My Birthday Weekend

Alright, so my birthday was on Friday and I do not have classes on Fridays. It´s awesome how that works out. In the morning Brigitte, a friend from Central, and I went to the Huerta de Rasillo. It is a place for people with physical disabilities. We set up our Service Learning times, and hung out with the people for awhile. They were celebrating the festival in Cadiz. This festival is crazy. It is a week long, and people dress up in costumes. Pretty much is a massive costume party. Later that night, I got a call from one of my friends saying that they were outside my apartment with a present for me. I was thinking the worst, so I put some running shoes on just in case. I got down there and they made me a huge chocolate cake!! haha. (It´s half-gone already!!) This is pretty much the only sugar that I get here, unless I have hot-chocolate. Then a few of us went out for ice cream and then went salsa dancing. Our salsa dancing is stand right next to a good dancing couple and try and copy what they do. BUT they do it so fast that I lose track of where the arms and everything are supposed to go. If you are lucky, you will be asked to dance by the instructor, and he can make you look like you know what you are doing. It´s amazing!! haha.

The rest of the weekend was a blur. On Saturday, it was so hott!! (PS I am tanner already. Yes be jealous) I sat in the sun for four hours in the morning, and watched the Step practice of the group from church. The combination of a lot of sun and Spanish drained me. I took a three hour nap, then slept for 10hrs that night!!

February 20

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!

¡¡¡¡¡Feliz Cumpleaños a mi!!!!!

Sledding!!

So on Saturday I went sledding in the Sierra Nevada. It was set up for the youth in the church that I attend here. It took forever to got up to the slopes because there were so many people heading up there. It was so nice. We stepped off of the bus, and it was like 60 degrees. I brought way too much clothing for this trip!! A couple of us decided we were going to walk up to the sledding hill. Not joking, but I laid down in the snow, and tanned. It felt like I was at the beach. I had a t-shirt and thin pants on. It was crazy!! We got up there and we bought a little butt-sled. This sled is awesome. You sit on it and have to lift your feet up to go down!! At the bottom of the hill was a wall of snow to stop you. If you go over it, you run into cars. So you have to stop yourself. Then you walk back up, but you have to be careful, because there are people coming from every direction. You have to jump out of the way to not get hit. haha. It was amazing. I have so many bruises on my butt and back from that little sled!!

(PS. I have begun to put some pictures on my facebook. So you can look at those there. They are not all of them.)

The First Days of Classes

Alright...on Monday and Tuesday and just hung out in the city of Granada and did pretty much nothing. I caught up on emails. WOW!! Now I know why I check my email all of the time at school. I also ran. haha. I haven´t ran since I left the states. I am pretty sore.
--okay, so there is this cute park that is a couple of blocks from my house. I go and run around this park. It´s not very pretty right now, because there are no flowers, BUT it´s sufficient enough. Well, I don´t know if most of you know this, but I kind of don´t really like dogs. I mean they are fine if they mind their own business, but if those dogs bark. Yeah, I am out of there. Well, I was running, and this tiny little black dog starts chasing me. I mean he is barking, and jumping on my legs. I just stopped. I thought it was going to bite me. The owner was this little old man. He was laughing at me so hard, that he couldn´t call his dumb dog back to him. so yeah, even the tiny, black dogs are dangerous.--

On Wednesday I started my classes. LOVE them. My art history teacher made us sing a Spanish song on the first day of class. He is the best teacher so far. Here is my schedule¨:

Monday-Wednesday
8:30-10:00 Spain Business
10:00-11:30 Grammar
11:30-1:00 Islamic Culture in Spain
3:30-5:00 Oral and Writing

Tuesday-Thursday
11:30-1:00 Art History in Spain

Tutoring at 6 on Monday
Intercultural Relations at 2:30 on Monday
Granada Seminar at 7 on Monday
Phonetics at 5 on Wednesday

Then eventually I will have service learning on Tuesday and Thursday as well.

Nothing on Fridays!!!

Madrid-Dublin

Alright so last Saturday we went to Madrid.  When we got there we went to the Museu del Prado.  It was alright.  To be honest I'm not that interested in art.  BUT no worries, I will be taking a History of Art class.  fun, fun.  Then the rest of the day we walked around the town.  On Sunday we were supposed to go to another town, but due to snow it was cancelled.  We went to the worst museum ever.  It was being remodeled, so there were only like three exhibitions open.  Don't worry it was free. Pretty much hung out at our amazing hotel that we were staying in most of the day.  That night we went to the strangest theatre show ever.  One, it was in Spanish but it was so weird.  The short version is that there was the queen who stayed in her bed the entire time.  Her son wanted her dead so that he could become the next ruler.  He was married to an American women (lots of American jokes).  They had a daughter who was gothic.  She was so weird.  The queen had a helper lady who she ended up marrying in the end.  the helper had a son, who was actually the son of the queen's son.  The helpers son and the other daughter got married, but they were siblings.  Yeah. weird.  On Monday we went to the Royal Palace.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  The rest of the day, Tosha and I went to look for a hostel for that night.  We found an amazing little place for the two of us.  

Then on Tuesday we left for Dublin.  We arrived there, and the people are so nice.  I mean really nice.  Wow.  That night it snowed so we didn't do much.  The next day we toured the entire city of Dublin.  amazing.  My favorite thing that I saw was seeing a page of a Bible dating 150AD.  It was the oldest known until the found the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 60's.  It was so cool.  In our hostel which was amazing btw.  (If anyone goes to Dublin stay in Abrahamson house)  We had 3 french girls, 2 spanish girls, and a northern Ireland girl.  They were all very nice.  On Thursday we went on a bus tour to the country of Ireland, which was covered in snow.  But still everything was green.  That night we went to the airport,but all the flights were cancelled  due to the snow.  We slept in the airport that night.  We were there for almost 24hrs.  They don't have snowplows in Ireland.  We returned to Spain early bc it was supposedly worse in London.  It has been great though.  I am glad that we returned early.  

I Passed!!

Okay so the first two weeks of studying and taking Spanish classes paid off. I passed into the level that I wanted to be in. So now I am in the middle level, lengua y cultura, and I don´t have classes on Friday, I take two spanish classes and three other classes in spanish, I will get my art credit done here, and I have a week of vacation time right now.

Right now I am in Madrid, Spain on an excursion with our group. On Tuesday Tosha and I are going to be leaving Madrid for Dublin, Ireland and eventually work our way to Wales and Great Britain. I´ll be sure to tell you all about the adventure. I have a week and a half worth of clothes and toiletries, etc. in my little backpack. haha. It is going to be great. Please keep me in your prayers, as we brave the cold weather up north. It was freezing today here in Madrid. I think that it was about 38 and snowing. BRrrr. haha. hope that you all are enjoying your weather back home.

One Week

Okay, so it has been one week here in Granada, Spain. It is weird, but it feels like I have been here longer. The first test that we took last Monday was to decide what level of Spanish we were in for our two orientation weeks. Last week and this coming is completely orientation. I have not started my actual classes yet, and depending on what level I test into, determines when they will start. But that isn´t until February. For this first week of orientation we have been on a tour of downtown Granada, the Albaicin (the older part of Granada where the military section used to be and the parents of the king stayed to be well protected), Sacramonte (the church for the kings of Granada), and the Alahambra (the summer palace for the kings of Granada). Then we have a couple hours after the tours to eat, check mail, study, and get necesary tasks done. At 2:30 we start orientation classes. They are usually classes that we do as a group to get to know the city, the culture, what there is to do here, what is rude or not rude here, etc. At 4 our spanish review classes start and go until 7. After that the rest of the night we are free. I have gone out for tapas or shopped during this time. This is the perfect time to shop in Spain because they have set dates where in every store there are sales. They want to clean out all of their old stuff to make room for the new season. I go back to the apartment, which is only a 15 min. walk from the school, and eat at around 10. Then at 10:30 I meet friends somewhere to hang out. This has been what this first weeks was like.

My senora is older. Grandma age (for the US) She has four daughters and the two middle ones live with her. I would guess they are about upper 20´s lower 30´s. Her oldest daughter is married and has a son, who is studying to be a doctor. He said that after he is done with finals (which last a month here, so until the middle of February) he can be my intercambio. Where we talk in English for a half hour and Spanish the next. Then my senora has a youngest daughter, who lives farther away. She has a daughter, Candela, who is 1. They are staying at the apartment right now.

This last weekend I went to the church here, and it was amazing. I met people from all over the world. They are so nice and welcoming. They have a youth group which consists of youth ranging from 15-30. There are a lot of american students that attend there, and also south american immigrants. I didn´t get a lot out of the message, becasue it was all in spanish, but once a month they have a english sermon. Graciela, a girl that went to Central and who now lives here, is in the band at the church. She introduced us to everyone and took us to the best tapas bar in Granada. It was really good. And it never fails, in every country that I have been in they always are like what is your name. Brittney. Like Britney Spears. -- Everytime!! oh well, if that helps them pronounce my name. They can´t say it at all. And I had a lot of people ask me if I dyed my hair. haha. Blonde is not a normal hair color here.