Discoteca life

Well so far partying here in Granada has been quite an interesting experience. There's been a few nights of partying at clubs like El Camborio, Campus, and Granada 10 but there's been a lot of bar chilling as well. The culture here is definitely not for everyone, I'm loving it so far but if you're not a late night person, well good luck. If you're going to a normal club around here, there isn't much point going before 2:30am/3am because the discoteca will only be like half full, seriously. It took till about 4-4:30am for Granada 10 to really get crowded, it's pretty insane. Although if it's a university party put on my ERASMUS then it's generally pretty crazy by 2am-3am. So, I definitely haven't been home before 4am on the nights I've partied here, if anything it's been more like 5am-7am, people definitely know how to party hard here, thank god for siestas is all I gotta say aha. Clubs open here at around 1am and close around 6am, it's like 3 or 4 hours behind the North American party time, no joke. The past 3 or 4 days there has been lots of wine drinking, shots, tapas, and great company. Like in North America there's lots of different party scenes, there's definitely some interesting ones over here. There's the really popular discotecas like Granada 10 which played a lot of really popular North American and Spanish music like Call Me Maybe by whatsherfacecanadian and Dance Again by JLO, etc. plus some awesome popular Spanish songs, well I think they're awesome anyways.

Then there's the clubs which are more popular among the international university kids where ERASMUS and whoever are always putting on parties like El Camborio and Campus, those are definitely ones where they play the world wide popular music, such as all the top 40 hits we've been hearing on the radio for the past 2 or 3 years with a mix of some popular Spanish music and some 'older' popular hits from the last 10-20 years. What's kind of awesome too is that at most of the discotecas I've gone to so far, if there is a cover it's only 6-10 euros and usually you get 2 free drink tickets for the night, North America is such a rip off sometimes. Then there's those crazy parking lot parties..they do have an actual name but I can't remember right now what it is that are really popular with the locals around here. Then there's the more bar or bar/club like places which I have just recently started experiencing with my roomie and other locals, it was a bit of an older/mature crowd so there was definitely some really great and in depth talks over bottles of wine this past week (like 7 or 8 bottles of wine..maybe a little too much red wine for me to handle all at once.) If nothing else, the thing they all have in common is how well-dressed everyone around here is, especially at the local discotecas and the parking lot parties which almost creates a stark contrast between the dirty/messy setting and the beauty of the people. Europeans know how to live.

Anyways, all those types of places are very different and interesting to experience, I don't really have a preference towards any, I'm just enjoying the experiences as they come so far. All I can say is, it's going to be a crazy adventure of a year..it already has been a crazy adventure and I've only been here just over a week! I'm so grateful to just have the opportunity to be here and experience life like this, it an amazing chance that many people will never have. I'm just taking everything day by day right now and soaking it all in. As always, I'm excited to see whats to come. Europe just gives me the hope of limitless possibilities.

Granada 10, beautiful crowded venue at 4:30am

Brazil themed night at El Camborio, that pastel/paint stuff does not want to come off my skin.

El Albacín and the Arabic Culture

Thursday I went back to the CLM again to try and get my schedule sorted out. After about 30 minutes of the guy finding forms for me to fill out, asking me for all kinds of things like my passport and pictures for my ID card, etc. I finally got my schedule figured out and a student card (which is literally a piece of paper with my passport-sized photo glue-sticked onto it that is in a little pastic cover) THANK ZEUS. I don't know why that was so bloody hard to get organized. Today I still had to go online and figure out where my classes actually were since it doesn't say anywhere on my schedule either, oh CLM.

 the weather was pretty gray and rainy but we still wanted to continue our exploration of the city all the same. We decided to head up to the Albacín area which is the Arabic influenced zone of the city up on the hill side on the other side of the Alhambra from where I live. We walked up there for a couple hours, found lots of kool little places and things including an outdoor workout area with random pieces of work out equipment which we thought was hilarious but we were having serious problems finding the actual like centre of the Albacín, I'm pretty sure we wandered through a few parts of it but we weren't entirely sure what we were looking for and the weather wasn't great so there wasn't too much going on up there. It was an interesting adventure as always though, we found a spectacular view of the city up there.

The outdoor workout park ahaha

Spectacular view of the city we stumbled upon

Later that night we wandered around in another little Arabic-esque area closer to the centro and stopped at this beautiful little restaurant/shisha house and got some Turkish coffee (Café Turco) and some Delicious hummus and naan bread, along with a lamb and rice dish. So Good. There are lots of beautiful little places like this one around the city, I love them.

 The interior décor was beautiful

DELICIOUS Hummus and Bread

There's also a ton of small shops in the same little Arabic area as the restaurant with all kinds of interesting clothing, tapestries, trinkets, scarves, etc. I decided to splurge a little a buy couple things from one of the little shops, there was a little bargaining involved but to be honest I didn't try that hard, I think here, as well as everywhere in market places like this, the original price they give you is a lot higher and then they will easily bargain it down. Anyways, ended up getting a wall tapestry and a skirt for 24 euros in total which isn't too bad since the 'original price' was about 46 euros. 

Skirt I bought

The Tapestry, I'm kind of in love with it

  

Italian Level Test Nonsense

Wednesday morning after going to bed borracha at 4am, I woke up at 20 after 8 to go to the CLM to take my Italian test, I'm not sure whether I was still drunk, hungover, or just really over tired, maybe a mixture of things...Finally get there just before 9 and check the board with the listings of time and place of the level tests, find the Italian one and my name isn't on it...WTF? So have to go and wait to get into the Secretaría office to see what the heck is going on. 20mins later I get into the office, apparently I was signed up for the 4pm level test..thanks for keeping me in the loop, as usual, CLM. They're so helpful there... anyways I was pretty freaking glad I didn't have the test then anyways because Tuve una resaca (I had a hangover) and pretty much came back home and went back to sleep for a couple hours after talking with the CLM people. So since I had until 4pm to chill around, me and my ubc peoples went exploring the centro some more, we found the big mall called El Corta Inglés which is awesome. It's where the movie theatre and all the big shops are. We stopped at a Cervecería (beer house) to grab some coffee (I LOVE how strong the coffee is here) and food, it was a kool place, kind of had a "deutsch-esque" feel/décor. It started pouring rain as we sat there in the cervecería so we chilled in there awhile and then started wandering around again, we came across this crazy deli/food market, I've never seen so much meat in one place. It was intense! The rain here in Granada kind of goes in phases from being nice and light then turning into a down pour and then returning to a nice light rain before stopping (momentarily), it's now been raining for 2 or 3 days on and off but it's suppose to return to its sunny self this weekend, yay!

The Cervecería logo on the table

The Deli...so. much. meat.

Eventually I had to head back to the CLM for the Italian level test, of course just as I was walking back there it started to pour again, needless to say by the time I reached there I was pretty soaked, fun times. It's so slippery where when it's wet here because a lot of the sidewalks and plazas are smooth from years of erosion and some are just tile and marble in the first place. That was fun trying to navigate my way around that...almost fell on my ass once or twice... So then there was the level test. OMG MY BRAIN. I didn't realize how much Italian I had forgotten..yikes. There was about 10 of us waiting outside the room, a couple of us were english speakers, but most of the people taking the test were spanish speakers which was interesting, but that made my brain hurt even more, talking in English and in Spanish right before an Italian level test...my brain was in overload. The level test itself wasn't too bad, it took less than 2 hours to finish, it was just a front and back sheet of short answer questions and another sheet of fill in the blanks and finish the sentences and things like that, I had to think so hard to pull the words out of my brain though, my Italian has definitely gotten rusty, I know all the words when I hear or read them but I could not think of some of the simplest words from the top of my head. Like the word MORNING, all I kept thinking was mañana (spanish), and matin (french) unfortunately I couldn't make the connection that the Italian word was Matina...like duh, how could I forget that?!

So after the test we had to wait around forever to talk to the profesora about our results and what time we could have the class and whatnot, that made my brain hurt even more, I was trying so hard to talk to her in Italian but my brain still wasn't fully functioning so sometimes I would revert to English but she doesn't speak English that well so I would have to revert to Spanish, my brain was a mess! But anyways, I survived and got placed into second level or something like that which is good because it should hopefully transfer back as 201 and 202 at UBC then. Then there was still the matter of dealing with my course registration and my schedule but of course the CLM office isn't open past 6:30 so I had to deal with all that fun crap another day.     

The CLM campus #1

How Many Days of Madness?

So this week has already felt ridiculously long and it's only Wednesday (well Thursday now technically because it's 3am) I already wrote about Monday and the level test stuff so I won't mention much about that but Tuesday and Wednesday have been crazy, random days that felt more like week than two days. Maybe I'll split this one into small sections.

So Day 1 (Tuesday Morning)
Started off as a total normal day, got up and went to go meet T for coffee and to get him a phone card, we ended up at this kool little square and grabbed some coffee. Although on the way to the square we passed by something that looked like a protest in a small square, there was a ton of cops and whistles and chanting people, I have no idea what was going on, didn't seem violent though, just...loud. I was going to try and open a bank account after but then I discovered that I need a residency permit before I can do that, what a pain. Then there was the SIM card, T already had a phone and just needed a SIM card but they work kind of different here, you pretty much have a weird pay as you go kind of plan and the SIM cards are like 5-10 euro which is super cheap. Everything in Spain is cheap compared to Canada. Then we found this DELICIOUS sandwich shop at Plaza Nueva, our fav plaza, they were so simple; fresh bun with delicious rich cheese and the excellent thin cured ham they have everywhere here. For entertainment we watched a guy in the plaza trying to teach another guy to ride his segway aha.

Plaza Nueva

Day 2 (Tuesday Afternoon)

Another fun experience was apartment searching in Granada, T was still looking for a place to live and so far has been staying at a hotel and on my couch. It was kind of odd because all he had was numbers and address of these apartments, no idea what they looked like, who the landlords or tenants were, nothing. Just a phone number and a name attached to it. The first one we went to see was at 1pm and it was just off of Plaza Nueva which is an awesome location, it's up the hill from Plaza Nueva which pretty much goes up to Alhambra which is so kool! We were wandering up in the area waiting to check out the apartment and came across a spectacular view as well as a piece of the Alhambra property we think. 

Spectacular view or what!

Eventually we walk back down the hill to where the apartment is, when we got there we had to wait a couple minutes for the landlord, she appeared to vacuuming hardcore before letting us in aha. She was this really kool woman from South America, loud and super chill, the apartment was really nice, 2 person place, a massive living room, nice bathroom, good sized kitchen, it looked great and then...we met the other tenant...a quite Japanese girl who spoke only japanese and a limited amount of spanish, a very odd, timid creature with straight highlighted hair and confused looking eyes beneath Large glasses. So that was a no. After we left there wandered up the street a bit to check out the kool little stores and whatnot. And there, near the entrance to the Alhambra path, I fell in love aha well, there was a man sitting and playing some of the most beautiful Spanish Guitar melodies I have ever heard. I could have honestly sat there and listened to him play all day. Estoy tan enamorada con España. 

  

Day 3 (Tuesday Evening)
So after pulling myself away from that beautiful music, T and I walked back down to the main square to go meet up with K and saw some very interesting things. Looks like it's 'Frosh Week' here in Granada for the locals, we walked into one of the central squares and found this:

Girls on the left, guys on the right, yelling and chanting at each other from across the street, another part of the girls group showed up moments later wearing garbage bags and had drawn on unibrows bahaha.

We continued on our wanders after watching this go on for a few moments and went wandering down through the plazas, there's so many plazas here it's amazing, each one is unique and different. We were planning on finding food but as usual we just ended up aimlessly wandering and I finally found a place to buy bedsheets! I've been surviving with just a duvet and a kind of bottom under-sheet thing since I got here, I found them at this store called Buenas Aires, it is this Massive fabric store, the first two levels are nothing but fabrics of every shape, colour, texture, etc. Anyways, we end up chilling in Plaza Nueva again and watched a really crazy street performer juggle all kinds of things! It was so kool! 

Juggling like 6 balls, I was impressed, especially because I can't juggle at all. 

So T had a couple more apartments to check out so we went to check out one that was pretty close to my place, the building was looked quite nice from the outside, we stood outside waiting for the guy to show up and let us in, he said he would be there in a couple minutes because he was walking over...20mins later he shows up, this about how time works in Spain, there was 2 guys, one looked like a normal, chilled out, cyclist kind of guy, the other one was ummm...how do I put this...creeepy...he was like a mixture of Michael Jackson and Benecio Del Torro..I don't want to sound too mean but all 3 of us got the 'pedo' kind of vibe from him..so that was bad sign #1. We go up to the apartment and it's the Tiny one 'L' shaped hallway..that was it. The kitchen was just to the left,it was dirty and Tiny, the fridge was literally beside the front door because it wouldn't fit in the kitchen and then there only appeared to be 3 bedrooms but there was already 3 guys living there so not too sure what that was about and a tiny little bathroom. Needless to say we got out of there as fast as humanly possible. 

Day 4 (Tuesday Night) 

Our plans for the night was to go to this Traffic Light party that ERASMUS was putting on but we were all feeling pretty chill so just made dinner at my place and cracked open a bottle of wine. T left during dinner prep to check out another apartment and finally found an awesome one! YAY! Now all 3 of us have places to live! That called for more wine drinking of course. K and my roomie P both showed up and joined us in our wine drinking, K brought over another bottle, we sat on the terrace and drank more, and more wine... 2 bottles later we finally went out to go meet up with some of T's friends. We met up with them at an irish bar and then proceeded to wander through town, stopping at a convenience store to buy another bottle of cheap wine, 3 bottles down. Finally after who-knows-how-long of walking we find this bar called Chupitería 69 (chupito is the word for shot here, so it's essentially a shot house) this place had 1 euro shots! It was ridiculous. A couple shots later...we leave and are apparently going to this place called (english translation) 'the parking lot'.

After walking like a mile or two (and buying another bottle of wine) 4th bottle down, we arrive there, it was one of the craziest things I've seen. It's this huge open space, I'm not too sure if it was actually a parking lot or not but there was probably 1000+ people standing out there drinking and smoking and just socializing -a large number of them were locals which was kool- so we walk over and weave into the crowd and find a group of American/Canadians who all somewhat know each other and hang around them then a group of locals starts talking to K and I. That was pretty interesting, they had fun kind of f*cking with K (perhaps because she's American, they seem to have a thing about that here) aha and this one guy get touching my hair which was weird. It was interesting, by that point we were both pretty borracha (drunk). Finally around 3am we left because I had the stupid Italian level test at 9am that morning, FML right. Got home and passed out around 4am.   

So that was tuesday..the craziness continued on Wednesday

Rules for surviving in Granada

Here's just a short list of things I've sort of learned in my first week here...

Rule #1 Always stay hydrated
Rule #2 Be prepared to walk a lot on hilly roads
Rule #3 Be prepared or at least accept that all your plans will probably not work out according to plan, and don't freak out when they don't
Rule #4 Don't walk around the Albacín area at night especially by yourself
Rule #5 Be patient and try to just go with the flow; don't expect North American like efficiency
Rule #6 Good shoes are Very important
Rule #7 You need your passport or at least a copy of your passport for almost everything around here
Rule #8 Packing too much stuff, especially in suitcases that are hard to transport is a terrible mistake (lots of stairs here)
Rule #9 A lot of the time everything will be given in vague information, get used to it
Rule #10 Sunglasses are also very important to have with you all the time, so is your CAMERA!
Rule #11 If you don't like meat, don't go into deli's
Rule #12 There's so many vendors everywhere, watch out but be polite
Rule #13 Siestas are amazing and annoying at the same time because A LOT of things are closed for hours in the middle of the day
Rule #14 Spanish coffee is really strong and Spanish Sangria is So good
Rule #15 Eating meals on patios and in plazas is really nice but expensive, better to eat real meals at home and then just get coffee, tapas, and drinks from cafés, restaurants, and bars
Rule #16 be prepared to experience a multitude of different cultures, embrace them
Rule #17 Know that you probably won't be able to understand most of the locals very well at first (or maybe ever)
Rule #18 Be careful how much wine you drink, 8 or 9 classes is quite a lot especially when it's red...

I'll probably add more later...

The Level Test

After the craziness of Friday night and Saturday morning I decided to have a pretty chill weekend, just hung around the apartment and aimlessly wandered around the city and other such things, last night (Sunday night) I met up with another UBC friend (let's call them T) and we explored the city a bit, stopping to get a delicious dinner on the way, we got this 'Pollo Granadina' (Chicken Granada Style) and this ensalada mezcla (mixed salad) it had bits of everything, it was soo good, topped it off with a glass of wine of course. Was planning on coming home and studying for my level test which I was planning on taking at 9am, didn't end up going to bed until like 4am because I was up studying and talking to ppls in Canada <3 So decided that maybe taking the level test at 4pm was a better idea. So this morning I went wandering with T and we found like the perfect hangover breakfast (not that we were) of potatoes, eggs, and thinly sliced ham, with some bits of pepper, all on this one plate, fried and delicious, apparently it's a very typical plate of Granada. I Love the food here. So then there was the level test..seemed like a pretty intense test from what I read on the website...was not excited to say the least. T and I get there around 3:50pm and run into another UBC-er (K). We all hang around and talk and eventually wander up to Aula 9 (class 9) where we're taking the test, this test was so long, it was like 5 parts, started at 4pm-ish and it was about 7:20pm when we left the building. There was a listening section which was just like...what?! And then a reading comprehension, blah blah blah, grammar blah blah blah.. and then once we were done we had to wait around for another 25ish mins and then got called in 1 by 1 to talk to the admin guy who gave us our results, it was surprisingly efficient.

It was a bit nerve-racking waiting to talk to the admin guy, but I got there and we briefly went over my test and he was asking me questions about where I study and where I'm from and whatnot, apparently one of his really good friends is in Toronto and he really liked the city, he even told me that he liked it better than New York :O. Aha. But anyways, the level test scale was 1-9, 1-4 meant you take some your classes in English, 4-6 was the CLCE program meaning you take your classes in Spanish, and then 7-9 means you're taking like Native Speaking Spanish classes. I got level 5 which I think is great, wasn't sure if I'd do that well and didn't really want to take classes in English after coming all the way here so I won't complain! Now I have the week off to explore the city some more, planning on doing lots of site seeing tomorrow and wednes!

After coming back from the mindf*ck that was the level test I just sat on my terrace as my brain began shutting down, that test was exhausting. It was nearing sunset on my terrace, there was a nice breeze, the city was quiet. Perfect. I just collapsed in a chair and just enjoyed the peacefulness of the city.

My Terrace @ 8pm. 24/09/12

My Terrace @ 8:10pm. 24/09/12

My Terrace at @ 8:20pm. 24/09/12

That night me and some of the UBC-ers went out and had dinner at this outdoor place which was nice but so expensive! For 3 entrées which we split and a litre of Sangria the bill was like $70 euro which is a lot in Canadian dollars. So we decided from then on we'd probably just have dinner at home and then go out for drinks and tapas (kind of like appetizers) at night time. 

The Next Morning...

Continuing on with the strangeness of Friday, this morning I woke up at 10:30am feeling wine-hungover, eugh. So tired and hungover M and I walk back to my place trying to avoid the sunlight as much as possible, felt like a vampire. It was pretty kool though, walking around my area in the morning when the streets are so alive, it was the first time I've seen all the shops open, so far I've only been out during 'siesta' when everything is closed and in the evening when it's mostly just bars and restaurants that are open. So M and I get back to my place, and I remember that I can't get the gate open, so M and I are there fiddling with the gate for like 2 minutes and all of a sudden and old white haired lady sticks her head out the 2nd floor window of my building and starts speaking to us in really fast spanish, and we're both kind of like What ? at first, she didn't exactly seem friendly, then again I think she thought I was trying to break in or something...oops. She was starting to look pretty concerned when finally I got the gate open, took me a long time to figure out that there's 2 parts to the gate lock, one that you move with the key and another that's just like a latch thing that I just needed to pull back to open the gate...duh. She came around later to look at the gate, I think she was still kinda concerned. After all that weirdness I went and got a spanish SIM card for my phone today, was kind of scary at first trying to communicate with the guy at the phone store in Spanish but we got it figured out, luckily there was a 'menu' kind of things with all the different phone services and plans, so anyways, I do have a working phone now with a small data plan as well THANK ZEUS. Going 5 days without a phone has been kind of nice but at the same time it was very hard trying to contact and meet up with people and the only way I ever knew what the time was by the church bells which ring on the hour and by looking at clocks in random bars/cafés, maybe bringing a watch would have been a good idea..

Anyways after I got my phone I went grocery shopping for the first time, there's a bunch of little shops like Fruterias (fruit/veggie store), Carnicerias (meat shop), Pescadores (fish shop), Panarias (bakery kinda thing) but I was lame today and just went into the normal 'super marcado' and bought cereal, yogurt, and some deli meat, all of that in total was under 6 euros, insanelyyy cheap, I Love this place, everything is so cheap. I bought a kitkat bar tonight too and it was 80 euro cents, like wth. Later in the afternoon I was back just hanging in my apartment wearing just a bra and pj shorts because at 2pm it's too hot to wear anything else really and suddenly this old, fragile, white-haired woman in a blue bath robe appears infront of my door, and I'm just like wtf and scramble to throw my tanktop back on... awkwarddd, I mean we always have our door and windows open during the day but have never seen anyone around my terrace before. Apparently her name is Lola and she's the woman who lives upstairs in the building, it's just her and another female tenant that no one ever sees up there on the 2nd floor, guess it's only a 3 apartment building.

We had a hilariously awkward conversation of me trying to understand her Spanish, she spoke really softly and really fast, she was wondering who I was and was asking what had happened to the other girl who lived here and was talking about keeping the gate closed and robbers/disturbances, guess she heard me fiddling with the gate too, oops, and of course she doesn't speak any english so most of the conversation was just me saying 'sí ' and 'vale' (okay) and 'lo siento' (sorry), then she goes and pulls out a little white string bag that looks like it's coming from her bra and I'm really like WTF now, but it was the bag that she kept her keys in, she was talking about the gate lock trying to make sure I understood how it worked and that I should keep my keys safe... it was a very odd day with the two weird conversations with Lola and the landlord. Another random thing I noticed as I was wandering around the city tonight was that shisha is a very common thing, there's actually signs in the streets advertising it and there's a ton of like shisha shops where you can sit inside and outside at tables and just smoke and order drinks and whatever. It seemed pretty weird at first, in North America they try hard to hide it or at least pretend to hide it, here there is literally advertisement signs in the streets with an image of a woman smoking a shisha bong thing on it. Welcome to Europe.

It's Friday...Friday...

So it's been a pretty interesting first few days. Yesterday (Friday) I met up with a UBC friend (let's call her M) and some of her other friends, they live across from the Plaza Nueva which is a pretty popular plaza in the city, they live in a dorm-ish style place which is kind of kool, there's 10 of them in the building and they're from all over the world which is awesome. My roommate left yesterday around noon to go run some errands and then was headed home for the weekend to her parents place, she's from another town about an hour and a half outside of here. So here I am, all alone in the apartment trying to figure out what to do with myself. Well I spent the morning unpacking and organizing my room, I was freaking starving though, there isn't that much fruit or crackers or cereal or ready-made food in the house, I was going to cook some rice or pasta or something but what I didn't realize is that the stove is gas...I have a gas stove at home but it's one that ignites by itself when you turn it on..this one doesn't...and I didn't really want to try and light it myself, by the looks of it my roommate always lights the stove with a lighter because there's 3 lighters hanging around in the kitchen. The thought of trying to light a gas stove with a lighter..HA NO THANK YOU. So I ended up making myself a bread, cheese, and tomato sandwich..yep. I would have just gone out to eat except nothing is open between 2pm-5pm around here.

Spent the afternoon wandering around the city exploring which was nice, I'm starting to get to know my way around here, I can at least make it from my place to the Plaza Nueva no problem now. Last night M invited me to go out with her and her roomies, there was 2 big fiestas going on that were sponsored by the university so we figured we'd go check out at least one of them. I'm leaving to go meet them about 10pm and I'm trying to close the gate (there's a gate at the entrance of my apartment building and then my apartment is in the hallway right next to it.) The gate was pretty difficult to close, felt kinda stuck, but I just forcefully pulled it close and locked it, then I realized I left on the little light in the living room so I was gunna go back in and turn it off..I try to open the gate but I can't, I'm turning the key, I hear the 'click' which should mean it's unlocked but the door won't budge. SH*T. Now what? Well I fiddled with it for a few minutes and then just gave up because I couldn't figure out what the hell was up with this lock and I had to go meet my friend and being somewhat punctual was pretty vital at that point because I still didn't have a phone. I make it to M's place and as usual, plans are all over the place, 2 girls want to go to a pre-gathering at some random girl's house, who's a friend of one of their's, another guy was just gunna head to the fiesta later on, M and I didn't know what we wanted to do.

So we ended up going with the two girls to the random girls house gathering, stopping at the convenience store on the way there to get some vino (insane prices, wine for 2.50 euros) and as soon as we got there M and I were like...we shouldn't have come. It was a Little apartment. There was amazing art work all over the walls though, all in impressionism genre, seeming to all have some kind of Spanish theme. There was a bunch of random people there and almost no room to sit, in the centre of the little square of couches/chairs there was a shisha bong on the table, interesting. So, M and I drank a class of wine and then awkwardly made apologizes and left. We stopped by the convenience store again and picked up another 2.50 euro bottle of wine and went back to her place. Half a bottle of wine later we decide to go to the fiesta that is closer to us, most people were going to the other one but it was pretty far away. The cover for the Campus fiesta was 6 euro but with that you got 2 copas (mixed drink) tickets, plus (certain) drinks for girls were free until 1:30am anyways. It's about 12:30 when we get there, we go down into the club and it's Empty ahaha there was like maybe 6 other people there, M and I are just like WTF? So we go over and sit on a platform thing opposite the door trying to decide what to do...One of the best parts of the night came next...we watched a few other groups of people walk into the club to discover it was empty, the looks on their faces was Priceless, it always like a Just For Laughs Gags joke or Punk'd or something ahaha.

A group of M's Irish friends showed up and they were stunned too but we decided to drink and dance anyway, the music was decent and the booze were free so why the hell not! The club did start to kinda fill up around 2 but at that point we decided we wanted to go check out the other fiesta. The other fiesta is supposedly 'quite far away' so the three of us who decided to leave the Campus fiesta grabbed a taxi, turns out this place really wasn't Too far, the taxi ride was like 8.5 euros. We get there and that fiesta was like 4 euro if you're not a ERASMUS member.. ERASMUS is essentially like the school for european internationals at UGR (university of Granada), they were hosting it and theme was 'dress in your national colours'. The fiesta was in the upstairs of the building, there was a big terrace area and then there was the inside 'club' type of thing, with one big square room which you couldn't move in and then a series of tunnels full of dancing people which were kinda kool. To be honest, most of the night after leaving the Campus fiesta was a little hazy, from all the free drinks and whatnot, when we got to the second fiesta we met up with the 2 girls from earlier and a couple of their other friends. Lots of music, good mix of popular English and Spanish music, lots of dancing, lots of people. And then there was Pablo. Tall, lightly tanned, dark dark hair, light eyes...couldn't tell you if they were green or hazel or blue to be honest. He's studying modern languages and business or something like that at UGR and he's from a city/town nearby. We spent a good portion of the night together and then he left to go find his brothers because they had to head back their grandmother's where they were staying for the night. We parted ways leaving it up to fate if we see each other again seeing as I didn't have a phone and whatever.

So I went and found M and everyone else and we headed out, there was still a line to get in when we left which was insane because we left at like quarter to 5 in the morning, on the walk home Chris the Scottish, Norwegian neighbour of M proclaimed that he was going to prove that he could get a tan and that it wasn't his fault that he was a Strawberry White ahaha and then moments later claimed that he hadn't called himself a Strawberry White and that he had actually said Strawberry Blond...bahaha. By the time we got back to their place and crashed it was about 6am.  

Sunset from my terrace over Granada

Sign of a good night of partying

Graffiti

There's a local graffiti artist around here who is pretty famous apparently, they live somewhere close by in my neighbourhood. Their graffiti is all over the city and it is really good! There's so much amazing art and culture in this city, it's influenced by Spanish, Arabic, and Jewish cultures and is a very diverse place. There's lots of churches in the city as well, of course. Here's some of the famous graffiti:

First Impressions

Funny things I've experienced in Granada so far, the music on the radio is a hilarious mixture of different types of spanish music and random old english music, much of which is Country although they also played songs like Tainted Love, very interesting radio station. Also, most of the people I have met so far in Granada have been complaining that it's too hot, for one thing, they're locals and they were also all wearing pants or 'warmer' clothes to some degree, it was so weird! Also, my roommate, P smokes and here you make your own cigarettes? Like she roles the tobacco into thin rolling paper and then adds the filter to it, and she does this Every time..do they not sell already made cigarettes here? P and I were wandering about in the city talking about random things, she speaks Spanish, Russian, Polish, Czech, and a little English. She's kind of like me in that she understands a fair bit of English but can't speak it that well just like me with Spanish, although I'm speaking better than I thought I would be. So pretty much, we both speak bits of lots of languages but unfortunately we don't have a strong common one, so speaking broken Spanglish has become our fun passtime :P. We were talking about how weird expressions are in different languages and she was asking me why the verb 'get' has so many meanings, because she knows what to 'get an item' is but she didn't understand the expression 'get out' and then asked me what the expression 'piss off' means aha I thought that one was funny, clearly she's been listening to some of the British tourists around here, which there a lot of btw. I learned the word for 'cool' around here is 'guay' (no idea how to spell it but it's pronounced gu-ie) and some other random words. Lastly, as there is everywhere in world, some rowdy guys in a car driving around super fast and yelling out the window passed by us while we were wandering around in the 'centro' (downtown), what else is new ahaa. There's also tons of graffiti around here which is really cool! (está guay!'). Granada is a nice little city full of ancient architecture and lots of different cultures, there's a lot of Arab/Muslim culture like Shwarma places and Halal meat places and whatnot. I Love it. Also siestas are Awesome!

Settling In

I'm not gonna make a new post Every time I do something of course but figured I'd set the scene a bit more. The apartment is a cute little 1 floor flat that's at the top of a ton of stairs, there 2 or 3 flights worth of stairs, trying to get suitcases up all those stairs was not fun let me tell you, it was like my exercise for the week. We have a lovely terrace here which I think we share with a few other people, looks like there's a couple other apartment things in this building. So for lunch since everything is closed here in Spain from like 2pm-4pm or 5pm, we went to my P's cousin's for lunch, the same cousin who picked me up from the airport, her cousin lives like 5mins down the road in this cool apartment building it's red brick and has a courtyard in the middle and there's plants everywhere. Her cousin had a cool little apartment, pretty modernly decorated, a poster of Gaudi's church and 'The Kiss' by Gustav Klimt that everyone in the world seems to have on their walls. There was a set of spanish encyclopedias and spanish trivial pursuit on the bookshelf thing with an old school looking tv, it's an interesting world over here. Anyways so funny enough there was a guy (who I'm guessing is mr. problem) there at the apartment too, guessing it's her boyfriend who lives there with her, his name's Javier, he's a ginger with a beard and a nose ring who speaks really softly, odd guy. They also have this adorable dog named Africa, looks like a mix of a boxer and something else, it's the sweetest dog. So for lunch she made this 'traditional' Granada dish which is like potato 'tortilla' pretty much like a potato omelette kinda thing, sooo good. We had that with some fresh bread and a tomato 'salad', apparently the tomatoes and the oregano which were in the salad were grown by the cousin's dad, he grows a lot of things apparently. Lots of carb dishes here, I love it. Definitely going to get out and explore the city tonight and/or tomorrow. Pretty exhausted still, last night only slept for 4 or 5 hours and then a couple hours today on my flights and that's pretty much all the sleep I've had since Tuesday.

This is the Terrace :D

View from my terrace :)

My bedroom :D it's pretty big, double bed too yay!  

FINALLY

To add on to my previous ridiculous story, my flight o Madrid was at 6:15am this morning, the bus leaving the hotel to get the terminal was suppose to be at 4:55, however it didn’t show so I ended up catching the next bus which showed up at 5:10am which went to terminal 3 which I then had to take an express train from terminal 3 over 5 which I had to wait for, by the time I got to the check in it was around 5:45-5:50 and the gate was already closed. So YET AGAIN I had to go to customer service, the woman at the desk didn’t look too impressed when I told her my story, looking back at it probably should have just taken a taxi over. Oh well, anyways she rebooked my flight again –for free which was a miracle- and amazingly enough it still connects with my Granada flight because the connection time for that flight was like 2.5 hours and my new flight to Madrid is only an hour later than the original one so there you go! 

So caught my flight to Madrid no problem, even stole some wifi from the Airport Lounges while waiting, I had a middle seat but that was fine because MY ROW WAS EMPTY, awesome or what? Finally traveling was going my way aha. Then got my connection to Granada, I swear I walked about a mile to my gate, I got off the plane at gate H60 or something like that and my Granada flight was at grate K90, it was SO far, I was following the K signs and eventually the signs said like: 9mins, 8mins, 7mins... and I was like ohhdeargod where is this gate ! Anyways, I found it and had to change into shorts because it was So hot, it was like +30 in Madrid, mind you it's about +31 here in Granada. So anyways, got to Granada, Tiniest airport ever. Seriously, we got off the plane by walking down the airplane stairs and then walked over to the terminal where there was 3 luggage belts, 2 for local flights, 1 for non-EU flights. So I got my luggage - thank god, was a little worried it wouldn't show up after all the flight non-sense and then I met up with my roomie (let's call her P) and her cousin who came to the airport to pick me up. On the car ride back to the apartment I saw lots of Granada which seems so kool! the buildings are colourful and the architecture is awesome! In the car I was having broken-spanish conversations with P and her cousin, it sounded like the cousin was telling P about her male problems or something of the stort lmao guess things don't change wherever you go eh! So at my apartment now and internet is up and running! That's all for now! 

What The Bloody Hell??

So, my trip hasn’t exactly started out as I had planned… Last night (Tues, September 18^th) my flight was suppose to be at 8:50pm, for some unknown reason (maybe weather) my flight was delayed until 10:35..1h45mins later, my next flight was a connection in London to Madrid, which was originally about 2.5hours, because of my delay though I only had 45 minutes for my connection. My next flight was at 11:07am (Wednesday Morning) and boarding for it was 10:45am, now because of my delay we didn’t even arrive into Heathrow airport until about 10:10 or so, and then to make matters worse we sat on the plane forever until they discovered that the gate connector thing was indeed broken and that we would have to exit the plane by going down the stairs, onto the tarmac and, into the terminal. GREAT. So finally get into the freaking terminal and discover that I’m at C Gates and I need A Gates, which means I have to take a little underground train thing from C gates to A gates and then get up to where flight connections are, well by the time I had gotten to the freaking flight connection desk I had 3 minutes before my planes departure..yep. So I was redirected to the Customer Services line to re-book my flights..and waiting in line is just so much fun. So finally get to a desk with a nice Indian guy, he’s doing his best trying to help but as it turns out my connection flight to Granada from Madrid is a very rare one and there isn’t one available at all until tomorrow (Thursday morning)  which we find out after a very long search on the computer and a very long phone call to other flight head offices. So now I get booked into a hotel over night in London, when he told me that was the best option part of me wanted to laugh and cry all together, was kind of in that over tired, over emotional state. I was furious when I found out I had originally missed my flight but when he told me I got to stay over night in London I felt almost a sense of relief and just wanted to laugh about it. So here I am it’s only like 12:30pm and I suddenly have a whole day a head of me because my flight isn’t until 6:15am Thursday morning. So I went and waited forever for the bus to show up and take me to the hotel, meanwhile borrowing a random strangers Iphone so I could email my mom because wifi costs money everywhere in the UK apparently. So then I get to the hotel and see the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day, there is a STARBUCKS in the hotel lobby ahhh!  So after I get me some Starbucks and a complimentary lunch that came as part of the hotel deal -eating by yourself is always fun- I start talking to some of the people working at the hotel trying to figure out what to do, although by this point I’m exhausted from my 7 hour flight which I didn’t really sleep on, a couple of girls recommend I go to some nice small city areas like Uxbridge or Kingston which sounds great to me because I’m exhausted. But then I wander over to the concierge desk and the guy is telling me all about downtown London and tours –which I immediately say no to- since all I have is Euros and the conversion to Pounds is expensive!- I’m considering taking the tube/metro/underground from the airport into Central London, as I’m about to walk away from the Concierge desk a guy who I recognize from the bus trip to the hotel yells over to me asking if I want to go touring with him, he said he’d been to London a couple times before so I said sure why not, company is always nice when you’re traveling. So we head out and catch the tube, the guy is a 32 year old Mexican architect who’s on his way to the Ukraine and had his flight rebooked like me. His English is alright, we talked a lot of Spanglish which was kind of fun, although my brain was not remembering much Spanish due to lack of sleep, we toured all around downtown London, mostly by foot, most of the ‘main’ attractions are pretty close together, the only thing we didn’t see was the Olympic Stadiums but I saw those from the air when we flew in so I’m not too upset about that. What a long day of walking, gotta say though I do love London, it’s a pretty gorgeous place and it was even partially sunny most of the time! Although it was only about 12 degrees so I stuck out like a sore thumb wearing shorts –I was expecting to be in Spain today!- Getting back to the hotel was the best, got a complimentary dinner and then had a bath and got ready for bed with a bunch of the crap that came in the British Airways Complimentary Kit –what a joke. So anyways, my flight is tomorrow at 6:15am so I’m taking a bus to the airport at 5am, funnnn, which means it is time for me to sleep because it is 11:15pm here right now which means I’ve roughly been awake for 35/36 hours? AHHH what a crazy beginning to my trip! I better be in Spain tomorrow! 

Complimentary Kit from British Airways LOL

Le Hotel BA put me up in

Hotel Room

London pics will be posted on my facebook.