Over the last month, during the time I was MIA from the blog, I have been really busy! I visited the beautiful city of Cordova with the rest of the BU group, and celebrated Thanksgiving, with my mom and sister, and grandparents, who all came to visit. I have also become even more involved with the LGBT organization, and have attended a feminist march, an AIDS memorial, and danced until 2 am! And in the beginning of December, I turned 20! Also, as I have already posted, I visited my friend Kavita in Ireland.

We went to Cordova the 10th of November. It was our last group trip of the semester and it was guided by Charo, Gregorio's wife. He came along too. I was happy that the other Bucknell students could meet the two people I talk so much about! It was so great to have both of them on the trip, and it was a very enjoyable day. From the third century B.C. to the third century A.D. Cordova was capital of the Roman province in Spain, and we saw the bridge that they built, and which is still functioning! It is under restoration right now, but normally has traffic crossing it. Cordova was also the capital of the Spain when it was under the rule of the Islamic empire, before the territory was split into separate Arabic kingdoms. We saw the remains of one of the Arabic mills, with the waterwheel still standing. That was pretty cool. Still, the most amazing sight in Cordova, and perhaps in all of Spain, is the mezquita (mosque). Unlike the mezquita in Sevilla, it wasn't knocked down by the Christians to build a cathedral; instead they built the cathedral inside. Although it's unfortunate that they changed the inside by putting in the cathedral, at least the mezquita wasn't completely destroyed. I have never seen anything like it, the rows and rows of columns (they used old Roman columns) topped with double arches painted in red and white stripes. It was, as Gregorio described it, like entering some sort of enchanted forest. I felt like I had entered another mystical world. After the mezquita we visited the palaces, and saw huge Roman mosaics hanging on the walls, and then we visited the small synagogue. Then we had free time, to wander the winding streets of the Jewish barrio, and to visit the souvenir stores.

After a while, Cheryl, Caroline and I got bored of shopping, so we took a wander down by the river and crossed the bridge (the modern one) to see if there was anything interesting on the other side. There wasn't. However, walking back across the bridge we saw something interesting. A river statue! When Cheryl (or was it Caroline?) said, "Look, there is a statue bathing in the river," I had no idea what she was talking about! A statue had gotten up from its stand and was washing itself in the river?? And then I saw it, huge bronze shoulders, head and knees, sticking out of the water. It was very odd. And sort of cool. We took a million photos! Also there were several cormorants swimming around it, which I was excited to see, and tried to catch on camera.

The week after the Cordova trip I studied and tried to get work done before my mom, sister, and grandparents arrived. Also, on the Tuesday I went to a book talk held in the University of Granada Department of Political Sciences. I had visited Sandra in NOS (the LGBT organization) earlier in the day and she told me about the talk by the co-author of the book "Herramientos para combatir bullying homofobico" (Tools for combating homophobic bullying). So I managed to get out of class a little bit early and went. It was so interesting, especially considering the work I have done at Bucknell through the LGBT office. (The author used the same heterosexual questionnaire that we have used before in our presentations to sororities and fraternities.) I wanted to comment that I thought it was really important to have a book like this available to educators, particularly because, while I don't know about the situation in Spain, studies in schools in the U.S. show that adults who see or hear an instance of homophobic bullying only intervene 48% of the time. But I was too self-conscious about my Spanish to speak up. Still, I thought about it so much that after the talk, when Sandra asked me what I thought, I expressed my thoughts without stumbling at all! "Why didn't you say something during the talk?" she asked, but said she understood when I explained about being too nervous. After the talk, the whole group went out for drinks and something to eat, and she invited me along, "You're coming with us, right?" I had such a good time, and loved being surrounded by so much Spanish! It was a great night.

On Friday, the 16th of November I visited the monastery of San Jeronimo with my Hispanic America Civilization and Culture class. (The convents were very important in the Christianization of the natives during the Spanish conquest, and since we can't make a trip to South America to see one, we settled for one here in Granada, which is very similar.) It was a beautiful place; the church had me spell bound. The walls were covered in paintings, some of which seemed to be coming out of the walls. It was breath-taking. When my family was here, I took them to visit it and Mom said it was almost more impressive than the cathedral.

Grandma and Granddad arrived really late at night on that same Friday, and on the Saturday the three of us went to visit the towns the Alpujarras, part of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The weather was nice and the autumn leaves in the mountains were magnificent. The little white pueblos on the hilltops were so full of character. Particularly Cañar, which we sort of visited by accident. It was tiny, with narrow steep streets leading into quiet messy corners and dead ends over looking the valley. At one such place we found two cats sunning and two kittens running nervously about. The black and white cat came and twinned around my legs, purring. Along another street, as I commented to Grandma about how pretty the cloths were hanging in front of all the doors, a man stuck his head out through one such cloth and said "Hola." I said "Hola" cordially back, and then we made our way back to the car, to wind out way up to another small white pueblo. We had a great day.

On Sunday Mom and Alicia came! The plane in Baltimore was delayed the night before so they missed the connection in Madrid, which meant they came in a lot later than originally planned, but finally they were here! [Actually it was funny, they came in on the same plane as Noria (my senora's daughter in law, who works in Madrid often.) So we saw Edu there at the airport, waiting outside with their beagle Nela. She is so cute!]

It was great to have everyone here, although a bit stressful to organize everything, and on top of that I had two exams that week. Also, I missed seeing Patrick, Emily and Dad, who hadn't been able to come. Still we had a great time, despite my work, and the rain. It rained that week--bad luck, seeing as it hardly ever rains here in Spain! So some afternoons we just hung out at the hotel, reading and studying. And we did a lot of sight seeing of course! We went to all the necessary touristy places like the cathedral, La Alhambra, and like I mentioned before, the monastery, and we went out for tapas. The last night my mom and sister were here (after my grandparents had left) we went to a Flamenco performance. It was in a restaurant up on the hillside along the river Darro, and it was built into some caves, which was really cool!

Another thing we did a lot of was eat and eat and eat! On Monday we went for la cena at Gregorio's house. We had about eight servings of appetizer-like food! It was good, but almost too much. I was really worried about the evening because Charo and Gregorio don't speak English, but it went fine. Grandma and Granddad speak Spanish and they hit it off really well with Gregorio and Charo. And my mom understands more Spanish than I thought. Only Alicia was a bit lost at times, although she could also follow along more or less. Inma also ate with us, which was nice, and she invited us for la comida at her house the Wednesday before my grandparents left.

On Tuesday we had Thanksgiving with the Bucknell group. It was a long meal; we got to the restaurant at 8:30 and didn't leave until midnight. Stuffed and tired, but satisfied! It wasn't quite the same as having Thanksgiving at home, but it was an interesting experience--Thanksgiving Spanish style. First we had the typical Spanish cheese and meat appetizers, and then finally they brought out the turkey, and served us a plateful each! And there were also peas and beans and their version of cranberry sauce, which definitely wasn't made of cranberries! I think it was from elder berries or black currants or something. It was delicious and much better than cranberry sauce--which I actually don't like. This other berry stuff was great!
The time with my family went so fast, and I was sorry to let them go, although I knew that I would be seeing Mom and Alicia again in a few weeks.

The week after my family was here we had a "diary"(journal) due for our Bucknell class; a detailed account of all our trips and "cultural" experiences. Originally it was due on Tuesday, but Professor Fischer moved the date to Thursday. Still, I thought she'd moved it only to Wednesday so Tuesday night I stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish it. And then I had to get up early the next day for my work in the daycare. Still, since it wasn't due until till later, it gave me time to revise it some more. I wrote 36 pages double spaced. In Spanish! I have never written so much in English let alone another language! I guess it is something to be proud of--but when I was done with it, I just wanted to sleep.

When I wasn't typing away furiously that weekend I was with NOS. On Saturday, after getting up early to see my Mom and Alicia off to the airport and after going home (Inma's house) to sleep an hour, I got up and headed to the LGBT organization office to help clean it up. I thought we'd do a bit of tidying, cleaning windows, sweeping...Well, we scrubbed the place down! First the shutters (big metal doors, like you see on city stores when they are closed), then the windows until they sparkled, and then we painted! It was like spring cleaning but in the fall or winter. It was hard work, but I had fun and met a lot of people. It was satisfying to see the place shine after all of our hard work. And helping out made me feel like I belonged. It was one of the first things that I was finally able to do with the group, since during previous events I had been outside of Granada, traveling with the Bucknell group.

On Sunday, Nov. 25th I went to a feminist march/demonstration, with several members of the LGBT group, for Spain's national day against violence against women. There were tons of people in the street, marching together. Much more than I had been expecting, and what surprised me was the amount of men in the group. It was fun. I really liked some of the chants, for example, "Violencia machista, respuesta femenista!" (Chauvinist violence, feminist answer.) The group in front of us was very animated and would shout to a sing-song tune "Mujeres adelante" (Women forward) and would dance forward, and then they'd say "Machisistas atras" (Sexists back) And then dance back. I had such a good time. It was my first march/demonstration experience not connected to a university, like the Stop the Hate march at Bucknell. It was uplifting to see all the people and it made me remember why I'm so involved at Bucknell and why feminism is important.

Well, that brings this blog up to date till November 25th. I still have a lot to talk about--other fun times with NOS, and my awesome birthday, but I think that will have to wait a few more days. I am now going to watch the movie Marie Antoinette with my familia...till next time...