A weekend in Granada

There is a national holiday in Spain two weekends before Christmas break starts and everyone has that Monday and Tuesday off of school or work (if your an English teacher you have off school AND work heh-heh). Spanards call these long weekends "puentes" which translates to "bridges"...I dunno. Anyways, some friends and I decided to make the trek to Granada for this weekend. Granada is a city in the mountains of Andalusia. Granada is well-known for being a young city because of its university and many people who study abroad in Spain end up here. Also, fun fact: Granada means pomegranate in Spanish. There is some mythical story that goes along with this about a princess that may or may not be true but I can't remember it sooooooooo, sorry! Either way, there is a lot of pomegranate decor around town and in a different season there would have been ripe pomegranates on a lot of the trees.

Granada is also a hippy-ish city. There are a lot of Rastas and alternative-looking folks. This probably has something to do with the liberal-student population. There are a lot of cool little hippy clothing and jewelry shops. Also, the Moroccan influence is strong here and there are a lot of food and souvenir shops of the like. This all contributes to the city's cool eccentric feel.



I really enjoyed Granada for all of the reasons above and because it seemed familiar in some ways.  It is a bigger, more crowded city than Huelva, which reminded me of auxiliary neighborhoods of NYC. Also, all the Christmas lights were up in the streets which gave me the warm-and-fuzzies of course. Spain likes the decorative light fixtures that hang above the streets. As far as I can tell there aren't so many string lights. Also, because of Granada's location, there are a lot of trees around and throughout the city. I didn't realize I missed seeing trees that weren't palm trees until this. It was great to see trees whose leaves had changed colors like in PA, since in Huelva there really is no fall. Also, the narrow cobblestone streets with the building walls closely crowded along reminded of Cuzco, Peru. Which I guess is no surprise since most of that architecture got there from the Spanish.



We walked around the city doing some shopping at the holiday booths and went out to some bars for tapas and beers at night. (In Granada, you get a free tapa with every drink!) We had to bundle because in Granada, it gets really freakin' cold at night! Most Spanish houses don't have heating so when we stayed with a friend in Granada in her big Spanish house, we were sleeping under many layers--it was frigid. In general, the city is beautiful but I definitely need to explore it more since we actually spent a lot of time outside of the city at the Alhambra and hiking (to be explained in another post).

Thanksgiving in Spain

As you know, Spain does not celebrate Thanksgiving. In a couple of classes at the high school I work at in Lepe I gave a little presentation about Thanksgiving. I talked and showed pictures about the fall weather in Pennsylvania, how the leaves change and what frost is like. I talked about football and the Macy's day parade, and of course about all of the food. Lastly, I recapped the main ideas about Thanksgiving, that is: peace, giving thanks and spending time with loved ones. I lead one activity in which I asked the students what they would have at their ideal Thanksgiving feast. For the second activity I asked the class what things they were thankful. The first three answers to this question were "dinero," "jamón"(ham) and "cars!" Yeeeeah..

This Thanksgiving was the first that I spent abroad and without my family. So, I was really happy when my two good friends, Jess and Jane, that live in the apartment above me hosted a big Thanksgiving dinner. Jess and Jane cooked the turkey and everyone brought a dish to share. I made pumpkin pies for the first time in my life and they turned out pretty damn good, if a little burnt, if I do say so myself. A shout out goes to Alex for bringing me pumpkin puré when he came to visit, because it is impossible to find here. There was about 20 or so of us in my friends apartment. Our Spanish, Italian and UK friends

got to benefit from our American and Canadian holiday. It was a good night of excessive food and drinks as it should be..

Setting our sights on the Mediterranean

From the first moment I laid eyes on the Mediterranean, I knew an indelible bond had been formed. I would always be drawn to this sea, always want its waves to crash around me, always want to bask in its wondrous sun beams.... just kidding. I first laid eyes on the Mediterranean through a veil of cold sideways rain. The wind was heartlessly wrecking our 5-euro-newspaper-stand umbrellas and eventually I gave up holding one at all. Huddled in our wet coats and gloves, Alex and I stood by the water, the sea and the sky both wearing similar shades of grey. The city of Barcelona stretches right up to the waters, and I am sure it is packed with beautiful people and sunshine in more favorable conditions.


Actually, wind swept through our coats and rain soaked our heads and feet the entirety of the weekend we spent in Barcelona. It made seeing and appreciating the city difficult because we were constantly shivering and stomping around in soggy shoes, seeking shelter in cafes and bars for 3 hour long 'bites to eat.' Although, during one of these lunches we enjoyed excellent paella, which Barcelona is famous for. I had fideua, a Barcelonian(?) version of paella; instead of rice it has thin noodles. I still think about how delicious this was from time to time.

We stole away from the rain in the Picasso Muesum, which was really great. It has hundreds of Picassos (if not more?). I thought it was really interesting to see his paintings from when he was still young and attending school. For example there were some self-portraits from when he was 11. They are stunning realist portraits--so different from the famous quirky, abstract Picassos we all know too well. The museum did a great job of showing how dynamic Picasso's career was;
from his younger realist works, to his blue period, to his bright, abstract paintings (including his forty some renditions of Velásquez's 'Las Meninas'). My favorite part of the museum was actually works done, not by Picasso, but by a photographer friend of his. This photographer gave the museum hundreds of black and whites he had taken of Picasso, his home, and Jacqueline, his second wife. These photos gave a window into Picasso's home life and intimacy with Jacqueline. It was cool to see his goofy smile candidly captured or a photo of him in his later years, shirtless, chubby stomach pushed forward as he slumps in front of a marked-up canvas. I liked seeing this side of him, rather than the way we are sometimes taught about artists, that is, as if they are aloof and untouchable people.

We also visited the History of the City museum which is an archaeologist's wonderland. Barcelona was first inhabited by Ibericos nativos and then it became a Roman city. The museum has countless artifacts from these periods. The best part is that they had excavated under the building that the museum is housed in, uncovering a portion of this old Roman city. You can walk through reading plaques about what different walls and rooms/buildings were. Good stuff.

Flamenco en Sevilla

Apparently, flamenco originated in Andalusia. It is extremely popular here. When I asked students their favorite hobbies at my school in Lepe, a large number of the girls (ranging from ages 11-16) said dancing, and more specifically flamenco dancing. It is something that a lot of kids learn here starting at a very young age. There are a few flamenco hubs in Huelva. I have been to a few bars where a flamenco show was happening, sometimes a scheduled band and other times a few men and women taking turns strumming the guitar and singing while friends clapped along. The dance is more complicated than it looks at first, because to the untrained eye it initially looks like some twisting of the wrists and lifting of the arms. However, there is organized steps as well, often hidden under the long skirts traditional flamenco performers wear. There is also different types of clapping that go along with the different flamenco songs. Audience members who know the clap participate. I, for one, watch and admire.

Sevilla is known for its flamenco. You can see it everywhere when you go there--there are posters for sale, sandwich boards advertising "the best flamenco show in town," flamenco music in bars and cafes and flamenco street performers. Alex and I stopped in Sevilla for a night before heading off to Barcelona a few weeks ago. We left the center of the city, crossing the bridge to see a flamenco show that a friend recommended. Both of us ended up being so glad we took her advice.

The show was wonderful. It was in a very "Spanish" bar--AKA I think we were the only non-Spaniards there, which was all the better in my opinion. The bar was decorated with the traditional ceramic plates and bowls hanging on the walls as well as pictures of saints and the regalia of decorated flamenco performers of the past in glass-doored wooden cabinets. There were about 40 or so straight backed wooden chairs huddled in a semi-circle around the all male band of singers, a guitarist and a drummer. We had to straddle and climb over other guests to squeeze into two seats somewhere in the crowd. The place was packed and the drinks were passed. (By the way American bartenders got nothing on the Spanish, the fill the class at least 1/3 or more of the way with the liquor before pouring in the mixer). The band was great and we were really enjoying ourselves. As they wanted, various people got up and danced flamenco in front of the band. One man in the band, referred to by our waitress as "el Gordo" was clearly the alpha singer. He stood while the band played for him and sang in the dramatic way of flamenco, looking as if he was pleading to some long lost lover. (If my spanish were better, I could tell you whether this was actually the case or not).

The true intricacy of the dance makes itself evident when you get the chance to see a partner dance. The organization of it all comes out here. The couple, usually a man and a woman, dance facing each other while a band plays. Every so often in the dance, and I not knowing much about flamenco can't tell you when it is, the couple swings around each other and switches sides. There is an exact timing for this, and if one didn't know the timing the two would certainly collide. But in all of the flamenco that I have seen, the timing has been precise, and the couple dips around each other with ease and expertise. With each verse the dancing finishes with the woman usually turning into the mans arms, her back to his chest and she flings her outside arm above her head, bent at the elbow in a dramatic pose. What I found most striking about the dance is how the couple barely touches each other, yet the level of intimacy is heightened even so. Even as they dip past each other to switch sides there is a small distance between their bodies. I kept on thinking of it as marble painting. Have you ever used the marble paints in art class where you had different colors that, because of something in their oily consistency, they never mixed but swirled around each other in a interesting design? Well, this is what the dance looked like to me--and I loved it!

The strangest cathedral I have ever seen

Alex and I went on an excursion to Barcelona last weekend and of course we went to Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral that Antoni Gaudí designed. The cathedral is completely unique, and for the most part not at all what you expect churches to look like. The cathedral is also famously known as the cathedral that is never finished. I am not sure when the construction of Sagrada Familia began, but Gaudí died in 1926, and it is still being worked on today.

One facade of the cathedral is a strange mix of modern and earthy. Large sculptures of figures and events surrounding Jesus's suffering and death cover the large entrance area. These sculptures bring in the modern element--the are composed of smooth simple lines and the figures turn out to be rather crystalline. The supports around the entrances look like tree roots, or something more maluable-like. Maybe like in the pizza commercials when they lift a piece from the pie and the cheese stretches all gooey and such--or maybe that is a really stupid comparison. haha see for yourself.

The inside is the kicker. That's when the size of place hits you. The pillars and buttresses were sculpted to look like tree trunks and branches. The ceiling is covered in repeated, concave spiked circles to imitate a canopy of leaves. There are glowing orbs, looking like spores, in the tree pillars. It gives the place an almost alien feel. It's like a forest, but on another planet. Gaudí modeled his architecture from nature, and even noted the plant-life on the land before the construction of the cathedral and incorporated these elements into the building.

The other outside of the cathedral is astonishingly ornate. There are figures from Christ's life tucked in little decorated alcoves and arches on arches on more niches on those arches. It's definitely the strangest cathedral I have ever seen. It is a refreshing deviation from the normal gothic style. See it if you can.

Real Alcázar

I made another trip to Sevilla with Alex last Thursday-Friday. This time we went to visit the Real Alcázar, one of the oldest royal palaces in the world and originally a Moorish fort. The Almohades first built the palace near the end of the 11th century. It is simply incredible. We spend about 3 hours in the palace, but realistically, could have spent most of the day there.

It is huuuuge, for one. I had no idea about it's mammoth size until we were actually walking through, hallways sprung from hallways and rooms from those hallways and courtyards from those rooms and so on. The architecture is one of my favorite styles-it's mudéjar, a type of Iberian architecture. Basically it's got numerous columns and arches, the floors, doors, walls, arches and ceilings are covered in intricate carved or plaster designs that can make you dizzy if you stare at them too long. Which is actually kind of the point I think. I remember learning in one of my classes at the university that the typical intricate line designs of architecture associated with Islamic buildings was supposed to represent the complexity and beauty of God. The complicated designs were supposed to help you get lost, or meditate on the glory of God. Hmm, I can't remember exactly, but sounds good, doesn't it?

I think my favorite part of Real Alcázar was the gardens. It has huge walled-in outside gardens with fountains, stylized hedges, flowers, winding walkways, different trees, lawns, benches and small, intricately-decorated buildings scattered throughout. The different sections and gardens have their own names. Peacocks and other birds wander about. Also, there was a hedge maze--a hedge maze!! So cool. If we had planned the day better we could have walked around in the gardens for hours and taken a nap in one of the lawns.

Living near the beach

Huelva is not exactly on the beach, but it is close to many. In fact, from my piso's balcón, I can see the high rises of the beach condos at Punta Umbría. Punta Umbría is the most popular/commercial beach around here. Punta is only about a 20-25 minute bus ride from here. I have heard great things about several other less-traveled beaches in the area, but have admittedly only been to Punta.

For someone who has lived in land-locked Western Pennsylvania all her life, living this close to beaches was a big perk (and one of the original reasons why I put Andalusia as my preference when applying for this program). The last time I went on the trip to the beach was with Alex (friend from the US) a week and a half ago! So it was still nice enough out to go to the beach in November, which is fun to brag about. Admittedly, we ditched all crazy ideas about swimming when our toes touched the freezing water for the first time that day, but we still had a great time enjoying the sun and peace. I have gone swimming several times before then, however, and loved it. We are still on the Atlantic side over here. We play beach volleyball and always end up stopping for tapas at the cafe that is on the beach.

Punta is great for sea shells and coral. I have probably taken over a hundred home with me. My apartmentmates don't mind, as our apartment is still pretty empty, and the seashells are great poor people decorations.