Que tal?

Well another week has come to pass here in Granada. Time flies when you are napping half of the day. I have begun to settle into my new life here in Spain and have become used to dodging cars and mopeds on the sidewalks and overhearing Spanish conversations as I walk through the streets. As an extranjero (foreigner), I continually make observations about the Spanish culture from an American point of view. First, I would like the declare Granada the city of old men and small dogs; both are bountiful in the streets of Granada.

Wherever I walk in this city, especially around 1 p.m., I see old men who all really look the same, with white hair and light skin. They are also a lot of old women too, but we have plenty of those in Florida. I guess it reassures the notion that red wine is good for the heart. I hope someone does a study on the correlation of siesta and life expectancy because I think us Americans have something to learn. Below I have posted a picture of an old lady walking up a hill that I scale every morning on my way to class. I now have no reason to complain.

As I mentioned before, there are plenty of dogs here too. Apparently there is no leash law and they walk freely behind their owners. Most of the dogs seemed to be well-behaved and listen to their owners, though you do have to watch where you step on the sidewalk. It is sort of demoralizing, though, that these dogs probably understand more Spanish than I do.

To add to my general confusion, the people of Granada happen to have the most difficult accent of all the Spaniards. Here in Granada, they speak with sort of a lisp, or a "th" sound in their words. To make up for this extra sound, they then decided to drop their "s". For example, "Adios" (goodbye) is pronounced as "Adio," with a long o. Hasta luego (See you later) is shorten into "Aluego", which I sort of like for some unknown reason.

After eight years or more of taking Spanish, I would say I was finally becoming comfortable with using an S in the all the words that, you know, it was written in. Now, I am unlearning a little while trying to learn a lot.

They also speak here with their mouths more open than in other parts of the Spanish speaking world, which is probably due to dropping the "s." I would equate this to the way you speak when you have a piece of hot food in your mouth and you are trying to politely tell your dinner host why you are spitting their fancy food out into their expensive cloth napkin. "It's tooo hawwt." One more thing to get thing I have to get use to.

On Friday, the group visited the house of the famous Spanish poet Fransciso Garcia Lorca. I did not know much about the poet before the trip and I still do not since I and most of my fellow Bucknellians nodded off on our way to his natal home. Lorca is both a poet and an author of a few plays, one of which we will read while we are here. We toured the house where he was born. That's all that was special about this house: he was born there.

The house was sold after he was born, along with all the original furniture so the house is currently filled with vintage replica furniture. Basically we saw the house where a famous person lost his first tooth and not much more. I guess you can gather I was not enthralled by the visit. I was also not allowed to photograph any of the replica furniture either so I have little to show for my visit.

On Saturday night, I had my first anti-American experience in Granada. A group of us attempted to go a large club on Saturday night. I happened to be there on Friday with another group of friends and had no issues. Saturday was different. When we got to the entrance of the club, the bouncers told us we were not being allowed to enter because we were American and that Americans were "bad." The most ironic part of this story is that the club is named for a Hollywood actress, Mae West, and is decorated head-to-toe in vintage American movie posters. We were too American for a club decorated in Americana.

That wraps it up for tonight. I will post some cool pictures of the sunset from the roof of my building as well as what I see on my walk to school every day. I hope everyone at home is enjoying the cold weather. It was about 18 degrees here too, but that is in Celsius or 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

There is some pretty cool graffiti here in Granada...

This is where some of us take classes.

I see the Sierra Nevada on my way to class

The sunset from my roof

Video of sunset