I've become a wimp

I know with how the weather's been in the US, you might think I don't really have much of a reason to complain about the weather here but....

It's been really cold here! The first week here is was mid 60s every day. I was getting used to wearing thin layers if not short sleeves. The after we returned from Granada, BAM! Cold. I wasn't expecting this kind of weather when I was packing. I didn't bring nice, warm clothes. I brought my Mizzou hoodie and the shell of my winter jacket, but those aren't really appropriate to wear to class. So everyday, I've been wearing my fleece jacket. Ugh, I look like such an American.

Another reason the cold is a bad thing: my family doesn't heat or air condition their apartment. So I'm freezing at night when it's ~45 degrees. Thankfully, a few nights ago, my madre brought out a space heater for my bedroom. Before that, I thought I'd have to get used to a cold nose and cold fingers and sleeping with many, many layers of clothing and blankets and still shivering in bed. So now I'm more comfortable at night, but I still try to save energy so I don't have the heater set too high. So still lots of layers but at least my nose doesn't feel like it's about to fall off, and I can sit at my computer at night and not have to take typing breaks to warm my fingers. This heating situation has me worried about summer. As much as I'm complaining, I'd rather than be too cold than too hot. Summer's gonna be brutal. I might just have to spend all of my time in the air conditioned buildings of the university campus. Or at the beach. Maybe I'll alternate between the two.

La Alhambra!

First let me start off by saying that there was a quote carved into one of the walls at La Alhambra that says,
"Dale limosna, mujer,
Que no hay en la vida nada
Como la pena de ser
Ciego en Granada."
I think it's lovely. I basically says that there is nothing worse in the world than the pain of being blind in Granada.

Our last day in Granada, we went to La Alhambra. For those of you who don't know, La Alhambra was "a palace and fortress complex constructed during the mid 14th century by the Moorish rulers... After the Reconquista by the Catholic Monarchs {King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille) in 1492, some portions were used by the Christian rulers. The Palace of Charles V, built by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1527, was inserted in the Alhambra. After being allowed to fall into disrepair for centuries, the Alhambra was "discovered" in the 19th century by European scholars and travelers, with restorations commencing. It is now one of Spain's major tourist attractions, exhibiting the country's most significant and well known Islamic architecture, together with 16th-century and later Christian building and garden interventions" (Wikipedia).

King Ferdinand and, mostly, Queen Isabella are the reason why 76% of Spaniards are Catholic. They had a very strong religious faith, citing many of their military decisions on the religious beliefs. In 1492, they even forced the Jews and Muslims to leave the country. (They were allowed back in the 19th century.) Ferdinand, Isabella, and their children lived part of their lives in La Alhambra.

Now, a little background on my personal affinity with Granada. About two years ago I read The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. I loved it so much that I started reading the sequels, and then my Aunt Peggi let me borrow her copy of The Constant Princess, the prequel, which is the story of Queen Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII and one of the daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella. The book described Catherine's early life and her childhood in La Alhambra. That's what hooked me. It seemed so pretty. So when I was looking at cities is Spain where I could study abroad, I decided I'd love to study in Granada. How cool would it be to study in the city where Ferdinand and Isabella lived, walk where they walked?! I could visit La Alhambra all the time if I wanted! That was my plan until I realized that a semester in Granada would cost more than a whole year at Mizzou. So I chose Alicante, but when we were offered this trip, I jumped at the opportunity.

So of all the activities they had planned for our weekend in Granada, I was definitely most excited for La Alhambra. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations. Maybe in the spring or summer, when more of the trees have leaves, it'll be prettier, but it's a good thing I wasn't too upset about not being able to study in Granada. I probably wouldn't have visited the palace too many times. I mean, it was pretty! Just not like, the most beautiful place in the whole world. It was nice to have Armando there to tell us all sorts of interesting facts. We even had a few English speakers follow us through the place just to hear what he had to say. One of the, supposedly, best parts of the palace, the Court of the Lions, was under construction. But man, they're doing a really good job restoring the twelve lion statues. Click here to see what the Court is supposed to look like. They did all sorts things to clean the lions: chemical cleaning, laser cleaning, you name it. Also there were about 200 more fountains and ponds in the palace. We also go to see Carlos V's palace. He built it, but it was just for show. He never lived in it. It was really Renaissance-y. The last thing we saw was the Generalife gardens. Lots of reflection ponds and walkways and stuff.














Yeah, I wasn't that impressed. I'm sure my mom would be though, what with her new love of labyrinths and gardening. But I'm sure it was much better, back in the day. That's just how I'll keep picturing it in my mind. Here are some pictures. It took us about three hours to walk the whole thing.











After we left La Alhambra we headed back to Alicante but we took a quick detour to a Guadix, a "cave" town about an hour outside the city. It was a town up in the mountains where people build their houses into the side of the mountain. It wasn't like you'd expect though. The insides were pretty nice. To me, a few of the buildings just looked like normal houses with mounds of dirt on top. But man, they had a really sweet view of the surrounding towns. They must get visitors a lot because there were two houses that we went to and each sold little trinkets and one even just finished constructing a path up to their "roof" the day before so visitors could see the amazing view. I bought a jar of orange blossom honey to bring home to my host family. I've been eating it for breakfast almost every day with toast, and as far as I can tell, I'm the only one eating it. Oh well. Their loss.

Oh speaking of food, my mom made a request. She wants me to talk about what food I normally eat here. It's true, I've only talked about special food. Well, for breakfast I have normal breakfast-y food: toast or cereal and OJ or tea. They only have instant coffee, so I don't drink that. Then for lunch, we just have leftovers of whatever was for dinner the night before. And for dinner we usually have some sort of meat-y thing. Twice we've had cheeseburgers, twice breaded meat, once a lemon-y chicken dish (that was really good), once homemade gnocchi (delicious!), once spaghetti, once tortilla espanola. I forget what else. There's always bread on the table, but not like sliced sandwich bread. It's big loaves of "French" bread. It's so good! And it's relatively inexpensive as compared to in the states. Sometimes we have a salad too. But she puts canned tuna in it, and I don't like that. We rarely have veggies. Sometimes we have rice. And she and my padre always have a glass of wine, but they mix it half and half with soda water. Strange. So it's pretty normal food.

I've only eaten out a few times. My first night here Armando and Cynthia took us all out for dinner. There were a few courses and one thing I chose was a rice dish with spaghetti sauce and an over-easy egg. I wanted to live the phrase "When in Rome". It was weird. Other times, I've gone out for tapas, and one typical dish I've seen is called jamon serrano. It's thinly sliced raw or dried ham.

One thing, I told you how I looked for peanut butter. Well it turns out that my padre tried a little of it at the suggestion of my host sister. He thought it was too rich! I tried to tell his as best I could, that I eat peanut butter with everything! I even told them that we give it to our dog. They thought I was weird.

Oh and I was gonna talk about the Sierra Nevadas. So I knew Granada would be mountainous but as we approached the city, I was amazed by how beautiful the mountains looked. They were these HUGE snow covered mountains in the distance. Guess who grew up in the flat Midwest. And I couldn't capture how cool they looked because they were too bright for a good photo. A few people expressed interest in going back to Granada to ski. I bet that would be awesome! But it was so strange to see snow covered mountains when there was no snow on the ground everywhere else. That's really why I thought they were so cool.

Ciao!