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

Mala Folla, Blood Sausage, and Dogs

Mala Folla

So what is "Mala Folla"? I had a professor explain it to me and actually means "with bad intentions". Granadians are INFAMOUS for having mala folla, meaning that for no reason at all they will be complete butt heads to you. For example, for the first few weeks of being here my friends and I spend a lot of time going a Cafe close by to where we live. The waitress there HATED US. For the life of me I could not understand why. We brought in 12 people every time we came in which is really good business for one cafe, and always ordered more then our share of drinks and always paid in a timely manner. But for no reason at all she would be a complete ass all the time. Aparently that is the granada no bull shit mala folla attitude. I wish you could see it in action. It's like seeing real life "grumpy old men" in action. I know, kind of random but this is a random post isn't it?

Spanish Morcilla Cocida... BLOOD SAUSAGE.
Sounds horrific right, but holy mackerel is this stuff good. I know how it must look to you... like dog poop, but I cannot even attempt to tell you how good it is. It's a sausage stuffed with pig's blood, rice, onions, and a bunch of spices. Most of the time it's got a little heat to it and it served with chicken and ham. You mixed everything together and eat it with bread or plain. It's AMAZING. It doesn't taste irony or salty like you think it would, its just like a really soft sausage flavor with a bite. Our senora gets such a kick out of Emily and I liking it that she gives it to us at least twice a week. I'm bring some home for you all to try because I know you are going to love it, (as long as you don't know what you are eating first). I really could eat this everyday, and the nutritional properties are ridiculous. I'm going to be really full of iron by the time I get home. YUM!

Dogs
I really wish my Aunt Donna could see the dogs here. I already mentioned that there is an abundance of dog crap in the streets, but you should see how well trained these dogs are! When I walk to school in the morning everyone is walking their dogs. Actually ALL DAY people are walking their dogs. It shows how lazy Americans are, these dogs are really well taken care of. When it rains they all have little jackets, or booties, or whatever, even on the big dogs, and their dogs never SMELL like wet dog. Ever. The thing that really weirds me out though is the leash laws, or lack there of. The owners will walk along the street of the city and the dogs just FOLLOW. They just sniff here and there and tottle along happy without a leash. They know better then to get to far from their owners but if they do it's a quick whistle and they run right back to where they came from. They sit down patiently if the walk sign is red and wait for it to turn green (another indication dogs can see color signatures) and never get into fights with other dogs. When the owner needs to go into a store, the dog either goes with and follows them, or they sit outside the door, or lay down while with owner shops, for hours if needed. It is so crazy! The weirdest this is that the puppies I mean.. really little new born puppies just KNOW what they are supposed to do. I saw one yesterday, barely trained who knew better then to go in the street or get to far from his owner. He waited outside while his owner got art supplies and played with a piece of paper on the side walk. It's just strange.... just shows how much we Americans know about training our dogs.

Anyways, who is coming to visit me? I could use a friendly face

Monkeys, Dead People, Puppies, and Aching Necks

The View From Sevilla's Cathedral Tower
In Sevilla's Palace
The Park

Gibraltar Apes (Baby Ape)

Traveled around Gibraltar, Seville and Cordoba last weekend. Nothing too special but I figured I would let you know how it went down
In Gibraltar we saw the water for the first time, traveled through the stalactite caves and had monkeys pee our heads. They are really cute, but suposedly very dangerous as well. You aren't suposed to pet them or even look at the male ones in the eyes (yesh) When it comes down to it, it is basically England with a Spanish accent. It is really warm down there and gorgeous, but probably only worth a day or so of your time, so it’s a good thing we only spent 4 or 5 hours there. Oh I forgot, it was RIDICULOUSLY windy next to the water. I almost lost my scarf 4 or 5 times. You can see in my pictures just how windy it was.

Stalactite Caves

See the mountain in the background? Africa

In Seville, we took tours of some of the bigger buildings like the Cathedral, and the Spanish Palacio where Star Wars; Clone war was filmed. We climbed to the very top of one of the Cathedral's tours which of course was 34 flights of stairs (ugh), but the view was beautiful. You could see the whole city below you. Later that day we saw a weird man dancing with two puppets in the street, and spent the night exploring the nightlife, which was amazing.
Cordoba's Roman Bridge

Cordoba... well, let’s just say our entire group got back to our hotel around 7am, were up by 830 and on a bus by 945. Once we got to Cordoba it was pouring rain, flooding the streets and making us all miserable on our WALKING tour. Needless to say I didn't take many pictures. I don't like having my camera be wet. But we saw the famous Cathedral (yes another one) of Cordoba which actually used to be a mosque before Isabel and Ferdinand took over Spain in 1492 and kicked all the Muslims out (or converted them).

Anyways, a picture is worth a thousand words so check out my picture or view more in the link below

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034615&id=1271940076&l=3a29772d19

In my next post remind me to tell you about “Malla Foya”, Spanish Dogs, and Black Chorizo

Horrible Terrible No Good Very Bad Day

Shortened version of course...
1. Woke up feeling crappy and decided to skip my first class and attend the last 3
2. Woke up at 2pm and missed my first 3 classes
3. Went to my last class, started raining on my way home and got the hair that I just straightened wet.
4. Find out that I have been charged 235 Euro on my credit card for "Failure to Cancel" my groups hostel rooms (My phone had no minutes to call the hostel anyways)
5. Find out that that is 333 American dollars and my bank at home will not allow me to pay the bill online and I can't send a check. The bill is due today and despite me trying to pay it for the past 3 weeks I now have a late fee.
6. Ex boyfriend wants to marry me although he already has a fiancee... great
7. She is probably going to read this and try and kill me, but I think I'm okay with that.

Best part of my day, talking to my BrettB and Kyle Newman, ranting to them for awhile made me feel better. Not going to lie, I miss my roommate and a lot of my friends. They help me through situations like this more often then not.

Owell. I promised you all pictures from my last trip so I'll post them here.



Mall in Amsterdam
Museo de Arte en Madrid
Plaza Mayor Madrid
Statue de Palacio
Statue de Cervantes y Don Quioxte



Big Stick Dog
Toledo
Cathedral De Toledo
Perched on the cliffs

Someone's Been Munching Emily's Muffins y Mas Shenanigans

My title has nothing to do with my trip really, It just makes me laugh.



I don't have pictures yet so you all will have to wait until I can upload my camera. I'll post them in another blogpost once that happens.
So here is the summary of what happened since apparently some of you are really impatient for my blog posts *cough* (Auntie D, Rien, Brett). I spent 4 days in Madrid/Toledo, 2 days in Brussels, 3 Days in Amsterdam and 1 day in Girona (outskirts of Barcelona).

Madrid/Toledo
We spent the beginning of day one in Toledo which is about an hour out Madrid and 3 hours out of Granada. It's a beautiful extremely old city perched on ginormous hills. You will see in the pictures, when I say perched I mean houses on cliffs perched. The old city and new city are separated by an ancient stone wall that was built hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The wall surrounds the old quarter which houses about 10,000 people and has 83... yes 83 churches and ONE Cathedral. It is the 3rd largest cathedral in the world. There is breathtaking art by Grecco everywhere you turn. I toured a lot of buildings, the ONE mosque that Ferdinand and Isabella left when they converter Spain, as well as a couple museums or Grecco's art. The picture on top is of one of Greco's most famous painting, "El entierro del conde de Orgaz (the burial of the count of Orgaz)." It is gorgeous up close and personal. After all the museums we toured a sword factory where they still made all the blades by hand, as well as brooches, necklaces, guns, and a ton of other stuff, you'll love my deperado style pictures once I post them :D. After that we traveled to Madrid. We ate dinner in TGIF's (yes I know but we REALLY wanted something American), and went to bed. Of course the next day Emily and I missed our tour because we were so tired, but we spent the day wandering around discovering things on our own. We ate lunch in a little cafeteria with our two friends and after headed back to our hotel for a nap. I ended up getting sick and puking all night from whatever I ate, but still got up and went on the next days tour. We toured the palace in madrid, the statue of Miguel De Cervantes and his different book characters (he wrote Don Quixote if you don't know who he is), as well as a billion other statues, and Piccasso's most famous painting depicting Hitler's bombing of Guernica, a small town in the Basque country. I'm not much for art but I almost cried hearing the amount of passion and emotion Picasso put into this mural, it's HUGE on the wall in the Musuem of art. There is no way you can avoid thinking about the pain and trauma of the people depicted in it. I don't think I ever understood Picasso's paintings until seeing them live in front of you. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and recovering from my still ill stomach. The next day we woke up really early for our Flight to Brussels.

Brussels (Brusselas)
A group of 12 of us traveled together for the remainder of our break. We took a taxi to the airport in madrid and flew in by 11am. It was cold, snowy, and miserable when we got there. We walked around for awhile that day and then ended up going to a Belgium chocolate factory after lunch. After the chocolate everyone left to go back to the hostel because I still wasn't feeling well. THAT"S when the fun started. While everyone else was drinking belgium beer, I was purging my body of all moisture through cold sweats, hot sweats and puking... forevvverrr. I spent the entire 2 and a half day trip in Belgium throwing up. FUN!

Amsterdam
After our flight to Amsterdam I still was only eating crackers but I did find a cure. America I'm so sorry but you are soooooooo wrong about the medicial uses of marijuana... I was feverish, hot, nauseus and sick. I smoked about 3 puffs of marijauana in a cafe bar in Amsterdam and felt INSTANTLY better. I actually felt so much better that I spent the entire time in Amsterdam running around actually enjoying myself. The only mistake I made was thinking that marijuana brownies would have the same effect on me.
TIP: DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT eat an entire brownie the first time and DO NOT under any circumstances go to a Van Gogh Museum after eating a brownie. I have never geeked out so bad in my entire life. Emily and I hallucinated through the entire exibit, and I couldn't close and open my eyes without flinching at the colors. Mind you, our friends had the munchies and wanted to go to Ben and Jerry's which has the most ridiculous amount of colors in one room that you could ever have. I was NOT happy with that experience. I couldn't even sit down without moving some part of my body to make sure I was still.... Me. Never again. NEVER. The next day however was fun because we took a canal tour, saw the Ann Frank house, and the red light district.
Now Brussels is okay, Spain has spotless streets (minus dog shit) and Amsterdam is a SHIT HOLE. It is sooooooooooo dirty. You are always stepping in some unknown substance and then you realize it's because they have a red light district... dirty dirty things happen there. They have windows with prostitutes in them so you can pick them... like puppies from a farm like.. " Oh mommy I want the one with the boobie tassels and the lip peircing.. Ooo oo or the one that looks like she's 12!". It's HORRIFIC! But I guess if pot cures my headache maybe a good poke will cure someone else who knows. ( I apologize if that was too graphic for my family to read but eh).... ( wait no I'm not sorry this is my damn blog, go away if you don't like it). So yeah, in summary, streets nasty, buildings culture and musuems are an epic win, a must see city in Europe.
We stayed in hostels all trip which actually wasn't bad although you will probably not believe me when you see the pics (if you can see through the pot haze that is, EVERYONE smokes). In Amsterdam it was called Bob's Youth Hostel... yeah. Bob wasn't even Dutch, he's australian haha. But it was fun we stayed in a huge 16 person room which 4 British guys who were pretty good roommates... oh and the one random 55 yearold man who was creepy, but I prefer to forget he existed in you don't mind.

Girona
We took a train to Dusseldorf, Germany then hopped on a flight to Girona to stay in a hotel for the night before we flew back to Granada. I cannot tell you how nice it was to have a hot shower you don't have to share with 20 people. The airline we took allowed us ONE carry on size bag so we all wore the same clothes, no laundry, for 2 weeks, we all smelled reeeeeeeeally good by the end of that trip.

I'm back in Granada thank god, ready to start class at 8:30 tomorrow yay. I hope you are all satisfied now, I'll get you some pictures when I can. Don't forget to subscribe to my posts and comment when you see something you like, or if you have any questions. Love you all!
Muchos Besos Para Todos Mis Amigos y Mi Familia! Ciao

A Rose Called By Any Other Name Would Still Smell Like Pee

So I'm realizing that things in the Spain are bi-polar with things in the US. Some things are really similar then all of a sudden you are smacked with something new right when you least expect it. It's the sense of security that gets you, you think you are safe when you really are just as insecure as you were before. Being in a new place makes you feel like you can reinvent yourself, more often then not you get lost in the new person you want to be while you are away from home, until you are again hit with that one similar situation that snaps you back to reality (oops there goes gravity). Sorry I'm being random I'll get to the point.

Clothing

Men:Metro-sexual doesn't exist here, every guy is metro so therefore it is not a sub-culture. Guys dress in nicer jeans, colorful tee-shirt and a scarf, casual but could probably step into a magazine ad if asked on the spot.
Women: Everyone here is a fashion model. The women dress like the morning walk to work is a runway. They have succeeded in making me look dumpy every day. Skinny jeans, ankle or calf length boots, leather jackets and a scarf make a complete look. If you leave the house without makeup or your hair done you WILL be looked at like you are crazy.

The Streets

I have yet to see a solo house in the city or or the outskirts. Everything close to where I live are pisos or large apartments interspersed between tiendas (stores) or bancos (banks), cafeterias, bakeries and everything else. The sidewalks are made of tile which are super dangerous when it rains (which it does a lot) and there is dog poop EVERYWHERE. People let their dogs just run around whereever they want when they are taken out for walks. Of course there are people with leashes but they are few and far between. The buildings are completely stone store fronts. The architechture is breath taking at times especially in the Albaycin or the old quarter of Granada. Being able to look up in any direction and see the mountains in the distance makes all the rain, slipping, and stepping in dog shit worth it.

The People

Women: To the women of Spain American girls are a plague. We are too noisy, to boisterous, too brash, too honest, and all round too much. It doesn't help that the Spanish men assume we are all easy so we take their men too (oops). Sorry we party.... They stare at us in bars if we laugh too loudly or ask for more then one beer. Really they stare at us for anything. If you keep your mouth shut and mimic their outfits you can usually fit in enough for someone to assume your are Spanish but it doesn't last long if one of your drunken noisy friends approaches you with a tequila shot. The older women tend to be a bit crankier but most women aren't against helping you with directions or being patient while you figure out your Spanish. Can't blame the other for not liking us though, sometimes I don't even like us.

Men: Like I said, the men here are like "eagles" if you give them any eye contact, attention or recognition at all they will bug you forever. Bars are like a hunting ground for these guys it's ridiculous. When it comes down to going on dates with them they are just as confusing, and complicated as the rest of their American brothers. I went half way around the world to discover it is exactly the same... sorry girls. There will be no butterflies, happy thoughts, bunnies and rainbows of love over here either. You might called me jaded, I call me realistic. If you happen to walk past a large group of older men, you will definitely know if they think you are pretty, they all stand up and applaud you down the street... no joke. They are generally more tolerant of Americans, and tend to be a little bit more helpful when you are completely lost. I'll let you know when I have more information on these little jewels of society.

Don't get me wrong, still love it here, just the more time you spend here the more you realize that you didn't escape your problems at all, they are just hibernating till you get back and everything that happens here reminds you of them.