¡Listo!

So you guys have already seen a little slice of Granada (at least through its graffiti), but I thought I would expand on our adventures!  This is going to be in the form of a numbered list.  Hope you're ready.

Things to Do When You're in Granada (a.k.a. for Mom and Dad):

1. Stay at a nice hotel.  We stayed at Hotel Los Angeles, which is pretty outside the city, but the walk to the center isn't bad (maybe around 15-20 minutes).  But you can't beat the breakfast that we had.  I'm not sure if it was free or not, but hey.  It can't hurt.  Besides (@ Mom and Dad), you already paid for it once (thank you!).  And the walk to the city features all that cool graffiti!  With a lobby like the one to the right, how could you say no?
2. Comer tapas.  I know that this is a staple of pretty much anywhere in Spain, but in Granada, there's a catch.  If you order a drink -- whether it be beer, wine, or some other type of refresco -- you get a free tapa.  Granted, some places might be better than others.  I'd recommend going to a legitimate tapas bar.  We went to a sit-down restaurant that also had a bar and we got smaller portions.  However, we had friends that went to a tapas bar and they ate really well.  Needless to say, it's all good.  Take advantage of it.
3. Go to a tetería.  As I mentioned in my last post, Granada has a significantly large Arabic population, and as such, they have quite the large slice of Arabic culture.  This means really good tea shops, or teterías, everywhere.  We went to one on Sunday and had literally the best tea I've ever had in my entire life.  It was a little pricey, but then again, we chose the house specialty; naturally, it was going to cost more. This is something, unlike tapas, that you might not necessarily find in such a high dosage anywhere else in Spain.
4. Have some ice cream.  Evidently, the helado in Granada is the best in the South, if not in all of Spain.  I didn't have some for myself, but Meagan got some hazelnut-chocolate ice cream (called Roche, presumably named after Ferrero Rocher) that she shared with us.  It was DELICIOUS.
5. See La Alhambra.  This is the monument for which Granada is most famous.  It's a set of castles and older villages, most now in ruins, that sits high up on the mountainside of the city.  During the Moorish reign, it functioned as a city within a city, a small marketplace or village, if you will.  After being taken over during La Reconquista, it maintained its purpose within a Catholic context.  There was even an additional palace built for Carlos V, the grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, right next to the old Moorish palaces, La Alcazaba and Los Palacios Nazaríes.  The architecture among the three of them is absolutely stunning and ornate, while the gardens are pristine and lovely to wander through.  We were on a guided tour so we lost some of the feeling of spontaneity, but it was still a wonderful visit.  I highly recommend it.  Pictures below!
6. Go to the top of the city.  I don't really know the way, nor do I know what the top (or at least where we were) is called, but I can tell you that you should find out and then go.  The view is amazing.  Granted, you'll see quite a few wonderful vistas from La Alhambra, but even those didn't beat this one.  (I think the name had to do with San Nicolás, but I'm not sure.)

A long time ago, I watched a music video for "Waiting on the World to Change," by John Mayer.  The song itself is pretty good and the video, which deals with a bunch of people painting protest messages with cans of spray paint all over the city, fits well with the ironically mellow tone of the song.

It was the first time I had ever seen graffiti used so artistically.  Maybe that's because I don't live in a big enough city where graffiti is a "crime" of vandalism too widespread to successfully eliminate.  However, walking around the beautiful city of Granada this weekend and seeing all the wonderfully artistic graffiti and "mural art" was altogether inspiring and somewhat ethereal.  I have never before seen so many vibrant, impromptu paintings at one time.  Here are some examples:

As we all know, yesterday was Valentine's Day, and I'm about to get a bit gushy for the next paragraph.  I can't truly express how grateful I am that Meagan is here with me in Spain.  I honestly don't know how I would survive this adventure without her.  I think that the adjustment to life over here would be a lot harder.  A really hard adjustment isn't something I have really experienced yet; of course, every adjustment has been hard, but not nearly as bad as I expected it to be, for whatever reason.  In the end, I am so thankful that she is here for me to share this adventure with.

Something I did not expect about Spaniards originally, but in retrospect I really shouldn't have been so surprised about: Spaniards love to eat ham.  Last night, my señora invited me, my roommate Chris, and Meagan to go to a bar with her para tomar cerveza y comer jamón.  That literally means, "to drink beer and eat ham."  So we agreed!  It was actually quite a tumultuous experience, what with Chris and my señora arriving half an hour late, last-minute schedule changes, trying to figure out how to pay an un-split check between four people (because they don't split checks here in España), and Chris calling my señora old by accident.  It was crazy.  However, we still had a good time.  As we would say here about ourselves, lo pasamos bien, amidst food, drink, and somewhat awkward merriment.

About ham, though: this is not your average ham bought in the grocery store.  This ham is very lean (supposedly), fresh, treated meat.  Spaniards are very prideful about their ham, saying it is among the best in the world.  And it is, actually.  It's different, and it's very valuable and rich.  There's a certain type of ham, jamón ibérico, that literally cannot be bought in the U.S. because it literally cannot be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean.  It spoils too quickly.

Another thing that surprised me about Spain is that there's a lot of open space.  I know that's probably a naive thing to assume a country didn't have, but I had always expected Europe to be pretty jam-packed because in terms of continents, it's pretty small.  I always got this impression that cities were everywhere and you could walk everywhere and all that.  This could be true for other countries, but I doubt it.  Regardless, Spain is really a collection of, as my book put it, oases in the wilderness.  Cities are scattered about everywhere and what's left in between is just open expanses of fields, farmland, mountains (Spain is the second-tallest country in Europe), etc.

So there's actually a lot of places that pigs can be reared.  My señora says that each province of Spain gets the best of all the other provinces, because they will of course export their best goods to show for them.  So I'm pretty certain we got some good quality jamón.  And if you ever come to Spain, I seriously recommend trying it, whether it's just plain jamón or chicharrones or some kind of complete dish with jamón mixed in.  It's a delicacy that you might not be able to have anywhere else.

I know it's been awhile (again), but I haven't really known what to write here.  So I guess I'll talk about how I haven't had to do anything the past few days.

Basically, my weekend started on Wednesday at 2 o'clock.  (What?!?)  But seriously, my last class this week was at 1 the day before yesterday.  This is due to the fact that one of my classes doesn't start till March, and the other one was cancelled that day.  This will most certainly not happen every week (what a shame?) because I will eventually have class when I'm supposed to, not to mention I will be tutoring on Thursday in the morning.  I'll get to that later, maybe in a later post.

Anyway, my roommate, Chris, mentioned Wednesday night as we were walking back from dinner out, that Sevilla is a great city because there's so much stuff to do.  And he's right!  There is a whole lot to do.  However, sometimes you just don't wanna do anything.  The past couple days, after I had worn out every idea of things to do, I just went and laid out in the sun on one of the few lawns they have here.  Not exactly the same as Polk Place at UNC, but it served its purpose.  In short, these past few days have been very relaxing and easy-going.

That being said, I miss class.  I miss the hard grind of typical classes at home, when I would have so much to do and not nearly enough time to do it.  But most of all, I miss just having something to do.  That's not to say that I don't, but when I'm here to study, I want to be able to have fun...and study.  Now, I would be the kind of person to complain that the academic system here is lax, but I'm not.  I do enjoy it.  However, when I know that I will enjoy myself in the classes that I'm taking and will enjoy learning about the things that they teach, I want to go.  I really do.  For example, the best class here so far is this linguistics class that I'm taking, dealing with the history of linguistic thought.  The professor, Juan Pablo Mora, is FANTASTIC -- so energetic, speaks at lightning speed (although surprisingly, I can understand pretty much every word he says), and very, very smart.  The subject material is great and sometimes (or most of the time, maybe) in English -- we read a really interesting article by a linguist whose name was only listed as "R Harris" and if I could include it, I would, but I don't know how to do that on Blogger.  AND it's participatory, which isn't common here.  Essentially, it's one of the best classes I've ever had, and I can say that with reasonable certainty after being in it for just 2 days.

My other classes are interesting as well, but the one that I've been to the most (other than linguistics) is early and kind of dry.  And the other two haven't really started yet.

But again, I'm not complaining.  And it's not as though I'm running out of stuff to do.  I just get restless when I don't have obligations to fulfill.  Is that weird?  Well, for now, I will have to deal with it.  Hah!  Because I have two more days of "weekend" left.  Time to party.

So...I was supposed to have 3 classes today.  I had about 1 and 1/2.

Let me explain.  As I've mentioned before, the Spanish educational system is a lot more lax on certain things, one of them being when classes are held, when the teacher shows up, what room it's in, when they post what room the class is being held in, etc.  (For example, my class at 1:00 takes place in a different room each of the three days it meets.  What???)  This is fairly typical of The University of Sevilla, if not Spanish universities in general.  I knew this going in, so it was only fitting that a lot of this confusion should happen today, the first day of classes.  Here's what happened.

8:30 a.m.: I knew this class, La historia y técnica de la fotografía (History and Technique of Photography), wasn't going to meet today.  It is in its own department, and the entire department doesn't start classes until tomorrow.  So no surprise there.  I was going to go down to the university early anyway.  I got there around 11; saw my former teacher, Ángeles, who also coordinates all of the educational aspects of the program associated with the university; and met up with Meagan, waiting with her until our next class at 1:00.  (Her 8:00 class was canceled.)

1:00 p.m.: Ángeles informed all 5 of us in this next class, La historia de las ideas lingüísticas (History of Linguistic Ideas), that the professor, a good friend of hers, Juan Pablo Mora, wasn't going to be teaching class today because he was driving back from Rotterdam.  (Huh.)  And that today would be taught by a substitute.  Prof. Mora evidently said that the sub might give us an exam to test for our level of knowledge about the material; of course, none of us really knew anything.  Even I, having taken a linguistics class, couldn't tell you who the fundamental philosophers and linguists were before the 19th century, nor could I have told you there basic philosophies or theories.  But whatever.  Ángeles told us that Juan Pablo told her that it wouldn't matter.  No pasa nada.

6:30 p.m.: This was my only sure-fire class, because it was another being taught at EUSA.  And sure enough, it was held.  But all we did was outline the basic aspects of the course and then introduce ourselves to the professor.  Somehow that lasted the entire hour and fifteen minutes.  But I'm not complaning.  He also canceled class on Wednesday.  Awesome!

So there.  I can say that I have been fully indoctrinated into the Spanish system because I've had balking professors and class cancellations already.  They have a phrase that would describe that perfectly in Spanish: ¡Qué arte!  There's not really an accurate translation in English; the closest I can think of is "How artful!" but the feel of it is more like, "How ironic."  I don't know.  Sometimes things just get lost.  Or nobody bothers to do anything about it (like my classes).  Again, not complaning!

Nick

So now that our program has been in Sevilla for 1 month, but what feels like 3 or 4, I feel fairly comfortable walking around the city and seeing the sights, especially in our neck of the woods.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, this city is huge, and a lot of it has remained unexplored by us, considering we all live basically in more or less of a line across the southern edge of the city.  Luckily for us, a lot of the things to see are within this line.  Today, Meagan and I took a walk, or in Spanish, dimos un paseo, on which we visited several of these places.  For a map, look here.  Our route:

A) Calle Mateos Gago, or rather, El Barrio de Santa Cruz en general.  Mateos Gago is just the main street in Santa Cruz.  At this point, I was by myself and just wandering.  El Barrio de Santa Cruz, in case I haven't expounded before, is a tight, densely consolidated community (it's called the Jewish Quarter), full of pedestrian streets, little plazas, and restaurants and family-owned tourist shops.  It's quite a fascinating place, and good to get lost in too.  But today I made it all the way through one side and out the other!  I was so impressed with myself.

Hey guys!  Sorry it's been awhile.  I had two exams today for the two halves of my first class, so I've been at work stressing out and studying.  They went pretty smoothly, though, so I'm not complaining!

Anyway, I have to check you guys up.  The most important thing for me this week was going to La Catedral de Sevilla, which evidently is the largest cathedral in the world -- at least, that calls itself a cathedral.  St. Peter's Basilica doesn't qualify because it is called a "basilica".  Sometimes I think they stretched their records here in Sevilla.  However, speaking of records, you can check to be sure -- La Catedral de Sevilla has a certificate from Guinness Book for being the largest cathedral in the world, so I suppose that title is pretty legitimate.

Let me tell you, though.  It was absolutely amazing!  The whole place is so humongous, so vacuous.  The ceiling looks three times higher inside than the height of the building looks outside.

Just being in something that old and that grandiose was very humbling and awe-inspiring.  It is kind of funny, though, because its existence and the history behind why it was built kind of makes me wonder exactly how virtuous its presence really is.

Let me explain.  According to our instructor, Fernando, the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarchy had somewhat of a rivalry throughout the first part of the 20th century.  While being a devout Catholic himself, the king would build very, grandiose palaces in order to assure the people of his stature, and also to show up the Catholic church.  Well, the Catholic church would respond by building a gigantic, grandiose cathedral.  So they kept one-upping each other until, finally, it came time for the cathedral to be built.  So while it does exist to house worship services and does function as a place of solitude and religious reverence, at the same time it exists to be a decadent display of pride, which I thought was very ironic.

Nonetheless, it is still astounding.  Here are some more pictures: