Exploring the City

Sangria in a tapas bar in the Albacyin

I love this city. Granada reminds me of a mix between Florence, Rome, and Istanbul—three of my favorite places I’ve ever been.

Our official EAP program started on Friday afternoon. We checked into the residencia, where we all get our own room and individual bathrooms (which is a luxury in and of itself, but coming from Isla Vista it’s a miracle). There are fifty of us on the program, and so far everyone seems so nice. I’m definitely reminded of the first two weeks of freshman year, where you ask and repeat everyone’s name about thirty times before anything sticks.

After putting our stuff away we had free time, so a bunch of us went out to explore the city. We walked to the center of the city where the Catedral is located, and then to the old Arabic quarters, called the Albacyin. This is generally considered to be the most beautiful part of the city, with its cobblestone alleyways, middle eastern shops, and gorgeous views of the Alhambra. I fell in love with Granada after seeing this neighborhood!

The great thing about this country is that any time you get hungry, you stop in any restaurant and order a drink (soda or alcohol) and automatically get free lunch or dinner. Sometimes it gets a little tedious, like when you want two glasses of Sangria but not two full rounds of food. Good luck finishing three or four drinks and all the accompanying tapas!

On Saturday we took a language placement test, and then met our monitores, our student guides. Mine is a really nice guy named Javier, who is the nephew of the program director. The monitores showed us some places in the city, and then took us out to tapas. Later they will help us buy cell phones, search for apartments, and hopefully introduce us to their Spanish friends!

In the afternoon I took a long walk by myself through a lot of the city. Granada is the perfect size—it feels like a real city but it is very walkable, and probably takes an hour from one end to the other on foot. Also, for the whole month of August all the stores have incredible discounts on clothing before their Fall styles come in, so we got here just in time!

On every street post and fence there are hundreds of fliers for pisos (apartments) to rent, and it is very overwhelming trying to find an apartment to move into after the stay at the residencia. Especially since I don’t have a cell phone to call any of the owners. I would most want to live in the Albacyin district, but this is recommended against because it has the most robbery. This is also where the gypsies tend to hang out, and they are very skilled pick-pocketers. One tried to distract me with some rosemary plant today while her friend snuck behind me, but I didn’t fall for it.

Last night some of our monitores took us out to dinner again. The meal timing is pretty hard to adjust to. We had lunch at 2 and then dinner at 10:15, and needless to say I was starving in between. Buy a snack, you say? Too bad all the stores close for siesta from 2—6! But I’ll get used to it I’m sure.

We went to a bar where the soccer game between Granada and Sevilla was playing. Spaniards are very into futbol. We got tons of tapas and everything was delicious, until later in the night I was sick for five hours because I’m not used having everything I eat be either fried, mayonnaise-smothered, cheesy, or full of red meat (and having it come all at one sitting!). But it’s the price I must pay for deliciousness. 

Exploring an old Arab bath



A distant view of the Alhambra

We Made It!!!

After 28 hours of car, plane, metro, bus, and lots of walking, Claire and I have finally made it to our hostel in Granada. I have never had such a long travel day in all my life, although it did go pretty smoothly. Somehow we managed to catch the right metro, take the right 5-hour bus, and we even met up with a local Granadian who had studied at UC Davis right when we were definitely going to take a wrong step. He personally escorted us to our hostel. Unfortunately I took packing tips from my sister, who subscribes to the train of thought that you’ll never know what you’ll want to wear, so bring everything! I was getting some very strange looks on the Metro with my body-sized bag.

The 5-hour bus ride from Madrid to Granada was like taking an inexpensive scenic tour through the country. Also there was a man on the bus that looked and sounded exactly like that short, fat warrior Yao in Mulan. The problem was that every time I would fall asleep on the ride, this man would clear his throat or cough or even sing some off-key Spanish songs so forcefully that I would jerk awake and think someone was crying out in pain.

Spain looks exactly like California, except less developed and more olive trees. Also there’s an occasional whitewashed building thrown into the hills in some places.

We are too tired to explore the city today, although we’ll probably venture out for some tapas in a bit. Hopefully I will sleep for 20 hours if that is even humanly possible, and then be ready to start the program tomorrow.

Pre-departure Thoughts

Bienvenido!

I’d like to start this blog off by saying I never thought I would be a blogger. People who know me can vouch for the fact that I barely know how to download pictures onto my computer, let alone set up a website. I also always made fun of my parents for being nerdy bloggers, but I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Anyway, I thought this blog would be the easiest way to communicate with people instead of writing tons of the same emails. Plus, I guess it’s the trendy thing to do now, because at least five of my friends who are also going abroad have already set up their own blogs and posted links to their Facebook pages.

My reason for choosing Spain was really a process of elimination. I’ve been trying to become fluent in Spanish since 7^th grade. I remember my middle school Spanish teacher asking us to write down our goals for the year. I wrote, “By the end of the first trimester, I want to be 1/3 fluent. By the end of the second trimester, I want to be 2/3 fluent, and by the time school’s out I want to know the whole Spanish language.” Eight years later I am at a nine-year-old’s reading level. Great.

I chose Spain instead of Latin America because, like every other blonde girl who goes to UCSB, I just want to party!! No, just kidding. I wanted to be in Europe as a college student, yes, but I also think it’s hard to understand Latin America without first understanding Spain, since after all, Spain was responsible for much of the way Latin America ended up. I picture Spain as this regal country full of ancient splendor, long-entrenched traditions (like the dreaded bullfighting), a relaxed lifestyle complete with daily siestas, and a perfect Mediterranean climate. It’s easy to forget about the country’s atrocities: the Spanish Inquisition, Los Conquistadores in the New World, Franco… Europe, despite the stereotype that it’s a popular college partying destination, has a lot to offer in terms of insight, education, and history.

I must add here that my other inclination for choosing Spain may sound selfish or pretentious (or both!), but if I was going to live in a foreign country for a year, I really wanted to be able to eat and drink without worrying about dysentery. I lived in Nicaragua for a summer during high school and loved it, but my hypochondria never let me fully enjoy some authentic street food, or even brush my teeth with the tap water, without wondering if I would be hunched over the toilet in three hours (TMI??). Also my neighbor got robbed at gunpoint, which I guess could happen anywhere but at least in Spain you can enjoy a good glass of wine and a siesta while it does.

I chose Granada as the city because the smaller size appealed to me, as well as the fact that Spanish is the main language, whereas Madrid is very metropolitan so there is lots of English, and in Barcelona they speak Catalan, an entirely different language altogether. But honestly what really sold me on Granada was the fact that it’s one of the few remaining provinces that still serves free tapas (small portions of food) with every drink—you just can’t say no to such a great thing!

I started the process of traveling to Spain back in January, and applying for my Visa was arguably more difficult than some classes I took Spring quarter at UCSB. I’m inclined to think that Spain does not want visitors—I had to get fingerprinted, cleared by the FBI with an assurance that I have no criminal record (twice, since the timing of the documents was messed up), a seal of the Apostille on an original document from the State Department, and an in-person visit to the Spanish Consulate in Los Angeles. Luckily I go to school nearby—I found out during this process that students in, say, Minnesota who wish to study abroad in Spain also have to show up in person to the Consulate, and there are only three in the U.S.—two in California and one in New York.

            My trip is now a week away, and I’m getting really excited, although I have to admit I’m also very nervous for all the cultural differences. I tend to eat dinner like an old lady, at 5 o’clock on the dot. Spaniards are eating a late lunch at this time. I tend to go to bed around 10 or 10:30 here. Spaniards are eating dinner at this time! Also, people keep telling me that Spaniards are very well-kept, and don’t even go to the grocery stores without getting nicely dressed first. Any UCSB student will tell you it’s perfectly acceptable to wear sweats or gym clothes to class—I even showed up to work in my pajamas the other day! (Ok, maybe that was even stretching the UCSB dress code a bit. . . .) It seems counter-intuitive to get all dolled up in order to buy a slab of bloody meat from the butcher next door, but I guess I’ll have to adjust.

To prepare for my adventures, I spent a lot of time over the summer reading some of my favorite childhood books in Spanish. This really knocked out two birds with one stone—I practiced my Spanish and didn’t have to feel bad about re-reading Harry Potter for the hundredth time instead of picking up a more “intellectual” novel during my spare time.

I’ve also been killing a lot of free time and sunny days by watching the Discovery Channel show Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. This man travels the world, eats tons and tons of local specialties, and essentially has my dream job. I considered all this TV to be research, as I watched two episodes where he went to Spain. I should add here that Anthony has said that he considers Spain to have the best culinary achievements in the entire world, outside of Asia. But I would say that watching these episodes has given me some reservations of my own.

Spaniards clearly like their meat. Every meal he ate included some form of fatty tissue, whether it was braised oxtail, ham, seafood of literally every origin, shape, preparation, and horridness (i.e. piles of anchovies); pate with a side of ham, hanging pig, the stomach lining of a cow, a little more ham, and countless other pig products. The one glimmer of hope was that there was bread and wine in every scene—those are the real culinary achievements, in my opinion.

Although it is rare for me to find a food I don’t like, I must say I’m not a huge meat, cheese, or oil lover—and it seems these are the only three ingredients in Spanish cuisine. Although I’m definitely open to trying new things, and will in fact start eating red meat for the first time in roughly five years (with small slips here and there) to accommodate, I will guess that by the end of this trip I will have resorted often to a full meal of bread—and let’s be honest, I have no reservations about that.  

Thanks for reading my blog, and I’ll try my best to write frequent updates while I’m abroad!