So I haven't written anything in a while: here's some of the stuff I've been doing!

A couple weeks ago I visited the Cathedral of Granada, which is a glorious old Romanesque/Gothic church with lovely soaring ceilings and an excessively ornate altar area and an ambulatory and everything! I walked in and this huge sense of peace just washed over me, and I looked up at the vaulted ceiling, painted white, and was almost overwhelmed by the beauty around me. It's one thing to read about Gothic churches in art history books and see pictures of their beauty, but it's something entirely different to actually be in one. I walked all around the ambulatory, stopping at all the chapel apses dedicated to different saints, and looked at the big sculptures of Saint John I think it was in his different guises: one of him as a pilgrim, very harmless-looking and holy, and another of him as Juan Matamoros--John the Moor-killer. Not so harmless, especially as there was a sculpture depicting him mounted on a white steed in the process of stepping on the neck of a Muslim. Lovely. All in all, though, the church was rather spectacular.

Since then a lot of things have happened, such as the start of an intercambio program, whereby we English speakers learning Spanish get paired up with Spanish speakers learning English for purposes of mutual practicing and learning about cultures and all that good stuff. I've hung out with my intercambios a couple times since then, going out and doing various things around the city. Once we went to a free Swedish movie (in Swedish with Spanish subtitles) at the public library, and the other night my roommate and I and a few Spaniards went out for sushi tapas (talk about mixing cultures!), where Salo demonstrated some rather impressive artistic skills using a napkin, a chopstick, and soy sauce ink. Then we went to an "Irish" pub, getting back to our room, in true Spanish fashion, at about four in the morning. Actually that's pretty early for a Spanish Friday night, but it was pretty good for us.

Today was/is the festival of the Virgin of the Anguishes (it's a lot prettier in Spanish), the patroness of Granada, and they had a big parade. too bad it looked like rain, or I would have gotten to see a giant beautiful statue of the Virgin herself.

I'll write more when my computer's not ab out to die!

things I plan to write about soon

1. la Catedral de Granada
2. intercambios
3. my weekend (and my new dancing bartender friend)
4. my hour-long conversation en español sobre linguistica con mi compañero de piso!
5. mi familia aqui, especialmente mi señora Pepita y el perro Dori.
6. my sunburn and subsequent gross peeling skin-- I now kind of look like I have exzema, what with splotchy colors on my back and all.

I´d actually write about them now, but I´m feeling lazy. So this is just a teaser, a trailer if you will, of coming attractions. ¡Besitos! (tr: little kisses)

observations on spain

There are dogs EVERYWHERE! Everyone has one, and they all do their business on the street, so there´s also dog poo everywhere. Lovely.

There are also gypsies! This is kind of cool, but everyone seems to hate them for whatever reason. My roommate Julianne always feels sorry for their dogs.

Everyone smokes. Everywhere. It´s kind of gross, and that is one thing I won´t miss when I return to the States.

Making out on the street is widespread and shameless. I´ve seen some pretty intense makeout sessions just walking down the street, and couples tend to always be touching (in what Americans might consider inappropriate places) and sitting in provocative positions on benches. It´s cool that they´re so comfortable with it, but it´s a little weird watching something that is usually considered private where I come from. Not bad, necessarily, but weird.

There are ice cream shops about every block or less, and they all seem to have delicious ice cream. Luckily they will close in the middle of October, or I´d be in serious danger of gaining several pounds while here.

Most of the people seem to be so glamorous ... random women walking down the street look like models, and they don´t even look like it´s unusual for them.

That is all for now. Maybe next I´ll tell you about my family. Sunburn update: the vinegar apparently does wonders-- my back isn´t peeling, and it´s already turning into a tan. Hooray!

If I were an order at KFC, I would be crispy-style.

Bad things:
1. I broke my camera! :*(
2. I am red like a lobster and crispy like chicken: I didn´t realize the sun was so ridiculously intense and so did not apply as much sunscreen as I should have.

Good things:
1. The beach was awesome!
2. Helado on the beach was excellent.
3. too many to count!

So the trip to the beach, as you may have guessed, was a fantastic day. There was not sand, but pebbles, which hurt a little after a while, but it was very pretty and easier - much easier - to clean than sand. The water was shockingly cold, probably about 55º or colder, but once you got numb to it it was great! It was clear enough to see to the bottom even in about nine feet of water, and the waves were just the right height-- not too big, but not negligible. It was pretty nice, after sitting in the beating sun for a while, to go down and freeze my feet for a while or just sit in the surf and talk. We had some pretty intense discussions, quite unusual for the beach, but it was pretty fun. Also pretty fun (read, amusing) was the fact that in the background of the majority of pictures taken down by the water appears one topless woman or another-- apparently boobs are no big thing in Spain. After a while the beach sun got a little uncomfortable, so at intervals different groups would break off and go get ice cream or drinks, and let me tell you, cold ice cream after baking in the sun is very refreshing. On the bus back to Granada I kept getting chills and I dídn´t know why, and Damon promptly pointed out that it could be a symptom of sunstroke. So I drank some water and put on a jacket, and nothing worse happened, but I may or may not have gotten sunstroke yesterday. All in all, though, it was a great day.

A sunburn tip from my señora: put vinegar on the burn, and it will keep it from peeling and also reduce the pain. I don´t know about the peeling yet, but it did help with the hurting.

One week down ...

So I've been in Granada for about a week now, and it seems like both more and less time. I can't believe it's already been a week, but I've done so much stuff it seems like it has to be longer.

On Monday night we explored the Albaicin, the Moroccan district, and then we went to a real flamenco show in a little hole-in-the-wall sort of place with a tiny stage at one end. I expected it to be awesome, and it far surpassed my expectations. The dancing was so passionate and so powerful-- it was utterly captivating. The women all had such intense looks on their faces, and every part of their bodies were dancing, not just their feet, although their feet were breathtaking. I can't even begin to describe how alluring and entrancing the dances were, how powerfully sensual the dancers were, and how they carried themselves with such confidence and self-sufficiency-- they were completely independent and completely gorgeous. There was one male dancer, and his hands were fascinating to watch. They were so graceful and fluid, I couldn't take my eyes off them. There was something so subtly powerful and caressing about the way he moved them in soft but definite patterns ... I'm planning to sign up for flamenco classes while I'm here, and I can only hope that I'll be one quarter as good as they were by the time I'm done.

Much of the rest of the week has been pretty nondescript, getting started with classes (which go from 9am to 1pm M-F) and starting to settle into a routine of sorts. There are heladerias, ice cream shops, everywhere! I've bought helado almost every day since coming to Granada-- it doesn't help that there's a particularly delicious heladeria right down the street from my house. Even if I don't particularly crave helado, I can count on my roommate Julianne wanting some, and of course I'll go with her to get some and probably end up getting some for myself too.

On Thursday Julianne and this guy Damon and I went out to some bars and had a good time, although it wasn't particularly Spanish in atmosphere-- the bars were most definitely pitched towards American college students. Last night, though, we did go out and do some quintessentially Spanish things. There were about seven or eight of us, and we went to a tapas bar and then got falafel from a Moroccan shop, then we went and got helado (of course) and we ended up at an Arabic tea shop, where we had some hookah and some tea-- my Pakistani friend Amen got Pakistani tea and was very excited to discover that the barista or whatever he was was also Muslim, and I don't think he realized how much she plans to talk to and visit him. She also made friends with a Pakistani storeowner who offered to give her Pakistani food whenever she wants it, which may be more often than he bargained for. Damon is not so lucky in finding friends of his religion-- he's probably one of about six Jews in all of Granada.

That's about all that's been going on here so far. I'm going to the beach tomorrow, and I'll be sure to tell you all about Spanish pebble beaches ... I wonder if we'll see any nude sunbathers?

Toledo!

disclaimer part three: same as the last two

Saturday was the day I fell in love with Toledo. We went on a walking tour of the city in the morning, and it’s full of little twisty streets and ancient cobblestones and well-built churches and houses several hundred years old. I said earlier how Madrid was nice because of its history—but in Toledo you can actually see the history all around you! It’s the kind of city where you can get lost as soon as you turn around, but once you know how to get around it’s truly your city. One of the coolest places we went on the tour was a church called San Juan de los Reyes. This is a church built by Queen Isabella to commemorate her victory over the possibly illegitimate daughter of her brother in a war of succession, and it is a lovely crusty Gothic church. I don’t know if some of you will understand, but it was so cool to actually be in a real Gothic church, having admired them from pictures for so long. The ceilings were soaringly high and groin vaulted, and the walls were covered in carvings and sculptures of Isabella’s coat of arms and various symbols of her reign and so on. Along with all that, there was a fair amount of Moorish architecture, what with the carved wooden ceilings of the upstairs passageway, the decorations over some doors, and some of the arches being horseshoe-shaped.

We also went to Santo Tomé, a small church that is the home of El Greco’s masterpiece, “El Entierro del Señor de Orgaz,” or the Burial of the Lord of Orgaz. The señor in question was the mayor of Toledo for a while, and it is said that at his death, two saints came down to take his spirit to heaven. That is the scene depicted in the painting, and surrounding the central trio are the portraits of many of the nobles of El Greco’s time, although the legend took place about 200 years earlier. There were some other sites to be seen, although not from the inside, such as the Catedral de Toledo, some quaint old buildings, and a mosque that has been converted into a church (like most were around oh, say, 1492). An interesting bit of trivia we learned: Toledo is a steel-working center, and many of the weapons seen in movies are made there and later replicated and sold at high prices. One window alone had swords from Pirates of the Caribbean, 300, the Matrix, Kill Bill, Conan the Barbarian, the Lord of the Rings, and several others that I hadn’t seen. Toledo also has lots of shops that sell various sweets formerly made by monks, especially marzipan in any shape or color you could desire. There was even a model of the cathedral made of marzipan, complete with crusty carvings around the portals. In short, Toledo rocks and I want to live there someday.

on the way to Toledo

disclaimer: same as the last one, this was written a few days ago.

Friday was a fun-filled day, in which we visited several big tourist places and arrived in Toledo. The first place to which we traveled was called La Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen Ones. On first sight it looks amazing—there is an enormous cross rising out of the rock that can be seen for about 50 miles around. The base of the cross coincides with the dome of a cathedral carved into the mountain, excavated from the rock. The thing that’s not so amazing is that the people who excavated and built all this were the prisoners of war, the losers of the Spanish Civil War, and it is said that 900 of them died in the process, from cave-ins and accidents and so on. Nonetheless, the place itself was breathtaking. Before renovations, it was larger than the church in the Vatican—but the Pope wouldn’t come bless it until it was smaller, as nothing is allowed to be bigger than the Vatican church. The plaza in front of the church was vast, although half its previous size, and it offered really wonderful views of the surrounding countryside, which mostly consists of tree-covered mountains receding off into the distance. The inside of the church was just as spectacular, with soaring coffered ceilings cut into the very rock, tapestries on all the walls, and fantastic sculptures of angels, saints, and historical figures. The entryway to the church is wide and marble-floored, and as we walked in it was almost completely dark, through which I could dimly perceive two huge metal archangels with massive swords flanking the walkway, guarding the church. As the lights came on, I could see more and more of the probably thirty-foot ceilings of bare rock. Every few dozen feet was a niche chapel dedicated to a different saint or aspect of Mary, and atop each opening was an appropriate sculpture. All along the walls hung large tapestries depicting various Biblical or historical events pertaining to the church, and on either side of each were four or five organ pipes—I don’t know whether they were functional or not, but I believe they were. I would tell you all about the wonderful dome, but we were unable to go all the way into the church to see it because there was a Mass in progress at the time. We did get to hear the priests or cardinals chanting and singing in harmony, which was really beautiful in the lofty and echo-y space under the mountain, and I could see a little bit of the dome above the congregation. I ended up taking probably too many pictures, but I couldn’t help it, everything was so beautiful. That’s kind of a theme of my travels so far.

The rest of the morning was spent at El Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, an historic monastery that is still in use by some Franciscan monks today. The buildings cover nine acres of land, and there are about eleven miles of corridors on the inside—and this huge complex was completed in just 21 years, as compared with the 150 or 200 years it took to build a cathedral in the same century. The building, in addition to being a functioning monastery, served as sort of a summer home for the royal family of Carlos V, and some of the royal bedrooms had been preserved, complete with bedwarmers and chamber pots. There were lovely gardens with shaped hedges, and large airy rooms full of paintings. There was an excellent library with “only” 45,000 books, but the oldest was from I think the ninth century and the youngest was from the sixteenth century, and they were all of highest quality. The loveliest part of the monastery, and the part I was sorriest not to be able to photograph, was a series of wooden doors. They were all handcrafted, and they all had ridiculously intricate designs, each different color coming from a different kind of wood. I can’t even describe how delicate and exquisite they were and how much patience they must have required to set each tiny sliver in place by hand. One of them, the best one, had pictures of scholars studying in corridors with perfect one-point perspective and ribbed barrel vaults. I would have liked to spend all day there, but we had to eat sometime, so we ventured out into the town of El Escorial and found a nice little café. The waiter we had was apparently learning English, and we were apparently obviously American, so he was trying to explain things to us in English, and he was very patient when we asked about most of the items on the menu and took forever to order.

After lunch we got back on our bus and drove the rest of the way to Toledo, where we wandered around, explored the city, and had dinner. A couple other girls and I found this little hole-in-the-wall tapas place to eat, and the bartenders were probably a little annoyed with us, being loud and taking up all their seats as we were, but we had a good time, drinking sangria, trying new foods, and telling stories. We wandered around the city for a while after dinner, finding sketchy alleyways and interesting architecture, and we eventually took cabs back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Impressions of Madrid

disclaimer: this was written before I had internet here, so it's a few days old.

It’s still a little hard to believe that I’m really in another country—Madrid to some extent feels like just another big city, like Chicago. Wednesday was not really a very interesting day—since we were all jet-lagged, having just gotten off planes, we didn’t really do much. We walked down the street to a little plaza for lunch, and then again for dinner, and neither was really remarkable. We did, however, go on a panoramic bus tour of the city, in which we saw lots of monuments and so on and learned a fair amount of history, none of which was particularly interesting. The architecture, though, was quite interesting, with little balconies on every building and lots of old buildings—it was so nice to be somewhere with actual history, somewhere where “old” means more than 50 or 200 years. The city is full of roundabouts, each of which (it seems) has its own fountain complete with sculpture of some city founder or saint or war hero. In amongst these antique buildings, though, there were quite a few modern ones, even some that were a mix of the two. There was one in particular that bore signs saying “this building was built according to the plans of the architect So-and-So, and remodeled and expanded according to the plans of the architect Such-and-Such.” There was also a building erected from the top down (don’t ask me how) and a memorial for the victims of the terrorist bombings of 2004.

The next day (Thursday) we took an early morning tour of El Museo del Prado, the biggest and best art museum in Spain and one of the best in Europe. Our tour featured three of the most prominent Spanish artists, El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. It’s amazing how different their styles are and yet how each offers such an important part of Spanish history. We saw originals of some of their most famous works, including Velazquez’ Las Meninas and some of the paintings from the walls of Goya’s house. After this tour some of us went to a huge park in Madrid called El Parque del Buen Retiro, which is probably twice the size of Forest Park in St. Louis, if not bigger. There was a lovely entryway, framed by trees that looked like broccoli, with lobes of foliage branching out from the trunks. We wandered through the tree-lined paths, arriving at the Crystal Palace, a cathedral-like building made entirely of glass. There were some lovely gargoyles and paintings along the top of the walls, and we decided that it would be a wonderful place to get married. Unfortunately it wasn’t open, though by rights and the sign it should have been, or we would have gone inside and posed. We were running a little short on time by the time we were finished there, so we went to a little plaza and found cafes in which to eat and then had to literally run to meet the rest of the group at the Palacio Real, or Royal Palace. This was a ridiculously beautiful place, full of red velvet and gilt and rich furnishings and mirrors and paintings of the royal family and their hobbies. Each ceiling was lavishly painted, and each room had its own flavor and color scheme. There were more than 40 clocks in the palace, one of the kings having been obsessed with them. We got a little history lesson about past kings, how the Austrians were very simple and stiff, dressing in sober black and going around being dignified. The Bourbon monarchs, when they got to Spain, decided that the kingly attitude needed a change, and they pioneered the pleasurable use of free time for dances and parties. As the tour guide noted, the “Spanish spirit” of constant partying really started with the French. Most of the Palacio was decorated in lovely Italian styles, except for one room. This was painted all over with Oriental scenes in bold colors with black backgrounds, and it was used as the king’s opium den. The ceiling was painted in, again, the soft Italian style, contrasting with the walls, because during the Spanish Civil War a bomb fell directly into the room destroying the ceiling but thankfully leaving the rest undamaged.

That night was more interesting for some: several of our group went to a famous drag show called Gula Gula, which started off with a male stripper, unexpected by all. During the show, one of the male dancers, fortunately clothed at the time, rubbed a girl’s face in his crotch, traumatizing her and giving her, no doubt, a lifelong memory. Some others went to an Irish pub and thoroughly enjoyed themselves, but I and a few other girls had a more laidback evening, getting food at a market and eating in a little park down the street. We planned to go to Retiro Park, but it was too far to walk, we didn’t know how to get there on the bus, and the Metro line to the Park was closed for some reason until September 15. Ah well, it was a nice time anyway.

Hola todos! I´m in Granada, and school just started. More later, when I can include pictures!