"Week 7"

¡Cuanto tiempo! Hola dear ones, it's been awhile!

Yes, I’m still alive and well in Alcalá. Yes, I’ve been busy. Yes, week 7 has been the hardest. Yes, I’m still studying for midterms but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, this post is yet another procrastination method (because it’s more fun than writing essays or studying literature).

Last weekend our BG program spent 3 days in Granada, which is in the south of Spain and has a lot of Arabic and Moroccan influences (there are reasons for this, but I won’t bore you in a lesson of Spanish history). We visited la Alhambra, which is an amazing fortress with palace-buildings and gardens up on a mountain in Granada. We spent the whole morning there, and it is so beautiful! I wish I could have seen the gardens in the summer but everything was still gorgeous! And we had beautiful weather too!

They had lots of streets filled with little stories like this... very hippie-ish and full of tapestries and incense. Obviously, I loved it.

View of most of la Alhambra... how sweet is this?!

The Moors built this when they were in control of Spain... which was quite while ago (in the middle of the14th century-ish).

Later on Saturday we went to this town on the ocean, and we hung out and ate lunch. We got to see the ocean, but it was a bit chilly and windy to enjoy it! Plus Rachel starting getting sick so Katie and I hung out in a café by the ocean while the rest of the group climbed up to see this castle. By the time we got back home Sunday night we were so exhausted but the trip was so amazing!

Last week was the last week of the first half of our time in Spain… how crazy is that?! So, naturally, being almost halfway through, it was a hard week for a few of us emotionally, plus we had to study like crazy for midterms! Here are few pictures from adventures and frolics we had this weekend to recover from our week…

Katie and I spent Friday afternoon barefoot in the park listening to American pop music...we got some weird stares from Spanish people but it was 75 degrees and sunny, so we were gonna enjoy it!!

On Saturday Katie, Chester, Kalyn and I went and spent the day in Madrid, and it was so amazing! We're all so obsessed with the city, and it's so fun on Saturdays in the spring because so many people are out and there are so many street preformers and everyone is eating at little outside tables. That has to be my favorite part about Spain, just how people relax for hours in the sun, watching people, chatting, and drinking a beer.

THEN... we found this amazing crepería (crepe shop) and went in for some café con leche (pictured above... SO much better than any coffee in the States) and crepes! My crepe was filled with Nutella, bananas, caramel, and cookie crumbs. Needless to say, this crepe experience and lovely hours in Madrid helped us recover fully from the "off" week we had experienced!

Now, it's back to studying for me! But the latest news is that in exactly a week, two amazing friends of mine from BG are coming to visit me!!! :) I can't wait to see them! :) :)

Besos!

xo

Ana

Paraguas and other things!

Hello dear readers (if I have any left... it's been a very long time since I've posted!),

I'm still alive. And still loving Spain. But just busy and lacking interesting tidbits to blog about. It's just been raining around here, and there are so many paraguas (umbrellas) out every day! All colors and designs, it's like a parade of umbrellas (to borrow my friend Chester's phrase). I can't wait for the nice weather!!
I spent the weekend in England visiting two of my best friends, Ellen and Steph. They're studying there, and I was so amazing to see their lives at Keele University for a few days! Everyone in England was super nice, too!

We're all heading to Granada for the weekend with the BGSU program, so expect a nice long post and pictures soon! (unless studying gets in the way... midterms are coming!).

Besos,
Anita

Adventures... ¡a Segovia!

First of all, I’d like to say that I broke two of my keys off my keyboard adding pictures to my computer today… so if it seems like my posts are low in “2’s” “3’s” and “ marks, that’s why. Soooo if anyone knows how to fix them, your feedback would be helpful! I got food stuck down there (Proof, reason #4598, that I’m getting chubby in Spain) and I just popped them off! Now… their functionality is… um… not so good.

Moving on to more exciting news… SEGOVIA. Early, early this morning (9 am, I know that’s not early, but, hey, it was our day off!), our group packed up our bocadillos (you read more about these and their enormity a few posts ago), our coats (everyone assured us it would be freezing there!) and headed to Segovia for the day!

It’s much different travelling with the program, because everything is structured for you, and Javier comes as a tour guide (he knows so much about Spain, but sometimes we don’t want to hear EVERYTHING about a particular topic :). First we got to see Los Jardínes de la Granja de San Ildefonso, which were pretty amazing, even in the winter! (yes, in my pictures there is snow! But in the sun felt so warm to the Ohioans!)

(La Granja de San Ildefonso)

Then we actually rode into the city of Segovia, where the Roman aqueduct is—it’s so incredible! It was constructed with no cement whatsoever, just rocks that fit together perfectly. My pictures, like so many things, really can’t even do it justice! It was built at the end of the 1st century and beginning of the 2nd century, that’s muy antiguo!

We trotted around through the city to the Castle de Alcázar, which is supposedly what Cinderella’s castle is based on. It was built about 9 centuries ago, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…

Finally, after enjoying our lunch in the sun, a few of us went to a few shops. There was a little hippie store, one of the ones that smell like incense and are full of scarves, handmade jewelry, and all other good things, and it was so fun to just look around awhile! At the end of the day we ended up at the Catedral de Segovia. Unfortunately I couldn’t take pictures inside, but I took tons of the outside! Since it was my first European cathedral, I was amazed! The students from last semester said they’d seen so many, but I thought it was so amazing! :)

Sorry this post is kind of “business-y” and not very interesting! The girls and I are going out on the town of Alcalá tonight, so maybe I’ll have some adventures that lead to funny blog posts!

Hasta luego (or “staluego” if you’re going say it like a native! :)

Abrazos y Besitos, (hugs and kisses)
Ana

Life during the week... homework, grammar, and Hannah Montana

Hola queridos (dear ones :)!

I usually don't have much exciting, funny, or remotely witty to say during the week, but I'm going to give it a try!

The school weeks fly by here! It's a combination of of the fact that I'm in class during the day (but only 4 days a week), take siestas every day, and have English lessons (I'm a private tutor twice a week for a delightful 15 year old, and I am a teacher's aid in an "English" class in an after school program). Every Tuesday I help in this classroom of a handful of 8 or 9 year olds... they are precious, hilarious, and very helpful in practicing my español! They are very encouraging but not also afraid to tease and correct me. This class (its a class for me at the university, paired with volunteering at the school) has helped me learn so much about the Spanish education system, and I think I was expecting it to be very close to the American system (it's not). I'm pretty sure I speak better Spanish than their teacher does English!

Plus, they learn British English, so that's fun! Does anyone know what a pullover is?
Exactly, neither did I. I guess it's a sweatshirt type thing.

So the kids are hugely curious about the United States and asked me where I was from. I told them a state called Ohio, it's sort of near Chicago., and it snows all the time there. Raul goes, "Ohhhh, so you live near Hannah Montana??"

Not knowing what state Ms. Montana was from, I asked!

"Californíaaa!" He said!

I had to explain that California takes days to drive to, which is something that these kids can't even imagine. The whole country of Spain is only slightly bigger than Texas! Needless to say, I love these kids a lot.

I've also learned that I don't understand English grammar at all... like, seriously. And these kids ask hard questions!! I had to explain what a lever was (like, the physics thing!), what "yuck" means, why "Joy" is a girl's name, why the past tense of "go" is "went," what a UFO is, how a piano is different from a keyboard, and how very few people in the US say "hiya" instead of "hi" or "hello." I had to explain this all in Spanish. This is what I mean by good practice.

Well... I'm procrastinating and need to finish homework. Friday we're heading to Segovia for the day with our program!

Don't get lost in all the snow in the Midwest! As my host moms would tell me... "¡Abrigase!" (bundle up, dress warmly)

¡Besitos de España!
Anita