Primavera

Coming from California, I’ve never really gotten to appreciate seasons—especially in Santa Barbara, where we treat light drizzling as torrential downpours worthy of skipping every class that week. But after being consistently cold in Granada for four straight months (OK, winter here is pretty mild in comparison to the rest of Europe, but like I said, I’m a California kid), I am overjoyed to say that this week Spring arrived! I’ve whipped out my Rainbow flip-flops from the back of my closet, and even applied sunscreen once or twice. Yesterday I went for coffee with a friend and was literally sweating while sitting outside. The bakeries have been replacing their winter sweets with all different flavors of ice cream (and I unfortunately walk by my favorite one at least twice a day on my way to school). The change of weather makes me really start appreciating this wonderful city again—let’s see how many posts until I start complaining about the unbearable heat….

A lot of my Californian friends have left, since the first semester ended a couple weeks ago. Although I’m sad to see them go, I’ve taken it as an opportunity to try and more thoroughly immerse myself in these last four (only four!!!) months. For one of my classes I have to read a 400 page book in Spanish, and I’m so excited to say that I’m getting through it fairly easily. It’s so gratifying to know that I prepared for Spain in California by struggling through children’s novels, and now I’m reading adult non-fiction. Also, since two American friends I hung out with a lot the past few months are now gone, it’s forcing me to make more native friends in my classes to keep from getting too lonely. I think I’m also going to take a break from traveling at least for a little while—we have Spring Break coming up, but I plan on staying in Spain since it’s Semana Santa, which is a week packed full of festivals leading up to Easter, and most famously celebrated in Andalucia.

Also, as a random note, every time I teach English the little boys find some way to make me laugh. The other day we were practicing some new verbs, and I said “draw,” to which they were supposed to mime the action of coloring. Out of the blue, and without missing a beat, the littlest one Alejandro shouted out, “¡¡YO VOY A DIBUJAR UN TORO COMIENDOSE UNA VACA!!” “I’m going to draw a bull eating a cow!!” I really don’t know where little kids come up with such things.