Granada routines

I apologize for having been so far so negligent of this blog.  I can excuse it partly by the fact that I had a blog post all written and I wanted to attach an audio file to it but couldn’t, despite multiple attempts.  I had been set on posting that audio file.  Now, the original post doesn’t really make sense to post, and so I’ve had to start over – a difficult thing to do, when the only down-time I ever have is during siesta (and even then not often, as my host mom likes to talk a lot).

So.  I am inside the red dot on this map:

During orientation, I learned that Spaniards only lisp when pronouncing "c"s or "z"s, and then only with certain vowels following.  Therefore, my impression that "Spain" in Spain's Spanish would be pronounced as "Ethpania" was incorrect, and the original name of this blog was therefore wrong.  For any of you who knew that already, I apologize!!


I live in a 5^th-floor (6^th-floor, in the English-speaking world) apartment with my host mother, Hortensia, my Californian housemate, Emily, who is here with the same study-abroad program (IES), and our super-happy little dog, Campanilla (which means Tinkerbell) who occasionally leaves me little brown gifts on the floor of my room (which is easily forgivable because she really is the best company ever, and vastly attenuates the potential awkwardness of a homestay).  It has taken me a little while to get used to getting into an elevator every time I come or go from the apartment – at first, it unsettled my stomach quite a bit, but after walking miles and miles every day, I really do NOT want to be going up 5 flights of stairs on a hot afternoon.  Granada is quite the place to be.  It is possible to walk everywhere, and people DO walk everywhere.  It’s not even practical to have a car, unless you live really far outside the city; the majority of streets are pedestrian-only, and in the old Muslim part of the city it is completely impossible to ride around, even on a motorbike (of which there are many here).  So I have been building up my leg muscles.

Every morning after an early breakfast that Hortensia places out neatly for us (complete with Hello Kitty mugs of coffee and tea, Choco Rice cereal, and mini breakfast cakes), Emily and I walk 15 minutes through the commercial center of town to the IES building where we have classes.  The IES building is right in the center of the old city, with a beautiful view of the Albaicin (the Muslim quarter) and the Alhambra (14^th-century Muslim fortress and pleasure palace).  This is what one of the (many) views from the IES center looks like:

This is the Alhambra, from the top of the Albaicin:

The IES center is also right next door to the Iglesia de Santa Ana, which is the most popular church in Granada for elaborate weddings.  On weekends, there are weddings there every consecutive hour.  I have seen more weddings in the past two weeks than in all the rest of the 21 years of my life put together.

[Iglesia de Santa Ana]:

I am taking classes in Spanish language, Islamic art and architecture in Spain, a literature class about Federico Garcia Lorca, an early 20^th century poet and playwright who was executed during the Spanish Civil War, and an investigative anthropology class about minority and immigrant communities in Spain.  I will be taking 1 or 2 classes at the University of Granada when classes there start in the next 2 weeks.  At around 2 in the afternoon Emily and I walk back home again for lunch, which is always huge and always delicious and often includes Hortensia’s daughter Irene and her two children, Carlitos (1.5 years) and Irenita (4 years).  This was one of our lunches, arroz negro, which is made with rice, some vegetables, and seafood, including mini-octopi and blackened with squid ink:

Then we have siesta, a wonderful cultural invention.  Even if I don’t sleep, it’s relaxing, and the conversations that take place over lunch (politics, immigration, health care, economy, education, food, language, history) often extend for hours, until siesta is over at 5 or so.  Around 5 or 6, depending on the day, Emily and I return to school for afternoon classes, which last usually until around 8.  Just as the sun is going down, the whole city turns out onto the streets, with their dogs, their small children, their friends, balloons, baby carriages, ice cream cones, and music, to “dar el paseo” (the closest English equivalent I can come up with is the Jane Austen-like “take a turn” as in, “let us take a turn about the room”, but “dar el paseo” is a million times less stuffy).  You walk around slowly, through the streets and plazas, greet all the people you know, buy some gelato or go out for tapas with your friends.  The street, in Spain, is an incredibly public place, and rather than meeting friends in someone’s house or at a particular restaurant or bar, it is most common to gather with friends in the street or in one of the many plazas before deciding what you will do.  And people go to bed late; even on weekdays, people are out in the streets until 1 or 2 in the morning.  On weekends, that hour is more like 4 or 5.  Small children stay up until 11 or 12, often later, accompanying their parents on the paseo late at night.  I can barely keep up!

Weekends are a little different from this weekday routine, of course.  I have so far been to 2 sites on the Mediterranean coast (I can now check “skinny dipping in the Mediterranean” off my to-do-in-life list), gone to a flamenco concert, gotten free backstage tickets to see the most popular rock band in Spain, gone to the movie theater to see a really melodramatic big-screen interpretation about the life of the 17^th-century poet and playwright Lope de Vega, and walked all over the city and seen some of the best views of my life.  Most of these require their own blog post, so I promise to be more diligent in my blog duties and to write about each of these events in more detail soon.

For now, if you ask me specific questions about Spain, or Granada, or my classes, or whatever, I’ll have more of an idea of what people want to hear about.  Post questions to this blog, or send me an email at mwinslow@brynmawr.edu.

I send you all greetings!!!!!!!

And Hortensia, who is in the room at the moment, sends greetings and "besitos", too!