**Updated with Photos**

Hola,

My fellow Bucknellians and I finally arrived in Spain after leaving Saturday, Jan. 5, at about 8 p.m. The plane ride was uneventful and I mean that in a good way. I do not particularly enjoy flying, as I believe that nothing without feathers and a beak should be doing 500 mph at 30,000 feet, so an uneventful flight is a blessing. We landed in Madrid at about 9 a.m. Once we got off the plane, the plan was to find Professor Delgado and take a bus to Granada.

Professor Delgado was a bit delayed and we found ourselves sitting in a big luggage circle in the Madrid Airport. While we were waiting, a man approached us and asked if we wanted to put our luggage in his bus to go Granada. Since Professor Delgado had not arrived, we figured that we were about to be mugged by a man posing as our driver and we vehemently denied his offer. Of course, this was our actual bus driver.

We were all excited and a bit overwhelmed. I know that I was and I am still trying to come to grips with finally being in Spain, but the whole-no-one-speaks-English-on-the-streets-thing is a constant reminder.

Picture of Spain from the plane:

Waiting for Professor Delgado

Anyway, Professor Delgado arrived and we hopped on a bus to Granada. Along the way, we had our first Spanish meal in La Mancha, home of Don Quixote, where we found quite a shock to have to actually use Spanish for real. A few of us ordered, "el mismo," which means "the same." In other words, we ordered what the person in front of us did.

A small restaurant in La Mancha

As we arrived to Granada, the sun came out, illuminating the Sierra Nevadas (the mountain range outside the city). This was a sign that our trip will be a wonderful adventure, since it is much more romantic than believing it was a coincidence.

A few buildings in Granada

Bucknellians immediately find an internet connection

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant at 8:30 p.m. (They eat dinner much later in Spain, more about this later in the semester). Afterwards, we took a quick tour of the city, which is gorgeous as you can see by my posted pictures. I was a full fledged tourist, taking pictures of anything remotely interesting. Even though we were tired after only get a few hours of sleep in the last 28 hours or so, most of us decided we should try out a Spanish bar. Rob coined it best and said, "We only have one first night in Spain." So, we went out.

Streets at night in Granada

Jan. 6 and 7 are national holidays in Spain and are the last two days of the Christmas celebration. Because of this or because it was a Sunday (we don't know exactly why) many of the bars closed early. Most of our group wandered into quite a few bars before we found a small, intimate place called Nave. We quickly befriended the bartender, named Luna. Luna was an interesting character, who is Brazilian and speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish. If you ever stop by, ask him to do his New York impression of coffee (cawfeee) with his British English accent. After a glass of Spanish wine, we headed back to the hotel.

Monday morning we awoke at about 9:30 and had breakfast. We took a tour of the Bucknell office in Granada, learned some basic things about life in Granada, and headed out on a walk of the city. Granada has an interesting cultural history. During the middle ages up until 1492, it was one of the most religiously tolerant cities in the world. Muslims, Jews, and Catholics lived together in the city, and were just plain happy. Or so I am told. Anyway, because of this, there is a large Muslim influence. On our walk, we got to witness this first hand. We got a great view of the Alhambra, a Moorish fort and the entire city, before lunch eating at a nice restaurant.
See video of the Alhambra that I took.

That's pretty much it for Day One and Day Two.

A picture of the girls at the hotel

A random statue on our walk:

Some cool graffiti

Things I have learned so far:

1) I am American.
Everyone around us gazes at us (not due to our good looks), especially when we walk around in big groups. Our rusty Spanish is thick with our apparent American accents. I don't think it is us who as the accent, I think everyone else in Granada does.

2) Everything is a road.
You have to look every possible way when crossing a street. Also, roads that look like walking paths are not just for walking. The cars and mopeds in this city are tiny and fit on the narrow cobblestone streets. Fortunately, when crossing the road, there is a cool animated green figure on the traffic light that tells you how many seconds you have to cross. He speeds up as times runs out.

3) I like lists of three.

Hasta luego,

Evan