El día final en Granada

It's been almost a month since I last wrote.  Let's just say life has taken over, as it normally does towards the end of November: homework, final papers, teachers feeling the need to catch up on things because they didn't move as quickly as they had hoped.   I had more work this semester than I have ever had at Ithaca, which was really inconvenient because of any semester, one would expect this one abroad to be the easiest, most relaxed.   I don't know exactly why its been such a tough semester but I can hypothesize:

1. Different type of course load -  up until now I have never taken a semester without at least 4 credits being a science class.  Here I didn't take any classes for my major, so all of my were writing/reading heavy which is completely different from the science classes I normally focus on.
2. Different language - I suppose this one is pretty obvious but since all my classes were taught in Spanish (some with professors who know some English, others with professors who don't know one word of English) all my papers, my reading and my lectures were in Spanish.  My notes took on an effective version of Spanglish equating to which ever language has the shortest word with needed meaning was used.  There are many things that I learned that I don't know how we would call it in English.  For example, I learned on the day of my Art and Architecture exam that fachada is "facade" in English (the spelling I just learned to write this blog).
3. Different schedule - At home if I have work that seems to be threatening to not be finished, I work through lunch: here I ate lunch with my Señora and we talked and watched the news.  At home, if its 8:45 PM and I want to start that research paper that is due tomorrow, the library is open until 2 AM. Plenty of time!  Here, every library CLOSED at 8:30 PM...and on the weekends.  I still don't understand how Spanish students go to class and get all these research papers done.
4. I refused to not go out because I had work - At home, if I had too much work, I would dedicate a weekend to studying, but here I refused to do so.  I wanted to experience every bit of Granada that I could, even if it wasn't by traveling every weekend like some students, or going to the discotecas every Thursday and Friday.  
   

Though this all made for a stressful semester as far as work goes,  As a whole, my experience was excellant excellent (my English spelling and grammar has gone down the drain, but my Spanish grammar and speaking has improved quite a bit, I hope) and I have too many memories to record here.

A quick overview of the last month:

• Thanksgiving Dinner - we went to a restaurant that rotates slowly so you can see all of Granada while eating - really neat.  The food was not Thanksgiving the way we remember and cherish it.  The turkey (or what they called turkey, I swear it was ham) was in the form of a meatloaf kind of deal, with a cranberry sauce, with little "poofs" of mash potatoes on the side.  I wasn't too impressed with the Turkey Creation, but I was also half expecting them to put a Turkey and some potatoes on the table in the traditional Thanksgiving way.
• Madrid - I went to Madrid with my friend Celia to visit the city but most of all visit my friend from home Caitlin.  Caitlin is also studying abroad this semester.  She had come to Granada a few weeks before so I made the trip up to see her.  Celia also had a friend, Aser, to meet up with and we all had a great time.  The best part about that was while Aser knows English, his friends do not.  When hanging out with them we were forced to speak Spanish except to ask help with a word.  It was great practice, even if a bit frustrating at times.  We saw a lot of Madrid and though we attempted to check out the night life, we realized quickly that you have to either see the sights or experience the nightlife when you're some place just for a weekend, we chose the sights.

• Alemania y Polonia - Some big religious holiday occurred on the first weekend of December, thus Celia and I had planned a trip to Germany and Poland to take advantage of being in Europe. What a great weekend.  It was cold and rainy for most of it, but we donned our rain jackets, and ventured outside for most our time there.  In Germany (Berlin to be exact) there were tons of festivals for Christmas where they were selling food, crafts, beer. Wonderful stuff.   

          We had planned to take a train to Warsaw and it left at 4 AM.  We got to the train station early because being cold and rainy, once everything closed there was no where else to go.   The McDonald's in the train station was the only thing open until 2, so after hanging out there for as long as possible, we played the "Squiggle" game (one person makes a squiggle, and the other person had to makea  sketch out of it) until we had to head to our track.  When we got up there we stood for a about 20 minutes and then hear an announcement in German.  We didn't know what it said because our German is limited to danke.  A few backpacking men who  (thankfully) spoke English, German and Polish came to us and said "Are you going to Warsaw? If so, you have to go to the other station."  As I said thank God for these men and trilinguality because we would have missed our train to Poland.  So long story short, we took a metro to the other side of the city, got on the train that was then 40 minutes delayed.  We slept as best we could on the train before arriving in Warsaw.  The first thing we did in Poland was get pierogies.  They were absolutely delicious.  We went to this small little restaurant that specialized in pierogies (recommended by our hostel) and I got cheese and spinach pierogies that were absolutely heavenly.  They were so good we went back for more the next day.  Again we walked around a bit, sometimes in such downpours it was hard to be anything but a little miserable.  I really loved Warsaw and hope to get back to see more of Poland in the future.  On the way home we missed the middle leg of our trip so we were in the Switzerland airport for a while.  When we finally got on a flight we went to Barcelona and then to Madrid, and had effectively missed our last leg of the flight.  Luckily, Aser was waiting with his friends (we felt so bad as they were waiting for us for a while as we had expected to have 6 or 7 hours of layover in Madrid), and we got a ride to the bus station to get a bus from Madrid to Granada.  I got home at 5 in the morning and had class the next morning.

• Week of papers, homework and catching up on sleep...
• Final exams... last couple days here... :(

There have been times I have wanted to come home, but there are just as many moments when I would stay here for a while longer.  I really enjoyed the experience.