BUENAS!
I have quite a lot to update with! First off, went to Madrid 3 weekends ago… wow time is flying. It was a small group; I only went with Justine and Katie but very fun! We took the 5 hour bus to Madrid where we got yelled at for talking twice (I'm pretty sure it was just because we were speaking English.) Once we arrived we went to our kinda shady located hostel and decided to go explore the city's biggest plazas, plaza mayor and plaza del sol. Straight off the bat Madrid was totally not what I had expected. People have always compared it to NYC and bigger cities but it certainly did not feel big whatsoever to me. Maybe it was because we were pretty centrally located, I'm not sure. We went on a free tapas crawl offered by our hostel and that was pretty fun where we met some interesting people… some Americans, Spaniards, Germans and British. We had the pleasure of staying in a 28 bed room that night in the hostel and were later awaken to a bunch of wasted Russian guys screaming. Everyone in the room was getting so mad and telling them to shut up. It was 330 in the morning and they screamed, jumped on the beds and caused chaos for an hour. It was actually kind of scary; I had never stayed in a hostel room with more than just my friends. I just felt uncomfortable because I didn't want to say anything to them and have them hit me to or something. Clearly all the guys sleeping in the room were too intimidated by them because they never said anything, I was mad. They later got up at 630 am and were obnoxiously loud for another hour. It was horrible and scary!!!! That pretty much killed all our sleep for the night too.
The next day our hostel offered a free tour, since the company we normally take tours through wasn't offering tours this weekend. We should have known it was going to be horrible when the guide was 15 minutes late and told us it was because he just woke up and was extremely hungover, and then told us later it was his first tour. He was horrible. We went on the tour for 3 hours (just kept hoping it would get better but wasting our time) and learned next to nothing. So that pretty much wasted our whole day! We went to the Royal Palace which is basically the big thing to see there besides the Prado obviously. That also was not that impressive to me, but I think I'm just sick of seeing palaces, castles and cathedrals since there are like 230482309842 in Europe (not an exaggeration). It was starting to get rainy and ugly looking and we were so tired, so we decided to go just get churros and chocolate at this place that is supposedly the best in Spain. There was a line out the door when we left! We got a great (and cheap!) paella dinner and then headed back for a nap for a couple hours and to get ready to go out. We moved rooms that night and this time had an 8 bed room that we shared with a bunch of American girls. So much better than crazy Russians (yes, I am still mad about this). Katie managed to flood the whole bathroom when she took a shower (that would be gypsy flood #3 of our trips hahaha). Then we went to Kapital, wow. The only word to describe Kapital is RIDICULOUS. Ridiculous cover, ridiculously huge (7 FLOORS!), ridiculously packed with people, ridiculous dancers on the stages, ridiculously awesome breaks where they just blasted air through the whole club. But seriously it was crazy, there were 3 dance floors one of which was all Spanish music! The other floors were some like chill lounges, different bars and some sort of café/restaurant looking floor. It was quite the experience and it was really fun!
The next day we went to Museo del Prado for a while. I enjoyed it way more than I had originally expected! I have learned a lot from my art class and I'm definitely finding a greater appreciation! I wish we could have spent more time there actually but we had to catch the bus back to Granada!
Semana Santa (aka my spring break)!
My family came last week for Semana Santa! I have been so excited to show them Granada since I am obsessed with this city. We were in Granada for 4 days then went on road trip down the coastal towns and then to Morocco for a day. In Granada, we went to the Alhambra, ate lots of tapas and paella, saw a million processions for Semana Santa, went up to the Albayzin, ate dinner with my senora and went to a flamenco show! It was a bit stressful because there were like 2340 other things I wanted to do and they were jet lagged but we still managed to have a great time! I attempted to bring James to a discoteca too, but Semana Santa apparently stopped everyone from going out! We drove through la costa del sol and went to Nerja, Malaga, Marbella, Gibraltar, and Ronda! The Spanish countryside is really beautiful with quite breathtaking views of the Mediterranean. Although we took some of the scariest roads that I have ever driven on in my life. It would be safe to describe it as an hour long amusement ride, we managed to end up driving them both at night too… oh yeah, they don't have street lights here. I thought my mom and grandpa were going to die, they were so scared. We (LORIE!) learned our lesson in making hotel reservations beforehand… especially during Semana Santa (I tell you, SS takes over life here.) I had to go into every hotel in this shady little town at 11 at night speaking Spanish and we somehow managed to find these great apartments… talk about stressful but at least we didn't have to sleep in the car lol.
In Morocco we went to Tangier, we had a small tour group and it was pretty fun! When I went we hardly were in Tangier so it was cool to actually see it. We saw the Kasba which is a neighborhood (later we rocked the Kasba as well), almost got strangled by snakes, rode camels (of course, this is what you do in Africa?), went to a cave, ate the most amazing lunch ever, and then did a little shopping in the markets. Oh yeah, Grandpa also bought everything possible in Morocco. Including a shirt with a stain and a fake rolex that the minute hand jumps way forward then wayyyy back hahahaha. I love learning about different cultures and Morocco is completely different from anywhere I have ever been so I loved it!
My family out front of the Kasba in Morocco... check out my picasa if you wnat to see more pictures because I just have too many!
Time absolutely flew and then my family had to leave! It's weird that I was looking forward to having them here for that long and now it's over! I wish we had more time! Miss you all!
The rest of the weekend we spent relaxing outside at Garcia Lorca (a huge park, also my new favorite place) and then celebrating Leslie's 21st birthday. The weather is beyond perfect here it's impossible to stay inside anymore. The sun is stronger here too and I am actually getting some color pretty quickly! Life is great! I start my intercambio with Vega on Tuesday so that will be interesting! We only have a month and a half left here and we decided we're going to create a bucket list so we can make sure we get everything done here! Although I'm pretty sure it's impossible.
But now I am soo happy that Semana Santa is OFFICIALLY over… I am so relieved I will be able to walk through the streets and not have to worry about processions taking over everything. Plus there won't be 230482034 tourists here and Granada won't be completely packed everywhere… YES! Semana Santa is insane people are very very serious about it. Semana Santa is the holy week leading up to Easter. There are all these parade type things called processions that consist of first women dressed in this fancy outfits, then the saints dressed in KKK looking outfits (they are religious and the KKK stole the idea from these saints), then a huge "float" type thing, and a band that follows. The floats are beautiful and covered in decorations. The float has either a big statue Mary or Jesus and there is roses, and candles. Below the float there are probably 30 men (apparently women do it too) who walk in unison and carry the float. They switch carrying every 15 minutes-ish and it is a huge honor to be carrying it, they walk around in their outfits for quite a while because it is so well respected. It rained here one day and they cancelled a procession, it was so sad the people were crying and there was a bunch of news coverage about it. I guess they prepare for a year for the procession so it's a huge disappointment.
Observations:
- My friends and I have all given into the pantyhose trend and loving it. Spanish fashion is so smart and great.
- Easter was sooo different here. I didn't even realize it was Easter actually. They celebrate Good Friday much more, everyone was dressed up everywhere here. In the US everyone says Happy Easter and gets Easter baskets with candy/eggs, not here. It's more of a day to spend with your family and nothing to do with our fake bunnies/eggs. The restaurants were packed with families. It was really cute; they have such a great appreciation for family here.
- They think it's still cool here. We're talking winter coats and boots, that is one trend I cannot give into. It's way too hot to be wearing a winter coat! It's been almost 80 degrees the past two days!!!
- Ice cream here < Ice cream in the US
- OOHH hahaha my senora thinks the fudge my parents brought her is some kind of nutella. She keeps trying to spread it on cookies and stuff and tried to put it on toast this morning. I keep telling her to cut it into pieces and eat it and she doesn't understand why you don't eat it with something.. soooo funny.
- Still loving Spain and starting to feel very confident in my Spanish—I can talk over the phone in Spanish now! That is an accomplishment for me! I am certainly not speaking perfect Spanish at all and I make mistakes a lot but in comparison to when I came here, it's amazing how well I speak! Funny thing is now I keep phrasing things in English how you would in Spanish… luckily I have Carolyn to tell me I am not making sense hahaha.
MISS YOU ALL!
Adioooo,
Michelle
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