El final esta muy cerca...

The end is very near...

At the Sacromonte with Granada
below and the Alhambra on the left

I'm soaking up the last few days in Granada. This past week I've done some shopping, walked around a lot, took a million pictures, and tried my best to enjoy the ridiculously hot weather. I can't even imagine living in southern Spain in the summer. This past week we had one last meeting with our program director. We talked about the changes we are going to encounter when we go home. Before I left for Spain, many study abroad alumni had told me that you don't experience culture shock until you come home. To me, that never made sense but I totally understand it now. Just knowing that in 3 days I will be waking up in my real bed, looking out my window at the flat fields completely blows my mind. I was also told that the whole abroad experience will seem like a dream. When we return home, life goes back to the way it was. I'm very excited for that but since no one at home has experienced what I have, and my parents only got a micro-taste of what it was like for me...its very possible for living in Spain to feel like a dream.

A group of us with our program directors

I'm so thankful that I've kept this blog, took so many pictures, and have kept a detailed journal of every day. Its still crazy to think that a month ago I was getting back to the grind after Spring break. Two months ago I had just gone to Naples, Italy with my parents, three months ago I took my weekend trip to the lovely cliff town Ronda, and four months ago I had just arrived in this beautiful country.

My friend Katie Stip

Director Jose

So back to soaking everything up, this past weekend was phenomenal! On Thursday evening we had our "Cenar Despedida", Goodbye Super, with my entire program of 44 students and three program directors. We went to a restaurant, which I've never noticed before, very close to my house. We met at 9:00pm at a Plaza Trinidad, took some pictures, and walked to the restaurant. The food was great! Bread, salad, cheese fondu...I had ravioli and we all shared desert at the end! It was so fun having a formal dinner with everyone! By the time we left it was midnight and two of our program directors said they would go out with us. So we went to a street, also near my house, that is very famous for nightlife. We went to a very Spanish bar..music, dancing, etc. And danced the night away. I think I got home around 3:30am which isn't even that late for the typical Spaniard. But this girl had class and was up at 8am.

Cheese fondu!

For a class, I had to write my very first paper in Spanish. This thing was two pages long and took the same amount of much time as a 5 page paper in English would. But I was proud of it and it wasn't that boring to write about since I chose Bullfighting as my topic. Don't worry Taylor, it was a negative reflection on the bullfights in Spain.

Now I don't usually share stuff like this...but I will this time. I spend a lot of time with Austin here. We're a lot alike and he's always up for doing activities like hiking, salsa dancing, and churro eating every Sunday. Well after all this time I had never been asked on an actual date. No pasa nada... so I was asked on a formal date this past Friday night. So he met me at my apartment and we went to a little restaurant up near where my school is. I had gone to this restaurant before with my roommate Kylie, for tapas and sangria so I knew at least the tapas were good! Big spenders..we decided to have three course meals! Sangria, bread and delicious salad to start off with. Pasta: Carbonara and Lasagna...SO good! And finished off by cheesecake: a piece of strawberry and chocolate.

Now I can't exaggerate this at all but this was the best desert I've ever had in my entire life. We could hardly hold a conversation because we were loving this cheesecake so much! Have already decided we're going after our test Wednesday to celebrate being done with school! YUM!

Saturday was awesome! We went on our last trip together as a program. We left at 9am to go to Neerja, which is a beach town about an hour away from Granada. So beautiful! First we went to "las cuevas" the caves. I expected some lame caves like the gypsie ones but turns out this was not a cave but an underground WORLD. I'm talking huge. Giant dagger-like rocks everywhere. It was incredibly cool and I'm so glad we went there. I didn't even know that was in Neerja or even that close to Granada! Afterwards we went to the beach from 11am-6:30pm. Now, what does a day on the beach do to you... please stay continued....

The beach was beautiful. Everyone brought their brightly colored beach umbrellas to light up the beach. The water was cold but felt amazing after baking in the hot sun. I did get in and swim a little. I do have a cool little adventure I would like to share...

A girl from our program found a little shell with a crab inside. So of course I decided I needed to check this out. So we went go over to the end of the beach and were just looking in the water when we picked up a shell and sure enough there was a little crab inside. Before long I have 5 crabs chillin in my hands and a star fish on my knee! What in the world! Just then, a fat little nino (boy) about 5-6 years old comes over and asks if he can hold my crab. He picks up the biggest one with the coolest shell, of course, and marches away. He comes back a few minutes later and asks for another..well what the heck! Then a girl comes over (9-10 years old) to check out my cool find. Shes explaining me the names for the crabs and starfish in Spanish and began telling me how they live on the rocks and they crawl down into the water. The little boy returns with a red plastic bucket full of water with my two little crabs inside. So I put the rest in there and we start looking for more together. Before long another girl, the nino's sister, comes along too! 

Austin helping the little boy to
the other side where we explored

We do have swimsuits on!!

So there is a crew of us. They tell us to follow them over some rocks to the other side of the beach where there is more. So we're crawling on these sharp rocks to get a lesson on Spanish marine biology. Its so fun to be able to hold a conversation in Spanish..even if it is with someone ten years younger than me. And knowing the little Spanish nino had a higher IQ than me...well, I figured I could learn something from him as well!

Of course being on the beach, a bunch of us tossed the football around and took a nap in the sun. But when my program director, Jose, started calling me a "tigress", yes..a female tiger..I was wondering what was going on.

My dear friend Chris...Oh Chris.... thank you for spraying my back with sunscreen... and thank you for the STRIPES ON MY BACK!!!!!!! Now that's a little lesson on the power of Spanish sun.

Now I have a good story to go with this...but don't know if i wanted to put it on my blog. So if you remind me when I get home, I would love to share it. Its definitely one of the funniest stories I have.

The past few days I've continued to check things off my bucket list. For example, Sunday I went to church with some friends. It was so good to go to church and now that I've improved so much, I was able to understand quite a bit and I loved singing a song which I knew from home in Spanish! After the service, I was given a small book that gives about 10-15 bible verses for about every emotion you could feel! And its in Spanish, of course so I'll get to REALLY study the verses now! I've been taking pictures like mad, buying last minute little souvenirs I've been eying the last four months. Lastly I crossed an item off my REAL LIFE Bucket list! I went up the los jardines del Carmen, which is a gorgeous, large garden above Granada next to the Alhambra. I found the perfect tree and carved my name and dated it! Now later in life when I return to Granada, I will have to go up and find my name that I caved in the tree during my study abroad experience when I was 20-21 years old!

Like I briefly mentioned earlier, tomorrow is my last day of class which includes a test -- joy! But I'm not worried! Today I have yet to Skype my parents for the last time before I return home, pack up some stuff, and catch up writing in my journal. Thursday is my last day in Granada and I fly out at 7:00am Friday morning. I can't believe I just typed that.

I plan on posting one more blog Thursday before I leave so please don't forget to check it one more time! For all those who have followed me through the past four months. I want to thank you like crazy! I wish I was able to see who has been reading my blog but my mom does share with me when someone mentions it. I've spent a lot of time writing the stories, doing my best to explain my time abroad. I look forward to seeing everyone this Saturday. PLEASE, if you have followed me and my blog, come to my welcome home party Saturday!

2 full days left Granada, one blog left, but yet 100 things to do -- isn't that life!

Can time slow down...speed up...wait, time has stopped??

Buenas! Back from Lagos, Portugal from what I can assure you was a MUCH needed vacation. I'm sure you're thinking..."what a brat, that girl travels all the time". True. I've done so much sight seeing, traveling, and touristy things the past four months that all I wanted was an actual vacation. One where I didn't have to worry about finding a bus, missing a plane, but just lay out on a beach and catch some rays. Solution = Lagos. If you have never gone...go! Lagos was so beautiful and the weather was awesome. I was alright with taking a 6 hour bus ride from Granada. A group of maybe 150 students jumped on the two charter buses at 6am Friday morning. We got the Lagos around 1:30 after the 3 mandatory stops in between. We stopped at the cliffs just a little ways from our hotel. They were awesome -- and the water so blue. Below there were people on cute little boats riding next to the cliffs, between the huge rocks that shot out off the ocean, and under the arches.

It was a quick stop because everyone wanted to spend their free time at the beach. Right below our hotel was a cute cove with cliffs on all sides and a big rock we could jump off of in front! The water was gorgeous and it was so much fun getting to catch some rays, throw an actual American Football, and relax! For the night we went out to the "Na-Na-Ba" Restaruant which makes a Top 50 (in the world) Burger!!! So of course I got it..and DANG was it good. It was called "The Tucan" and had a giant onion ring, bacon, an egg, and pineapple on it.

Saturday we left the hotel at 11:30 and took a bus into town. Lagos isn't very big so it was a short bus ride. We were dropped off at a dock next to the beach. There were two large sailboats ready to go. We had all you can drink Sangria and a small boat attached. When we got a ways out, we sailed and the little boat would take us through the caves we saw Friday! They were so cool! One rock looked like an Elephant. It was impossible to understand what the boat guide was saying...since he spoke Portuguese. Our tour guide told us not to speak Spanish because there is a little rivalry between Spain and Portugal, since Portugal seems like a part of Spain. The weather was partly sunny, mostly cloudy, making it a little chilly on the boat but when the sun was out it was hot!

When we got back from our little excursion we spent three more hours on the beach. I stood through a game of sand volleyball.....hoping everyone is catching the sarcasm there. Walked on the beach and laid out some! When we got back to the hotel we showered up and got ready to go to: "The End of the World"! In another small town, about a 30 minute bus ride away, there is a lookout point with a lighthouse. Many, many years ago...before Christopher Columbus, the people had thought just ahead of where we were standing was the end of the world.


It was beautiful, sitting there next to the HUGE drop off cliffs and the light house watching the sunset. Definitely a sunset to remember!
When we got back into Lagos, the bus had dropped us off downtown. We had followed the guide around looking for a Thai food place. Turns out they were so busy they didn't have any rice left?! So we took the guide's advice and tried out this American style restaurant called "Rockefellers". It was very good! I had some bacon macaroni and cheese. I know its stupid, but I think the food I miss most from home is a box of Kraft's macaroni and cheese! Afterwards we went to a different places downtown. Sunday morning was absolutely beautiful. So after our breakfast we had threw together some sandwiches from the cold ham and cheese from breakfast (poor college student 101) and grabbed our stuff to head to the beach. We laid out for a while and as the tide started rising we were getting hotter and hotter. So we decided to jump in the water and jump off the rock. Brr the water was very cold and the climb up this HUGE rock was hard. It really wasn't a rock. It was more like corral. You could see the entire thing was made up of white sea shells and boy were they sharp. Many people got cut up as they climbed up. I consider myself one of the lucky ones.

Now I'm not a fan of heights, like my Dad, but you only live once right? So I jumped!! And had to go a second time too :) But then that was it for me! Warmed up on the beach again, freshened up in the hotel, bought some snacks for the ride home and grabbed a late little lunch of vegetable soup at a local cafe. There are just as many ugly stray-looking dogs without leashes in Portugal as there are in Spain. So we were accompanied by a limping, no toothed old dog who desperately wanted a spoonful. Probably not. I was so happy to see Granada at 2:30am Monday morning. Nothing like a quick 5 1/2 hour sleep before my four hour class Monday morning.

One of our tour guides

Portugal was perfect. All my trips have been amazing and I'm hating that this was my last trip. Granada has shown me beauty, given me challenges, shown me love, and thrown a couple good unexpected punches right at me. There have been days when I look at my calendar and shake my head with disbelief that I only have X amount of days left. Then there has been those days where I'm figuring how many hours of class I have left to go to or how many bocadillos I will probably be forced to eat yet. There are times when I want the time to fly and just to be home hugging my dog Buddy, lifting weights with my teammates, or eating a true farmer's meal with my family. Laying on the beach, meeting crazy fun tour guides and other students on our trip, sharing jokes on the microphone in the front of the charter bus, watching the sunset at the end of the world... moments like that I wish time would stop. And lucky me...this weekend I got what I wanted. As I climbed the giant rock for the second time, I heard an all-too familiar beep coming from my left wrist. Crap. I forgot to take off my watch. The watch that has traveled all over the world with me and more importantly wakes me up in the morning. Yep, I'm just as upset as you are mom because I know that was a nice watch. So as the day went on and I tried to dry it...I watched my watch try to evaporate the salt water from its screen, the side buttons unresponsive when I push them...and then when I woke up for class Monday morning...I realized that for me in Spain, time had stopped at exactly 4:32am.

But time won't stop. I have 9 days left in Spain and I will be breathing in that fresh Iowa air in 10. This weekend I have a Goodbye dinner with my program, a two page paper due, and a day trip to a beach town, Nerja, on Saturday. The bucket list is dwindling to a few things left and my camera card space is getting smaller and smaller. This must mean one thing....its almost time for me to come home.

Thanks for reading...look for my next blog in a week!

No Closer than Nose Bleed, Please!

Yep - it happened. Granada's bullfight. We joked during the fight that the only reason we're here is to support down syndrome, which was the purpose of the fight. All donations were given to the cause. We had a beautiful day...sun was shining, birds were cherping, bulls were dying. Not my kind of day. But when you are in Spain for four months, you at least have to go to one bull fight. Like our directors had told us, the first bull will be the most difficult to watch. And it really was.
The whole fight lasted about 20 minutes. And to keep my blog positive, we won't go into detail. The second bull I started to notice some details about the actual fight: the three stages, the President waving different colored cloths, the different moves the toreadors were doing. I still didn't watch the very end part. After halftime everyone in the crowd gets out their tinfoil wrapped bocadillos and has a snack. There were 6 bulls and 6 toreadors. Two from Granada, one boy who was 16, and three of the best bullfighters in all of Spain.
At the end of the fight, the crowd would decide if they got to cut off one or two ears. If two, they would throw the other ear into the crowd. Must be that great feeling like when you catch a home run at a baseball game.The first bull after half time was a real fighter and it took a very long time for him to die. So after that display I decided I had enough and I left. OF COURSE, I would regret it because turns out the last bull fighter, the youngest kid, got gored!!!! But not badly because he was alright enough to finish the fight.When it came down to it, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the animal. Some of the toreadors were pretty brave, kneeling 5 feet in front of the bull with nothing in their hands. But to me, there is nothing brave about weakening a bull, bleeding it to where it is really delirious, then make it chase after a pink cloth. I felt it was a blessing in disguise when they finally killed the bull. I can't imagine sitting anywhere closer than our top floor seats. Call me American, but I would have been more impressed if they would have ridden the bull.

[Got this picture online]

Overlooking Granada

I spoke too soon. "Granada has beautiful weather all the time, it never rains here!" Opps! So the weekend I get to spend in Granada...is miserable because it rains the entire time. Hiking with my Intercambio was fun. I got to explore a direction in Granada that I hadn't before. I would hardly call it a hike though, it was more like a long walk on a trail. But that is alright because the main point of the meetings with the Spanish students is to practice our Spanish. Afterwards we went to a cafe and had some coca-colas. 2 euro for a small glass (kids size) of coca-cola. That's about $2.75! But gotta splurge! When my parents came to visit they brought a whole bunch of candy from the US. Yes, I did share. But I rationed that out like it was the only food I had left to eat. Which is completely ridiculous! BUT now that it is all gone, I've reached that point where I want to eat as much Spanish candy that I can before I can't anymore!

On Friday after my Oral exam in the morning, Austin took me on a real hike. We made the plan to not stop until we reached the snow in the Sierra Nevada. Well, nothing like setting our sights high...literally. We left before noon and didn't get back until 7.

Off road short cut!

An attractive victory dance

We hiked up two huge mountains. The next morning when I woke up, I was cherry red and one of my eyes were even swollen. OH, and I sore from head to toe. It was crazy fun though and I'm so glad we went. It was beautiful weather and I'm always up for a little physical activity. Because we had no prior plan of where to go we just started walking. At first we were on an actual trail. Then, to save time, we took a short cut to get to the other mountain. We walked through a little town outside of Granada, petted some horses, crossed a highway, then up the next! From the first mountain we could see three different trails we could take. We were shooting for the one in the middle. But after we had crossed the highway we realized we couldn't find it anymore. So we just started walking through a pasture which turned into an olive grove. We figured we'd find one. But we didn't.

Next morning-lookin as good as I feel!

We took a break earlier to have lunch. His host mom made him a bocadillo with a banana. Mine forgot...so I got to make my own sandwich. I even snuck some lettuce on mine--what a treat! haha We took a break and sat in the shade under an olive tree in the grove. The sight was amazing. We both decided it just wasn't possible today to reach the snow. So we hiked through brush, pine trees, and thorn bushes to the top of that mountain. The sight was awesome but I was burnt, my legs scratched and a little bloody, and I wanted to get back.

We hiked near to the top of the right peak

Hiked to the top of the right peak
(to the right of the Coke sign)

Over the rainy weekend I did some shopping, went to the movie "Los Avengadores" (The Avengers) with a group of friends, and went horseback riding! Yes! That's right! I went with 3 other girls to a little town outside of Granada. From there we were picked up in a beat up Jeep and taken out to a little Spanish Ranch. It was adorable!!! It was exactly what you would think a little Spanish ranch would like. The home was built into the side of the hill/mountain. There was one corral for horses in the front. Chickens, geese, and about 80 little ninos running around. We thought there was a birthday party but turns out they do a little schooling out there for the kids in the town! We met the entire family..they were sooo good to us! The Spanish Grandfather, who owned the place, served us soda, whole walnuts, chips, and dried cookies. Because it had been raining, we waited for it to pass and hung out inside with them for a while. We learned that they own about 70 English horses. The one I rode was named the Spanish word for belly: "Barriga". I don't know why because honestly, none of the horses looked too well fed... but I guess I compare them to how fat Dolly was!!

The ride was awesome up into the Sierras. It wasn't cliffs or anything dangerous. But we did ride up the trail a ways and had the most breathtaking view of Granada and the Sierras. When we turned around to go back, it started raining. And the rain is colder of course, being in the mountains. It was a successful ride until poor Breann, one of the girls I was with, while dismounting from her horse, fell on her butt and got her entire backside and leg muddy.

 But we were welcomed inside by our Spanish Grandpa who was building a fire and had a hair dryer out, ready for us to dry off with! He served us hot chocolate..literally hot liquid chocolate, and a Spanish tortilla tapa! (Remember its like potatoes and eggs, not an actual egg omelet) We were having such a blast with the family, they had brought in baby kittens and a bunny too! It has been so long since I've played with an animal! There are dogs everywhere in Granada but the owners AND the dogs get pretty mad when you touch them. Grandpa gave us a ride back into town in a farm car, unlike any farm car I'd been in. It died 5 times going back into town and I was absolutely shocked that it had made it through the rough road anyways! He made us sit in the car with him until the bus came so we would be warm, and we gave him Spanish kisses when we left! What a guy... (:

Just don't forget how beautiful Granada is!

Downward slope! I'm writing this on Wednesday, May 2nd, meaning I officially have 15 days left in Spain.
Still a few more adventures to be had... might just have to go on one today!!