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