Finalmente, estoy en Granada!

Hola todos! It is now my 4th day in Spain and I apologize for not blogging yet but it has been SUPER busy here. Pues, this post will be quite long so I can fill you in on my adventures so far!

My flight into Madrid went very smoothly. No exciting news (which, when dealing with airports, is always the best). I knew 2 other girls who were on my flight so I met up with them as soon as we got off of the plane and we went through customs together. Then, we found 3 more people from API and so we all got together to wait for Curra and Lydia in the airport. From there we picked up some more people and went back to the hotel. The weather was (and has been since we arrived) absolutely gorgeous... sunny, breezy, cloudless aka perfection. We then spent 3 days in Madrid. On Sunday, we went to El Museo del Prado and saw some awesome artwork from Velazquez, El Greco, y otras. We also went to El Palacio Real y dios mio (oh my god) it was incredible. There palace has 2800 rooms and we saw about 15 of them that were absolutely breathtaking. So much gold and silk and silver everywhere.

Afterwards, we had a meeting with all the students for API and we went over stuff about Granada. During the meeting, there was a mini Spanish Revolution! There is stuff going on with the gobierno and there were loads of people protesting with signs and stuff. Nothing violent, so it was very cool to watch. That night, myself and 4 other girls went to a restaurant called La Bodega in Madrid where we ended up staying for 3 hours. We had been walking around for a long while so when we stumbled on this place, I was ecstatic and it turned out being awesome. We met and talked with the waitresses and danced, sang karaoke, laughed, met some Spanish people and from French people.

Despues (after) (also, I'm already struggling with separating English and Spanish so I will be putting in a few Spanish words every once and a while :)  ), on Monday, our API group went to Toledo. Fue increible! (it was incredible!) It felt as if the town was as if we had gone back in time. It was beautiful but very slow and definitely different pace of town. In Toledo, Marcela (my roommate), Craighton, Adam, Parker, Lorelyn, Kat, and I went to a little restaurant for lunch. We got a Menu which is sometime that is only for lunch where you pay something like 7-10 euro and chose 1 entree from one list and a 2nd entree from a different list and also get a drink and postre (dessert). The gazpacho that I got there was very good.

Vale, on Tuesday we left for Granada! Primero (first), we went to El Escorial which is a monastery where the King would go during the summer months to be a monk. After seeing the Palacio Real, the contrast between the two was astounding. The rooms in the monastery were very plain and simple as opposed to the extravagance that the Palacio had. The only two places that had the non-plain and simple was underground in a room where they house all of the bones of the previous kings and queens (and the mothers/fathers to the children they had, so not necessarily the most recent wife or husband). This place was, simply put, breathtaking. It was all granite and marble, deep green and cream colors with gold everywhere. There are currently 3 empty tombs because they must wait until the bodies of the person have decomposed because they only put the bones inside of the tombs. There are rooms right before the entrance of the tomb room where there are currently 2 bodies ( I think) in the 'rotting rooms' waiting to be done decomposing. The other place that was just as breath-taking, if not more so was the church area. I felt like I was an intruder, it was so big. I also felt like an ant for the same reason. It was phenomenal. The paintings that were housed in there were indescribable.

Well, that pretty much wraps up my first couple of days here! I am now in Granada (today was our first full day) and I am in love with the town. My host mom is adorable and has her moments where she reminds me of my mom and grandad (all good things, grandad and mom!). We live right next to the river and have a very spacious room that includes a desk for me and my roommate, a bookcase for each of us, 4 drawers for each of us, a shelf for each for shoes, and a big dresser where we can hang all of our things. We took a tour of Granada today with Curra (our program director) and visited both buildings of the Centro de Lenguas Modernas and also the API office. We then had a meeting to get our student ID cards and also fill out some paperwork -- always fun, even in Spain. My host mother then made us almuerzo(lunch) for when we got back and it was delicious. It was called arroz cubano and had  rice and garlic. Then there was a tomato, ham, onion, and garlic sauce on top. Mmm mmm mmm. Then we also had pan (bread), salad with a fried egg, and the best watermelon I have probably ever tasted as our dessert.

Today in Granada, there are rebajas (sales) that are so good. For example, almost every store has the cutest shoes selling for only 5 euro. Pues, I'm off to go shopping! Today is the last day of the rebajas because tomorrow is the first of September. Tomorrow or even later tonight if I have time, I'll post some pictures on here from my trips for all of you to see!

Thanks so much for reading!! I'm missing everyone in the US but am so glad that I'm here. I've met some pretty cool people so far and I can't wait to meet more!

Love to all,

Katie

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I leave for Spain, tomorrow, it's only a day aaawaaayyyy!!!!

*see title

8 days

Topics of freaking out for today:

In 8 days I leave.

The countdown until when I leave is in single digits.

I can now, for the first time ever (well, okay I could have said it on Sunday too but, minor details) I can say that I leave next week.


What?!?!

Almost Forgot

Just an add on, talk about the best weekend ever that I just had. I got my final packet (see prev. post), got to pick up some awesome pottery I painted with my good friend from school and it turned out AWESOME (pictures may follow depending on when they get loaded onto my computer), I saw Taylor Swift live in concert (again, AWESOME), I got a music grant from my church, AND my godparents came over, who I haven't seen in ages and missed terribly, for a wonderful birthday dinner for my mom.

Awesome weekend.

Final Packet!

On Saturday, I received my final packet from API. This means I now know where I'm living! I also received our itinerary for our orientation in Madrid and found out that within my first week, I'm going to Madrid (obviously) but also on day trips to Toledo and El Escorial!

Back to this housing thing though. I'm so so so so pumped that I know where I'm living! The woman's full name is Maria Jose Romero Fernandez. She is retired and has 4 children, 1 of which I think might live there? Not sure, but I know the other 3 don't but visit her periodically throughout the week. She is retired and lives about 15-20 minutes walking from the University of Granada, where I'll be taking classes. From Google Earth, she looks about that amount of time from the Alhambra too. My roommates name is Marcela and we had already been chatting before we even found out we were roommates! We also just discovered that two other girls are living in our building as well: Kristen and Jiela. We live right next to a river/canal thing and the pictures from Google Earth look so pretty! I cannot wait until we are there and get to see it in person.


Only 17 more days now!! (and even more importantly, less than 13 more days of work left! Yay!!!!!)


Katie

say what?

Only 20 more days left until I leave?!?! Whoa would be the understatement of the year

A collective sigh of relief

Today marks the end of possibly the most stressful/emotional/worrysome two weeks of my almost 20 years on this earth. For the past two weeks, my parents and my life has been calls, faxes, e-mails, and messages galore to the US Department of State and our congressman's office which has been like trying to yell for help in a soundproof room.. seemingly useless.

Here's the scoop: I'm going for over 180 days, therefore I needed an FBI background check done. Check. Now, as of, oh, less than a year ago, we now have to get an apostille to attach to this said document. What is an apostille you ask? Honestly, I'm still not sure myself. I'm currently refering to it as the Holy Grail and that which has shaved 2 years off my lifespan. It is a yellow paper, groveled to my FBI record saying 'hague convention', signed by someone, and stamped by someone. What I've gotten from the things I've tried to read about it, it lets other countries in the Hague Convention not have to verify that document. Whatever, Hague Convention, you made my life more stressful. Any who, I sent off my FBI record to receive this important apostille in late May and just received it back on Friday. Fine, except they told me it would take 14 days and I had a deadline to make to get my visa to go to Spain to do all of this exploring, dreaming, and discovering. God bless my mother, who is a magician and saint in my eyes. She took the reigns of contacting and persistently pestering (rightfully so) the state department and our congressman's office. Finally, we got a call saying it had been shipped the 29th of June (which, we found out was a lie. It was sent on the 6th of July but I digress) and it has been received at the McMullen household.

Now it is off with a collection of other important documents to the API office so they can get my visa for me, god bless them. For the past two weeks, we have been looking at some alternative options in case we didn't get this apostille, all of which were less than ideal. I'm so happy that this has all worked out and I can do what I really want: the early start program + the academic year.

Now, the countdown happily continues!! 44 days! Honestly, it still doesn't feel like I'm going. That sounds dumb, but it's terribly true. I just can't believe that I get to go back over and for eight. whole. months. .... and I'm mildly freaking out a bit (but very very very excited. Odd mix of emotions over here) Now, off to eat and sleep early so I won't be a zombie at work tomorrow.



Katie