And you may ask yourself, "how did I get here?"

Hi everyone!

So much is already happening in Spain that I would have to flood your inboxes constantly to tell you everything I want to via email. Hopefully this blog will work out better, even though the idea of a blog isn’t very appealing to me.

OK, so, long story short- Spain is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Like, all of it. Every place we visit is more beautiful than the last. Upon our arrival in Granada, we walked off the back of the plane onto the tarmac and were surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountain range (the original ones, clearly). Since arriving, we’ve explored Granada some, both with our program directors and monitores (more about them later), as well as in our precious little free time. It’s an amazing old city nestled against/on the mountains, which makes for beautiful views and long hikes at times. Most of the streets are cobblestones and all the buildings are short compared to American cities. Our hotel is on a street with a little river running parallel to it and a view of the mountains. Do you want to vomit yet from how pretty this place is? K, good.

The program itself is pretty cool too. I’ve met some cool new people and am rooming with 2 other girls, both of whom are really great. One of the girls, Melanie, is from Wesleyan and, like me, has only taken through intermediate Spanish. I think we both feel better knowing that we’re in the same boat. Our director, Michael, is a really nice guy too, but our monitores are really making our trip exciting. The monitores are these 5 students who are a few years older than us who live in Granada and are basically hired by the Vassar-Wesleyan program to take us out and show us a good time, as well as talk to us in Spanish. In fact, Ramón, León, Cristina, Cesar, and Alberto showed us such a good time on Friday night that we went out for tapas around ten, hit up a couple bars, went dancing at a discoteca, and didn’t return until 6 AM, which, by the way, is a fairly normal thing for Spaniards to do, since bars & clubs pretty much stay open until the sun comes up, if not later. Despite my poor command of Spanish, I’m managing to become friends with Cristina, who is such a fun person and very patient with all my incoherent Spanish.

Spanish culture is really cool and different too, especially when it comes to meals. Breakfast is around 8 or 9, lunch is between 2 and 4 and is the largest meal of the day with 3 courses, and dinner starts around 9 or 10. Sometimes for dinner we just go out and get tapas instead of a full meal. For those who don’t know, tapas are basically small dishes kind of like appetizers that you share with a group of friends while you have a drink. When you go out for tapas, you order a round of drinks for everyone and the food comes free with your drinks. Also, many places make you pay as a group instead of individually for tapas, which says a lot about their culture. Spaniards are very sociable people, especially when it comes to meals, which is good, because they usually last at least two hours.

Today we took a bus down to the southern coast, since Granada is only an hour or so away. We got to explore a castle and this huge cave, and then we had lunch on a mountainside overlooking the Mediterranean. With all the things we’re doing and all the beautiful places we’re seeing, it’s damn near impossible not to be nauseatingly happy.

Classes start tomorrow, at which point I can start improving more quickly (I hope). When we’re all in a group together, we generally speak English unless the monitores are around. Fortunately though, I’ve learned some key phrases to get by in Spain, and I’m at least semi-coherent most of the time. And for now, I'm more than OK with that.