La Primera Semana

The first week here in Granada was great. During the day, we have intensive Spanish classes from 9-2. It's kind of a long class, but we also get to walk around the city a bit which is nice. Then, we walk home for lunch with our homestay families. The walk is about 30 minutes but its a nice walk down one of the main shopping streets. Lunch is always great. It's a good meal with the whole family, and we sit and talk and eat. Directly after lunch, my homestay family all sit down to watch Fama! a bailar which is this absurd dance competition on TV. I have never seen anything like it. 

After the show, I usually nap and then head out around 9 or 10 for tapas and drinks. The whole tapas bar for dinner thing is really great. Drinks are usually a little under 2 euros and the bar then gives you tapas for free. It's usually a really fun atmosphere.

I'm still adjusting to the Spanish schedule. I really like that everyone is out and about late at night, including children, but I'm tired all the time because class is still quite early. 

Yesterday, we went to las Alpujarras which is a group of villages on a mountain about an hour and a half from Granada. The white houses are all built quite close to each other in each village due to the steepness of the mountain. Anyway, the villages were built on one mountain and then the farms for the villagers were built on the adjacent mountains. The two areas are separated by a ravine and a river. We hiked from one village, down into the ravine, and back up the mountain to the next village and then repeated the procedure to get to the final village. It was absolutely gorgeous but all exhausting. While the Alpujarras were once populated by grain farmers,  that industry has since left the area. Now, the old farms on the non-village side of the mountain are being bought up by people looking for country homes while the villages are entirely populated by hippies and artists. It's pretty sweet. I tried to attach pictures below, but it's proving difficult. I think the file may be large to upload it to the blog.

Last night was the first night we went to a discoteca. We went to one called Granada 10. It was sort of empty because we got there at around 2:30 which is a bit early for them. The discotecas usually close at 7 and are most populated around 5ish I think. We still had a ton of fun though. 

This week we're continuing orientation with Spanish classes and enrollment stuff. Also, we're taking tours of certain parts of the city. I'm going to the Sacremonte tomorrow which is a hillside full of caves in which many gypsies live. I can't wait, it should be pretty cool. I'll write again soon!