Inauguration Madness

First of all, Happy Birthday to my aunt Jenny :-) Now today's blog!

Spain is going CRAZY with the inauguration today. So many people have been talking to us about Obama and congratulating us on our new president. We went to an Irish pub called Hannigans and Sons to watch the speech (the only English version available in Granada) and it was so crowded that a lot of us had to stand outside in the hail to listen... so crazy! The bar was PACKED and was decorated with posters and balloons. My favorite part was definitely the Irish and Spanish bartenders sporting "Team USA" doo-rags. It was pretty overwhelming to see what a response the inauguration elicited around the world, and that's coming from little miss "John-McCain-is-my-homeboy". And I ran into my friend Gina who goes to ISU at Hannigans! It was so good to see her!

After Hannigans a lot of us went out for tapas to the same place we went the first night we were here (I still don't know the name of it, but they give the best tapas by far!). We then decided that we should go to the free salsa/merengue class that the school offered. I'll wait while everyone has a good laugh at the idea of me salsa dancing. I'm very coordinated. So we went to the class and had a lot of fun-- I won't be signing up for the full 8-week course due to my extreme lack of coordination and my painfully awkward dance moves, but it was definitely fun to try!

I also signed up for a gym membership this morning! I knew I wanted to when I got here, and I was able to find a gym pretty close to my house with a good 3-month rate (and they give discounts for CEGRI students!). I'm excited to try it out tomorrow! The guy helping me sign up was very patient, which I really appreciated. There's a fingerprint recognition system to get into the gym, and I couldn't figure it out for the life of me! I've got it down now, though, I think :-) I'm excited to try some group classes in Spanish!

Another funny part of today was when it started HAILING around 5:30pm. Now, remember how I said it never rains in Granada? Well it never EVER hails here. People were looking around like aliens were invading the city. It was pretty funny to watch everyone's reaction. My favorites were the little kids yelling "nieve! nieve!" (it's snowing! it's snowing!)

Tomorrow I think I'm going to look into volunteering at an elementary school in Granada with Julia and Kathy. It should be pretty interesting! I figure I want to squeeze as much language practice in as I can and absorb as much of the culture as I can and this would be a great way to do it.