¡Aqui Estoy! (Oct. 2-4)

¡Hola Todos!

Man, I got off to such a hot start there on those blog updates! I think I was somewhere along the lines of 5 for 5; 5 weeks, 5 blogs. Thats 100%! Rather than look at these past couple of weeks as losses, however, which would put a dent in that rather pretty percentage, I think I'm going to take them as though they were by weeks. And really its only been one by week. Or maybe one and a half. But anyways, here I am! And I have stories! The more time off the more stories generated! Jajajajaja

This past weekend I made plans to go to Granada. And this time I actually made it! (I don't know if I ever mentioned it in the Almuñeca blog, but I was under the impression that we were actually going to Granada then, which never exactly happened.) My friend Marco and I took the train there on Friday afternoon and came back Sunday morning. The train, if it were the same one I took to Madrid, would have taken about an hour, but being that they reserve those old fashioned, cargo looking trains that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid once plundered for the shorter excursions, the trip was about 3 and a half hours. Bus and car are about the same length of time though, and trains allow for reading and writing so I would chose them any day. We arrived in Granada at about 7 friday night and fortunately, or so I thought, I had written down the directions/bus numbers that we would take to our hostel. When I pulled them out and started walking towards the bus, however, mi amigo Marco looked at me as if I were crazy. I mean, who uses directions to get to a desired location in a city in which they have never been to? I guess I liked his spirit though so i put them in my pocket and we proceeded to walk. Not only did we not know where we were going, but we didn't even bother to look at street signs; I guess we just assumed that some force was guiding us or something. But, as we would find out, such a force did not exist. We walked in what we later discovered was the completely opposite direction for about 30 minutes, but it was a fun way of seeing the other part of the city and we were in no hurry. When we knew we were close we decided to use the directions and this is what they consisted of (the final part, at least): "Big wooden door on the right". Maybe if we were in New York or something such a description would have worked, but its a little bit less helpful when all the doors are relatively big, and most definitely wooden. We started off at the biggest of the wood doors, which turned out to be somebody's house, then we attempted to decipher which of the four wooden doors on the street was the most wooden, if that is at all possible - for one wood to be more wooden than a corresponding piece of wood. (Wooden/wood is looking like a very odd word now, after writing it so many times. Test it, after the 6th time it starts to look really funny.) Anyways, that attempt failed as well - it was some sort of meat factory or something - so we turned to the smallest and least wooden of the four doors and, obviously - I mean it probably should have occurred to us sooner, that was the hostel.

The next day we had tickets to the Alhambra - one of the seven man made wonders of the world, also, as we would soon find out, one of the seven most complicated and confusing things of the world. We had tickets to the 8:30 entrance (each ticket gives you half an hour to enter the Alhambra, so we had from 8:30 to 9:00) that I had printed off of the internet. When our turn came up, feeling relatively proud of ourselves for making it on time, we were turned away because we were supposed to have exchanged the internet ticket for one that they give at the front. Ok, a little bit frustrating, but not too big of a deal, I mean, how hard can exchanging tickets be? Well, I guess it depends on if your a distance runner or not, because it was like running a marathon. At a full out sprint. In sandals. Ducking and weaving through people the entire time. Which reminded me of football. Which I miss a lot. We had to run up one hill, only for them to tell us that we were at the ticket office for purchases, not internet exchanges, so we had to run back down the hill and up the one on the opposite side, were we discovered that, although this was the actual entrance, the exchange office was back down, then up and around behind where we were. So we ran again. By the time we got to that office it was 8:51. Fortunately, they took us to the front of the line to exchange our tickets and we somehow made it just as the second hand on my watch was about to force that big hand to change the hour. (A fancy way of saying it was almost 9:00).

The Alhambra was well worth the run. It was originally built by the Muslims and later conquered by the Christians, so it retains aspects of both religions. Although its technically a castle, its much different than one would imagine a castle to be. Each room is beautifully and uniquely decorated witch Islamic scripture covering the walls. It is a very open structure with many courtyards and outdoor walkways leading from one room to the next. In what I thought was the prettiest and most unique room it is said that a Christian leader hosted an extravagant dinner party in which he killed all his guests. Right before dessert none the less. Probably not quite what the guests had in mind when they received the invitation. There is a winter part to the Alhambra and a summer part, or "vacationing spot" in which there are gardens are everywhere - probably similar to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, though I have never been there. In my opinion what makes the Alhambra so beautiful, so majestic, is its location. Granada itself is impressive to take in. Its reminds me a little bit of Aspen, only its an actual city. Mountains rise up on all sides and then unexpectedly drop down into far reaching valleys which the highways shoot over, painting a sort of futuristic looking scene amidst an old, muslim founded community. The Alhambra looks over all of this and gives one an amazing view from all angles.

Wow, this has been an excessively long post. I guess that I felt as though I had to redeem myself a bit but I'm sure everybody is getting a little bit tired of reading this. Or maybe I'm just using that as an excuse due to the fact that I'm getting a little bit tired of typing, but to sum things up, we wrapped up our tour of Granada by visiting the Catedral of Granada and the Arabic community that is on a hill side close to the Alhambra.

I'm going to try to get back to this again this week to put up pictures and give a brief update on life at school. ¡Hasta luego!