agua, and Los Siete Suelos Puerta. In itself, the Alhambra is a mix of things, it was originally a city holding I believe 1500 people, a fortress and a palace, and is now a monument as well. It was built by the Moors/Arabs, so the Islamic influence is seen but when los reyes catolicos, the Catholic king and queen Isabelle and Fernando, conquered Granada, more Christian and Catholic images were placed over the original design.

It has three parts, the first of which is the military fortress, where we stood on a tower that gave an amazing view of the city and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We saw the bases of what used to be houses, basically the outlines of where people lived, and where they would bathe and cook. We also saw a dungeon they held prisoners in, which was frightening. The second part is the palaces and residence of the kings. This is more decorated and has many designs and patterns that represent infinity or Allah. Our guide told us that the Alhambra tells her own story, seen through the patterned walls and repeating phrase that he said means something like, "no hay ganador sin dios", or, there is no winner without God. The third part is the Generalife, which is outside the walls of the Alhambra, but very close by. It involves mostly gardens. Even though it is winter here, most things were green, although I would like to go back in Spring when things are blooming. The gardens and forest are vast, and I don't know if I even saw all of them.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. After we finished the tour, we stopped to sit and eat our picnic and a few extra snacks we bought at the souvenir shop. My senora packed Kathleen and I a bocadillo, or sandwich, which was basically a half a loaf of french bread with cheese and oil in the middle. We also got COKE!!! I don't know how she knew we loved coke, but it was a very pleasant surprise. She also packed fruit, but I had to grab a bag of chips and a delicious chocolate ice cream bar since we had been doing so much work walking around :)

Instead of taking the bus back down, we decided to walk it. The streets leading up to the Alhambra are very steep, so I don't think we could have made it on the way up, but leaving was fine. Unfortunately the road lead us straight to some street vendors and shops that we spent at least two hours grazing through.

Then later Saturday night we went out, first to the chupeterria, which is a place that deals in shots for one euro. After we got out of that place, we headed over to the discoteca Granadadiez, which we had visited last Wednesday. It was fun, but extremely crowded so you couldn't move your legs much.

Sunday Kathleen and I asked senora for another bocadillo to take with us as we went adventuring and attempted to get to a better view of the mountains. We were very excited but unfortunately it seemed the farther we walked, the farther away the mountains got, and we couldn't get any clear photos where we were, so we are going to try another direction next time, possibly first stopping at the tourist office to find out where we can walk and be successful. But we did have a good time and actually walked for like two hours straight, no stopping. We had our picnic in a park in front of a little fountain (there are fountains everywhere here) and headed home for a siesta before dinner. We had what seemed similar to Alfredo pasta, cheese, and some kind of chicken balls she fried. It was delicious.

That's all for now! Love Love Love Nikki

Wandering in Granada

Que tal?

Today was pretty great, number one because it was friday and thats always exciting, and also because we signed up to go see the alhambra tomorrow, but mostly because Kathleen and I decided to wander to a new area of Granada we hadn't seen before, and it was amazing. I was really loving the whole study abroad experience, but now I feel more in love with Granada itself.

We decided we should try to get past some buildings in the city to get better pictures of the mountains, so we headed pretty far down a main street, able to see the mountains in the distance very clearly. Since we've been here, we haven't seen much of them because of the clouds, rain or snow, but today we were really able to get a first true glance at their beauty. We reached an area that seems up and coming, new parks and some fountains, and finally arrived at a bridge over some river I can't remember the name of. Its hard to describe how beautiful it was, walking along the river with a mountain backdrop. There was a hill nearby that was covered with white houses. It started to get dark, and they all lit up, twinkling lights in the distance.

Sunday we want to head out there earlier in the day to get some better pictures. Theres so much more we have to figure out about this city, today really helped make this whole experience more exciting and mesmerizing.

Tomorrow we are going to finally see the Alhambra!! I'm very excited, I've seen some pictures of it, but it is supposed to be wondrous to see with your own eyes. I also am planning to sign up and see the Mezquita in Cordoba next Sunday. Its a big moorish/islamic building that has like a hundred or two hundred columns striped with pink/reddish and blue! My descriptions are so vague, lol, I just don't know much about these places yet, but I will take notes or buy a book or something so I can remember and tell people about it if they want to know!

Meal recap:

Thursday: pizza for dinner

Friday: lunch - chicken surrounding a mound of rice...delicious. Dinner - hamburgers again made of chicken, I couldn't eat it. I apologized and explained I just don't like meat that isn't cooked all the way, so this won't happen again, she said don't worry about it, that she won't make it anymore and she's glad we told her. Senora is so nice, she totally understands when you don't like something. She said she's been doing this for 14 years so I'm sure she's used to people not liking certain things.

Oh! She did our laundry today, I saw my clothing hanging outside my window lol. I probably won't get it back till sunday if it isn't sunny out.

Love you all!

School & Food

School has been going well - four hours a day is a long time to sit in one class with one teacher, but we do get a 15min break and a 5minute break which usually helps me stay awake. We do a lot of practice speaking, some listening and a little writing, and grammar. It's been raining here quite a bit, but today was at least warmer. We're going to some free ladies night bar tonight, but I have class tomorrow morning so who knows how long I'll actually stay out.

Meal recap:

Sunday night - hamburger, good right? No. Appeared cooked on the outside, but definitely was not. I regretted the decision to eat this later.

Monday: Paella for lunch, Fried chicken bits and tuna salad for dinner

Tuesday: Chicken, tomato, noodle soup. Chicken noodle soup, tortillas espanoles, cheese, ham, salad.

Wednesday: Pasta with chicken for lunch, fish and potatoes for dinner.

Last night we booked our first excursion for the break we have from jan 30 to feb 8th. We are going to fly to madrid, then to paris on january 30th, arrive late in paris and check into the Jules Ferry hostel, then stay there until wednesday morning when we fly to rome (two hour flight :)) and stay there at the Lilliput hostel until Saturday night. Then we fly out late saturday to madrid, and basically sleep in the airport until the plane to Granada arrives in the morning around 630, and then we get back to Granada feb 7th around 730am.

We're planning to visit a few places I've been in Paris, like the Louvre, Cathedrale de Notre Dame, Arc de Triomph, maybe Monmarte and definitely the Eiffel tower. We also would like to see the Moulin Rouge which I've never been to.

Then in Rome we want to see the colosseum, palatine hill (which encompasses a bunch of houses and temples), the sistine chapel, probably the basilica de san pietro, and definitely vatican city.

Thoughts/Suggestions?!?!

Jan 10 - Catedral, Discoteca, Snow!

Hola a todos,

Yesterday I went to see the cathedral here in Granada, and it was extremely beautiful. Its located very nearby, closer even than our school. The part that is used still for church was free to enter, and a group of violinists were practicing inside, which made the experience that much more beautiful. I used my flip video to record them, and it is on facebook if you'd like to watch it. Afterwards, we exited and walked around the outside to the entrance that you pay for, but we were stopped by gypsies multiple times trying to sell us lavender and read our palms. They grab your arms, probably trying to distract you so they can steal from you, but we all were on high alert and kept our hands on our bags, pushing through and saying, dejame en paz, or leave me in peace. Then we got to go inside for only 3,50 euros, and it was very beautiful. The ceilings were extremely high and beautiful in themselves, and huge columns filled the room with detail. Most of the architecture was white, but the paintings and altars were mainly gold detailed, and very large. The center area was a big circle with gigantic paintings from the 1600s in it. I also did multiple flip videos of the inside.

After the cathedral, we walked around the shops, and Kathleen got a killer navy leather jacket for only 18 euro. I'm still on the search for boots, which can be overwhelming here with the number of zapaterias, or shoe stores. We headed home for lunch, I had cauliflower soup and fish with a sweet potato, and of course pan, or a loaf of french bread. She also brought out the cheese from Galicia which I love. Afterwards, we wandered around more, and came home for dinner, which was pizza!! and a egg and noodle soup. We almost always have a soup at meals, and I really like them. Breakfast is always the same, two pieces of toast, what look like mini pieces of toast but are really biscuits, (hard as a rock, I swear), and a small rectangular lemon cake. After meals, senora always puts out a platter of fruit for dessert, and I try to eat it but usually I am stuffed as they feed you a lot.

Then we decided to finally go out in search of a club here or discoteca. Our french roommate, Cami, (pronounced Ka-mee, emphasis on the final vowel) walked with us to the meeting point (burger king), and a group from my school and the french group of students went to a bar nearby. It was very cold out, so we didn't explore too far, we just found a place and decided it would be good enough. When we first got there, it was just midnight, and it was almost dead of people. In spain, most people arrive at bars or clubs around 1am, and leave around 5am. I have no idea how they can do this and still work around 8 or 9, but that must be why they have the siestas from 2pm to about 5pm here. We had fun there, and stayed till just after 3am. The walk home was peaceful, not as busy as Madrid, where people stayed out walking very late, even older couples or people walking their dogs in the middle of the night. Here we saw people, but it was fairly quiet.

Today for lunch we had some kind of sweet mashed potato with chicken, but we ate the chicken off of the bone, which was a new experience for me. The chicken was delicious, she put some kind of peppers or juice on it. Of course, more bread, and water. I will not get to have delicious milk until I return to the states, because I don't think I can do the type of milk they have here. It isn't refrigerated, it comes in a bag or a box and they serve it room temperature or warm. Not my thing. So we've been having water a lot which is fine, and occasionally a soda at a restaurant (in a small glass bottle of course), or like today at cafe futbol, a hot chocolate with churros. Also, today it was snowing a lot, and the spaniards were telling us how it hasn't snowed this bad in 20 years! By the time we walked home though, it had all melted into puddles, but still they find it very intense. This week should be warmer, but rainy. I'll take a little rain in the warmer weather over freezing every time I go out!

Tomorrow we start our intensive language classes. Mine is from 9 to 1pm, an Kathleen's is from 10 to 2pm. We are thinking about going to see a Spanish movie this week in Spanish. Last night our senora was watching the third installment of lord of the rings in spanish, dubbed over so it sounded goofy, but still fun to watch some of it.

Not sure what dinner will be tonight, but I hear Ana Rosa, our senora, preparing something in the small alley kitchen. We eat between 9 and 930pm. Hope everyone is doing well! Love Nikki

Testing, Shopping, Sleeping

Today was the placement test for the intensive language course, and then my main group of friends here and I went shopping for a bit, returned to the house for lunch which was salad, bread, delicious cheese from Galicia, lentil soup and mushrooms, although I only tried one mushroom and gave up.

Afterwards everyone took a siesta, poor kathleen is fighting a cold and I was just plain tired, so we slept about an hour and a half before meeting the other girls to buy cell phones. We got them pretty cheap at a phone company called "orange", they were 19 euros and included 12 prepaid euros worth of calling. The funny thing spaniards do here is instead of actually receiving a call and getting charged, they will call and hang up so the other person sees a missed call, and it will signal a "yes" or, "I'm here". They call it giving a "toke". Like, for example, if I said I wanted to meet up with someone at the post office at 5pm, I would get there, call the person and hang up, or "give them a toke", and they would know that I was there. Or, if I call and leave a voicemail and say, give me a toke if you want to do this, I would see their missed call as a yes. It seems a little unstable if you ask me, but is kind of brilliant at the same time. So we will be using the "toke" system to save our prepaid minutes, but of course if we can't get ahold of one another, we can always leave a voice mail or text each other.

After the phones we went shopping in a different area of town which was fun since we hadn't visited it before, and there were a lot of little boutiques.

Tomorrow we will visit the cathedral here in Granada which is very nearby, closer even than our school. Our other roommate from france, Camy, is going to come with us as well. Hopefully the cathedral is either free or cheap, especially since we have international student ID cards that are supposed to get us discounts. We shall see if they really work!

Granada!

So today we took the train to Granada, which was painful because it took 4 ½ hours and I was very tired, but not able to sleep much. It was very beautiful though because the mountains were visible. When we arrived, we took a taxi to our street, parton tejeiro, but the taxi driver didn’t know exactly where it was and dropped us off to figure it out ourselves. Kathleen and I were a little nervous about the buildings, but we finally found ours and it was locked with a big black gate that you rang up to. Our host senora let us in and met us on the third floor. The building floors were very nice and marble looking, and everything was clean and well maintained. It was very quiet and private as well. When we got upstairs, Ana Rosa was waiting outside the tiny elevator that only fit one person and their luggage, and she greeted us very openly and excitedly. She showed us the apartment and told us this would be our home, and she would be “la mama”. The apartment door opens to a foyer area with the option of turning left to a seating room, which is also used as the dining area, or walking straight to the small alley kitchen, or turning right to see a hall of doors. The first door is a bedroom that is being used by a French student who arrived later today than us and will be staying until March. Then the bathroom for her, Kathleen and I to share is next, followed by another bathroom that Ana Rosa uses for herself. The end of the hallway is a door that leads to the bedroom Kathleen and I are using, which is surprisingly large. It is much bigger than the dorm room I had freshman year and includes two bed and a nightstand, two desks, two dressers and areas to hang clothing, and a tall wooden area for storing things like our towels and maybe books.

Kathleen and I dropped our things off in the bedroom and Ana Rosa had lunch prepared for us. We ate a pea type of soup with fresh French bread, and pasta with carne de pollo, which is like chicken that looks like ground beef. It was very delicious! Then we were offered fruit to follow.

We unpacked our things and Ana Rosa offered to walk us to the city center where we were to meet with our group to find the school. It was so nice of her, and she came with most of the way until we could see where we needed to go, and I told her thank you and we could go the rest of the way if she’d like to go back. Kathleen and I met up with the group and saw a few areas of Granada, basically enough to get us to the school. We only got to see the outside wall of the CLM (centro de lenguas modernas) but tomorrow we have our placement test at 9am there. Hopefully then we will find out the schedule for the next 4 weeks of intensive language, because I’m curious as to how long we are in class!

Afterwards, it was raining but we stopped at el corte ingles, a supermarket or department store in Spain that is very popular. I got shampoo and then we headed back to the apartment because we were freezing and it was raining. Then we tried to upload pictures which worked much better here as the internet is great, and had dinner at 9pm. We had tortillas espanoles which was a warm potato based circular bread or pie you might call, with more French bread and salad. I am still working on liking the type of dressing they have here, I think it is oil and vinegar but I am definitely not used to it yet.

I am very tired today and will be adjourning to my bed very soon as we have to go to the CLM tomorrow so early. Our breakfast will be at 8am, so we have to get up pretty early, probably 7 to shower before hand. I tried really hard to get pictures up on this blog but it has been difficult and facebook loads them much faster, so please for now at least check them out there because I want you all to have visuals! But I need more time to figure out how to upload them here.

Love Nikki

Hello all! So I decided to just post some things I've sent to my parents so far since it takes so long to type everything that is going on here. Here is an excerpt from my day on Tuesday (I apologize if it is a bit detailed lol)

After breakfast, which was pretty good, (toast, bread, cereal, cheese, meat, OJ,) we got ready and met for orientation. They gave us lunch at the hostel which was delicious, we got free everything. I sat with kathleen, megan, claire, liz, and lydia. We got salads, which looked better than they tasted, and then chicken with fries that I couldn't even tell were fries because they were so delicious. They were like potatoes that weren't grilled dark at all and they were so flavorful I was amazed. We all got coke and water and everything was in glass bottles! Then we even got dessert, I had the chocolate ice cream which was very dark. After lunch we went to an orientation where we talked about things like cell phones, manners with the host family, how to reach the accent staff, the plans for the next two days. For example, today we did a tour from 3 to 5pm, tomorrow we don't have anything planned since it is a national holiday (its like their equivalent of christmas), but we have to do a scavenger hunt around the city and whichever team has the most stuff wins some prize in granada. Then on Thursday morning we meet in the hotel lobby at 745am!! and take the 905 train, which she said only stops for 3 minutes so we have to spread out and hurry on the train and then deal with storing our luggage or we won't all make it lol but she didn't seem too worried about it. Then we will get to granada after 130ish, meet our families and have a meal with them, and take a tour of the city and school around 5pm. Friday we have our placement test, and Kathleen and I are going to get our phones then since they said they should be cheaper in Granada than Madrid.

Anyhow, the tour was great. We saw all kinds of things like a big plaza that had a huge christmas tree made of lights for the christmas celebration, and then we walked past an opera house and the palacio real, which is was the royal palace for some kings and queens, and it is HUGE. We got to see it from a vantage point that allowed you to see the mountains as well, which was really neat because we learned that Spain is the 2nd most mountainous country in the european union, and the mountain range we could see was the 4th highest peak in Spain. Then we walked around and saw some churches and buildings that demonstrated the islamic influence from the 1400s, and passed some places she suggested going to, like a chocolateria, which was the oldest one in Madrid, and we did go to it later, I'll tell you about it in a sec.. Then we saw the plaza mayor which was like the original plaza in Madrid, and we just walked around a lot. There are a bunch of ham museums! I thought it was so weird. We also saw part of the celebration parade for the holiday, because tonight was the night they said the three wise king came, and they brought gifts, so children open their presents tonight or tomorrow morning.
After the tour, our group went back to the hotel to use the bathroom, and I switched from my big camera to my little one, and we wandered back to a market we had passed on the tour. It was all glass on the outside, and I thought it was some kind of flea market at first but it turned out to be a kid of area full of food stands, like fish and cold meats and cheese and wine. I think people buy food there too to take home, but we ate there. There were five of us at that point, and we split this bowl that was full of melted cheese with bread. AND THAT WAS IT!! I don't know why but I was actually okay after we ate it, because I thought I'd be starving still, but afterwards we went to the chocolateria!!! I assumed it would be a bakery or something, but they were a specialty place and we had to stand in line for quite a while to order their version of hot chocolate and churros. Basically it was a cup of extremely dark chocolate and churros, which are long breaded sugar coated sticks that are grilled and very greasy. But you DUNK THEM in the chocolate drink!!! And then you drink the rest of your chocolate!!! None of us could finish the chocolate because it was sooo rich, but Liz came pretty close because she loves chocolate lol.

Afterwards, we walked around a lot more (by this point my feet were killing me :) and looked for some kind of discotera to go to (like a club but disco). We literally walked around for like an hour and couldn't find the right kind of place, but we realized we were too early, it was only 1030pm. Apparently that is like time for dinner but we went to a bar instead and sat down to drink. I hate that everywhere you go, people are smoking!!! Inside and outside, the bars I understand, but the restaurants seem ridiculous!! Anyways, we sat around for an hour or hour and a half, each only having one drink because it is so expensive, and then we went to a different bar where they tried to give us a free shot again like last night, except there was no alcohol in it!!! Its like they lure you in with false promises and then give you a shot of a smoothie!!!

So we left that place and went to a discotera that was free to enter, and it was pretty cool. Every place is very small here, so kind of intimate, but it got busier as the night went on. We finally left at about 245am, and I was so tired my feet were killing me. We came back to the hotel and decided that since we don't have to do anything specific tomorrow, we would meet for breakfast at 10, get ready, and go to the Prado Museum here, and then do the scavenger hunt itinerary.

WEDNESDAY

So today we (me and five other girls) went to the Prado Museum, except since it was a national holiday, they closed early and we couldn't go in, which was upsetting since it is supposed to hold something like five centuries of art that kings had commissioned in the past. We walked around the area there and saw a lot of gardens and cool looking buildings. The gardens weren't in bloom, but they were still very beautiful, and I'd like to see them in warmer weather when everything is green. We continued to walk around that area for probably three hours until we ended up on the other side of town and had a spanish version of fast food. Basically everything was served on a baguette and I thought it was pretty good to try once.

Afterwards it was getting chilly and we walked closer to the hostal. Me and a few of the other girls got ice cream, which was delicious, and came back to the hostal. Then we spent about three hours trying to get pictures up on facebook. I got about 45 done, but I have a lot more to do. The internet is a bit slow here in the hostal, and it may have been hard since there were like 15 of us trying to upload pictures at the same time. I will try to post them on the blog as well as soon as I have time, probably Thursday night or Friday.

Tomorrow is Thursday and we will take an early train to Granada, which is about five hours that I will be trying to sleep and not be bored out of my mind like the plane ride. Then we will meet our host families, eat with them, and go on a tour of the city and university. Friday we have a placement test for the classes and then me and a few girls will probably try to get our cell phones for Spain. Hopefully I will get to take a lot of neat pictures of the city and put them up this weekend, especially since Granada is very mountainous and probably very beautiful. I don't have plans for the weekend yet, but I'm thinking I'd like to see the Alhambra if we don't have anything else to do. It is very close by and I believe it is visible from most areas or at least in the city center.

Hope everyone is doing well! Love, Nikki

Arrival

Hello everyone, I just wanted to let you know I arrived safely in Madrid, albeit a bit late, but I'm here at the hotel and it's pretty nice. Our plane ride took an extra hour, which was bad because we only had an hour and 40 minutes to get to the connecting fight. Once we made it to Frankfurt, we had to run through the airport and get to the plane which was horrible, but we got on, and were then told they would have to wait two hours due to weather. Luckily we didn't have to stay that whole time, we ended up leaving around 820am instead of 725am, and got to the city where we took cabs to the hostel.

My roommate for Granada, Kathleen, and another girl, Megan, and I wandered around the city and went to lunch at a cafe. Everything is so neat to look at, and there are little shops and restaurants everywhere. We are going back out to probably eat dinner, and then tomorrow at 1pm we have orientation and a tour. Wednesday is a holiday, so we will be doing a scavenger hunt the orientation staff set up for us to get to see the city and celebrations. Then Thursday morning we leave by train to Granada to meet and move into our host family homes, and get a tour of the school and area.

I'm missing everyone and hope the internet connection gets better so I can write again soon.

Love Nikki