Luna the sneak and Tortuga the freak

I have now been in Granada for a week! And living here with Gloria and Rafael for 4 nights. They are both really nice and cool so that is great. When I first arrived there was an 18 year old girl from Ukraine living here and she seemed really cool (and really good at Spanish! she assured me that the couldn't speak really at all when she got here, so that was definitely a nice thing to hear) but unfortunately she left the morning after I got here and now I have her room (which is good because this is definitely the best room, with it's own balcony and "farm").

There was also a lady from California here and I'm not sure how old she was, but I have made an educated guess that she was 34 or 35. The California girl (was unforgettable, daisy dukes bikinis on top....not really) took me to a flamenco performance with one of her friends and that was really exciting. The performance was also on top of a hill facing the alhambra so we got to see it all lit up. On Thursday she showed me a few key places in the town, such as el Corte Ingles which is basically like a macy's type store that also has a supermarket (so a little like a walmart I suppose but classier and smaller). She was really nice, but left Friday morning so currently there are no other boarders here. Hopefully the Japanese girl will come? She might be coming for a different program, or not coming at all, so we will see.

Friday I had a productive morning by purchasing minutes for my phone here (whooo) and then walking over to CLM to ask a few questions. I hoped to be with the same receptionist as last time, but instead I happened to get the person who my mom and I had been e-mailing from the U.S. so that actually worked out perfectly! I also wanted to know if I could find a teacher or conservatory to take flute lessons with or participate in an orchestra or something while I'm here, and she just happens to have a son that plays flute so she called his teacher and this teacher happens to know the teacher that I had heard of and tried to contact before coming here. So I didn't get anything finalized, but basically the world seems to have this going in my favor.

Yesterday I was here alone because Gloria and Rafael went to a wedding in another town, so I decided to explore the town a bit and go to el Corte Ingles and buy some lettuce (believe it or not they don't really have many salads with lettuce here... and I was craving a salad for some reason). So anyway, I bought a head of lettuce and a large bag of baby greens (and a bag... they don't give you grocery bags for free here) for under 2.5 euros. I suppose I don't pay very close attention to the lettuce prices back at home, but that seemed cheap to me.

Anyway, I made myself a  nice salad and that was all fine and dandy, but what you probably really want to know about is the title of this blog post. So here comes the interesting part (sorry to every english teacher I have had for waiting until 5 paragraphs in to get to the subject).

Luna the sneak is the "adorable cat" I mentioned in my last post, and Tortuga the freak is their little pet box turtle. So Luna is without a doubt the sneakiest cat I have ever encountered. She is a small cat, but fully grown. We are working on our friendship, but I don't think she is used to having people like her, because both the california and ukraine girls despised her for creeping around so much. In this penthouse, the windows don't have screens and the doors to the porches are just open all the time to keep airflow (bugs don't seem to be a problem), so Luna will just climb/walk all around the ledges on this 7 story high building and enter from a window outside or from my porch when least expected. It can be pretty freaky to suddenly see her reflection in my computer screen leaping into my room. I've been petting her slowly more and more every day, and so far that's good but yesterday I thought we had reached the level where I could pick her up, so I did and she made me bleed as a result. She will also just sit outside my door meowing like a mad woman with her little ball, and I go out and try to play with her and she gets defensive of her ball and gives me the stink eye. So at this point, you could say we are more like frenemies.

But now it gets exciting as Tortuga the freak becomes a third player in our games. This morning I was eating cereal on the outside main porch as I have every morning when Tortuga (I'm not actually sure if he has a name... but I like to call him that) starts walking towards me at his slow pace. I think I might want a pet turtle now because  he is sooooo adorable. He investigates my toes and here I am thinking how cute he is and reaching down to maybe pick him up when he gets "scared shitless" (literally). Who knew that turtle poop could smell so bad... it was reminiscent of the rat lab when they would get scared and have diarrhea. ANYWAY, Tortuga keeps walking along and then I decide to make friends so go over to him and offer my hand, he bites my fingers and I see his pink little tongue which is unreasonably cute. I decide to feed him some of the lettuce I bought so I go get the crunchy snack and my camera to take a picture (I am doing a photo a day thing, and so far it has been working out quite well but I usually end up with too many good photos each day... that will probably change as everything becomes more routine, and I may end up with a lot of selfies and food pictures come month 4 here...BUT at the end I want to make a photo collage with them or something.)

If you have not seen a little turtle munching on lettuce, you are missing out. But as I am playing with and feeding and giving so much attention to Tortuga, my frenemy onlooking in the corner starts to get a little jealous. I turn around and Luna is standing there peering at me. She snuggles up to me like i'm the best thing since cat nip and starts like caressing my hand with her head (I don't know how else to describe it). I pet her for a while and now she followed me to my room where she is chilling. So basically if any of you in college are trying to make friends, use the jealousy tactic. It certainly worked for me ;) Oh and "Tortuga the freak" earned this name because he went over to his excrements and stared at it for a good 5 minutes.

I haven't decided what I will do with the rest of today, but tomorrow I have my placement exam and then classes start Tuesday, so hopefully my life will become a little more interesting and busy then. Hasta luego!