I Never Thought Watching TV Would Be So Hard...

Lately our internet has been not working as well so I haven’t had a chance to update the blog so here’s the latest update from the past week (Some you may have gotten from the last email). Last Sunday, we met our host families for the semester and got our itineraries for the next two weeks. I have a roommate named Peter who is from Wheaton, Illinois. Our host family is a single parent family. Our senora has a son named Galdreg, who lives at home who is 26 and attends the University of Granada and her mother, Yaya, lives in the apartment who is 86 years old.

I can’t believe I would ever say this but… “Watching TV is horrible”. Everything here is so fast and dubbed over so you can’t ever read lips to get a general idea. Peter and I ended up watching an episode of Family Guy “Padre de la Familia” with our host family during our siesta last week. They also watch the Simpsons here and the voice-overs aren’t too bad when comparing them to the voices in English.

We meet as an entire group to start the day from 10 – 12 and then either have an excursion to the neighborhoods around the Granada area or we get to have some free time. Lunch is anytime from 2 – 3, and then back to class from 4 – 7. Then at night we try to find a new place to go since most of us live fairly close to each other. One of the best places so far is Café Drago or (The Tubo Bar) because we can get a 3 liter tube of sangria, tinto verano, or beer for 15 Euro, which also includes a ham pizza (Tapas). It’s a nice place to meet everyone because it’s in the middle of all of our apartments and a nice and relaxed place where we all can hang out, grab a drink and something to eat for fairly cheap. Another place is La Chupiteria 69 (The Shot Bar), this place has a list of 120 different shots all for 1 Euro. The other place we found was Café-Pub Batan, they have glasses of beer or sangria for 1 Euro. This pub plays a lot of American music and it also has a foosball table, and the bartenders actually have conversations with you unlike most places around here and they do magic tricks, mostly when he returns your change and with cards. Lately we have made it a tradition to stay up late, about till 3 A.M. and start walking people home so Pete and I get back at usually around 3:30 or close to 4 and we get about 5 hours of sleep each night.

The lack of sleep has finally caught up with me, I have caught a small cold, which started Friday, so hopefully I can get rid of it soon. The classes this week have gone well but are kind of slow and boring. We met everyday at 10 and we got more information about the Morocco trip, I will be going in November…hopefully. I am excited about this trip, even though it is very expensive, I heard it is a must see trip if you come to Spain and well worth the money. Once I get more information I will let you know. For those of you coming to Spain next semester, the Morocco trip is included with the tuition, so they plan when you go, so that will be one less trip you have to plan for.

We also met some locals and we are planning on playing soccer with them this week. I have never played soccer before, so this will be an interesting experience. I was hoping to play some basketball here, so we might try to get a team formed through school, I think that’s the only way people play since they really don’t have a rec center or public areas to play pick up games.

We went to the beach this weekend, so I will fill you all in about that trip very soon…

Pictures:
(1 & 2 -Views of the Alahambra from our excursions. The tour of that will be in October.)
(3 - Part of the fountain in the Plaza del Isabel Catolica)
(4 - A cathedral on one of our excursions)
(5 - A view of the sunset from my room... Aren't you all jealous???)