When In Rome

  Hello everybody! Sorry again about the amount of time between my last blog and this one.  I hope its worth the wait.  So this past weekend the whole group took off for Roma, our international excursion through the program.  We left Friday morning, and arrived at the airport around 4:30.  By the time we collected our bags, rode into the city, and checked into our hotel it was about 6:30.  My friends and I headed for a walk around the city.  Our first stop was the Spanish steps, and although I don't actually know the significance of the steps, I still enjoyed seeing them.  There were a lot of people there, and we stayed a while and people watched and took some pictures.  Then we took off again, this time for the Trevi Fountain.  This was what I was really excited about.  I had been thinking about what I was going to wish for when I threw in my coin since the beginning of the week.  (I can't tell you, you know how it works.)  The Trevi was amazing at night, and looked especially impressive all lit up.  There were also a lot of people there, even though it was pretty late.  We all made our wishes and enjoyed the area for while and then took off to find Piazza Nevona, and food. After that we just went back to the hotel and went to bed early; we were all pretty tired after the day of traveling, and had big plans for the next day.

  On Saturday we met up early, and headed off for the Vatican.  I could barely believe where I was going, and could not wait to see something with so much historical significance.  After a ten minute walk we hit the hour long line to get into the Vatican.  The line actually moved much faster than we had been expecting, and we were inside the Vatican in what felt like very little time.  Walking through the Vatican is indescribable, I feel like there is no way I can do it justice.  The first few rooms were very interesting. The first was an exhibit on Egyptian history.  Pretty soon it stops feeling like a museum, and you are surrounded by art and history, to a point where it is almost overwhelming.  Every room I walked into I thought, "There is no way it gets more impressive than this." And then you go into the next room, and it takes your breath away again.  I wish I could describe it better.  The rooms painted by Raphael were so beautiful, and I could have spent the whole day in those alone.  After going through most of the rooms, I was so ready to get to the Sistine Chapel, which is one of the last things you see when you go through the Museums.  The Sistine Chapel was not what I was expecting at all.  It was far smaller than I had imagined, and twice as overwhelming.  I have seen countless pictures, and hear numerous descriptions of the chapel and none of them do it justice.  We spent a lot of time just trying to take everything in.  The Chapel is so overwhelming because first you experience the amazing frescoes, and the artwork in the room.  Then, you remember the history of the room, and realize that Michaelangelo and other artists had spent years in the very place you were standing, and you are completely overwhelmed again.

  After the Vatican Museums we had planned to go into St. Peters Basilica.  The way I understood it, you are supposed to be able to get into the basilica from the Vatican, and therefore avoid waiting in a two or three hour line.  However, when I asked the security guard how to get to the basilica from where we were, apparently he misunderstood.  We ended up at the end of a line, and it would have been at least two hours before we saw the inside of the basilica.  My friends and I were torn, and unsure of what to do.  By the time we got inside, we really would not have much time at all to actually experience the it at all.  We left very disappointed without seeing the basilica.  After lunch, we had another disappointment.  We went to the Pantheon, and upon arriving found that we would not be able to go inside because there was a service going on.  So once again, we took in the outside, and I left feeling a bit defeated.  The rest of the day Saturday we just walked around more, and observed the Roman way of life. We checked out the Travestere neighborhood and did a bit of shopping.

  Sunday we headed out early again.  This time my friends and I took the Metro to the Colosseo stop.  It would have been a long walk, and we all had some serious blisters from the day before.  The Colosseo stop is probably the greatest Metro stop in the world.  You literally walk out and the Colosseum is in front of you.  We were all very excited.  We went inside and wandered around and I tried to read every informational sign I came across.  We had decided not to buy the audio tour, just because we knew the general history of the Colosseum, and because we are poor college students who cared way more about buying gelato later on than the audio tour.  We also walked around the Roman Forum, which is right across the street from the Colosseum.  It is cool to be around buildings and ruins that are so old.  I tried to imagine what it all must have looked like when it was first built, and how impressive it must have been.  The rest of the day Sunday (there wasn't really much left) we just walked around some more.

  I can't finish this post without devoting at least a paragraph to the food.  I think I gained at least five pounds over the course of the weekend.  My friends and I had decided before we even left that we would have pizza or pasta or both at every meal.  We also pledged to have gelato at least once a day.  Don't worry, we upheld our promises.  The first night I ordered my first authentic Italian pizza.  It was so good.  It has really thin crust, and fresh cheese and was amazing.  After finishing the entire pizza, I helped my friends Jennie and Anna finish their plates of pasta, which was also very tasty.  Then we headed back towards the hotel searching for a gelato place.  We found one about two minutes from our hotel, and we ended up going there every night we were in Rome.  My favorite gelato flavor is Nutella.  Saturday and Sunday we actually got gelato twice.  When in Rome, right?  Saturday we found a great little pizza place a little ways down from the Vatican.  The waiter was older, and a complete flirt.  We had a blast talking to him, and he posed for pictures with us before we left.  The rest of our food experiences were just as great as the first, but my favorite part was absolutely the gelato.  I think it might be a good thing I am not studying Italian.  If I had spent a whole semester there, I would have been in trouble.

  Over all the trip was a great experience.  Although there were disappointments along the way, and I didn't get to do nearly as much as I wanted, I still got to see Rome.  Besides, legend has it that once you throw a coin in the Trevi, you will return to Rome someday.  So now I just know what I absolutely have to do when I am next in Rome.

Math and Spanish: Conquering Two Foreign Languages at Once

Hello everybody! Sorry there was such a delay in my posting a new blog.  The last week was pretty much the same as the week before, and I haven’t had anything new to talk about.  Soon I will, because this weekend we are traveling to Rome.  After that friends and I are going to start taking advantage of our weekends to see more of Spain, and bits of Europe.  Tomorrow is the last day of my second week of classes.  I am enjoying them still, and definitely am seeing an improvement in my Spanish already.  The grammar classes are basically a reiteration of what I learned throughout my six years of taking Spanish in the US, but now everything I am learning is reinforced when I am at home, out on the street, and in my other classes.  There is definitely a huge difference when you are learning the Spanish language in the classroom and your daily life.  I am very excited because often times now I don’t have to translate what a person is saying to English to understand.  I usually comprehend what they say when they say it in Spanish.  However, when it comes to speaking, I am still thinking in English.  Before I speak, I have to translate what I wish to say from English to Spanish.  The goal is to eventually be able to think in Spanish both when I am listening and speaking. 

On Monday of this week, myself and three other girls volunteered for an organization called Amigos del Almanjáyar.  The organization is located in the poorer area of Granada, and is an after school program for children in the neighborhood.  They are what we would refer to as “inner-city” kids.  When we arrived at the organization, I was very nervous. I had no idea what to expect of the kids, or what they would expect from us.  We went in and there were only six kids there.  There are two sessions of the program, and it appears that more kids go to the later session.  The kids we met were very active, and my first impression told me they were probably pretty hard to control.  They introduced themselves, although the only name I understood was Sarah.  Then, we introduced ourselves.  The kids thought my name was hilarious, and tried many times to pronounce it without much success.  We told them where in the US we were from, and why we were in Granada.

After introductions had been made, the kids were split into different rooms.  Each room had three kids, two volunteers (me being one of them), and a teacher from the organization.  Seem like a little too much supervision for three kids? I’m pretty sure each room could have used a few more volunteers.  At one point a little boy (who thankfully I was not paired with) picked up a chair and charged another girl.  Then, he threw a pencil at her.  I can’t actually decide if he was the child who behaved the worst.  I lucked out, and was paired with a little girl named Adoracion, who goes by Doria.  She was probably the quietest student there.  We reintroduced ourselves, and she giggled as she tried to say my name again.  She informed me that she had never met a Meaghan before.  I wish I knew how to say “likewise” in Spanish to my new friend Doria.  Doria was doing math homework, two pages of subtraction.  She was fairly self sufficient and just needed me to correct the answers.  I tried a few times to help her, but math has never been a strong suit, and having to explain it in Spanish made it more difficult.  I’m glad it was just subtraction.  Anything else, I would have been in real trouble. 

After we finished Doria’s math homework, she went and got a puzzle.  You had to match animals to the habits they live in, and so Doria taught me some pretty useful vocabulary.  She was very patient with the language barrier, and repeated herself as many times as I asked her to.  It was especially hard, because of the Spanish she spoke.  I have only ever been exposed to proper, grammatically correct Spanish.  Just like the English you encounter in an inner city school in the US is very different from proper English, so was these kids’ Spanish.  They also talked very fast, because I am not sure how aware they were of the language barrier.  By the end of the hour and a half, Doria and I had figured out how to communicate, and she was excited to learn I would be back every Monday for the rest of the semester.  It certainly will be something that will add to my study abroad experience, and give me another aspect of the Spanish language that many students don’t encounter.  

Chocolate caliente, churros, y cursos

Since last time I wrote, not much has happened.  I have just been adjusting more to life here in Granada and trying to move past the culture shock.  On Thursday of last week I spent most of the day crying, and informed anybody who would listen that I was coming home.  However, I think a good meltdown was all I needed because once I stopped crying and realized I couldn’t go home, I really did feel better.  My host mom talked to me over a cup of tea about the experience I was about to have and encouraged me to stick it out.  She is really great about talking with us about everything, and understands the whole process of studying abroad since she has been taking in students for the last five years. 

Over the weekend friends and I experienced a couple great aspects of culture here in Granada.  The first is tapas.  Nightlife is a huge part of the Spanish culture, and my friends Shelly, Anna and I decided to embrace a bit of it, and headed to a tapas bar.  Basically, you order I drink (I have found I like tinto de verano, red wine mixed with a little bit of lemon-lime soda) and then the bar serves you free food.  Tapas are a snack, or a smaller version of sometimes very traditional Spanish dishes.  The first tapas bar we went to served us some sort of meat, which we think may have been lamb, in a delicious sauce.  The next plate they gave us was all mushrooms.  I tried it, but it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world so I just enjoyed my drink and the company of my friends.  The next night when we went out for tapas again, we were served turkey and cheese sandwiches and French fries.  The tapa you receive just depends on the bar you go to, and the crowd that they typically cater to.  Another night over the weekend, Shelley, Jennie and I just went to a dessert place, and enjoyed observing the Spanish people. 

Another fantastic aspect of Spanish culture is hot chocolate (chocolate caliente) and churros.  I know what you are thinking, what is so great about hot chocolate; you can get that in the United States.  Not like the hot chocolate here.  It is extremely rich, and thickened to a point where you have to eat it with a spoon.  Then you get the churros with it, which is essentially fried dough, and dip them into the chocolate.  It was probably the most enjoyable food experience I have had since getting to Spain.  I did not what to leave the restaurant, and considered asking the program if I could just live there for the semester.  I am positive I would be able to eat chocolate and churros at every meal and not get sick of it.  Although, I am still handling the Spanish diet pretty well, and I have found myself enjoying almost everything.  I have learned that I like spinach, peas, and olives, and many dishes I never pictured myself eating.  So far, the only thing I have truly struggled with is mushrooms on a frozen pizza, and the tuna empanada (similar to a calzone) that I was served for lunch today.  The tuna was way more then I could handle.  I ate all the bread that had not been contaminated by the tuna.  I was worried about offending my host mom by not liking it, so I told her I enjoyed it.  We are having it again for dinner tonight.  I am hoping I can learn to like it. 

Other then tapas and chocolate, the weekend was very low key.  We walked around, and checked out another viewpoint where you could see the entire city.  A lot of people were taking it easy, in preparation for the start of classes on Monday.   That’s right; we finally are out of vacation mode.   I was so ready for classes to start, because I felt like once I had a routine established, Granada would really start to feel like home.  My first class was my grammar class.  It seems like it is going to be a typical Spanish grammar class, although I am hoping since the language is now something I am forced to use throughout the day the grammar concepts will make more sense.  The other class we are required to take is a speaking and writing class, which gave the same impression as the grammar class. 

My three electives as of right now are Islamic Culture in Spain, History of Spanish Art, and The Arab World and the West.  However, the Arad World and the West class is taught in English and I am attempting to switch into a Spanish literature class taught in Spanish in order to immerse myself completely in the language; all my other classes are taught in Spanish.  The Islamic Culture in Spain class seems like it is going to be really interesting, especially considering our location.  Granada was the last place the Moors ruled in Spain, before the reconquista finally pushed them off the Iberian Peninsula entirely.  Therefore, we are literally surrounded by the history and influence of the Islamic culture in Spain.  All of the material we are learning about is put into context, just because of our location.  The professor seems extremely enthusiastic about the material, which always leads to the best classes. 

I am also very much looking forward to the History of Spanish Art class.  The professor came into today and pulled up a power point, titled “An Introduction to the Course”.  I expected it to cover the syllabus, and give an overview of the projects/assignments/exams that would be given in class.  Instead, the professor gave us a biography of his life, complete with pictures.  We learned about his childhood, his time in the military, his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid, and his hobbies.  He loves to play sports and he also sings opera.  After telling us his hobbies, he passed out the lyrics to his favorite song, Granada, and led us through the first five or six lines.  I am almost positive he was the only opera singer in the class.  Eventually he gave up and just played us the song from a C.D. he had brought with him.  I am going to attach a link so that you can listen to the song he tried to teach us to sing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy2fC1yzWrI).  He seems like quite the comedian.  We get an extra point on the exams if we put a joke (un chiste) at the end of them.  I really think I am going to enjoy all of my classes, and I haven’t gotten a bad first impression from any of the professors.   I'm getting the feeling this is going to be a very good semester.

Adventures in the Albaicín and the Alhambra

Sunday morning Olivia and I set out with the goal of becoming more acquainted with the city of Granada.  Once again we took off on foot, and headed to the center of the city.  We both wanted to find the Cathedral of Granada again to take pictures, as it was raining when we first saw it.  After getting lost at least three times, we stumbled upon the Cathedral.  It is absolutely enormous.  There is a law in Granada that says no building can be taller than the cathedral, so it is literally the biggest building in the city.  We were only able to admire the outside, as a mass was going on at the time we were there.  In the courtyard in front of the cathedral a father and his three sons were playing fútbol (soccer), which was fun to watch.  I always thought people were exaggerating when they talked about Europeans and their soccer, but they weren’t.  Soccer is a very big deal. 

After the cathedral we decided to just wander through and see if we stumbled upon anything fun.  Granada has what seems like hundreds of plazas, which are usually bustling with activity and people.  This is especially true on Sundays.  We found a really great plaza and just sat and people watched for quite a while.  There was a carousal set up, which was somehow operated by a man on a bicycle.  There was a person dressed up as Winnie the Pooh selling balloons, and a man with really long dreads making giant soap bubbles.  There were also many families and little kids running around and playing and parents talking and enjoying the first sunny day in a while.  It was a great atmosphere and a perfect place to just sit and take in the people of Granada.  After we left the plaza we headed into a little Cafeteria, and I tried my first café con leche, which was delicious.  The whole morning was a great success in my opinion. 

After lunch we decided to do even more exploring.  As of yet, we still had yet to catch a glimpse of the Alhambra, and our host mom suggested we head over to Mirador de San Nicolas.  She showed us on a map how to get there, but maps aren’t really our strong suit, so it was Rick Steves’ travel book who got us there in the end (thanks Uncle Ryan and Melis, it is fantastic!).  The Mirador de San Nicolas is a viewpoint at the top of the Albaicín, a neighborhood in Granada.  Finding the viewpoint was so much fun, because the Albaicín is one of the most beautiful neighborhoods I have ever been in.  The buildings are all white washed, have beautiful details, and many interesting plants and trees.  It must be much more amazing in warm weather.  There were also hole in the wall stores selling scarves, jewelry, paintings, and other souvenir type things all along the way.          

The whole walk to the viewpoint was uphill, and it was not a gentle incline at all.  But the walk was not in vain.  The view of the Alhambra was phenomenal; you could see the whole thing, with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background.  The best part of the viewpoint, however, was not the view but the people.  Probably around twenty gitanos, or gypsies, were there.  Some were selling things, some were just hanging out.  About five had guitars, and started to play very traditional Spanish music.  Then some began to sing along, more to clap.  A couple decided to dance.  Everybody watched and laughed with them, and everybody felt like they were a part of the performance.  It was so fun.  We ended up staying and enjoying the music and the people for a long time.  One of the gypsies was an older woman, with about two teeth, who was selling castanets.  As she was packing up her goods to head home, a man with a guitar went over to her and began to play a song.  She sang and packed, and when she was ready to leave she danced her way across the plaza and down the street, much to the delight of her audience. 

For Tuesday, API organized a tour of the Alhambra for the whole group.  To get to the Alhambra you have to climb up an unbelievably steep hill (I can think of a few track coaches who would have a blast with hill workouts here in Granada), but the climb is absolutely worth it.  I opted to be in the group with the Spanish speaking tour guide, and they handed out headsets that we would hear our tour guide through.  However, the tour guides microphone wasn’t actually working, so I didn’t actually hear most of the tour.  It did not matter.  You do not need the history of the Alhambra for the Alhambra to be breathtaking.  It was a palace and a fortress for the Moors.  I can’t even imagine the effort, craftsmanship, and artistry required to make the Alhambra what it is.  Intricate tile work and Arabic writing cover the walls, and there are fountains and plants everywhere.  Every room you walk into is amazing, and has a detail that is all its own.  I definitely will be going back, because I really do want to learn the history and stories behind the Alhambra, but I was in no way disappointed by my first experience there.  I think it is impossible to be in any way disappointed by the Alhambra.