Mi [primero] apartamento

                This semester, I decided to move out of my host mom’s house and find my own apartment. Before I even met my host mom, I had the intention of doing this for my second semester. Since I am here for 8 months in total, 4 months for each semester, I wanted to take advantage of this and have two different housing experiences: host family and then an apartment. The first semester I was in API housing with Maria Jose but when I decided to find my own apartment, I, in turn, opted out of API housing aka API gave me the money back that went towards my housing/food/laundry and then I had to do all of that by myself. I really wanted to do the apartment with Spanish students thing but doing everything myself was a daunting but also a key part of this experience. I would have to find the apartment myself, make all my own food, do my own laundry, plus all the little things I never quite thought about when I had a host mom such as bedding and towels.

But alas, my first ever apartment hunting process began. And yes, that was said correctly, first ever. I’ve never lived or had to find an apartment before in the US so it was a little more daunting considering that I was really going through this blindly. What was left of my US mindset of timeliness and doing things ahead of time also had a hard time with this process. The laid back feel of Spain, for me at least, is really demonstrated with their housing process. As opposed to in the States where you know, more or less, 5/6 months in advance where you would be living, here I knew about one week beforehand. I looked at one or two places in December before I left for Navidad but pretty much left Spain with no certain place of residence for the next semester. Here, if you were to want to ‘reserve’ the apartment in December but move-in in February, you would have to pay rent for both December and January (even if you weren’t moving in until February). I know, very weird.

Since I had no formal place to live when I returned to Spain, once again my amazing host mom appears and saves me from staying in a hostel for the first few days. We had arranged prior to my departure that I would leave about half my stuff (like books, shower stuff, summer clothes) in a cabinet in her house so that I didn’t need to bring all of it home with me. She also told me (yes, told me. When I told her that I was just planning on getting a hostel, she looked at me appalled and continue to say ‘Claro, quedarte aqui, claro’ aka ‘Yeah, you’re obviously staying here. Obv.’ ) This is one of the many reasons why I loved her so much.

Okay, so back to apartment hunting. I was in Granada for 3 days before leaving for Switzerland entonces I had to find an apartment pretty much before I left so I could move in when I returned from Switzerland. I had met a girl named Subira at the Hannigan’s Christmas dinner back in the beginning of December who happened to be moving to Vienna for a bit starting in the beginning of February. I saw the apartment in December before I left for the States and liked it (as well as the price). When I returned to Spain and before I left for Switzerland, I went over to the apartment again to have some tea. When I was in Switzerland, I got the news that I had gotten the apartment! Talk about relieved—finally a place to stay for the spring semester :)

Now, I live in a different neighborhood than my previous piso but as much as I loved my last ‘barrio’ I love my new one just as much if not more. I’m in more of the student section of Granada and closer to a lot more things. I live in a 4 person apartment and adore my roommates. One’s name is Anna, who is 26 (or 27, I can’t quite remember) and originally from St. Petersburg, Russia. Let that not fool you though, her Spanish is flawless. She also speaks some English and I just found out recently that some French too! She’s studying to become a teacher for ‘extranjeros’ aka people like me. She’s currently working on her masters for that while working so she’s quite busy. Another one of my roommates name is Jesus. He’s 22 and going to school right now at the University of Granada. He’s originally from Ibiza and has been in the apartment for about a year and a half now. This is also his first year on the Granada CF soccer team! He’s on the second string team so he plays in different games than the team you would normally see on TV but very exciting none the less. My third roommates name is Luis. He’s 25 and he’s studying, roughly translated, sports exercise science. He’s also from Ibiza and I think has been in Granada for all his education. They are all super nice, hilarious, and great at helping me with my Spanish. In addition to Anna, Luis knows some English too but we only speak Spanish at home which is awesome. It’s definitely a different language experience with this living arrangement too because, even though everything being Spanish, the language that a 65 year old woman speaks is going to be different from the language that’s used with people around my age. What I love about both of my living situations that I’ve been in is that they don’t slow down for me. If we’re hanging around the house, they’ll be speaking like they would naturally speak. I understand most of it but even when I don’t, I ask them to repeat it with a nice ‘Como?’ aka ‘Huh?’ and they’ll repeat it for me.

Quite side note that as of a mere 2 days ago, my friend Rachel and I decided to head to Morocco for the weekend! We just realized there was a 5 day weekend this weekend because of Dia de Andalucia, celebrating the autonomy of our region of Andalucia. Therefore, we have no class on Tuesday and with what I’ve explained before, we have a great thing called ‘puente’ aka ‘bridge’ so since we have Tuesday off, we get Monday off too! I’m super excited for Morocco. This was always a must see for me while in Granada. We leave on Friday afternoon and come back Sunday night. At first I thought that this might feel rushed because we’re going to 3 cities but all my friends that have done it raved about it and didn’t feel rushed.

Off to go to class! We have no class tomorrow so this is like my Friday J Gotta love Spain <3

Besos a todos

Katie

Quick P.S. I realized something about 2 days ago when I saw one of my best friends, Natalie, visiting from Sevilla. She turned to me while I was giving her a little tour of Granada in between my classes and asked me in a soft voice ‘Katie, how are you going to leave this place?’ I turned to her and I realized I had no answer. I love everything back home but to think about leaving this place is currently unimaginable to me and incomprehensible. I always heard ‘Granada still has my heart and I studied there  blank  years ago’. Well, I now have no doubt that that is a true statement because Granada really has my heart. I cannot ever imagine my life now without the city and the people in it. I think it’s safe to say that Granada is one of my first loves.

Mis clases!

So, as the name shows, half of my study abroad experience here is kind of the studying part. I was silly last semester and didn't post about the most important part: my classes! Here to change that for this semester is this blog post. Enjoy reading about what I am currently learning this semester!

El arte flamenco en la sociedad y cultura

            This class is ‘The art of Flamenco in society and culture’. In this class, I’ll be learning about all aspects of Flamenco such as the lyrics, the songs, the dance including the difference between the man’s dance and the woman’s, the history, and the links between Flamenco and society. I’ll also study a little history about Spain and Andalucía in the process. There will also be a part of the class in which we will differentiate between Flamenco, Sevillana, and the Meringa. My teacher for this is Jose Javier Leon and he seems so cool. He’s very enthusiastic about what he’s teaching and funny too. I found out he’s also my teacher for my Literature class, which needless to say I am pumped about. He was also talking about the humor that Flamenco encompasses and some of the politically incorrectness of it. He was saying that back then, when some cantantes were named, the whole something-being-politically-incorrect thing wasn’t an issue. He wouldn’t tell us any of the names at this time because it’s not on the schedule until later in the semester. This is already one of my favorite classes!

Literatura española (siglo XX)

            The professor for this class is the same one for my Flamenco class aka the one I really like. I’ll be studying Spanish Literature of the 20^th Century in this class, though our second class we were informed that we would actually be starting this class in Nicaragua. The influence from Nicaragua and some authors there have influenced Spanish literature so dramatically that he insists that we veer off the course of the Spanish literature and study this background portion first. Right now we’re talking about ‘El Modernismo’ and the crisis of the bourgeoisie conscience when the younger generation started to rebel against the ideology of their bourgeoisie parents. Even though, for me, literature is sometimes a bore, I think I’m going to really like this class. Last semester I took a Hispanic American Literature class and was surprised how much I liked it so maybe this class will be the same! I’ve discovered that almost all my classes overlap with each other in some way, whether it is Spanish Art appearing during the Spanish take-over of Latin America or my LA & Spanish business class becoming relevant in my Civ & Culture class. I’m starting to see parallels in a lot of things by finally putting together events happening on each continent and realizing that they are all interconnected somehow. I guess whenever I was learning history, I was always learning it about one single location at a time and didn’t realize until now when I’m learning history from all parts of Latin America, Spain, and then plus my past knowledge of some of Europe and the US, it’s all coming together in one big web. And unlike spider webs and cobb webs, this is a type of web I'm enjoying immensely.

Civilización y cultura española

            This class is about all aspects of the Spanish culture and the civilization. We’ll be learning about the origin of Spain and the Spanish people as well as the different autonomous regions. We’ll also look at Spanish people today: the family, customs, young people, and daily life. In addition to these, I’ll also be learning a little bit about flamenco, the Mediterranean diet, the bulls, the Spanish festivals/parties, Spanish cinema, and last but not least Spanish music. Excited about this class would not begin to describe how I feel. All of these things are such big reasons on why I wanted to come to Spain. To have lived in the culture for 4 months and now get to learn in the classroom about their culture (while continuing to learn every moment of every day) is awesome.

 Variedades del español

                This class is about all the different varieties of Spanish there are. I’ll be learning about the some of the phonetics, the difference between castellano and español, and what is considered ‘correct’ Spanish. We’ll also be looking at the different dialects that Spain has. There are actually 4 official languages in Spain: Castellano, Gallego, Catalán, and Vasco. In addition to these though, there are other ways of speaking and different dialects, such as in Andalucía. For example, in Andalucía, we eat a lot of our words and sounds. The ‘s’ at the end of a word is not pronounced nor is the ‘d’ when there is an ending such as –ado, -ido, -ada. Entonces, someone with a very heavy Andalusian accent would pronounce the sentence “Que ha pasado en Granada?” (normally said like ‘K ah pah-sah-doh in Grah-nah-dah’) as this: Que ha pasao en Graná? (said like ‘Kha pah-saww in Grah-nah’ )

                I’m excited for the content of this class but I’m not too thrilled with the teacher. My friends last semester didn’t like him too much and my friend, Craighton, described him as an Evil Mr. Feeny (Boy Meets World reference, what up). He’s a smidge boring but since I’m really interested in the content, I’m hoping that helps me out a bit.

Cultura Islámica en España

                This class I’m very excited to learn about; it’s Islamic culture in Spain (or as our teacher later informed us, not technically in Spain because we’re studying the years 711 -1492 and back then, the country of Spain that we all know and love today had not yet been formally formed.) Something that drew me to Granada was the huge Arab and Moorish influence here. It was the last place from which the Moors were expelled. In many aspects of the architecture here (conveniently noticed more so after my Spanish Art class last semester) are very Islamic: the arch ways, the carvings, so many things. I don’t have an in depth knowledge about this whole time period which is why I’m happy to take this class. I’m fascinated with the fact that they were expelled in 1492 and in 2012, over 500 years later their cultural presence is still being felt. I’ll also be learning about the fundamentals of Islam like the Koran, the pillars of Islam and the Islamic way of life. After that, I’ll learn about the Arab expansion into the Iberia Peninsula. This class is also interesting to me because before I came to Spain, I wrote a scholarship essay for API having to do with my interest in the Islamic influence. To write this paper, I had to do some research into the history of it all and I learned some things that way such as a few of the pillars of Islam. But, like I said before, since my knowledge is not immense, I’m really excited  to learn more about it.  

As you can see, it pretty much looks like I am excited about every class I'm taking which might seem unlikely. Conveniently, it is not! I truly am excited about every single one of my classes (yes, even those at 8:30 in the morning when all I want to do is snooze). I hope you enjoyed learning a little about what I'm learning about :)

Os quiero

Hasta luego!

I love you all

Until next time!

Switzerland: the land of snow, sledging, and canyon jumping

Even though I left Philadelphia on the 20^th of January, I still have only had 3 days in Granada so far because I’ve just been traveling for a week in Switzerland! My classes at the CLM don’t start until the 6^th of February and my friend Kristen’s classes don’t start until the 8^th. We met last semester when she was studying in Granada with API as well. This semester she decided to move on over to Mallorca, a beautiful island off the coast of eastern Spain. I’m bummed she’s not in Granada but I can’t wait to visit her in Mallorca this spring!

                Our Switzerland journey began on Tuesday, January 24^th when I hopped on a bus to go up to Madrid to meet Kristen there because she had just flown in there from JFK. We flew into Geneva where we stayed for 2 nights. Geneva is in the bottom portion of Switzerland on the bottom part of Lake Geneva and  basically surrounded by France. Funny enough, Geneva therefore speaks French which neither Kristen nor I knew about. Even funnier enough, neither of us speak the French language. This so began the biggest language barrier trip ever, though absolutely 100% worth it. The first night we were both so tired that we crashed in the hostel until the next morning when we decided to go explore the Olde Town part of Geneva. In the bay of the Lake stands the highest fountain in the world, the Jet d'Eau. It seemed pretty random but it was really cool. Another thing Geneva is known for is their flower clock. It’s a clock right by the Jet d'Eau that is a clock on a little hill of grass, decorated with various designs of flowers at various points in the year. We then walked into Olde Town where St. Peter’s Cathedral is. This was one of my favorite types of cathedrals because it is very simple. The outside is cool but nothing too extravagant, though this is how a lot of the outer shells of cathedrals are designed. What I loved was that the inside was not decorated with gold and jewels on the walls out the wazoo. The inside had cool arches down the center aisle. Everything from afar looked just like gray stone but when you got close to the front most part, you could see that they had painted some of the stone. Some of the arches in the front had remnants of deep red and blue stripes and other designs. Very cool and interesting to think about many things that we know without color were once decorated and painted.

                After the Cathedral we continued to wander around Geneva and stumbled upon some parks. One of the parks had an ice rink and life sized chess and checker boards (Yes, I did feel like I was channeling Harry Potter). We played a game of life sized checkers and were on our way to continue exploring. We bought our first of many Swiss chocolate bars… Mmmmmmm. So so so good. We grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hostel for a quick siesta—it was our obligation to bring at least some of the Spanish lifestyle to Geneva. That night was the Barça v. Madrid game so we headed over to an Irish pub to watch the game. (They tied but because of the previous game, Barça won!!)

Life sized chess & checkers

                The next day, we packed up our stuff, checked out of the hostel, and decided to take a tour of the UN. Geneva, Switzerland was first home to the League of Nations. The League of Nations then dissolved (officially in 1946) and the United Nations, as of October of 1945, stands in its’ place. New York now holds the headquarters of the UN, which I was lucky enough to tour when I was a freshman in college but Geneva and the Palais des Nations is still the main European office and very historically relevant with its’ history with the League of Nations. The tour was very cool. There was a lot of awesome artwork throughout, much of it given by countries when they joined as a type of tradition. The UN is also situated across the street from the American Red Cross museum which you can also tour.

Broken Chair monument at the UN used to warn against the danger of land mines

                 We were then onto our next city in Suiza—Lausanne! Lausanne was just about 45 minutes from Geneva. It’s another city on Lake Geneva but further north. Lausanne is the Olympic Capital and the second largest city in Switzerland. Our first of two nights was spent going up to the cathedral which was pretty impressive. There was a room off to the side in the back where they had painted the walls and it was still intact. The stained glass in this cathedral, like the Cathedral we saw in Geneva, was incredible. Both Kristen and I agreed by the end of our trip that the Swiss really know how to do stained glass. It was just breathtaking and awesome to admire that kind of craft.

                One minor slash actually huge thing about Switzerland is that it is quite the expensive country. Somehow, though, the country has managed to be affordable for the people that are employed and paid in the Swiss Franc but for everyone else, it’s a bit ridiculous (we found out that someone working at McDonald’s has a minimum wage of 18 franc an hour! That’s almost 20 dollars!) Because of this, Kristen and I ate many things from the good ol’ supermarket. Many nights we would buy a loaf of bread, some tomatoes, and cheese and feast on them. That is what we had done this night but decided to grab a beer at a place called Les Brassiliers. It’s a brewery that was recommended by some websites I had checked out and it delivered with some very good beer. 

Our first dinner in Switzerland: Bread, tomatoes, chocolate, spinach that wasn't quite spinach, cheese that said 'Classic' on the package but smelled like unwashed feet, proscuitto that was almost as horrible as the foot cheese, red wine, and truffles that we later discovered had a label on the package that said 'mit alkohol'... well that's neither french, nor spanish, nor english.. 2 minutes and a Google Translate search later, we discovered that we had picked out the only chocolate in the store that had alcohol in it... needless to say, they were put into the category of the foot cheese and bad meat as the Fail part of this meal.

                Because of Lausanne being the Olympic Capital, it has an Olympic museum that is very impressive. It has a timeline from the start of the games to present day. They have all the torches from all of the Olympic Games as well as memorabilia from many of the athletes. The entry for us ended up being free because on the 29^th of January they closed down the museum for about 2-3 years to do renovations. Since they were closing, they were letting people in for free for the last week of them being open. I’m so happy that we went because it was SO cool. I’ve always been interested in the Games and to see all this information about it was awesome. I’m not quite sure why they’re doing renovations or what they’re doing renovations on because it all seemed pretty modern and was quite spectacular. There was one section that had 6 of some of the opening costumes from various Olympic Games. There was a big video presentation on it with footage from the original Ceremony. Talk about innovative designs. Those opening ceremonies are spec. tac. u. lar.

All of the Olympic torches

One of the historical pictures from the museum that I loved

            

   After the museum, we took a bus up to the Sauvabelin Tower that looks over all of Lausanne. It was designed to be a spiral in the middle (it looks like DNA). Because of this design, you then have two ways to go up/down. At first we weren’t aware of the fact that there would be another way down and we were amazed when we discovered it. 

From the bottom of the stairs in the Sauvabelin Tower

**Not my picture! I take no credit!** 

This is a picture of the tower from the outside. You can see and imagine that because of the way the wood slabs are set up, there are automatically 2 ways to climb up

                Our second night in Lausanne, we decided to cook our dinner at the kitchen in our hostel. We went over to the grocery store and picked up rice, Tikka Masala sauce, chicken, and veggies for an Indian feast. We met some people from Australia that just moved to Lausanne for a year as well as a group of girls from the US who are studying in Geneva for the semester. Now prepare yourself for an example of how small this world really is. In the group of girls who are studying in Geneva, one of them said she was from Philly (which, if you haven’t already discovered, almost always means you are not actually from Philadelphia but if you were to say your town name, people would just look at your weirdly, smile and nod while pretending they know where the heck that is). Anyways, I asked her from where since I am Philly as well and she said Upper Darby which is right next to my town of Media. That’s not even the small world part of it though; I asked her where she went to high school, etc. and she said that she would go to Media sometimes because that’s where her church is. The next obvious question is where said church is. She starts to explain it and the name of it sounded very familiar: Unitarian Universalist Church. As we continue talking, I realize that I know if because it is across the street from my church! So let’s recap, I’m sitting in a kitchen in a hostel in Lausanne, Switzerland talking to a girl who went to the church across the street from mine in my town of Media, Pennsylvania, USA. If you can imagine it, it gets even crazier when I ask her if she knows anyone from Media. Turns out I know all 3 people she had mentioned: Neil Cambell sat in front of me in geometry class sophomore year, Cat Ramirez sat at my lunch table all throughout high school and I had been over her house many a times, and Nick George who I have known since kindergarten and she went to church with him. My mind was blown by this point because it was so crazy to think that this girl knew these people from my life at home in Media. Small world, I know!

                This now brings us to Saturday morning when we departed to head to our 3^rd city, Interlaken. Interlaken is more north and further east than Lausanne. Interlaken, as Kristen so accurately described it, is the hub/home base of the skiers, snowboarders, sledgers, everyone. It’s at the bottom of the mountains so what most people do is stay in Interlaken and then head up to the mountains for the day. It also looks just like a postcard: mountains in the distance, typical Swiss houses/cottages in the forefront. The first night we hung out at the hostel we stayed and hung out with Petra, our roommate. The hostel was so cute and was full with students, mostly English speaking. For Sunday, we decided to go sledging in the Alps. I’m not sure why they call is sledging but it’s basically sledding on a toboggan. We rented our gear and headed to Grindelwald to take the bus up to the top of the mountain. There were a few different paths down that you could take and there was no time limit so our first trip down, we took our good ol’ time. It was very cloudy/foggy so we couldn’t see clearly to the other mountains which was unfortunate but the few that we had was still pure beauty.

My sledge and me somewhere in the Swiss Alps

Taking in the gorgeous view of what looked like those fake little Christmas trees dusted with fake snow but was in fact the completely real beauty of the snowy Alps

Kristen and me with our toboggans!

                We still had one more day in Interlaken after our sledging. We didn’t have any set time that we needed to be back in Geneva by so we decided to do something cool our last day in Interlaken. What might be cool you ask? Well, despite my being petrified about this, we decided to go Canyon Jumping! Yes, I said Canyon Jumping, not bungee jumping because, like its’ name explains, you simple jump off a canyon… 90 meters aka 300 feet above the ground… ground as in snowy rocks. But as you can see (or read rather), I am still alive! It was so much fun and probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done in my life. You jump off of a platform and you free fall for 4 whole seconds. Let me tell you, 4 seconds seems like nothing until you are falling through the air and forget that eventually a rope and your harness will catch you. The process of the fall went something like this: Stage1— you jump, you think “this is kind of fun and cool”. Stage 2—you are still falling but it’s still cool/fun. Starting to get a bit scarier. Stage 3—You completely forget that you are harnessed in and you think nothing is going to catch you. Otherwise known as ‘The Complete Freak Out’ Stage. Then comes Stage 4—after you scream bloody murder because you realize you are indeed, still falling, the rope and harness catch you! Well, what d’ya know. Finally Stage 5 – RELIEF! YOU’RE ALIVE!! . Yup, that pretty much sums it up. After jumping off of a canyon, we headed back to Interlaken to pack up our stuff and go over to Geneva for one last night before our flight to Madrid the next day.

The contract that we had to sign before jumping (and indeed, my mother did not know I was there... sorry, Mom!)

This is the bungee jumping platform taken from the cliff jumping platform (though not on the day we went because there was no trace of blue sky while we were in Switzerland)

Pre-jump! Practicing a 30cm for a 300ft.

Yours truly all harnessed up, ready to go!

All of us getting ready for the jump!

First one to go and nerves are a-flying

And we're about a half of a second into my terror jump

This is around Stage 3 (hence the eyes BULGING and screaming/terror filled face continuing)

Stage 5! I'm alive!!! Estoy viva!! Gracias a Dios

                Though we had our cities for this trip planned, we didn’t have many plans beyond that. With that being said, this trip turned out to be so amazing/fantastic/every adjective along these lines. There were so many happy surprises along the way and if you had asked me before I left if I was going to come back having gone sledding in the Swiss Alps and having gone canyon jumping, I probably would have just chuckled at you and said ‘Yeah, okay.’

Happy February everyone!