Anyway, I kicked off by finally going to the Frederica Garcia Lorca park for the free wednesday tour of his house. I wouldn't go to Granada specifically to see his family's summer house, but it was still cool! The christmas lights throughout Granada also all turned on Wednesday evening, so the walk home from the park was beautiful. The Christmas markets also opened, so I browsed and bought some dulces de la navidad.
Plaza bib-rambla
Where I live!
But what I'm sure you really want to hear about is the new Twilight movie. It was pretty good, especially because my friend Morgan and I had mostly forgotten what happens in the book so the surprise at the end was actually a surprise. It was also kind of a nice test of how good our Spanish is because there weren't subtitles or anything. The movie was also without a doubt more enjoyable in Spanish. Even though I don't usually like watching dubbed movies (in any language) because it's kind of weird, the whole art of dubbing is pretty cool. I mean, they really have work hard to get a translation that also matches with the lips. So I applaud the producers on that. The twilight movie actors and actresses also kind of have a deserved reputation of not being very good. Let me tell you, Spanish Bella has quite a bit more emotion in her voice. There were also a lot of funny to us parts because Spanish is just kind of a funny language sometimes.
Then on Sunday I went to the Sierra Nevada with Morgan and some of our other Erasmus friends (the European study abroad program) and their friends. It was so much fun. We took the morning bus up and spent the first half hour just walking around the ski village (the tourist office was closed, sup spain sundays) but there were lots of skiers and we eventually found someone who could tell us where the hiking paths were and what else we could do besides ski. For those of you who don't have facebook, here's a little anecdote from the bus ride:
On the bus to the Sierra Nevada, making the obligatory i'm-sitting-next-to-you small talk:
Me: "Sí, voy a hacer senderismo."
German guy on the bus: "....uhh no entiendo."
Me: "hacer senderismo.... como caminar por las montañas"
German: "oh sí sí estoy aqui hasta miércoles."
Translation:
Me: "Yeah I'm going hiking"
German: "uhhh... i don't understand"Me: "going hiking... like walking along the mountains"German: "oh yes yes, I'm here until wednesday"
What?
We first went on this giant slide thing, kind of reminiscent of the Alpine slides in the west of the US, but elevated on a track several feet above ground. This was pretty cool because the first part is automatic, so the little cart thing takes you up the mountain (one part straight up) and then you get to the top and can control the speed going down. I held back a little this summer on the Colorado alpine slide, but this time I had a seatbelt so therefore no inhibitions. We then found a nice long trail and went on a hike. Unfortunately what looked like it should be snow was actually ice. So that was fun. Especially for the girl who wore boots with a heel. Fortunately, none of us took any great falls, and we found this giant rock on the edge with a great view and took a break and I got a group photo with the handy dandy self timer.
We kind of look like some reality tv show commercial "a lot of blondes + one brunette meet wild"
Now that's a view, folks.
It's also very weird to think that this is my last week of classes, then finals, and then I leave for Germany! One of my friends leaves this coming Wednesday, and then about 90% of the CLM, including Liz, leaves the 21st (friday) and I leave the 23rd! Tomorrow is my last day at my internship, but yesterday I had my last classes with 4 of groups I help in (and then I will have my last classes with two different groups tomorrow). I got a photo of one of my favorite group of 12 year olds yesterday, and again when I entered their class they all cheered and screamed "WE LOVE YOU" in their funny little heavy spanish accents.
This class was pretty much in complete chaos all the time, but also a fun and mostly sweet group to work with.
This morning I turned in a 6 page paper (1.5 spaced. Who assigns 1.5 space. To me, that's worse than single spaced.) about symbols Salvador Dalí used during his surrealist phase. Probably not the absolute best paper I have ever written, but hey, it's hard enough to write that much in English. I spent way too much time on it and went to bed way to late last night working on it (as you can see, my Uni High paper writing methods have stuck with me), but I got it done. This morning there were literally 40 of us trying to print at least 5 pages each on a broken printer. Note to world: for being so 'technologically advanced,' printers could use a lot of improvement. A lot of button pushing and messing with the paper trays and turning off and back on again finally got it going, so I was able to hand in a hard copy. Yippee. Another note to world: they say that in tough situations, people bond the most. Very true. All 40 of us were friends by the time we left the computer lab.
And now for a brief Luna and Tortuga update. Luna has met her match. Q-tips. I swear she is more fascinated by these little cotton swabs than she would be by a live animal. And tortuga is in fact still hibernating behind the couch. Here's some photographic evidence of Luna, and for my next post I will get a picture of Tortuga.
Finally, life in the telenovela has been renewed for another season, but I'm happy to say that two of the main characters will not be coming back. Okay, so I'm not actually happy to be leaving Spain. In fact it's weird to me and I'm not quite ready to go (but I'm very excited to be going to Germany!), so basically this weekend will be jam packed with doing everything we still want to do and also some studying (though probably more of the former than the latter). I am not, however, sad in the slightest to be leaving my 'host family.' I feel bad for Silvia because her sickness really is awful, but she's also crazy. And Rafael has more moments of niceness than we give him credit for, but he also does some weird and inconsiderate things and is definitely just in it for the money. Basically I've come to the conclusion that they may both be good and nice people deep down, but I personally don't really enjoy either of their company and therefore will not be sad to leave the set of nuestra telenovela. Doing the host family was definitely a good experience, and had I not, I would never have met Liz but I think that if I had known what it would be like when I got here, I would have opted for living in an apartment with Spanish flatmates.
Anyway, I'm off to get tapas at an internet cafe whilst working on some final presentations and enjoying the 11 remaining days that I have here in Granada. But fear not, I will surely be returning to this giant pomegranate (for those who don't know, granada is the spanish word for pomegranate).
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