Settling in

I suppose it’s time to write another blog entry… I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost three weeks already. Time has flown by and I am starting to establish a kind of schedule.

The average day:

9:00am – 10:00 am: Wake up, get ready, eat breakfast

10:30 am – 2:00 pm: Do things like wander the city, find internet at a café/a bar/school/API, go for a run, shop, explore, etc.

2:00 pm – 5:00 pm: Lunch + siesta = I eat and take a nap and read my book. I’ve finished almost a book a week here.

5:00 pm – 9:00 pm: Repeat 10:30 am – 2:00 pm timeslot. Occasionally sit by river and drink an entire jar of Sangria or buy pastries and eat them by the river.

9:00 pm: Eat dinner

10:00 – 1:00 am: Go to a smoky bar and listen to live music, play trivia, talk with friends, drink red wine.

This schedule is sure to be interrupted soon because school started on Wednesday, meaning I’ll have to actually go to classes. The good news is that we don’t have class on Fridays and there is no school on Monday because it is a holiday (I believe the holiday is to celebrate Spain’s Armada; not sure).

I have four classes:
1) Islamic Culture in Spain
2) Business Spanish
3) Translation of English to Spanish
4) Writing and Speaking Spanish

They’re two hours each session and I have them twice a week. I’ve had all of them so far, and let me tell you, listening to someone speak in fairly rapid Spanish for 2 hours straight is hard! I placed in a higher level than I thought I would (and higher than I probably should have) so the lectures are pretty much how they are in the States: except for the fact that they’re in Spanish and not in English. EEK. I’m going to have to study a lot and work on my vocabulary a lot if I’m going to do well.

School is held in an old orphanage that was apparently built before ventilation systems existed. The rooms are incredibly stuffy and hot all of the time and by the end of the two-hour period, it’s difficult to concentrate because it’s so warm. You can open the windows, but there’s always someone constructing something, or revv-ing their motorcycle, or smoking a cigarette and chatting outside, making it difficult or next-to-impossible to hear the teacher. Even if you’re lucky enough to have it be quiet outside, it’s difficult to get a cross-breeze flowing because you can’t leave the doors open to the hallway because it’s incredibly loud out there as well.
The school is built in a square shape, with a courtyard and fountain in the middle and classrooms on two levels surrounding it. The courtyard is covered and always filled with students talking, laughing, and taking breaks from classes. It’s also super hot in the courtyard because the type of ceiling it has creates a green-house affect. There are old coil-heaters in the classrooms which I don’t think we’ll ever need because it’s always so warm!

But enough about school. We went to San Jose last weekend. San Jose/Cabo de Gato is a small town on the southern coast of Spain. It reminded me a lot of a Greek town, with small, winding streets, white-washed houses and rocky cliffs that drop off into beautiful, azul waters. The beaches were sandy and fairly deserted and the water is as warm as it is in the Caribbean. Que bueno. We went to two different beaches there. One was a 30 minute walk from town and it was my favorite because it was so deserted. It reminded me of Meagan’s Bay in St. Thomas, only in Mediterranean rather than Caribbean style and it lacked the teeming masses of sweaty tourists. The only people on the beach besides us thirty-or-so Americans were a few nudist families and a herd of goats. It was pretty sweet. There was very little current so you could swim very far out in the water and just float. This was especially nice because the weather was very warm (I’m guessing low 90s).

The next day we went to the second beach which was in the town of San Jose. It was also pretty but not nearly as deserted. Still a few topless women, though. We lazed around, read books, and floated around in the water when we got too hot. It was like taking a vacation from a vacation.
I do see my time here as a bit of a vacation. I don’t really have anything to do here; no one who expects me to be anywhere at a certain time (except for my house-mom who expects me to be around for meals unless I tell her otherwise); no one who expects me to do anything for them. It’s really kind of a strange to feel completely superfluous. I keep saying I want to feel like I’m living here, but I don’t quite feel that way yet because I feel so detached from my surroundings. I don’t know the Spaniards at all. I join in at meals with Rosa and her family members who come over once or twice a week to eat with us; I go to bars where only Spaniards hang out; I try to blend in on the streets; but I feel like I am oil dropped into the water that is Spain. Even if you shake everything up to try to mix me in with the Spanish, I always end up separated from everyone.

I need to make some Spanish friends and I think I’ll feel more comfortable here. Last night, Carrie and I wandered and found this bar that had cool, live Jazz music. It was packed wall-to-wall with Spaniards, smoking, drinking, and talking. It was a really neat atmosphere (minus the smoke) and we had a good time listening to the musicians rock-out. It’s difficult to find cool places to go here – there are tons and tons of tapas bars and hole-in-the-wall restaurants – but we’ve got no one to show us which are good and cheap and authentic. It’s also very, very intimidating to be surrounding by people speaking a language you don’t grasp very well, especially when those people are your own age and of the opposite sex. I have gotten good at ordering “vino tinto de la casa,” although I can’t tell you what the actual wine is called, where it’s from, or what type it is other than it’s a red wine.

We get cat-called very, very frequently here as well, which would be nice if I knew for sure what the men were saying and if I knew for sure when they were talking to me. My Spanish vocabulary does not include cat-calls.

In other news, Carrie and I booked plane tickets to Milan, Italy for a five-day weekend in December. We’re going to try and explore Milan a bit and then take a train down to Rome for a few days before heading back to Milan and flying back to Granada. Should be fun. We’re going to try to do one trip per month, so now we just need to find somewhere cheap to go in October and November.

Miss you all and hope things are going well at home!