My Mind Can't Hold On To You, But My Camera Can

So I've only have about 15ish days left in Granada. We are going to the beach in Malaga this weekend as our last vacation trip as a group. At this point it is actually kind of difficult to write completemente in English and I have to keep going back and correcting spellings of words. Yesterday was the "Dia de las cruces" Which is a Granadian holiday where a bunch of plazas decorate crosses around the city and compete in a contest. A bunch of people dance sevillianas in the street (which I now know how to do) and drink and eat in restaurants and people watch. I walked down calle Recogidas to the Genil river then up into Sacromonte by the caves and finally ended up somewhere on the other side of the city. I just was kind of absorbed by the cool air and walking felt good so I ended up leaving at 330ish and got home around 8pm. I had to take a bus home because I didn't know where I was. It was a really nice walk and a good way to start the end of my trip. Next week I will be studying for finals and then the week after that I take some tests and come home! I'm excited and feel like I have a lot to accomplish once I get home. It was a good trip, ups n downs but mostly ups. Can't wait to see what this summer holds for me!

African Banana Jiggy Jiggy Inside

Morocco

Last weekend we traveled to Morocco. From the Tarifa port into Tangier on a ferry, then bused from Tangier to Meknes, Fes, and back to Tangier. The first day we got in a bus at 515 am to make an 11am ferry out of Tarifa. Blegh, I did not know I was going to be so sea sick. Didn't puke thank got but I was happy to get off of that ferry. We had lunch in a resturant deemed "safe" by our guide then spent the rest of the day driving to Meknes with a few stops to look at the coast and ride camels (I didn't feel like it at the time), By 10pm (yes it took that long) we were eating dinner in our hotel in Meknes. The next day we did a tour of an ancient granary and got to see the outside of the old royal stables. We also got to go into a mosque and have tea in the streets of Meknes. Walking around
I could see a TON of ramparts and cannons. Our guide told us that this is because Morocco being so close to the close was constantly being conquered by other countries so many wars were waged on the shores. I thought that was kind of interesting. In places you could see pocs in the cliffs from cannons. After lunch in another resturant we were already on our way to Fes and we got there late evening.
Once again we had dinner in the hotel and were not allowed to leave the hotel without the tour guide. The people are particularly pushy in Morocco and will hassel anyone who looks like they have money. Its sad to see so much poverty in a country that has such a rich and ancient culture, but war is expensive and most of the old money went to that. In Fes I did a lot of shopping. We didn't really get to see any really touristy things, but we did see a scarf factory, the markets and a rug factory. Before our trip we were told to be careful (as women) with what we said and did and wore in Morocco. Although a lot has changed in women's rights in the last decade a lot still has not changed. At one point we went into a traditional shop for Moroccan clothing. Our directer has been taking students there for years and has never had a problem. I wanted to buy a belly dancing outfit for halloween in the states and one of the shop keepers offered to help me find them. I'm not going to tell you in complete detail here what happened, but I'll tell you it did end with me getting very angry, upset, and telling him that I would remove some of his body parts if he didn't stop trying to touch me. Believe me, if you were there and you saw what happened you would have done the same thing. Islmaic law in Morocco still states that if a woman lays a hand on a man she goes to jail, regardless of the situation. I don't think people understand just how scary it is to think that if you defend yourself, you will be thrown in jail. Women's rights in Morocco have a long way to go. I'll get off my soap box now. Anyways, we also went to a tannery (really smelly) and I now have a camel skin purse that smells like poop and I can't air it out. We ate dinner in the hotel again, spent a little time the next day in Fes before driving back to Tangier so we could make out ferry on Monday morning.

I wish I had more interesting things to tell you but 90% of my trip was on a bus, or being harassed by the locals. On a funier note I kept getting hit on by people saying "NICE COLOR!" and one really strange man kept asking us if we wanted to "African banana jiggy jiggy" which sounds funny but was probably disgusting. Anyways, if you want to know more you can always message me. I'm posting the link for all the picture below, knock yourself out.

Pictures Here

Too Much Food On My Plate

I really have no reason for typing this blog at this moment in time but I guess I'll tell you how my first week back to classes was. Mondays and Wednesday I only have one class (Art History) so it was relatively easy to get back into the swing of things. Tuesdays and Thursdays can get pretty long though. Usually on Mondays and Wednesdays I wake up around 9am, am dressed and then eat breakfast at 9:15, by 9:30 Emily and I are out the door on our 30 minute trek to the Kenia Building. I have art for 10-1130 then Emily and I walk back home another 30 minutes or more depending on how much we wander around the back streets. Once we get home we either a. nap off our sleepy heads from staying up too late b. work out before lunch c. watch pointless tv shows and talk until lunch at 2:30. After lunch we do whatever we didn't do before, sometimes go to the park and lay around, or go for a run and collapse in the park after until about 6pm. 6 is time for homework and showers until we eat dinner at 9pm. After dinner it's a free for all.

Tuesdays and Thursdays Suck. I have 830 am class which means I wake up at 7, am dressed by 715, eat breakfast until 730 and am out the door by 8. I walk my 30 mins to class then have class from 830-10, have a break from 10-1130 then have spanish class from 1130-230. Since Emily and I have lunch at 230 we rush home and are home by 3 to eat. We then have from 4-5 to do nothing after we eat before we walk the 30mins back to the Kenia building for class from 530 to 700. At 7 we walk home and then do homework till dinner time at 9. Usually I'm exhausted on those days and can barely keep my eyes open in the last class, it is a lot of running around. BTW studied my little tooshie off and ended up with a 9.5 (A) on an essay exam in History. Not too shabby eh?

Thursday I was planning on going out after dinner but for some reason I kept getting nose bleeds all day,(Attractive I know) but it was really strange. My friend mentioned he had been getting them all day too. Maybe it was the change of weather but I was kinda loopy from blood loss and decided to stay in and sleep it off.

Friday morning I slept in and after lunch went on a walk with Pierce through the Albaicin. We had sangria in a cafe on top of a hill overlooking the Alhambra. It was beautiful. We talked for a long time, shopped around a bit in the area then walked home through Tea Street (a street filled with tea shops, my mom would love it). By 7ish we both were home and decided to meet up later with some friends and go out. After dinner I walked to Pierce's apartment around 10:45 and we went and had a drink in a local bar. After awhile my friend Rubio and his sister were in town joined us, we stopped in and recruited a couple more friends from another bar and ended up at a 3rd bar called escandelo (Scandelous). After a couple mojitos we ended up at the Botellion. Offfff Course. My friends drank a couple 40's I just ran around entertaining everyone in my post-mojito happiness and the night ended with a cab ride home and an awkward conversation with my "friend" from home.

Saturday I didn't go out. I studied instead and worked out.. because I'm that cool.
Sunday was down day too since there really is nothing open in Granada on Sundays.

So that was my week in a nut shell.

Morocco on Friday! I'll post pictures when I get home, I mean to Granada.

I'm sorry did you say tapas? I heard TOPless

Nerja Vacation

Instead of having spring break Spain has Semana Santa. It is the week of the Saints where everyone goes on vacation and in every church they take their patron saint and carry them around the city on their backs. It usually takes about 10 men on each side of the statue of the saint and they carry these around for probably 7 hours a night. Each one has to weigh 1500 lbs or more. Of course I have no pictures of this because everytime the processions started I would NEVER have my camera with me. Owell. Anyways, we traveled to Nerja, a coastal town in Southern Spain. It is mostly Germans, Dutch and British retired people who live there but it has beautiful beaches (nude beaches mostly) and the scenery is absolutly perfect for a beach week get away.

3 other girls and I stayed in an apartment 5 mins away from the beach while 2 more girls stayed in a hostal near by. We had our our balcony, kitchen, a really nice bathroom, a cable tv (which I haven't had in months) and a terrece upstairs with a sundeck, sauna and hot tub. We pretty much spent everyday on the beach, (which is why I am now clost to the same color as my mother) and our evening either relaxing and drinking wine, or drinking tequila sunrises and dancing in local pubs. Since Nerja is so small there was only one small plaza with 10 or 12 musical pubs that the young people would hang out in. We met some pretty nice people while we were there and being american it is close to impossible to buy yourself a drink, there is always some spanish or british boy trying to buy one for you.

Everyday day we would wake up at 10ish, eat breakfast, then head out to the beach. We'd lay around, play soccer or volleyball and have a drink until 4 or 5 then eat lunch at home or on the beach. They had a great Thai place (surprisingly) and of course the seafood paella was fantastic. After we ate we would head back to the apartment and nap for awhile or watch tv and would later go out and shop or wander around until 10 or 11 when we went home from dinner. After dinner it was off to a pub, or drinking wine in the hot tub on the roof. Best vacation ever.
Next weekend (the 16th) I'm off to Morocco and after that I will have less then 30 days left here! It is almost sad but I'll be happy to see my family. Oh and BTW got a 9.9 on my Art History Exam that's a 99% in the US!

I'm so baller sometimes I can't stand it ;)

More Later...

Whoa.. that's one big pee puddle...

Whoa.. that's one big pee puddle...


These are the things that I see everyday as I walk to class.
This is the main plaza I walk by in the morning.

This is the building I go to class in. The Kenia Bulding

The Church I walk by with the mini plaza

The gorgeous graffiti artwork along the way. I figured I would post some pictures so you could see what I see everyday!

Primavera
First thing that you need to know is that if you are not in a restaurant that is outdoors or a cafe of some sort it is not legal to drink in the street in Granada. The Spanish government realized that the students were poor and didn't have anywhere to go and hang out cheaply with their friends so they invented the botellion. It is basically a large concrete parking lot on the outside of the city where you can bring your own alcohal and drink outdoors. This means that the students can buy euro boxes of wine or share bottles of whatever, hang out and have a good time. Primavera is a HUGE party that marks the beginning of Spring in Granada. All of the young people have a ridiculous party in the Botellion. It starts out looking like this, pretty low key, a bunch of people sitting in circles listening to music and drinking/eating/playing games. People bring shopping carts with their groups alcohal and snacks. The party starts are noon and goes all night. Now if you look at the pictures I've posted that's around 3-4pm in the afternoon. By the time it reaches 8 oclock.. it looks like those last 2 photos. Literally 30,000 people came out to that TINY area to party. The street got blocked off since students were spilling out of the Botellion into the streets surrounding. These are cops everywhere keeping the crazier of the students in line, but nothing is really done about fights unless someone gets hurt. Most of the the time the cops just observe and go back to smoking. It really is something that you have to experience in order to understand just how crazy that amount of people in that small of an area is. My friends and I were just lucky that we stuck together, after awhile you couldn't sit down anymore, you had to stand so you didn't get trampled. It was a really good way to improve my Spanish since everyone there was speaking spanish and they prefer it over english (if they know english at all). Anyways, I need to get to studying for my exams this week, then it's off to the beach apartment for the week! Talk to you all soon.

More pictures located here

House Cleaning

So I guess it has been awhile since I checked in so now is as good a time as ever I suppose. It's Sunday night and I'm just sitting in bed listening to music (the boy band "Five" just came on and I suddenly feel very ill, hang on while I turn this off, ahh much better). This weekend was super low key. I spent Thursday and Friday nights out with friends and Saturday I spent in a small town closer to the coast called Ronda. It's a very pretty town that over looks a huge gorge that a river flows through into a valley. It is mostly touristy shops with wine, cheese, and sausages, but it has a beautiful church where I got to put my "Art History" skills to work. It was actually kind of fun getting to use what I learned in class to determine time periods and styles that I wouldn't have known anything about a month ago. So my friend Nic and I walked around all day looking at different places, and got to see the place where they have the bull fights in Ronda but mostly just enjoying the sun and got home about 8pm.

Granada has been rainy and cold and awful for pretty much the last 4 weeks. We'll get one day of relief then it becomes 40 degrees and rains for 4 days straight. I think that explains a lot of the mind state I was in when I wrote my last post. They warn you before you go abroad that it will happen, but I didn't really see it coming. Anyways moral of the story is that I'm feeling better and I've come to the conclusion that my whole life needs some "friend" cleaning. I figure I shouldn't waste my time on anyone who doesn't let me be me or at least try and make me a better person. I understand that the difficult people are the ones that teach you lessons, but I think I've already learned the lessons that these people have to offer me, forgive me if I move on.Exams are coming up and I'm starting to study, then I'm off to Nerja for spring break for a bit of (hopefully hot) beach time. I'll try and post again sooner than later.
Hope all is well with you guys! Love you all
-Sacha

No offense spain, but I'm almost over our affair

I guess eventually the honeymoon was going to wear off and it is definitely starting to. As amazing and beautiful as Spain is, it isn't home and it isn't Drake. Drake can be a huge pain in the ass, don't get me wrong, but all my friends are there. My friends that I CHOSE to be with and not who I happened to be thrown together with. Where my roommate is, who stays in with me when I don't feel like going out, or where I'm able to go out alone on my own to find other people to spend time with. Where it takes 5 mins instead of 45 minutes to walk to class, and you don't have to be dressed for it. Where I can take half hour showers and relax and actually fit in the bathtub as opposed to having a 5 minute shower in the fetal position. Where my crappy futon bed is, and my extra crappy job at my campus bar where I work with all my guy friends. Where people call me because they want to see me and make an effort to do so. Where people are a 2 second text message away and my cell phone has full coverage and 300 names to choose from. Where it's easy to call my parents for help when I need to, or talk to my sister and brother when I'm having a bad day.
I guess my problem is that I feel too isolated from everything. I can't take care of what's going on at home and I can't seem to control my life here any better, so I'm kind of stuck in limbo.
I know I sound like I'm complaining about living here but like I said I really do love it, but not forever. If I had the choice to leave now and come home of course I wouldn't. But I know I'm going to love going home to what I know.
Call it homesickness, they say it always sets in right about now