Bienvenidos a Granada

This was my first week as a Granada resident and student. Some moments were very nerve-wracking, and some were triumphant. Let’s start with the nerve-wracking, shall we?

First thing in the morning I had to ride buses to my school, which is downtown. My program instructs our host parents to ride with us the first day on the way to school to show us where to go. Since one of the other girls in my program lives in an apartment near mine, my host mom wanted us to meet and ride together this first morning. We arrived at the stop, and my host mom started to walk away as a bus pulled up. I called her name in a panic and she gestured at me and smiled, and then continued to walk away. I realized then that she was walking to the corner to call the other family to see if they were coming. I let the bus go, and then a minute later another came… and she started waving me toward it. I was semi-yelling “no sé!” and gesturing, when she caught up to me and told me not to get on. In the past couple days I have noticed that my host mom will wave me on like she’s telling me to go away from her, but she means for me to come to her. I don’t know if this is idiosyncratic or Spanish, but I’m sure I won’t mistake the meaning again. Or get on a bus to a destination I’ve never been to.

Anyway... once we finally met up with the other family it was smooth sailing and we got to our final stop in the Albaicín neighborhood, and then walked up some stairs toward the school. As I rounded the corner, I was floored by the breathtaking and unimpeded view of the Alhambra, a spectacular Moorish palace/fortress. We were a few minutes early so we just sat at the viewing point and watched the sun rise over the mountains and Alhambra.

I ate dinner at this café one night this week....the Alhambra is all lit up with different colored lights. It is spectacular.

   Albaicín is the most beautiful neighborhood in Granada, and my school actually used to be a house, so it’s hidden behind a white wall and garden. Our classes are obviously super small since we divide 9 students roughly in half between two language classes, so we just go upstairs to cute little classrooms with one big table to sit around. The main room when you walk into the school has a big open fireplace for winter J. The back courtyard even has a fig tree we can eat fruit from! I love it. (I forgot to take pictures of the exterior this week, but I'll add them here next week and on Facebook.)

To the back courtyard

The view out the back of the school

            My teachers/staff are wonderful. Right now we are just finishing orientation and have started our first intensive language class. We meet for three hours every morning, but it is just so helpful and it is clarifying so much for me. Because we are learning something that is a life skill for us right now, we can pretty much just ask whatever we want to know or talk about, and we play games to practice different elements of the language. Don’t get me wrong, I have pages of notes from each class, but we are constantly talking about things going on in the city or the appropriateness of one phrase over the other in a conversation with our host family, so there’s a great experiential basis for all of it. My professor, Juanfe, is hilarious and a great teacher. I’m hoping that my community service project and social change seminar will be as good when we start them next week!

The timing of everything here is so different that it gives me a lot of time to explore the city at night (before we start community service and have a lot more out of class work). I get home from school at 2:30 or 3, which is typical lunchtime. After we eat, I have taken a siesta most days until 5 or 6. Since we don’t eat dinner until 8:30 or 9 (or later) I have used those few hours to meet up with friends in my program to walk around the city, go to a shopping center near my house, or to do homework. On my first or second night here, I decided to be brave and go by myself to the Alcampo (which is like a mall but the main thing inside is a big Walmart-like store) to buy a Spain SIM card for my phone. I have to admit that I was really proud of myself for being able to communicate enough to make a decision and understand what I was buying, and my phone has been working perfectly. Little victories!

I have such a hard time believing that I’ve been in Granada for only a week. Some things already feel familiar, like riding the bus, and some things are still just totally foreign. The whole thing is different than I expected, which I knew would happen, but it’s still odd, and I think that is the hardest thing to adjust to. I have no idea what will happen in the next few months! Sometimes that’s super exciting, and sometimes when I’m really tired it is frustrating. Taking one day at a time is important, and I can always count on the moments like eating dinner with a friend while overlooking the illuminated Alhambra and city on a random weeknight to remind me what a spectacular experience this is.