Time to start catching up...in Spain

So I have now been in Morocco for three and a half weeks.  Due to some unexpected complications, I am just now going to start getting settled into some semblance of normal life, but I’ll get into that later.  The last time I updated my blog I was on the train from Madrid to Granada to meet my ISA Morocco group.  As you can probably imagine, a lot has happened since then.  This update has been haunting me for a month so hopefully the Spain update will be the start of a long game of catching up to the present.  Since I am just trying to spit out stories, they might be a little messy and for that I am sorry.  Now, on to this update I keep talking about...

My journey to Granada was pretty uneventful actually.  I got to the train station, caught a taxi, and got dropped off a block from the hotel because of the construction being done on our hotel’s street.  Checked in no problem and was directed to my room where I would be rooming with my future roommate, Michelina.  However, she was not there yet.  Some people had arrived already so the front desk gave me a list of the rooms we were in, but I wanted to shower so I just headed for my room to relax a little.  However, as I was about to get ready to shower, there was a knock on my door.  The man there didn’t seem to understand that I knew Spanish so he kept trying to tell me in his very broken English something about having to change rooms, but then he randomly left.  I went down to the front desk and asked what was going on (in Spanish) and was told that I had to switch to a bigger room because they were adding a person.  After moving, I waited a little to see if anyone was getting there soon to try to avoid anyone arriving while I was in the shower.  I watched BBC a bit to find out what was going on in Egypt, but eventually decided to go ahead and shower.  Of course, while I was in the shower the other girl, Meredith, arrived.

After I got dressed, we decided to use the list the front desk had given me to try to find some other students in our program.  We ended up finding people in a few more rooms and ended up hanging out talking with maybe half of the group in one of the rooms before going downstairs to stop in our room on the way to our first ISA meeting.  Already, the group seemed to get along really well, and so far that feeling has held up (knock on wood).  When Meredith and I stopped in our room, we found Michelina there!  Unfortunately, the airline had lost her luggage somewhere on the way from Ghana where she had been traveling with a group from her school for a few weeks.  It took a few days for her suitcase to be delivered to our hotel, but it got there.  Too bad that wasn’t the end of her bad luck with Ghana, but more on that later.

We had ISA meetings almost every day about Granada, as well as about Morocco and the culture and just some general information about our lives for the next few months.  We met Daniel, our Resident Director, Laura, the ISA Assistant Director of European Operations who is based in Granada and stayed in Meknes with us for the first three weeks, her husband, Manolo, and Mohammed, the Resident Director of the new ISA program in Jordan.  Let me just start out by saying that they (and everyone I have met so far) are all awesome and amazing people.  Daniel studied abroad with ISA in Granada while he was in school while Laura was Resident Director there and then started working with ISA in Granada.  He worked there for 7 years, I believe, before helping start up the program in Meknes, which is now in its third year.  At the rate I am going with studying abroad with ISA, I will probably ask him more about all this at some point since working with ISA seems a probable part of my future.  Plus I now know Laura, who told me if I ever need a job, to send in my resume :) Laura is traveling around right now, visiting ISA programs to basically do some quality control, and she said that this program is definitely doing well since the students seem more enthusiastic than at many other sites.  It was also fun to learn that she helped set up the program in Buenos Aires that I did almost two years ago, and knows most of the people who work there.  Then there is Mohammed, a Jordanian-Palestinian who got his Ph.D. in Arizona and teaches at refugee camps.  Given that, it may not come as a surprise that I, along with a lot of other students in the group, had a lot of good conversations with him about life and teaching and politics and culture.  He also told me that he is trying to get the ISA volunteer branch, ELAP, set up in Jordan which means I might be able to do some stuff there sometime, even after I am done with school.  However, I did ask Laura and she said that I do not have to be a current student to participate in ISA study abroad programs so Morocco may not be the end of them for me just yet :)

As usual with study abroad programs, there are a lot of students here who are majoring in some form of international studies/relations and we are from all over the US.  One of the things you don’t think about when studying abroad is how many people you’ll meet from all over your home country.  Anyway, we all have been getting along very well and so we had a lot of fun in Granada.  We spent most nights out getting drinks and tapas, and had tours 2 of the days.  Now let me explain tapas: Granada has this thing going where you can go to a bar and order a drink, and it comes with free tapas, or some sort of small plate of food/snack.  I believe just about all of Spain does the tapas thing, but I have heard that Granada is the only place that gives them to you for free with your drink, and the drink can be anything ranging from bottled water (because free food with free tap water would be too cool) to soda to alcoholic beverages.  On a different note related to food, Michelina and Meredith discovered this place with these small donuts that reminded me of Trish’s Mini-Donuts at Pier 39 in San Francisco, but these ones were covered in chocolate syrup :)

"La Media Luna"

During the days, we had a couple tours and went adventuring.  On our first day, we toured Granada and the neighborhood Albaicin, which is the traditional Moorish neighborhood.  One of the most amusing parts of this tour to me was this one door that was very Moorish in deisgn and had what appeared to be Arabic script over it, but as I looked closer I noticed it actually just said “La Media Luna” (“the half moon” in Spanish) but written so that it looked like Arabic.  Oh and to backtrack slightly, my alarm clock on my phone plays the introduction to “Circle of Life” so Michelina had started calling me Rafiki because it means “friend” in Swahili and in Arabic.  Back to the tour: we were walking and she points up to this balcony where I see a stuffed Rafiki sitting.  That is when we decided the nickname was permanent.  Anyway, we got our first little taste of Moorish architecture and the Arabic language, and made it up to this church square that had an amazing view of the Alhambra.

Alhambra from the church square

The next day’s activity was a tour of the Alhambra, an old Moorish palace and probably the largest example of Islamic architecture in Spain.  You know, Christians built great churches and cathedrals, but I think the Moors win as my favorite castle architects.  When the Moorish reign ended and Spain was ruled by Christians, they built more in the Alhambra and it just does not compare to the original Islamic architecture.  Mosaics, woodcarvings, and bright colors definitely win over big, gray stones :)

By the way, my pictures on Facebook probably say a lot more about the Alhambra than I can write here since my memory for history that I hear is horrible.

Anyway, the next day, Kyle, Meredith, Mike, and I decided to go explore the hills where the cave-people live.  Now let me explain: there are these cave-homes in the hills of Granada and people can just go find an empty one and move in.  As you might be able to guess, they are known as being the hippies of Granada and they have their own little community up in the hills, but come down to the city to get food and other supplies to bring back up in backpacks.  I thought they sounded cool, so I asked about going to see them and had some friends who wanted to go, too, so we traipsed up the hill to explore.  We were told to be careful about the stuff we had with us because it was not the biggest tourist area, and the people there may not be too fond of us being there so we had to be respectful (not that we were planning on being rude, but ok).

Hillside where the caves are

Stairs down to Granada

We wandered up through the Albaicin, tentatively following a map to keep track of where we were and where we wanted to be while trying not to stand out too much as tourists, before we got to the place where we had been told to go up the stairs.  The only place we could see stairs went up along/behind a house, so we decided to try them since there was no “do not pass” sign or anything, figuring if anyone yelled at us, we would know that they were the wrong stairs.  Turns out they were the right stairs and took us up to a church on the top of the hill.  We saw some cool graffiti on the way, and then proceeded around the back of the church as instructed to find the caves.  We ended up spending most of our time just wandering around the hills, enjoying the amazing view into the mountains and over the city, but did find a few caves.  The first one we found was one we were on top of.  They remind me of hobbit holes from the way the doors are just sitting in the hillsides, and chimneys sit poking out of the ground.  We saw this one front yard that was elaborately decorated with recycled materials and had a sign about hours, so I went to ask the man working on the roof what the place was.  From what he said to me before he just ignored me, I think it was both his home and a church.  I don’t know if it is because we were clearly not from there (even though I was speaking Spanish) or if he was just busy fixing something and didn’t feel like talking, but he did not seem to want to talk to me so I left.  More willing to talk were two girls sitting on a bench overlooking the hills and the city of Granada.  They did not live in the caves, but one of them lives in Granada for 6 months out of the year.  They were very nice, told me I had to go to Chefchaouan while in Morocco, and gave me some good Spanish practice.  I told them that it was really easy for me to understand them, and they told me that since they were from Catalunia, they learned Spanish as a second language after Catalan.  Since we had made plans to meet up with Michelina for lunch, we started our descent and got yelled at by someone for going the wrong way, but quickly corrected our path and made it down safely.  We even managed not to get too lost on the way.

Enjoying the view

Hobbit hole :)

Fun Facts:

-The “Al” in “Alhambra” means “the” in Arabic, so calling it “the Alhambra” is actually redundant, just like the Rio Grande River

Granada

 -Granada means “pomegranate” in Spanish and there are pomegranates hidden (and not so hidden) all over Granada

Moving

 -Furniture, such as bookshelves, are moved into these tall, narrow houses via ropes and pulleys on the outside of the building, while tourists stand in the street and watch

Time-sensitive Shots, Tall Buildings and Train Rides

Over one month later, and here I am again!  I meant to write some updates while I was home about Costa Rica reflections and Morocco preparations, but I failed.  A quick summary of my life since my last post before I go into details: about a month at home including a trip to San Diego and Disneyland, flying to Frankfurt, visiting friends in Brussels and Groningen, and taking a lot of trains to Madrid before I go to Granada tomorrow to meet my program group.  Now for the details:

Home

After being gone for 3 months, being home felt surreal, almost as if I had just gone back in time to before I left, except that it was winter instead of summer.  Surprisingly, the reverse culture shock did not hit me as hard this time as after my month in Argentina, probably because I was mentally preparing myself for it for weeks.  What was so strange about it the first time was not so much that being home felt weird, but how wrong it felt for home to be so weird.  You expect to feel like a stranger in a new place, but you don’t expect to feel so out of place at home.  I think being ready for it actually made it a lot easier because it took away that extra layer of shock, if that makes sense.  I also think I may have culture shocked my family a bit since I brought some of the pura vida lifestyle back with me…

The other big change for me was my nephew!  When I left in September, he was only 2 months old.  When I came back in December, he was just about 5 months old!  Even though I had seen a lot of pictures and a video, I could not believe how much bigger he was and how much more he was doing!  He went from smiling by accident and making a few cooing noises to smiling all the time and babbling; from not even rolling over to rolling and scooting and almost sitting and standing!  He even has 2 teeth!  However, I have to do another long gap again.  He was 6 months old when I left and will be 10 months when I come back, so I will have a whole new set of things to miss and catch up on.  But I did make good use of my time at home and went with my mom every Tuesday (her babysitting day) to spend all day with them, except for the day I went later in the day because of my rabies shot.

My stupid rabies shot.  This is the only vaccination I have ever heard of with such specific time rules.  You have to get 3 of the same shot on days 0 (so whenever you decide to start it), 7, and 21 or 28.  I forgot about needing this shot until I only had about 21 days left so I had to get them on a Tuesday schedule which meant going to Kaiser with my mom and my nephew.  And if I get bitten by something and think they might have rabies, I still have to get more shots!  But it does reduce the number of shots I need and I don’t need the one that can be hard to get so I guess it was worth it.  However, between that shot and having to pay full price for extra orders of my prescription, I am ready to be done with hospitals for a while.  Hear that body?

Other than all this, my time at home was spent relaxing and hanging out with friends and family.  Oh, and trying to make my wardrobe more modest by non-southern-Californian standards meaning higher necks and longer sleeves rather than the tank tops I can usually get away with.  Also made a trip down to San Diego to visit some friends and went to Disneyland with the Hawaii Club Disney Crew :)

Come January 19 and it was time to head to the airport.  I had packed my big backpack, my small suitcase, a laptop messenger bag, and my purse.  I would have shipped some stuff so I could travel lighter for the first 2 weeks but shipping to Europe is expensive and shipping to Morocco is about double that.  Since I planned on using trains, I thought multiple smaller, lighter bags were better than one massive, heavy bag and I think I was right.  I had a 5 days in 2 months Eurail Pass and plans to visit a couple friends before meeting my program in Granada for our Spain orientation (before going to Morocco).

The Benefits of Traveling During the Low Season

Not only was SFO practically empty, but my plane was only 40% full.  Oh yes.  11 hours from San Francisco to Frankfurt and I managed to sleep for about half of them, sprawled across 3 seats.  I arrived in Frankfurt at 9:45 am local time on Thursday and due to my bags already being on the claim when I got there and no stopping for customs, I made it on the train to Brussels at 10:32 am.  Paid for some wifi on the train and looked at the snow outside before napping.  For the sake of my train count, I will mention that something was wrong with this train and we had to switch somewhere so that’s 2 trains to Brussels.

Train total: 2

Brussels

Remember those Belgian guys I met on the journey back to San Jose from Panama?  Chris was in Brussels for a few weeks before going on more adventures so I visited him there for 2 days.  Jet lag left me tired, but the party schedule of those 2 days worked well with it so I consider it a fast adjustment.  I climbed a lot of stairs since I was staying on the 4th floor of his house (well American 4th, European 3rd), listened to a lot of French, drank a lot of wine, went to my first wine and cheese party, and had a great time!  I learned how to say in French that I don’t speak French, but I must say it too well because both times I have used it now I have gotten very strange looks…  We wandered around the center of Brussels and I saw some stuff I remembered from when I was there with my dad, and I now have a membership at Carré, a big club outside the city that I definitely did not go to with my dad.  I would offer to take you next time, but I don’t think you would like it…

To get to Groningen on Saturday to visit Maren where she goes to Uni in the Netherlands, I had to take 3 trains: first to Amsterdam, then to Hilversum, and then to Groningen.  I will say that some of these train rides were short, but those were usually the ones that did not have luggage racks so I had to sit/stand awkwardly with my stuff by the doors and therefore count them separately in the train count.

Train total: 5

Groningen

There may have been a lot of stairs in Brussels, but there were very steep and narrow stairs in Groningen.  Even though my first night there was a Saturday, we decided to stay in and watch a movie because jetlag and Brussels nightlife had worn me out and Maren was getting over being sick.  We actually did a lot of sleeping during my visit and it was glorious!  Next day, we wanted to go to the town center and the best way to get around is on bikes (as it is just about everywhere in the Netherlands).  Since I didn’t have a bike, I borrowed her roommate’s, which was too tall.  I learned that first night that it was better if I used Maren’s and she used her roommate’s, and that the bike paths move in a certain way that I did not quite understand, but not without falling first.  Yes, I did bump my head and I’m sorry mom, but no I was not wearing a helmet (no one there does) but I was very aware of how I felt for the next few hours and days and my head only hit the ground after a few other points of contact so it didn’t hit very hard.  I can tell you this because I am no longer there, riding a bike without a helmet, and it has been long enough that any damage would have made itself known by now.  Luckily, the only things that actually broke were the rear bike light, my gloves, my sunglasses (in my purse), and some skin.  All replaceable.  Turns out I had just bought another pair of my sunglasses at Disneyland to leave at home in case anything happened to my old pair, and my H&M gloves were sitting in a bin at the H&M in Groningen.  Took us a few days to remember to buy a new bike light and I am still working on re-growing the skin, but compared to the last bike accident I saw where one guy lost a tooth, this was nothing.

Other than falling off a bike, I had a great time seeing Maren.  For those who don’t know, she is from Germany and was an exchange student at my high school my senior year and we got pretty close.  We chilled, cooked, hung out with her friends, and I rode on the back of a bike for the first time when her roommate wasn’t around to let us use hers.  On Wednesday, due to bad train schedules, I had to start my journey to Granada.  I left Groningen at 3:46 pm for Gouda, then Rotterdam, then Paris (3 trains).  Then I took the metro to another train station in Paris (1 train…yes, I am counting metro) to catch a night train to the Spanish border town of Irun where I could get a train to Madrid (2 trains).

Train total: 11

Madrid

Well, this was supposed to be my catch-up-on-sleep night, but this blog is taking forever to write and I am actually not that tired.  Guess all that napping on the trains really did count as sleep!  I got here in the afternoon and reserved my train to Granada for the morning, then headed to Hostal San Martin.  I booked it on hostelbookers.com where it had good reviews and was one of the cheapest single rooms I could find in a building with an elevator.  It seems nice enough, and the room has a TV and a small shower and sink with the room, as well as free wifi and a lot of storage space.  For the price and location in the city center, it is very nice, but it is definitely more of a guesthouse than a hostel as far as the atmosphere is concerned.  But since I was not planning on going out tonight, that is perfect for me!  I got food at Maoz, my favorite chain from my European adventures 3 and a half years ago, and even found my favorite gelato place.  Unfortunately, it has a sign up saying it is only open Friday-Sunday, my guess being those are winter hours since even I was considering skipping it even though it is my favorite and I am not in Madrid very often to get it!  I wandered for a few hours and found my hostel from last time, as well as the area that my guidebook said it was (the one time Let’s Go has ever let me down was when they mismarked my hostel on the map in the book) and even the restaurant I stopped at to see if they knew where my hostel was where one of the waiters got a phone to call and find out so that he could direct me!  I love going to new places, but I also love going back to places I have been to before and wandering into places I recognize :)

Tomorrow I go to Granada and meet up with my ISA group for a few days of orientation there before we go to Morocco on Tuesday, and Meknes on Wednesday!  I’ll try to find time to write again soon!