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Granada

a travel blog by Taryn Hawkins


I will spend about 4 months in Granada, Spain. I leave on August 28th and come back December 22nd.
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strange things

Granada, Spain


so i have had all of my class once. on monday and wednesday i have my spanish communications class which is basically just grammar and conversation, and i have a spanish culture and society class. on tuesday and thursday i have a translation class, literature and teaching english to spanish speakers.

for the most part classes went well. i think my hardest class will be the translation, but i will probably learn the most in that class. the culture class will probably be hard too just because my prof is kind of boring.
liz and i actually decided to drop the teaching class within the first five minutes of class...the first thing she said was this class is going to be taught in english, then we spend the rest of the two hours playing board games and throwing around a stuffed penguin playing getting to know you games. one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone treats me like im ten years younger than i am, and thats basically what she was doing. i think it would probably be an interesting class for people who want to teach, but just not for me...and the lady snapped at me when she put a board game in front of us that on each square had questions like 'what is your favorite book' 'what are you good at' 'what is your favorite color' and i asked her if we were supposed to play in english or spanish...i was just taken aback that an advanced level class would be taught completely in english.

so strange things...
i've caught myself thinking in spanish on several occasions,
i tend to not remember words in english...i find myself searching through my english vocabulary for synonyms of words i can't remember, and after a conversation with someone, i have to ask myself if they were speaking to me in english or spanish because i fully understand what they are saying...yay
and while we were in italy, all of us instinctively started speaking spanish to the people we met..which suprisingly worked...i had at least three conversations with italians...them speaking italian and me speaking spanish.

best day ever: i got back from ITALY and i had two letters from friends in morris, and a package from my family that was so big that i had to go to the post office to get it, then the next day i had two more letters from friends in morris!! :D

liz, morgan, and i were going to go to madrid again this weekend but decided we were way too exhausted, so we have a four day weekend here in granada, then in two weekends we are going to sevilla, corodoba, and gibralter, then the weekend after that is dublin. then we go to morrocco at the end of november, and then we are going to paris at the beginning of december for liz's birthday! when we get back from paris theres a week and a half left.


permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 8, 2009 from Granada, Spain
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say whattt??

Granada, Spain


so a few things i forgot in my last post..

the airports. you would not believe the airports. we seriously walked right through customs on our way there and back, no one asked any questions at all. sad though because we didnt get a stamp in our passport :(

also security...it was very strange...so much more relaxed than in the states. coming back the thing beeped when i walked through and the lady looked at me and patted down my legs then let me through...and you dont have to take off sweatshirts or shoes...kind of scary

and we didnt walk straight on to the planes at all. we had to take a shuttle from the airport to the plane, in one case it was probably about a three minute walk that they drove us.

okay finally the accent here. i know i've talked about it before, but it is becoming much more obvious that i am going to come back with a disgusting southern Spain accent. all of my proffesors have a very thick accent too. when i first got here i would say Gracias...and now, all of us say gratheeahh. nice lisp goin on. people in my spanish classes are going to think im so weird speaking with a lisp and dropping all the endings of my words.
ok thats all

permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 9, 2009 from Granada, Spain
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playa

Nerja, Spain


we went to the beach again yesterday. we've been having really nice weather which we're told is uncommon for this time of year. we had quite the adventure coming back. the city bus driver kind of blew up on us and we had no idea what he was saying so we just got off. ha. it was the last stop apparently, but he didn't stop at our stop...bleh
today is a holiday in Spain, i'm not sure exactly what the holiday is, but we don't have class and just about everything is closed.

somehow i got very sick overnight, probably from the heat yesterday, but it's times like this where i just want to be home the most!! :(
but how can i complain...

permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 12, 2009 from Nerja, Spain
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language barriers?

Granada, Spain


so when i first got here, i needed to get some shampoo and conditioner. well, when we were in florence, i realized that indeed i got shampoo..and another bottle of shampoo. oops! for about ten weeks i have been using two shampoos! don't worry, i still use them both.

that same shopping trip, i needed body wash. well yesterday i realized that my body wash is for "el hombre", glad i've been smelling like man for two months.

the day i got my package from my family, i was with some friends and we sat on a bench on the corner to snack on my goodies. well about five minutes into it, a women comes up, leaned over, and told me she wants my candy. i just looked at her, stunned, and she said give it to me! so i gave her a reeses. then she looks at me and says, i want two. HA, this women just stole two of my reeses! and less than 5 minutes later, another woman comes up and does the same thing!! before i had a chance to give her some, one of the girls i was with yelled NO, GO AWAY, and the poor old woman wobbled away. que triste.

permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 12, 2009 from Granada, Spain
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intercambio

Granada, Spain


so an intercambio is a person you pair up with that speaks the language you want to learn. so tonight we went for tapas with a group of intercambios that AIFS set up. i was kind of skeptical because most people tend to use the intercambio thing as like..a dating service.
in the CLM, the place i take my classes, anyone can go sign up for an intercambio. funny thing, you have to put your name, age, and picture in it. so there were a couple of girls who were telling me they went to sign up for an intercambio and they just looked for the guys within a certain age range and then of course had to make sure they looked good too.
so anyway we go to this intercambio, which is 7 american students, and well..4 spanish guys. HA.
it ended up going better than i thought it would. i was very nervous and didnt really get to talk too much until towards the end. we sat every other and the guy i was next to told me he was really good at English, but only really wanted to speak English. towards the end i was speaking spanish to someone else and he was speaking English. very strange at first, but it eventually worked out.

after three days of being miserably sick, i'm feeling a lot better, but still not fantastic. but we were told that at this exact time every semester the students start to get sick like this. when i left the office this morning my resident directer said, 3 down 47 to go, ha so that made me feel a little better...

permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 13, 2009 from Granada, Spain
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first hostel experience

Lisbon, Portugal


when i decided to come to europe i had a few places in mind that i would have liked to go to. portugal was not one of them...a group of people were going and it was very inexpensive so i decided to go. it was amazing. lisbon is beautiful and very clean. our hostel was in a great location, right near the water. we took a ferry and saw the bellem tower and the cristo statue. the weather was great too.
so i had no idea what to expect from a hostel...but we lucked out. our hostel i would go as far as to say it was just as great as hotels ive stayed in. the people who worked there were very friendly and very intelligent, there was free wifi and computers to use, cable and flat screen tv, free internet, and free use of the blankets and sheets. ha, ive heard thats quite rare when it comes to hostels. there was also a kitchen so we cooked a wonderful meal one night. we had pasta with homemade tomato sauce. yum so delicious.
we spent a lot of time just walking around the city. there was so much to see..
i think the best part of my hostel experience was the people i met. the first day we were there we met two guys from australia. they have been traveling for a month and have quite a bit of traveling left to do. just for fun. but they were very friendly and we ended up hanging out with them the whole time we were there. they went out to lunch with us the day we left and it was so sad to say goodbye! in three days we felt like we've known them forever and yet we will never see them again...
we also met some people from spain, which was wonderful to be able to speak spanish! someone from Belgium, who says they dont really eat that many waffles in Belgium, but french fries originated there :p and some girls from france who were friendly as well. and someone from arizona who was just finishing up his world traveling adventure.
it was great they had a huge room where at night everyone just hung out and got to know each other. they also sold one euro beers..liz, morgan, and i made a toast to maddy on the she got out of the hospital :D i have a picture but well.. my camera is broken again.
ps-if you have facebook and were not friends you should find me..its much easier for me to put pictures on facebook than it is to put them on here... i will be buying a new camera before we leave for gibralter this weekend.


permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 21, 2009 from Lisbon, Portugal
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day trip

Sintra, Portugal


this is mostly for the use of the map again, but one of the days in portugal we took a day trip to Sintra. we walked around and saw castles. we walked up this really windy road to get to a place with a great view of the city. there a guy who works at a store we went into told us about this great pastry place and the two pastries portugal is known for, which were delicious! and he also told us that Sintra is the most populated city in portugal. before we left we ate at pizza hut :)

permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 21, 2009 from Sintra, Portugal
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MONOS

Gibraltar, Gibraltar


so i still am not 100% sure what gibralter is..but we were there. i know its part of the UK, but thats it. slash..according to this website it is also a city...? we drove up to the border than crossed on foot. a lot of the hotels in gibralter are built in the water...it reminded me a little of venice, but not really
so everyone there spoke English and spanish, but they used the gibralter pound, which is different than the English pound...we could use euros there, but we got gibralter pounds back.
gibralter is 6 square Miles...very tiny. its kind of hard to explain.
theres what the call 'the rock' which ive been trying to get the picture on here but its not working. its basically a giant rock, and when we went to the top of it we got to go in these caves that were HUGE and so so so cool.
and the BEST PART of the whole weekend slash my whole love was this..

SO cool. i got to hang out with monkeys...spectacular.

other than that we just toured the city..one of my friends got hit by a moto :( a group of a bout 5 of us were crossing the street and this girl on a moto swerved to miss a car and hit debbie instead. shes fine now but she had to go to the hospital in an ambulance and ah it was very scary...




permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 23, 2009 from Gibraltar, Gibraltar
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these boots were made for walkin

Sevilla, Spain


on saturday we went to Sevilla. i LOVED Sevilla. its about twice the size of granada and there are tons of people and buildings and traffic, and yet it was quiet and chill. it was perfect.
we did a tour for about two hours and then from there on out we were on our own. a group of 8 of us walked around all day, we did the math and figured we walked at very least 27 Miles on saturday. HA.
we also went on a paddle boat thing where you pedal on the gudavivir river which was so fun! we had very nice weather when we were there too. we had lunch at dominoes..ha we've kind of gotten into a pattern of eating american food whenever we're not in granada. then we just did some shopping and explored the city. a bunch of people went to the fubol game saturday night which it seems like they had fun, they tied 0-0. it would have been quite expensive for me to go slash the seats were in the boonies too. i feel like im forgetting a lot so if i remember later ill have to write again..


permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 24, 2009 from Sevilla, Spain
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another cathedral

Cordoba, Spain


maybe it was because it was the end of our trip and everyone was tired and ready to sleep, but i didnt really like cordoba. it was pretty small and we just had a tour of the city and the cathedral...tours are nice sometimes, but we have toured SO MANY CATHEDRALS and they are all. the. same. and our tour guide didnt seem to thrilled to be doing his job either so im sure that played into it as well.
and we shamelessly ate burger king for lunch...


permalink written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 25, 2009 from Cordoba, Spain
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