Time has flown and this is my last week in Granada, which is hard to believe. Since I last wrote I´ve done many interesting things that I´d like to share. A few weeks ago we visited a Moroccan Teahouse (Teteria) near the Albaicin area. The place was so ideal and had little nooks and crannies with cushions and tables to enjoy your tea around. The ambiance of the Teteria was perfect with fountains and music playing with doors opening into a garden. I had a frambuesa te con hielo (raspberry tea with ice) and it was delicious.
I´ve been able to meet some great people here and think it´s so neat to hear about other ways of life. The people in my class are fun and we all have been able to hang out some. We went to our friend Sofja´s house where she has a pool and at one point we were all sitting around the table and had 4 different accents in the conversation. Sofja from Serbia, Felicia from Sweden, Christi from New York, Shannon from Baton Rouge, LA. etc. It´s been fun to make friends with people from all over the world.
Last week I was able to go eat tapas, which Andalucia is famous for. Felicia and Ashley and I went to an area in the city center which has a street lined with tapa bars. Tapas are typically a smaller portion of food that comes free with the drink you order. Not all places give them free with drinks, so Granada is very well-known for its tapas. Many people will go from place to place ordering a drink and eating at each place which is a cheap way to eat dinner. Anyway, we went to 2 tapas bars and ate food such as slices of bread with brie cheese, tuna and tomato mixes, lots of jamon y huevos. I even tried my first anchovie which will be my first and last....
After tapas I went to a flamenco show in the caves of Sacromonte. Sacromonte is on the hillside of Granada and is an older part of the city. When I say ¨cave¨ and imagine what I think of as a cave, this is not at all how they looked. They were white and clean and shaped similarly like a real house. The flamenco dancers are a family and live in the cave houses. Really neat. The youngest member in the family would be the first dancer and they would work their way up to the grandmother, who did dance! I took some video on my camera. At the end they pulled audience members up to flamenco dance, but they didn´t make it to my end :) One thing I haven´t mentioned is that we were all seated in a circle along the cave walls and the family sat on one end in chairs where they sang and played the guitar and I was seated right next to them....
Another trip we went on was to Salobreña which is another beach near Granada. We went for a Sat. day trip with the program and spent the day on the beach. It was beautiful but I must say I enjoyed Nerja more. Then this last weekend we went to Sevilla and I loved it. Sevilla is Kansas City´s ¨sister city¨ and the Plaza is modeled after it. So imagine the Plaza times 100 with a European flair and that is Sevilla. The city has a romantic feel about it and you see many horse drawn carriages around the city giving people rides. The weather in Sevilla is the hottest anywhere in Andalucia (Southern Spain region) and is nicknamed ¨the frying pan of Andalucia.¨ I´ve never been in weather this hot--it was over 100 degrees! We were able to see the city and many sites such as the River, the tower where Christopher Columbus brought the gold he discovered and stored it here, Christopher Columbus´ tomb in the Catedral of Sevilla (the second largest Cathedral in the world) and the Real Alcazar. I went with the program so I was with Jaime our program director and 5 other students. We were treated so nicely and stayed in a nice hotel which felt like such a splurge. Saturday night there was a huge championship futbol game that Sevilla won, so from about 10 to 12pm the city was empty with everyone watching the game.