Córdoba

The intricacies of the ceiling of the mesquita catedral

You know you're a study abroad student when you have 35,395,295 pictures of ceilings and continue to take more because they're all really cool

Interior of the mesquita catedral.... the red is brick and the white is stone

Yup, more pictures of ceilings!

Columbus getting permission to discover us

Gorgeous. In the gardens of the Alcazar

I love this one

Orange and lemon trees

Gardens of the Alcazar

Alcazar from the garden

So yesterday we had our school sponsored day trip to Córdoba. It was a really cool excursion but very exhausting!

I met Breezy at the juice bar (our normal meeting place) at 7:15am to get to the Palacio de Congresos on time to catch the bus. The ride was about two and a half hours long and the craziest bus ride EVER. We were going through curves in the road so fast and I think I legitimately felt the bus go on two wheels at some points. We were all bracing ourselves and trying not to freak out! The twisty ride also led to the most intense game of "luggage" the world has ever seen. (For those who have never played, luggage is when everyone in a car-- best if it's the backseat of a station wagon on the way home from some sort of extracurricular activity-- leans to one side when making a turn and screams "LUGGAGE!!" at the top of their lungs). At one point, I was trying to sleep and had my iPod on my lap and it went flying across the bus so far that I had to stand up and take a few steps to get it. We made it there and back safely though, thank God!

When we got to Córdoba, we started out by touring the Alcazar de los reyes católicas, or the Castle of the Catholic Kings. It was pretty intense and had the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. It was such a gorgeous day and it felt great just to walk around and enjoy it. This castle is also where Christopher Columbus met with the Spanish king and queen to get permission for the voyage that would lead to the discover of America (fun fact!). 

After touring the Alcazar, we walked around the Jewish quarter of Córdoba. It was really interesting to see because the city has been either EXTREMELY Muslim or EXTREMELY Catholic for its entire history, so this little section is completely different than the rest of the city. We visited an old synagogue and walked around some of the patios of the homes.

Then, it was everyone's favorite time... boc time. Boc is our abbrev for bocadillo, which means sandwich. (I abbrev(iate) all the time in English, so it just makes sense to do it here, too. But instead of obvi meaning obviously or def meaning definitely, bocadillo becomes boc and bufanda (scarf) becomes buf). So we ate our bocs on the patio of the mesquita catedral (mosque cathedral) and then had two hours to walk around and explore. Breezy and I did some good exploration and saw a lot of the city in that time. We also got what was, no joke, the best ice cream of our lives. It was phenomenal and exactly what we needed on that 80 degree and sunny day (I know, it's tough! :-) )

After our break, we took a tour of the mesquita catedral. It was absolutely ENORMOUS. The architecture was incredible and the intricacies of everything were amazing. It was really cool, too, because it started out as a mosque years and years ago and then was converted into a cathedral when the Catholic reconquista began. 

After that tour, we just got on the bus and headed back to Granada. Everyone was exhausted by the time we got back! It was a nice little excursion but it was definitely nice to crash when I got back!

OHHHHHHHH We're Halfway There

Number of times I have played "Livin' on a Prayer" today: four.

Today marks my halfway point of study abroad. Holy. Moly.

It's really weird, because in some ways I feel like this just snuck up on me and I can't possibly be halfway done already, and in some ways I feel like I've been here foreeeeeever and can't possibly be only halfway done. I've learned so much about the language and the culture of this gorgeous, peculiar, completely foreign, fun, sometimes silly city since getting here, and I know I still have a lot more to learn.

I was trying to explain to people today that I'm so glad that the end is starting to be in sight, and it's not because I'm miserable here by any stretch of the imagination. It still absolutely sucks being away from everyone I love and being away from familiarity and the luxuries of America, but I have adjusted pretty well and am doing okay living here. The reason that I'm so glad that the end is in sight is because I feel like I can start to focus more on the great things about Europe than on the things I miss back home because those things will be in sight. It won't be like the first week when I had to wait four months to see my mom and to go to a restaurant with free refills of Diet Coke and take a hot shower for as long as I wanted. I will be so excited that my home is in sight that everything will just be that much better and that much more enjoyable. This might sound depressing, but I really don't mean it to!

For a "deep thought with Sally" moment, I just have to comment on the feelings of study abroad students. Study abroad is a lot harder than people think it is. The vast majority of the kids on my program came in the program SO excited about study abroad, having to have wanted to do it forever, so excited to travel and to live in a foreign country and all of that good stuff. That was one of the hardest things for me at the beginning. I did NOT want to be in Granada at the beginning and was so homesick and just was having a really tough time. I've gone steadily up since then. There are good days and bad days, but on the whole I've been doing better and better as time has gone on. The vast majority of the kids, though, are starting to get out of the honeymoon phase and are missing home like crazy. What interests me, though, is that most people don't really talk about it. People feel like they have to be like "oh my gosh this is GREAT! This is the best thing EVER, I never want to LEAVE!" It's almost like there's a stigma attached to admitting homesickness. My advice to future study abroad students is to allow yourself to feel how you feel. There will be days when you can't get the key to your apartment to work and you had trouble communicating something to the store clerk at Blanco and you look at pictures of your friends at school on facebook and they're all having a great time and all you want to do is go home. And there will be days when you have an amazing conversation with your host family and you get asked for directions by someone on the street who thinks you're a native and you walk around the rest of the day feeling so Euro and you walk up to the Mirador de San Nicolas and look over the city and realize how incredible it is that you have the opportunity to do this. My advice is to just feel whatever you are feeling. Don't let your feelings of homesickness get you completely down, but it is important to feel it and not to feel like you have to constantly be ecstatic. Don't let anybody make you feel dumb for being homesick. It happens to everyoneeeee and the absolute best thing you can do is acknowledge your feelings, feel them, and then try to pick yourself up. (I do realize that 90% of the people who read this will not study abroad, but I want to write all this down before I forget!).

Today was our day trip to Cordoba, which I'll blog about tomorrow. It was good but exhauuuusting! It's my bedtime!! Hope everyone's doing well!

Busy Week

I apologize for the lack of bloggage this week! I had a test yesterday and one today, plus a paper due today, so it's been a big study week.

Ummmm.... let's see! Here are some random highlights:

-The weather in INSANELY gorgeous. Low 70s and sunny every day. I've been spending a lot of time outside trying to get some color on me. Rosario told me that I looked tan and that she was shocked because I'm "very, very white". It was pretty funny. I'm not burning, though! Those OBBT summers have done me well. 

-Yesterday we had pizza for dinner. I tried to explain the concept of deep dish to the kids and they were amazed (of course, I then pulled up Giordanos' website and showed them). They asked how big the cheeseburgers were, so I showed them Chilis' website. Carlos gasped, turned to me and said "I am coming to visit the United States!" Then he told me that he was going to eat 90 pizzas and 80 cheeseburgers when he came to visit

-Carlos spent all of last night singing, "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" (in English). It was one of the cutest things I've ever heard, especially because he didn't know the "and a happy new year" part. He just kept repeating, "We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas" over and over again.

Today's our last day of class for the week, and then we have our day trip to Córdoba tomorrow. Tomorrow also marks the HALFWAY point of study abroad. WOW. In some ways it feels like it flew by and in some ways it feels like I've been here for ages. I've got a ton to look forward to in the second half of the experience, though!

T-minus 9 days till Matt gets here!

Paris!

Notre Dame... Look closely and you can see the gargoyles!

Eiffel Tower light show from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

Champs Elyssee

View from the top of the Eiffel Tower

SO GLAD I got to see Meghan! She's blogging too-- check it out! meghantravelstheworld.blogspot.com. I literally laugh out loud every time I read it!

Arc de Triomphe

SO cool.

Kicking off Unofficial with a Nutella crepe and a beer. I should remind everyone that I'm legal in Europe :-) (and less than three months to go until I am in the US, too!)

Chateau of Versailles

Carolyn and I in the architecture studio... we're 3 for 3 on celebrating at least part of Unofficial together!

This weekend in Paris was SO much fun! I expected to like the city, but I didn't expect to LOVE it as much as I did. It was such a beautiful city with a really cool energy. I had heard all of the ¨Parisians are rude; they'll be mean to you because you don't speak French¨rumors, but we were very pleasantly surprised by how great everyone that we met was. It was awesome!

We got to Paris on Thursday night after a loooong day of traveling (five hours on a bus, two hours on a plane, one more hour on a bus). We were so excited to get to our hostel! We got there and there was a line out the door to check in, so we decided to grab dinner in the hostel's bar/restaurant while we waited for it to die down. During dinner, Carolyn called and we made plans to meet in Versailles the next day... I was so excited! After dinner, we all jumped on the internet for a little bit and then crashed for the night.

The next day, we woke up, had our hostel breakfast, and then got ready for the day. Jenny, Betsy, and I took the metro down near the Lourve and walked around that area for awhile. It was Unofficial and we were all a little homesick and upset that we were missing it, so we decided that celebrating it in France was definitely necessary. We got some lunch and some drinks (I had a Nutella crepe for lunch. No big deal.) and then got in contact with Carolyn and started to make our way to Versailles. We got on the RER train and made it out there! Carolyn met us at the train station and after about five minutes of crying and screeching and hugging and jumping up and down and making a scene, we all headed out to her school to meet up with her friends and to celebrate Unofficial with them. Carolyn's friends were a blast and we spent a long time hanging out in their architecture studio before heading over to the Chateau of Versailles to continue the celebrations. We hung out in the gardens and then took out boats in the Chateau's pond. It was SO much fun despite the intense Oak Brook Bath and Tennis flashbacks of people not knowing how to paddle the canoe that they took out. But we managed to get back in successfully and had an awesome time. After that, we went back to the studio and Carolyn and I went and got some dinner to catch up. I can't even say how great it was to get to see her and catch up. We all ended up staying in Versailles that night and had such a good day catching up with U of I kids.

The next morning, Carolyn came with us back into the city. We got off at the Eiffel Tower and decided to go to the top. We had gotten the tip that morning to climb the stairs to the second level and then take the elevator to the top from there. VERY good advice! The stairs are tough (670 of them!) but it's definitely worth not waiting in the loooooong line and saving 10 euro! Getting to the top was SO cool. You could see the whole city and it was incredible. And there are a lot of safety measures for anyone scared of heights! After the Eiffel Tower, we walked down by the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysses (I might be totally butchering the spelling of that). We grabbed some lunch and did a little shopping before parting ways. Carolyn headed back to Versailles and Jenny, Betsy, and I went back to the hostel for a much needed nap.

After my nap, I got a hold of Meghan!! She said that she was going out to dinner with her parents and her Italian and invited me to come with! I met her on the metro and we walked to her foyer to meet up with her parents. It was SO SO SO great to get to see the Hartsells!! We went out for dinner on Champs Elysses before going to the top of the Arc de Triomphe to watch the Eiffel Tower light up. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen! After the light show, we went out for a drink and then they were nice enough to take me all the way back to my hostel. It was SUCH a fun night and I can't thank the Hartsells enough!

The next morning, we woke up and were really unsure about the whole Daylight Savings issue. We had gotten an e-mail from our program director, but (of course) just kind of skimmed it and assumed it was telling us to change our clocks ahead. Turns out we don't actually spring forward until the 29th! Weird! In any event, we played it safe and pretended like it was an hour ahead. Better to wait an hour for a flight than to miss it by an hour! We walked around a little bit, saw the Notre Dame, which was extremely impressive, had some lunch and some crepes, and then headed back to the hostel to grab our luggage. We had checked out that morning and had left our bags in the luggage closet there. Now, when we left, the closet was essentially empty. Buuuut when we got back, this long, narrow room was FILLED to the brim with backpacks and suitcases. So we ended up literally hiking through suitcases to get to ours from the back... it was pretty funny! 

After a metro ride, a bus ride, waiting at Beauvais airport for a few hours, a plane ride, another bus ride, and a cab ride, I made it home! It was a long trip but SO awesome! I can't wait to go back to Paris one day... although I think I might try to learn a little more French first. Repeating "bonjour" "oui" and "merci" can only get you so far!

Bonjour. Oui oui. Ooh la la. Croissant. Merci.

I'm practicing the five French words I know before my tomorrow :-)

Just wanted to check in really quickly before my trip to Paris! I probably won't be able to blog again until Monday, but I promise to make it a good one!

The Bachelor was ridiculous. Jason Mesnick, I rooted for you ALL of last season on The Bachelorette. I teared up when DeAnna broke your heart. I was SO excited when they said you were going to be the new Bachelor. And you BLEW IT! Two words: scum. bag. (Yeah, I know that's really one word but it's more dramatic like that). I AM ecstatic, however, that Jillian has officially been named the new Bachelorette!! ABC really knew how to welcome me home-- Jillian's installment of The Bachelorette premieres May 18, exactly one week after I get back :-) It will be really nice to get to watch this season at home, on a TV, with my parents. We love watching the show together and tend to get really invested in it. Last summer was HUGE because The Bachelorette (with DeAnna) and Legally Blonde the Musical: Search for the Next Elle Woods were on back to back on Monday nights. Amazing.

For everyone at U of I, have a really good, safe Unofficial weekend. I wish so much that I could be there with you guys!! It's making me miss you all even more than I already do! Be smart, be safe, and have fun. And remember, in the words of Patty VonderHeide circa 2008, "It's a marathon, not a sprint."

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly in Granada

Weeelll... We're back in monsoon season here.

Today, my grammar teacher walked into class and said that she has never seen it rain this hard in her life. It's been pouring all day! We told her that it was annoying but that we've all seen a lot worse. We're Chicagoans 'till Chicago ends :-) I did get a good laugh about the fact that on the 10-day weather.com forecast, the three days that it's supposed to be sunny and warm are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The days I will be in Paris. Where it will be 40º and raining (which, no big deal, I'll be in Paris! But still!). I also laugh because all last summer, I prayed for rain every night while I worked as a pool manager in an unusually dry summer. Where was this rain then?!

In any case, it's been a good few days. Yesterday, classes started back up at CEGRI. It was SO nice to get back to having a routine and having structure after five days of not really knowing what to do with myself. I got to see all of my friends again, too, which was so great! Now I only have one more day of class and then four days in PARIS! I am so excited for the trip and can't wait to see Carolyn, Meghan, and the Hartsells. Oh, and the Eiffel Tower :-) 

OH! An exciting development from today was that Alli and I found a coffee place by school that has AMERICAN coffee to go! It's so rare to find American-style coffee here. In Spain, ordering "café" (coffee) will get you a shot of kind of gross espresso, and ordering "café con leche" (coffee with milk) will get you said gross espresso shot in a coffee mug with the rest filled up with hot whole milk. I'll never forget my dad's face at the Granada airport when he went up to ask for a coffee and came back with a Dixie-cup-sized muddy looking espresso. It's also very rare to find coffee to go here. Usually if you want coffee, you have to go to a café, sit down, wait fifteen minutes for the waiter (you don't tip the waiters here, so they really have no incentive to give you fantastic service. Reeeeeeally makes me miss our favorite Chili's waiter, aka Mr. Sarah Fabbri. He always keeps your Diet Coke full and your chip basket overflowing), then order your coffee, get it in a mug, sit there and drink it, then wait twenty minutes until you see the waiter again to ask him for a check, then wait about ten minutes for the check. It's a process. Anyways, that was a huge run-on-sentence-filled tangent. So this new place is called Café Bella and has any kind of coffee drink you could want to go. The best part, though, is that they have CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. I have been missing homemade chocolate chip cookies so much and to be able to find them (even if they weren't exaaaactly homemade) was just so exciting.

 

Café Bella is also run by a Scottish lady so you order in English! The funny thing is that I got so flustered when I was ordering. I think I said something like, "Uhhh... Can I have grande, no, large, no grande, coffee American? I mean American coffee?"  Aaaaand this is a perfect example of how my English is slowly deteriorating. I guess it's a good thing for my Spanish skills, but it's starting to get scary! I'm the world's biggest grammar freak. Legitmately. If there's a grammar error on a test I'm taking, I get so distracted by it that I have to fix it before I can answer the question. But there have been SO many times recently where my mom has e-mailed me to tell me that I made an egregious grammar error on the blog! I can't believe it, but I've used the wrong "your/you're", "there/their/they're" and "two/too/to" a few times recently! iamsoashamed! So just know that if I make a dumb error like that, or blatantly misspell a word, or make the second grade error of typing "desert" instead of "dessert" (like I did in one of my Italy posts), just know that it's the Spanish getting to my head! 

Well, I think the Bachelor is just about done downloading, so I'm going to go watch what was apparently the most intense/psycho finale ever. Verrrry exciting! 

Happy March!

I am SO glad that it's finally March!! January and February are always tough months and it's so exciting to be getting closer and closer to spring. I always LOVE when it turns to March every year, and have no shame in admitting that I flipped open my phone at midnight on the dot to watch my phone calendar change from February to March (the future teacher in me is going to explain that I'm a very visual person. I understand concepts best when they're written down or drawn out methodically... hence my love for calendars!) Understanding my visual comprehension will also explain that I am SO excited to be able to see Matt's visit and Lauren's visit without having to change pages on my iCal (Mac calendar application). Very exciting!

I also have to admit that March totally snuck up on me. All of a sudden I'm realizing that I'm almost halfway done with study abroad and that I'll be coming home in a little over two months. In some ways it feels like just yesterday I was wandering the streets of Granada trying to grasp the concept of four months. I got to skype with one of my best friends, Libby, yesterday, and she was telling me that when she studied in Seville last year, the first half seemed to go by really slow and the second half flew by. I'm thinking that's probably what will happen to me too. The analogy I keep using is that when you're driving to a new place in the car, it always seems to take longer to get there than it does to get back. When it's unchartered territory, it feels like it takes forever, but when you know what you're doing, it starts to go by a little faster.

Today was a pretty good day-- I woke up late, worked out, got a coffee at Dunkin' Coffee (we're on day four with no Diet Coke... this is HUGE, guys!), then came back to the piso and watched When Harry Met Sally (so good!), caught up with a lot of people online, and all that good stuff. The kids' dad usually comes over for lunch on Sundays, but he didn't come over this afternoon. Instead, he got here at about 8:00pm and came for dinner. 

At dinner, we were all sitting around the table, eating our vegetable soup and tortilla española and having a good time. All of a sudden, the kids' dad got up to get some more soup from the kitchen and Maria yelled, "¡Siéntate! ¿Por qué estás levantándote?" ("Sit down! Why are you standing up?") and burst into tears. Apparently she was upset that her dad felt like he had to go get his own food. She started yelling at Rosario and telling her that she needed to take care of the dad and get him whatever he needed and that the dad shouldn't have to stand up. She said that was the woman's job.

Now, I'm not a feminist. I'm pretty far from it. I wrote an eleven-page thesis my senior year of high school on the importance of the role of a mother and how the ultra-feminist stigmatization of the stay-at-home mom was detrimental to our society. But that scene at dinner was pretty shocking. It really made me realize how progressive America is and how I do take the equality of opportunity for women in the US for granted. For an eleven-year-old to scream at her mother for making her father get off his butt and get his own second helping of soup? Wow. I do think that having your eyes opened to other cultures is one of the huge benefits of study abroad, and living with a host family is definitely a way to have the culture put right in front of you.

Okay, well I'm procrastinating on writing my two page essay on the Basque country. I should get writing...