3 Weeks In!

Can't believe tomorrow is February 1st and that I've already been here for almost a month! I know May 7th is gonna creep up on me way sooner than I'd like it to, which is a shame because I could really get used to this whole No Pasa Nada thing for good. I haven't done anything particularly exciting recently, so this is just a post to update ya'll on what's going to happen when my life does start to get exciting and I don't have the down time to write about it like I do now! No class until 4:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays has its perks...
I've been in the process of kinda-sorta-maybe booking trips to all of the places I want to go for quite some time now, and if doing so has taught me anything, it's that I have a way bigger phobia of spending too much money than I ever thought I did (I'd like to thank Tom Orlowski for that...as that trait had to have come from him because, let's be honest, I sure didn't get it from Mom). Booking flights is scary and stressful to me, because along with said booking comes the need to find a place to stay in (insert name of foreign country here), as well as figuring out expenses for food, transportation, and fees for museums/tours/etc. Not to mention the chance that the cost of the flight will go down after I purchase my ticket. All that stuff may seem too petty to be deemed worrisome while on a 4 month excursion in Europe, however, contrary to my sunshiney disposition, fantastic sense of humor and all-around general awesomeness, I tend to worry a lot more than most people that know me probably think I do.
With that said, I have booked trips to quite a few places already, the first trip being the one I will take on my first (of two) 10 day long breaks to Ireland, Scotland, and London!!! I could not be more excited for this trip, especially because it's coming up in less than 2 weeks!! You'll be hearing enough about that by the time I get back, I'm sure, so I won't bug you with the details now :). I also will for sure be spending the weekend of St. Patrick's Day visiting one of my best friends Lauren in Brussels, Belgium! I better brush up on my ever-so-fluent Belgian before I get there. The last trip I have booked so far is to Lagos, Portugal which will be a weekend trip at the end of April, about 2 weeks before I come home!
Pending trips, that I haven't bought yet due to the fact that I believe I can find better deals still, include the trips I will take with Jilli when she comes (yay!!!!!!) to (hopefully) Sevilla, Barcelona, Paris and Cordoba, as well as the Amalfi Coast and other parts of Italy for my second 10 day long break. This leaves me with about 3 open weekends to conjure up some magical ideas about where else I want to go. I know I want to go to Amsterdam, and I would probably give my right pinky toe (a vital part of the human anatomy if you didn't know) to find someone to go on the "Sound of Music" tour in Salzburg, Austria with, and I think Prague would be such a cool place to see as well.
The worst part about this trip is that, no matter how hard I try to be frugal (and believe me, I'm trying), the money really does add up. Sometimes I feel like I'm the annoyingly cheap friend in the group, partially because I don't buy anything when shopping for clothes here and, am trying my hardest to make due without having to pay for a 30 euro European-voltage hairdryer (which is working out better than expected thus far), but when 30 euro is what I'm paying for my flight from Dublin to Edinburgh, I'd much rather spend the money on that. Priorities, people!
The other thing is that the reason everyone is spending money on clothes and (albeit really cute) bags and ridiculously expensive trips and meals here is because "I'm only going to have this opportunity once in my life." Obviously this is a valid statement, as I'm guessing most people probably don't make it to Europe every summer to spend time in their villa on the island of Santorini. However, pardon me for sounding idealistic, but the question I generally ask myself when I'm up in the air about where to travel to and what I want to buy while site-seeing is, "is this somewhere I want to go or something I need to buy THIS time around?" If one day saving up the money to come back and travel through Europe again some day isn't justification for higher education, I don't know what is.

In other news, I've been taking lots of leisurely strolls through the city lately...here are some of my findings:

 Graffiti of El Padrino (The Godfather)

 We hiked up to a lookout to watch the sunset over the Alhambra and Sierra Nevadas on Sunday

 La Alhambra at sunset

And this is my view on my walk home from school at nighttime. This river is down on the left. Not too bad :)

Mólly in Málaga, Chocolate con Churros, and other fun alliterations...

My deepest and most sincere apologies go out to anyone who is a religious and diligent reader of this blog (Hey Mom!), as I have gone far too long without posting something to help remind you of how jealous you should be of my life right now! 

The days here are absolutely flying by! Well, not really the ones that I spend sleeping until noon and blogging until it's time to go to class at 4:30, like today, but I'm starting to realize that 4 months is really not that much time to be here, especially when you're an ambitious little ball of Spanish energy (and cuteness) like me! I have been in the midst of planning all the trips I want to take while I'm here in Europe, and the fact that I only have about 9 weekends and 2 breaks to travel makes seeing the 3,829,374 places I want to see a tad problematic. I'm sure you all feel so bad for me! Anyway, upon figuring out that we will not, in fact, live in this dreamworld forever, my friends Margaret, Amy and Matt and I decided to make a spontaneous day trip to the southern coast of Spain in the magical city of Málaga! Granada is still far from the tropical 80 degree weather we were all expecting upon our arrival here, so we were all just tickled when we stepped off the bus in Málaga and found that this is where the beautiful beach weather had been hiding all along! It was in the mid-70's and smelled like North Carolina in the summertime, and after exploring the city, visiting the Cathedral and doing some illegal picture-taking at the Picasso Museum, we were able to slip off our shoes and take a walk down the beach! I've learned later this week that Spaniards actually consider Málaga's beach to be sub-par in comparison to the white sand that most coastal cities in Spain sport, however if someone had told me this information while I was enjoying a plate of calamari and glass of sangria with the Mediterranean wind in my hair, I probably would have told them to stop talking and enjoy the view. After the beach we walked around a little more, ate some ice cream, visited the Plaza de Toros, and then cried when it was time to go home. Que lastima!

It has also come to my attention that I've never talked about my school (Because contrary to popular belief, I do have to learn while over here)! My school is called El Centro de Granadí, or CEGRÍ for short, and it was basically a school built for UofI, University of Michigan, and Wisconsin-Madison students to attend. We don't go to school with any actual Spaniards, however the teachers are all from Granada and no English is allowed to be spoken in any of the classes. It's sweet! I don't feel embarrassed to speak in Spanish like I used to in classes at UofI, and the professors are so helpful. I love my Historia de Arte class, because every Monday we get to actually go to the place who's art and architecture we're learning about and actually have class in the building (so far we've been to the Granada Cathedral, and the Royal Chapel where Ferdinand and Isabel are buried)! I also like my Arab-Muslim class a lot because strangely I know a lot about Islam so I'm doing well in it. My culture class is a favorite as well because the main goal of the class is simply for us to become fluent speakers...and it doesn't really matter what we speak about as long as it relates somewhat to Spain (In the last conversation we discussed the overwhelming amount of Caca that owners leave on the streets of Granada without cleaning up. Caca is dog poop. People are gross.).

In other news, I'm still fine, tonight I'm having seafood pasta for dinner, and last night I went to a bar to watch the Barcelona-Madrid game on a 20 foot screen while drinking cerveza and cheering for Real-Madrid (they tied)! I think I'm becoming a real Spaniard...although my host madre tells me I still have to work on not smiling so much. I tell her I was born smiling, and then we laugh together. I think she finally understands how funny I am!

That's all for now, next time I won't leave you hanging for as long as I previously had...that was just rude of me! 

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Málaga (not in any order...sowwy)!

And how could we forget Molly's First Day of School?? :)

Adios!

i Me Encanta La Alhambra !

...Or "I love the Alhambra!" for all the single-language folk out there.

Anyways, I have finally won in the war between myself and jet lag, and thus now have the energy to start doing all the wonderful things that study abroad students get to do, such as blog, eat churros, and be international!
With that said, I would like to begin by telling you allllllll about a little day trip my group took together this past Sunday to a muy famoso place in Granada known as La Alhambra! As you'll be able to tell by las fotos that follow, La Alhambra is a very huge and very old castle/fortress/miniature town overlooking the city of Granada. It was built by the Moors back in 711 and eventually taken over by the Catholics in 1492, and I can definitely see why. If I ever came across a place that was that beautiful and detailed and came with sweet gardens and a view, I would want to take it over too!
Anyway, the group met at the meeting place that morning, and we walked together up the hill to get there. I'm using the word "together" rather loosely, due to the fact that I'm pretty sure our group leader Miguel thought he was participating in the 100 yard dash at the Olympics, so naturally, on a 30 minute walk up a hill that was probably equivalent to an incline of 20 on a treadmill, the strong and healthy were separated from the weak and whiny. I'm embarrassed to tell you what group I was a part of.
Once we finished climbing that wretched hill, we dove right into various parts of the Alhambra. My group started by walking around the ruins and taking pictures of all the views, and then we got to go into the buildings. Que hermosa! I could not believe how beautiful all the fountains, statues, baths and even just the walls were! The walls were especially one of the coolest parts porque they all are COMPLETELY carved with either verses of the Qu'ran or just other designs that meant something or other to them. The tour of the inside took about 2 hours, and after eating lunch (my host mom made me a sandwich with a spanish omelette and ketchup on it, probably because the only conversation we've had where we've understood eachother was about my newfound love for spanish omelettes), we took a tour of the Generalife, the name for the gardens that surround the Alhambra. I don't know if I've ever seen something so beautiful, and the only thing that could have made any it better was if it had not been a rainy day in the middle of winter, because unfortunatamente not all of the flowers/trees were in bloom. It is easily my favorite thing I've seen since being in Spain, partially because it made me think a lot about my mom. I thought she would really really love all the flowers and exotic plants and how good everything smelled. I can't wait to go back in the springtime, and then again in 5-10 years to get married there! Todos son invitados!

In other news: I am fine, my host-mom still intimidates me with how fast she speaks, and I am currently in the midst of planning all the trips I want to take to various european destinations with all my new amigos! Suggestions are welcome and encouraged, and the money to do so is encouraged even more! :)


And now, La Alhambra....

 The outside baths/ruins

 There's me!

 The watchtower/ruins of the mini-city

 The atriums looked just like my apartment in Champaign's atrium!

 Overlooking the city!

 See, i have made friends

 These are my artsy pictures...

 I loved all the ceilings

 Another ceiling

 An example of the wall carvings...i told you!

Until next time, Alhambra!

Bienvenidos!

Hola a todos! After almost a week of packing, traveling, unpacking, repacking, touring, and re-unpacking, I am officially settled into Granada, Spain and will be for the next 4 months! So much has happened since boarding the plane at O'Hare that I haven't been able to blog about due to the lack of wi-fi (pronounced "wee-fee" here), so for this first blog I will just try to highlight the main events/things I've noticed since becoming a world traveler...

1. I named my blog "No Pasa Nada" ("It's Nothing" or "Nothing Happens") because I've heard it said by the locals many times and it seems to be the motto/lifestyle here. It basically means that nothing is that big of a deal and nothing matters as much as you think it does so RELAX you crazy American! The people here are so laid-back in everything they do...they talk more slowly, walk more slowly, and they're much less productive than most Americans (not including myself), but in a good way. Almost all the stores are closed here at any time from 2pm-8pm so everyone can go home to eat, take naps and spend time with their familia. AKA the important stuff, AKA my kind of place.

2. It is way colder here than you would expect the south of Spain to be. It's generally been in the high 30's-mid 40's during the day, and they say the temperature drops about 50 degrees F at nighttime during the winter months. It's because Granada is north of the Sierra Nevadas, so the city doesn't get the warm air coming from the coast because the mountains block it. The houses are still built for the summer months, though, AKA they have tile floors and there is no heat anywhere (and I mean anywhere) besides the occasional space heater. I've finally come to terms with the fact that until spring I will not be warm, not even as I sit under my covers with 2 pairs of pants and 2 sweatshirts including a Northface on with the space heater 2 inches from my bed. Also, everyone tour guide and local thus far has told us that it never rains here, so naturally it's been drizzling for the past 2 days. Sweet!

3. You can pick out Americans by looking for who is smiling and saying "please" and "thank you" after everything. I never noticed it until our orientation here, but Spaniards think Americans are overly polite and smiling too much is kind of like a sign of stupidity. I prefer not to know what they think of me.

4. Besides siesta and the fact that everyone is good-looking, one of my favorite things about Spain is tapas! I had never heard of them before coming here, but they're just various types of appetizers that come when you order a drink at any restaurant or cafe. And in Granada they're FREE! We've had some interesting tapas since being here, but my favorite was at a bar called La Bella & La Bestia (Also my favorite bar simply due to the name and way it was decorated like a castle), where we ordered 4 glasses of red wine and they brought us a HUGE plate that included 4 big toasted sandwiches, sliced potatoes baked in olive oil, tons of pasta and a very very large portion of fresh olives! In total we paid 2 euro each. Muy bien!

5. The host family I'm living with speaks not one word of English. This was shocking to me, as I assumed stupidly that everyone's family would know at least some, just in case the language barrier became a problem. We were all very very wrong, but surprisingly it hasn't been as horrible as I thought. My host mom's boyfriend picked me up from the hostal to take me home and show me around the city, and he told me multiple times that I spoke very well and he thought we understood eachother perfectly. I decided to just let him think that. My host mom speaks so fast that she's just become accustomed to repeating herself for me, which I feel badly about but I also think I get a little better everyday. It just gets exhausting sometimes trying to figure out what everybody is talking about and being the only one who doesn't understand, and that's when I awkwardly nod my head and thank God for Google Translate!

6. We learned in class today that less than 1% of students in the world get to travel and study abroad. I miss home a lot and it gets hard/frustrating trying to adapt to all the different things about this place, but I feel so lucky that I'm getting this opportunity and I know it will be so wonderful and worth it when all is said and done!

More revelations later! I still need to talk about La Alhambra and Molly's First Day of School! Here are some pics to hold you over until my next post! Adios amigos!

                                     My cute room! But don't be fooled, it only looks warm and cozy.

                                              One of the street corners near my school! 

                                  Not tapas, but fresh shrimp from the Mediterranean! Muy delicioso!