Paseos & More (with pics)

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Zeke

The real semester has started up here, and with it comes the sad reality that I’m not here on a five-month vacation.

Classes in my program (Hispanic Studies) are mostly taught by University of Granada faculty who normally teach Spaniards. The classes happen at full-speed Spanish, and don’t normally stop to cover aspects of Spanish language except for a few obscure vocabulary words. My most interesting class by far is Hispanoamerican Culture & History. I haven’t been able to take history classes since my junior year of high school, so I am happy to be back in one. My class schedule is pretty similar to that of an American university, except that Study Abroad students here never have class on Fridays.

For the last few weeks, I’ve gone out to different districts of the city on my own to explore everything a bit more. The whole city center feels pretty familiar now, and I’ve started to venture a bit into a couple of areas off the tourist map of Granada. This morning I went with my friends Megan and Korie to one part of town that seemed more suburban and modern – it had a big view of the Sierra Nevada, which made me feel almost as if I were in Colorado!

Other times I’ve explored more of the Albayzin and Sacromonte districts. It’s great how so many neighborhoods here have such distinct personalities in a small area.

I’ll post a few odds-and-ends photos from the last few weeks here – a little bit of everything from different paseos I’ve done, plus a couple of other things that don’t fit anywhere else.

Paseos & More

Internet-starved americans upon finding free Wi-Fi

Botellón in Granada

Centro de Lenguas Modernas - Kenya Building

Cathedral of Granada

Puerta Elvira

La Sierra

Chicken living on someone's roof in the Albayzin

Tourists taking pictures and local kids just hanging out

My street - Calle Alhamar

Calle Alhamar

Alhambra

Garden of the Palacio de los Córdova

Palacio de los Córdova

Alhambra from a hilly street of the Albaicin

Albaicin

“Who will save us from ourselves?” - More Niño de las pinturas

Alhambra Photos

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Zeke

Finally got to go to the Alhambra today… We had some blue skies peek out, which was very lucky (it’s been very cloudy and rainy most days).

I’m not going to post this set of photos here on my blog because they’re better viewed in full detail on my Picasa album. I suggest hitting the “Slideshow” link to get even better detail on it. Check ‘em out here.

Shopping and Super Bowling in Granada

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Zeke

About a week ago, I finished my 3-week intensive language course at UGr. I have no obligations until classes start up again sometime around February 12- so I’ve got some nice free time on my hands. Tomorrow I finally will tour the Alhambra, so look forward to a massive photo dump sometime tomorrow afternoon (US time).

Sunday night I went out with some of the full-year study abroad students. There was a bar throwing a Super Bowl party, but we were the only people who bothered to show. It sure was interesting watching America’s biggest day in sports from a country where close to no one is interested whatsoever. Kickoff was at 12:30 or 1:00 AM, and we were there until about 4:00 AM. They had prepared for more visitors than just us, so we got double helpings of free tapas with our drinks. Eating palella and bocadillos in a near-empty bar sure was a strange way too watch the super bowl… I would have killed for some nachos or potato chips with onion dip.

One other thing worth mentioning is what shopping is like here in comparison to good ol’ American suburbia:

The ratio of shoe stores to clothing stores is probably about 1.5:1
I’m sorry, but Spanish designers’ idea of jeans is just ugly. In every 10 pairs that I look at, there is maybe one that doesn’t disgust me. I made the mistake of only bringing 3 pairs of pants and I’ve been dropping into various stores for a couple of weeks now trying to find one pair that looks decent.
If any article of clothing has writing on it, you can bet on it being some kind of broken English. I saw a shirt that says, “Nobody knows I’m metrosexual,” and a clothing tag that said something like, “The most bombastic and iridescent style, threatening the essence of violence. Straight from the jungles of Africa.”
The one equivalent of a major department store here is El Corte Inglés. They have horribly high prices but a selection that can’t be beat. They usually have their own sit-down restaurant inside the store. We visited an 8-story Corte Inglés in Madrid with a rather fancy restaurant on the top floor.
What I heard was true, a pair of Levi’s here will easily go for 100€, if not more.

For now, that is all. Tomorrow… ¡La Alhambra!

Random Cultural Observations

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Zeke

Some things I’ve noticed in my first month or so in Spain:

I didn’t realize how much of a fixed routine Americans seem to require. Everyone seems to talk about how Spaniards are good about mixing work with leisure, but I didn’t realize how subconscious it all would be. I don’t notice it so much in how Spaniards act as I do in how I act differently from them. I keep trying to establish some kind of fixed daily routine here, and I find such routines to be less helpful here than they are in the US. Aside from school, I’m pretty free to improvise on most days. Going out for tapas isn’t restricted to the weekend, and loafing around can happen whenever. Plenty of hard work can happen too, it’s not “lazier” here really, it’s just approached with a different mindset.
Linguistically, Spaniards exaggerate much less. (Rather, they exaggerate less.) When I speak in English, I tend to say something is very easy, very fun, much faster, etc. Here, modifiers like “much,” “more” and “very” are reserved for descriptions of truly exceptional qualities.
Since Spain only emerged from its nationalist dictatorship about thirty years ago, there’s a huge generational gap in attitudes here. The older set is generally more politically and socially conservative, no longer influenced by Franco but more than anything influenced by the still state-funded Catholic church. Younger generations (I’d say under 40 to 50) seem to vary more in their views; some keep their traditional values, and many others have quickly moved to a more “European” lifestyle.
Overall, there seems to be a big cultural separation here between “traditional” and “modern” lives, and while they coexist, they seem to be pretty scared of each other as well. I haven’t been here long enough to really appreciate the nuances of it, but I’ve definitely noticed some similar deficiencies in understanding in the States as well.
If my professors are to believed, the 1980s were a sort of “golden age” for Spanish pop music. While I can understand the claim (huge artistic outpouring after the downfall of authoritarian dictatorship), I simply cannot accept that the 1980s was a good decade for music, anywhere. I’m a pretty understanding guy, but drum machines and cheesy synths are where I have to draw the line.

Granada Update

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Zeke

It’s been a little while, so I figured I’d pop my head in and give y’all a quick update on life over here.

I’m through 9 of 15 days of my intensive language course. Things are going well – I still feel like I’m reviewing the exact stuff that I’ve been learning and repeatedly screwing up for years now. This time it is clicking with a bit more ease, but it’s no walk in the park. The nice thing is that this time I actually feel motivated to study it and get it down.

I switched my course for the semester that starts in early February. I was in the Language, Literature & Culture program, but I changed to the Hispanic Studies program. Hispanic Studies has more faculty members from the University of Granada, and are more focused on the actual subject matter than they are on linguistic aspects. I signed up for some cool ones (Flamenco and Traditional Music, anyone?) so I’m looking forward to the start of that semester. Unfortunately, Hispanic Studies also comes with more homework. But I’ll only have 4 days of class a week, so I can’t complain too much.

More random observations and personal experiences from recent days:

As expected, Andalucia is awesome for its free tapas. Each drink you order comes with awesome free snacks.
While lacking spice and strong flavor, I am really starting to enjoy how the mediterranean diet is quite healthy without sacrificing much in the taste department. Obesity here is way less frequent, and I see a lot less unhealthily skinny people here too. It seems like a lot of people here manage to hover around “just right,” and that they don’t have to work too hard to stay there.
My family and teachers have started trying to correct some Latin American influences on my Spanish – and are trying to get me to pick up the Castillian lisp as well. I’m subconsciously starting to use it at times, and also picking up the sloppy Andalucian habit of dropping the ends of many words (“Muchas gracias” sounds like “mucha gracia” and “más o menos” becomes “Má o meno”)
As a native of another former imperial colony whose language has mutated much from the mother tongue, I don’t know what to think. I react negatively to the idea of British English being superior to an American dialect, since we can all understand each other regardless. I’m not closing my mind to Castillian Spanish – after all, I chose this country for study abroad over a plethora of Latin American options – but it certainly is making things more confusing. Once I was an American trying to pick up Mexican Spanish. In a few months I’ll sound a third American, a third Mexican, and a third Spanish. If I do Peace Corps in Latin America after I graduate, the people there are going to be crazy confused.
Last week I got a cold, mostly hanging around the throat and nose. Now it’s turned into a really annoying cough. I’m hoping it passes soon, but at least my head feels clear now.
I watched inauguration online since I didn’t know if the televised coverage would dub over the speeches or not (they didn’t). People seem pretty interested but I didn’t get the best vantage point to really comment on Spaniards’ opinions. It’s obvious that people over here are very interested, but beyond that I don’t really know.

OK, I’m out for now… Time to beat myself over the head with some Spanish grammar.

Photos from the first week in Granada

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Zeke

We’re getting pretty well settled here in Granada… Much easier to blend in a bit and feel more like a local. I’m learning the streets more and have a better sense of direction…

Today we went for a tour of the Albayzin - the historic Muslim quarter of town on a huge hill next to the Alhambra. It’s a beautiful, quieter part of town that has less roads and more footpaths. Very hilly, too. We saw a lot of great stuff and I got my first good look at the Alhambra, too.

Getting home from the tour was a bit difficult… There was a huge Gaza protest going on in the street. We wanted to check it out, but at the same time I knew that abroad, Americans can be seen as “OMG Israel can totally do whatever the hell they want.” So we tried to lie low walking through the enormous crowd, not wanting to look very American. Hopefully with the new presidency our foreign policy might come out of the sewers so we aren’t seen as supporters of genocide.

OK, I digress. The photos:

Granada, semana primera

Windmills in La Mancha

Pretty sure this is the tower upon which Gandalf killed the Balrog...

The CLM (our school) is in this plaza

Painting by Niño de las Pinturas

Spain = Very (hot)^2

Plaza nueva- The northernmost Catholic part of the city - to the north are the Albayzin (Muslim quarter) and Alhambra.

This used to be a mosque, but after the reconquista, Ferdinand and Isabel changed all of the mosques into churches. They kept the minarets, however, converting them into belltowers.

Donkey taxi

Alhambra (and an old hotel below)

More Niño de las Pinturas work

“tu padre es el sol, tu madre la luna” - Your father is the sun, your mother, the moon

“nuestro enemigo es la IGNORANCIA” - Ignorance is our enemy

A Carmen (typical old-style house in Granada). This one has an amazing porch view of La Alhambra.

Granada

La Alhambra

La Sierra Nevada? I think?

Matt Kennedy y Yo (so many Matts!)

Things I'd Kill For Right About Now

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Zeke

A calzone
Spicy food
Cellular internet on my iPhone
A drumset
Buildings that aren’t frickin’ freezing everywhere
Laundry that takes a couple of hours to run instead of the better part of a week. I’ve been wearing the same pants since Saturday.
Anything but a lager. Stout, pale ale, WHATEVER!

Small Victories (with apologies to Shakira)

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Zeke

My intensive spanish course doesn’t allow the use of English to help define Spanish words, so when we don’t know one, we have to explain its meaning in Spanish. It’s difficult at times… I’ll give you an example here. I’ll leave it alone for the hispanohablantes to figure it out, with English spoilers afterwards…

Today we were going over vocabulary for different body parts. The word caderas came up and most of the students didn’t know what it meant. It took me a minute and an example involving a dancing student and then I figured it out. Trying to define it to the class in Spanish, however, was near impossible, until it came to me:

“No mienten.”

About half the class figured it out just with that.

ENGLISH CLUE #1:
”No mienten” = They don’t lie.

ENGLISH CLUE #2 (for the truly hopeless)

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Zeke

Well I’ve been in Granada for a couple of days now, and I’ve been able to adjust to the city some more. I’ll commence the unfocused mental dump of my observations from the last few days:

Granada feels way more urban than I had expected. I thought it would be a small to medium-sized town like Fort Collins, but it’s about twice the size of that – around 250,000 people. I’ve been saying for a while that I’d like to try living in a big city, and while Granada is pretty small relative to Denver, Phoenix or Madrid, it’s still way more urban than anywhere I’ve lived before. Maybe it’ll make for a good trial of a somewhat larger city before taking the plunge into a city of millions.
Living in an old city with old streets is a very – well, foreign - concept. It’s obvious that there was no master planner in Granada, and it’s really easy to make a wrong turn that takes you way farther away from your destination than you had intended. I’ve gotten lost several times but the major streets and landmarks in the city center are starting to become familiar. I know enough to get home and get to class
The weather here is abnormally cold. It snowed yesterday, which is very rare. Many, many scarves. I’ll probably pick up the trend this weekend.
Because of the crappy weather, I haven’t bothered to go anywhere near La Alhambra yet. I want to tour it when the weather is just a bit better.
Going out tonight for the first time, not counting the pool hall I went to in Madrid. I’ve heard good things about the nightlife here, so I’ll have to report back on that.
I have one class for the next three weeks. It’s four hours long every day, with two profesoras that teach for two hours each. Neither of them know a word of English (or at least they claim) and it’s not allowed to define or translate an English word for another student – we have to try to define the word we have in mind in Spanish. It’s more difficult, and after several hours of this my brain definitely starts to hurt. We won’t be learning any new grammar in our class, but instead will be reviewing everything we’ve learned and perfecting it in order to correct all of the little mistakes. It’s exactly what I need, so it’ll be hard, but I’ll be glad I did it by the end of the month. After that I’ll advance a level and take my semester classes one level up.
I’m resisting the temptation to eat at Burger King. My roommate went there today and he says it’s better than it is in the States. I’m going to guess that I’ll cave in in another day or two.
Everything they say about learning a language by studying abroad is definitely true. Being around it all for just a week has helped me to pick up so much, and I’ve met a few students who were here for the last semester that are excellent with the language.
My English writing has gotten sigificantly worse because my mind keeps trying to form sentences in Spanish structures.
In the last day or so I’ve started correcting myself constantly, even mid-sentence. I think it’s good that I’m thinking about the “little rules” that I so often break, but at the same time it’s probably annoying to try and carry on a conversation with someone who can barely complete their sentences.
Spanish food is hearty and healthy. I’m still adjusting to the meal schedule but the food is great (and it’s nice to not have to find a million restaurants of varying quality and prices, like we had to for the first week). It is a bit more bland than some of my favorite foods, like Mexican or Thai, which definitely are a bit more strong in their tastes. I’ll have to go in search of some cayenne or something.
Starting to look at plans for my ~10 day break after the intensive month class is over. Ryanair is amazingly cheap, I can fly from Granada to Italy for like… 4 euro. I don’t have a huge list of “must-sees” for while I’m here, but I would like to see Belgium, Prague, Rome, maybe Amsterdam. Overall I’d like to stick to Spain, though. I don’t like the idea of spending lots of time in a place where I don’ know any of the language.
Before getting to Granada, I definitely felt like more of an observer than a participant in Spanish life. I’m starting to blend in a bit more and I’m sure that within a couple of weeks it will just come naturally to me.
Navigating streets and crowded areas is pretty strange – there really isn’t much of a concept of personal space here. I’m noticing little things I do to get out of others’ way that nobody else does, and realizing how funny it must look. I normally have great “crowd navigation skills” but here people have different fixed habits of which side to move to when you’re in someone’s way, and other things too.

In Granada

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Zeke

I’m here in Granada now… nothing much to report except that I’m really excited! We haven’t seen much of the city yet, but we’ve met our host family and moved into our room. The family is very nice and it seems like it will be a great place to spend five months. (Five months seems like such a long time now, I still find it pretty hard to believe!)

Tomorrow I take my Spanish placement exam and a walking tour of the city, and at night we’ll have our first intercambio, or inter-student exchange with students learning English. We’ll go to something like a café and spend half an hour speaking in English and half an hour speaking in Spanish. And the day after that, we start our classes.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for a week already. Even harder to believe that I’m here for a whole semester. Very exciting though, so far I have no regrets and no worries, besides the basic cultural transplant jitters.

Zeke Weeks

Web Analyst & Developer at Blazing Wheel

Category Archives: Spain