Wow! It has been awhile since I last wrote in my blog.  My apologies.  The past few weeks have been zooming by, it is beginning to scare me because I still have so much I want to experience in Spain.  Speaking of time flying by ridiculously fast… yesterday, Friday 21^st, was the halfway mark to my program, as come December 21^st I will be leaving my host family.  Over the past ten days I have been really busy with school, training for the half-marathon, traveling and hanging out with friends.

Last Wednesday we had a holiday break from school so a few of my friends and I went up to Lanjaron, which is a hiking area on the southern part of the Sierra Nevadas.  We went for about a 4-hour hike and it was absolutely beautiful.  The majority of the land was very brown.  It was really nice to get out of the city for a few hours and enjoy being in the outdoors since the weather is still so nice here.  We finished the day by drinking blackberry milkshakes while waiting for our bus back to Granada. 

Last weekend a group of ten of us went to a beach in southern Spain called Cadiz.  It was great fun! We left Granada on the night bus at 3 am arriving in Cadiz around 8 in the morning.  We ate some breakfast and then checked into our hostel.  Due to the fact that this trip was a very last minute decision, half of our group was sleeping on the rough of the hostel in hammocks.  The hostel was an actual hostel.  By that I mean that people cooked in the kitchen together and there was a friendly, family ambiance to it.  We really enjoyed the hostel and it only cost us 13.50 each for the night!  We spent the entire first day, from 11 to 8, on a beach name La Caleta swimming, playing a paddle board game, napping, reading and eating tons of junk food. I forgot how good chips are.  We stayed at the beach until sunset and it was incredibly beautiful.  The sky was an amazing orange red color and the way it reflected off the little dingy boats in the water was striking.  I truly felt like I was in my own little paradise.  That night we all worked together and made a big spaghetti dinner, with a salad and bread and it was actually quite tasty.  We played some card games and called it a night.  The next morning we went straight to the beach again and spent the majority of the next day playing and laying in the sun again.  We had to head back to Granada around 3 because we had class the next day but all in all it was a great weekend trip to the beach.

Nothing all too exciting happened this week.  I ran eight miles on Thursday and that was pretty exciting because I was feeling pretty good after, two weeks till the half marathon.  This weekend I am just staying around Granada working on homework and hanging out with friends.  However, next weekend I am going to Madrid with my program and we will be there for five days.  We will be seeing many of the major sites in Madrid but also will be going to Toledo and Segovia for day trips.  Check out my pictures from my beach and mountain trips below.

I learned a very interesting word today… “chalé” it caught my eye in a book because it is my last name (obviously) and it means bungalow.

Lanjaron

 Cádiz

Weekend Number SIX!

I have been in Granada for over six weeks, that is just two weeks away from the mid-point of my program! Through our program, we receive intercambios for our time in Spain.  An intercambio is another student that is trying to learn English.  Therefore, the idea is that you speak in both Spanish and English to help both improve.  My intercambios name is Roberto and he lives in a pueblo (small town) about 20 minutes outside of Granada named Monachil.  Therefore, we meet about once a week and practice speaking in both Spanish and English.  This Saturday, I went with him to some mountains near his pueblo where we went on a short hike.  It was quite refreshing to be outside of the city and in nature.  The hike we went on was probably only about three to five miles in total but we were walking along large rock walls next to a river; therefore, it was quite beautiful.  I have posted some photos below.

            This weekend I also visited the Catedral de Granada (the cathedral of Granada).  It was absolutely beautiful and I was surprised by how large it was.  It looks quite large from the outside but once inside, it was obvious that it was much larger than I was expecting.  The inside was full of huge white granite pillars that went from the floor to the ceiling and many parts were adorned with gold decoration.  It was build after the Reyes Católicos (Catholic Kings) took over the city of Granada in 1492.  I have also attached pictures of the Cathedral below.

            I am now in my second week of classes and I am enjoying them for the most part.  My friend and I have also started training for a half marathon that we will be running in Granada in a month (gah so soon); therefore each day we have been going for runs around the city which has been another great way to explore more areas.  Most of the time we end up running along the river, which leads to a few mountain trails and I am enjoying it quite a bit.  Tomorrow we don’t have class because there is a national holiday; therefore, my friends and I are going to return to the mountains and go on another hike! Hope all is well :)

Monachil

 La Catedral

The perfect week in London and Dublin!

And thus begins the novel of the perfect week vacation in London and Dublin.  After finishing our finals on Thursday the 29^th of September I headed off with my three friends (Rachel, Annie and Katy) to Madrid on a night bus that left around 8:30 and arrived around 2 am.  We then spent the remainder of the night in the airport and caught our flight to London at 6:30am.  By 11 am we were checking into our hostel and we headed straight into the city of London.  Originally, we had planned on only exploring a little that day and resting.  Plans changed.  We ended up going on two walking tours.  The first was free and it took us around the major sites of London such at Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The Houses of Parliament, etc.  After eating a lovely lunch in Hyde Park we went on another walking tour called the Grim Reaper tour.  This tour led us to some more of the darker sides of London.  We heard about an ancient castle that is supposedly haunted by ghosts, saw the body pits from the black plague, learned about the execution system and saw the church called “prostitute church” where women walked around for hours hoping to find men to support their families.  With only four hours of sleep I still do not understand how we saw so much of London in one day.  That night we returned to our hostel and got a good night sleep. 

            For our second day in London we spent the morning at the National Gallery, which is the largest museum in London.  The Gallery has paintings from many famous artists including Van Gogh, Monet, etc.  That afternoon we went to a free choir service at Westminster Abbey.  The choir consisted of males of all ages, I would guess ranging from ages 7 to 70.  It was absolutely beautiful, the building and the singing.  Unfortunately, taking photos inside Westminster Abbey is not allowed but if you are interested you should Google it and you will understand how beautiful it is.    After the choir service we returned to our hostel to get ready for a pub-crawl.  We got Thai food from a street vendor near our hostel and the pub-crawl started at 7:30.  With the crawl we got free entrance into five of London’s most popular bars and dance clubs.  The last place we were at was called Ministry of Sound and it had between 6 and 8 different large rooms and the place was packed.  Typically, you have to have your name on the guest list for roughly two weeks in order to get it.  On the pub crawl we met a couple from Australia that had been living in London for about two years.  They were really nice and it reminded me yet again of the people that you can meet when traveling.

            On our last full day in London we went to the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace.  It is incredible the number of people that show up.  After changing of the guards we went to platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station.  For those of you who don’t know… it is a Harry Potter reference.  For lunch we got a typical English breakfast (breakfast for lunch, YUM!).  It consisted of two eggs, toast, beans, sausage and hashbrowns all for four pounds.  That afternoon we went to see the Shakespeare globe theater and walked across some of the bridges over the river Thames.  We next headed to Abbey Road where we took pictures like the Beatles.  What’s London without the clique photos with the red phone booths, antique cabs, double decker buses, etc.? We ended our evening by sitting on the top of Primrose Hill, which has a view of the entire city of London while watching the sunset.  We may or may not have been drinking Rose and eating chocolate at the same time.  For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant near our hostel, packed and went to bed fairly early.

            Monday morning we got up and headed to the airport around 10 for our flight to Dublin.  Upon arriving in Dublin we checked into our hostel and then headed out to explore the city a little.  We did a little shopping and got dinner at a local Irish pub.  We went on another pub crawl that night and it was an absolute blast.  We met a girl in our hostel named Nicki that had been traveling Europe for the past five months and she joined us.  Yet again we met some really cool people from all around the world on the crawl.  During this pub crawl we went to five bars in Dublin, most of which had amazing live music and we ended at a dance club.  It was probably one of the best nights of the trip. 

            We began Tuesday with a free tour of the city including Trinity College, the temple bar district, the Dublin Castle, etc.  After some Irish style pocket sandwich things for lunch we went to the Guinness factory for a tour.  It was interesting to see how beer is made.  At the end of the tour we enjoyed our complementary pint of beer while sitting in the Gravity bar, which is at the top of the Guinness Factory.  From the bar you have a panoramic view of the city.  After enjoying some delicious tarts from the Queen of Tarts bakery we somehow got wrapped up into going on another pub crawl.  However, we only stayed with the crawl till the third pub where we stayed for a while because we liked the live music.  For dinner the guide of the crawl showed us where the best slice pizza in Dublin was.  It was pretty delicious.  Wednesday morning we woke up relatively early and did a little shopping before we headed off to the airport to head back to Spain.  It was nice being in Dublin because it rained.  Weird concept, but I actually miss the rain and weather back in Seattle because Spain is still in the 70’s and 80’s everyday.

            Our flight landed in Spain around 5:30 and we were on the night bus back to Granada again leaving at 8:30 and arriving around 1 am.  It was very hard to leave Dublin and return to Spain.  Thursday morning we started our classes.  I have four classes, grammar, culture, arte history and pronunciation and writing.  A nice thing about studying abroad is that sometime you don’t have to do that much studying compared to the states. 

            I cannot emphasize enough how amazing my trip was.  The group that I traveled with was perfect, as everyone brought a different dynamic to the group and we had a blast together.  We saw a lot of both London and Dublin, while not spending a ton of money, which is always positive on a college student’s budget.  This blog makes me sound like a bit of an alcoholic but what is the English and Irish culture without some cider and beer.  They did practically invent alcohol.  The one negative part of my trip is that I have caught the travel bug.  I am having a hard time staying in Granada because all I want to do is travel and see all of Europe.  The culture is rich, the people are nice, the history is endless and I feel like I am at the perfect point in my life to see the world.  Love you and miss you all!

LONDON

Westminster Abbey

 Abbey Road

DUBLIN

Trinity College