Part Three: Cornstarch Crepes

One thing I often forget to write about is my time doing day-to-day things. These grand trips are definitely noteworthy, but they don’t comprise all of my time here. I go to class, I spend time with friends, and I try to learn new things about Granada. On a typical day I go to class, then go to my friends Samantha and Nicola’s apartment where we go up to the roof and lay out in the sun. I am already getting a good base tan and it’s not even April! I then go back home for lunch where I chat with Caroline and Nati and her daughter Elena if she’s around. Sometimes I have class right after lunch, which I hate, because that’s siesta time! Time to nap and lie around and let your food digest. I do always have a class in the morning and in the afternoon though, and then after my last class of the day I work out. Depending on the day I either go on a run along the river, which has a nice path that follows it out of the city where many people are running or riding their bikes, or I go to the gym. I actually joined a gym, called Gymnasio TNT, and I like to go to the Spinning class and the Body Pum (Body Pump in the US) class. All of them are taught in Spanish of course, and for some reason the Body Pum instructor always picks on me. She’s short, powerful, and definitely not Spanish. I don’t know where she is from, but she has blonde hair and blue eyes and although small I would not want to run into her in a dark alley. Classes are just like in the US, only instead of having a microphone to hear her over the music, she just yells or whistles. It’s only natural for me to be intimidated when she yells and points at me. I think I just stick out because I’m not only the tallest person in the class, but the whitest. Either way, my legs haven’t been this strong since I don’t know when.
I of course then have dinner later in the night, and depending on the night I either stay in do homework or I go out with friends to play volleyball, get ice cream, or any other fun local cultural things that are going on. Lately it’s been getting busier and busier and the weather is nice, so I always have something to do.  I'm also currently reading a Paolo Coehlo book, Once Minutos, which I really like. He is the author of The Alchemist,  and I have read him before but of course it was an English translation. He is from South America, so I am reading in his native tongue! I like that I can actually read a book and enjoy it, and also I can still pick up on his specific writing voice that I came to know in his translated book.

I’ve also discovered that while in the States I am allergy free, I have severe allergies here. All of the flowers and trees are budding and I have been in allergy hell with sore throat, sneezy runny nose, and itchy red eyes. I never understood how Sean could have such awful allergies in our family and the most anyone else has is hay fever. Well, while I don’t compare to Sean’s 80 something allergies, I have never been so miserable with allergies until now. Apparently I’m allergic to the flowers on the olive trees. Such a bizarre thing, but I will be happy when spring moves into summer.

To mark the first day of spring, Granada had a massive festival that consisted of a botellon. Botellon is the word for drinking in the streets. Drinking in the streets is illegal, but the town designated an area in which it is legal. This area is the parking lot of Hipercor, the Spanish Wal-Mart. People from all over Andalucia came to Granada for this massive botellon that started at 3 pm. Spaniards will make any excuse to party, but you know they mean business when they start a fiesta during siesta! I went with a few other girls, and it was probably one of the craziest things I have ever seen. I have never seen so many people in one place for the sole purpose of drinking. No bands, no DJ, no real source of entertainment at all except for the alcohol in their hands and the thousands of other people standing around them. I wish I had a picture to show the never-ending sea of heads. We ended up leaving by 8:30 pm and that was more than efficient. Spaniards party like there is no tomorrow. Well, actually, by the time they start the party it IS tomorrow. Nightlife in Spain doesn’t start until after midnight. Many bars and clubs don’t even open until midnight. While I am not strong enough to stay out until 7am, I have left the discotecas at 4am only to pass the people who have just arrived. This actually deters me from going out many nights because I get too tired before people even start going out.

There have been a few changes around the house this month. Frenchy went back to France and I now have my own room. I moved into the room she was using, and Caroline is in the room we used to share. It’s really cute and has wall shelves and a tiny table and chair and a hat rack. It’s so cozy!

Before Mari left she showed me how to make crepes, French style! Of course I make gluten-free crepes and can’t do them exactly as she does because she normally uses beer in hers, but they work out just fine. For some reason corn flour is the only gluten-free alternative you can find here, but with the way she showed me how to make them it didn’t matter and they taste just like normal crepes! I was so happy she showed me how and I love having nutella, banana and strawberry crepes. One time I went to the store to find flour and I couldn’t find any different kinds other than wheat. And then I finally saw a box that said, “Harina Fina de Maiz.” Great, not only was it corn but it was fine flour, since the direct translation of the box was fine corn flour. I went home happy to start the crepe making and decided I was going to make a really big batch with six eggs. The first step of making the crepes is mixing the eggs and the flour until you get a really thick consistency. So here I am, pouring in this white powder, and sure enough it starts to get harder and harder to stir. But then when I stopped stirring the mixture looked thin again. That was when I got suspicious, so I started to try and stir really fast, but the mixture was too thick to do it, and then immediately looked liquid again once I stopped. I realized what was going on, and I punched the mixture and it didn’t even get any on my hand; it was like I hit plastic. My stomach sank as I realized I had used an entire box of cornstarch to make crepes and just wasted six eggs. I did a quick check online to make sure, but it was sadly true. With mixed feelings about wasting food but not wanting to eat straight starch, I threw out the mixture and had to buy new ingredients to start over again. Although Caroline says she would’ve made the same mistake, I felt like such a complete idiot.

The language mistakes never end though when you’re an amateur. Just last night I went out for drinks and tapas with Nicola, Sam and some Spanish friends, and I made a language mistake that made me the butt of all the jokes from the waiting staff. I asked for a glass of red wine and a cup of tap water, or “agua de grifo.” You have to specify tap water, because otherwise they give you a bottle and you have to pay. So I asked the waiter, “Puedo tener vino tinto y un vaso de agua grifa.”
“Cuidado!” he said, “Agua de grifo, no grifa. Grifa es chocolate.”
“Oh!” I said, because in Spain chocolate is street slang for marijuana. “No estamos en Amsterdam, si,” I said.
The rest of the night the waiting staff referred to me as marijuana girl and they occasionally stopped by just for the sake of teasing me.

But in good news, my Spanish is much better! As long as people are patient with me and help me with a few words here and there, I can have some nice conversations with people. I made friends with a Spanish professor at a different school in Granada, and he is great to practice talking with. We can talk about many different things and he can help me with words if I’m really stuck. When I find people I can actually have things to talk about with it is so nice to practice and realize how far I’ve come. I know that I’m not nearly as good as I would like, but there is a marked difference from when I first got here. Now I just have to prove that on my midterms this week…

My parents are flying into Madrid this Thursday and then taking a bus to Granada this Friday, and I am really excited to have them here! It will be fun to show them around and also for them to spend time in Europe. We are going to go to Palm Sunday at the Cathedral, go hiking, go to Arab Baths (which are amazing!), go to the beach, possibly go to Toledo, and just celebrate Semana Santa with the rest of Granada. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I hope jet lag doesn’t affect them too much. Kind of crazy to think they’re going to have to rely on me to get around! We’ll make sure to take lots of pictures and let everyone know how it goes. And I will try and write more blogs so I don’t have to do a trifecta of writing in one day! Uf!

Adios!



Me (and Jake in the background) during a bike tour in Sevilla. I wish I could ride a bike in Granada!

Part Two: Christopher Columbus's Dust

Like my group trip to Rome, my program recently took us to Sevilla, the capital of Andalucia. Within our program, Sevilla was another option for where to study abroad in Spain. While some people felt they had wished they had chosen Sevilla over Granada upon visiting, I was happy with the choice I made. Sevilla was very pretty and full of history and art, but it was also very large and sweltering hot. The weekend we were there temperatures reached highs of 80 degrees F. Joder! That’s hot.

On the way to Sevilla, we stopped in a national park called Torcal. Torcal is by far one of the most amazing geological areas of nature I have ever seen. It is on top of a mountain range, but it was once completely underwater. Because of this, all of the rocks are formed like riverbeds, and you can see the gradation and markings from where water rushed by and ate away at the rocks. It was absolutely amazing and beautiful. It was so nice to be in the fresh mountain air and go hiking and see the incredible rock formations. It was a pleasant surprise for all of us, and after looking down into a large valley that sat below the mountains someone said, “Good work, God.”

Once in Sevilla, I realized if the heat there would soon reach Granada, I had not packed enough summer clothes. Our first full day there while wearing shorts and a tank top, I felt overheated and searched for shade often. During the summer months, Sevilla can reach temperatures of 120 degrees F. Probably what made this worse was the fact that it is such a large city, concrete and rock absorb the heat and keep it hot into the night. Also, Sevilla has a humid heat since it is situated along a river. However the city also holds many large and lush gardens, which create nice reprieves from the heat.

One of the sites we went to visit was the city’s Cathedral, which holds the Guinness World Record for the most square footage for a church. It is a beautiful gothic Cathedral, but it also has incorporated old parts of a mosque that was once there before the Inquisition. The Cathedral was indeed massive, and the inside reminded me of the Westminster Abbey in London. The Cathedral is also the final resting place for Christopher Columbus. When Ol’ Chris died, he was buried in Sevilla at a monastery. Due to celebrations and some other reason I forget, he was then moved to what is now Dominican Republic. However, Dominican Republic gained freedom from Spain, so he was moved to Cuba. And as we all know, Cuba is no longer a part of Spain either, so he was sent back to Sevilla and put in a special tomb in the Cathedral that was originally designed as a gift for the Dominican Republic. However, a few years ago, DR started up some trouble and said that Seville had the wrong body—they still had Columbus. So, in 2003, they did DNA testing of the small remains they had left of Columbus, which is now a small pile of dust, and tested it along with the remains of his illegitimate child, who also has a tomb in the Cathedral. The consensus was then in, Columbus was indeed in Sevilla. So, Columbus did not just sail the ocean blue in 1492, but also well into his death. Phew!

I have to say, it never ceases to amaze me how famous Christopher Columbus is. In the States, Columbus is almost considered infamous. He was a man who landed on someone else’s backyard and claimed it as something he “discovered.” We all know what happened from then on; mass genocide, spread of disease, and wars over land. The land we now call the Americas. While I was studying in Costa Rica, every museum was full of depictions of those first meetings between the indigenous and conquistadors. The currency in Costa Rica is the “colon,” as in “Cristobel Colon” his real name. Many history lessons focused on the Spaniards invasion and control of the area, and it was interesting to live where life wasn’t previously under British control, but Spanish.
In Spain, there are memorials for him everywhere. He is practically the patron saint of Spain. In Sevilla every year on October 12th, Christopher Columbus Day, they have massive parties celebrating him. He is so ingrained in the culture, he is as famous as Isabel and Ferdinand, the former Queen and King of the Inquisition Era. He was the frontrunner in a time when Spain was powerful, and because of that they hold on to the glory he gained in their name.

Another famous site we visited was the Alcazar. The Alcazar was once a Moorish fort, but was then turned into a royal palace after the Inquisition. This place is very much like the Alhambra in Granada (I know, I still haven’t told you about it!) but it is still in use by the Royal family. It has gardens that span seven acres, and it was very lush and beautiful. There were some very interesting facts about history in general that came directly from this palace. One was the Media Naranja, or half orange. The Media Naranja was the top of a ceiling in a section of the palace that looks like half an orange, and is the spot in which two famous people of Spanish history (I have forgotten at the moment who) were married. Because of this, people now call their spouses their “media naranja,” or, their “better half.”

Also, there is a crest within the building that depicts two pillars and a river curving through them. The two pillars represented two powers, which I believe were Spain and Morocco, and the river being the Straight of Gibraltar. Don’t quote me on that one though, because I can’t remember exactly! I need to take a tape recorder on my tours! However, this image of the two towers and river were used often for symbols involving Spain. If you were to roughly sketch the two pillars and river, you would get two lines and a squiggly mark. $ This ended up being the origin of the dollar sign. That just blew me away! Who thinks about the origin of the dollar sign? Also, on many crests of Spain and within the palace there are the words “Plus Ultra”, which is Latin for, “You may go beyond this point.” All of these crests used to say, “No Plus Ultra,” because this was during a time when they thought the world was flat. They thought if you went beyond a certain point you would fall off the edge of the earth. After Columbus came to the Americas and it became obvious the world was not flat, all of the No’s were scratched off.

As you can see, I take a lot from my tours when I go to these places. I am very interested in the history of the area, especially since Spain was a catalyst in forming the country I am from. Our history is intertwined with theirs, and it is impossible to escape this fact. Living in Spain makes me feel more connected to not only the history of my country, but world history. Seeing and experiencing these things suddenly makes those hours as a child in social studies come to life, and makes me wish everyone could see and hear these things instead of just reading them from a textbook. But I also realize not everyone is as interested as me, so I’m glad to know the children in our country at least have text books to learn from.

Part One: Salam Alaikum

It’s been a long time, I know. Lets just say, no news is good news, and in this case also means that I’ve been living every moment to the fullest. Where did March go? I can’t believe it’s almost the end of the month. Starting tomorow I have midterms, and then my parents come to visit for Semana Santa by the end of the week. I don’t even want to think of the weeks to follow after they leave, because I know the end of my time here is coming soon. So much has happened in the last few weeks, it’s hard to know where to start. Frenchy went back to France, Caroline and I went to Morocco, our group went to Sevilla, and a whole load of other things. I’ve discovered new things about Spain and myself; every day is another chance to learn and do something new.

I don’t know how I’m going to be able to describe Morocco in such a short amount of space. I’m not sure I even grasped enough in my short amount of time there. Morocco is primarily Muslim, and I haven’t spent time in a culture that is mostly Arabic before. Almost everyone wore the typical dress of Muslim culture, with women wearing head coverings, and both men and women wearing an abaya, the long robe type clothing. Caroline and I went with a Study Travel group that takes students down, shows them around, and makes sure they don’t get in too much trouble; the usual. Our tour guides were very informative and fun to be around. We took a ferry over the Straight of Gibraltar and went to Tetuan, Tanger and Chef-Chaouén. Morocco was very different and beautiful, and I would have loved to explore more than I did. Sadly though, many of my memories from the trip are those of frustration and annoyance with other people that came on the trip. There were 54 of us in a group, and lets just say at least 2/3 of which were not prepared to actually be in Morocco.

When someone wears high-heals and a low cut shirt on their first day in Morocco, you gotta wonder if they accidentally got on the wrong boat. The majority of the group was girls, and many of them took little to no regard of the fact we were going into a country with different cultural standards and beliefs than what we are used to. Anything from complaining about bathrooms, gasping in disgust at markets, to making fun of language differences and remarks about terrorists could be heard. And although there were a lot of Americans in our group, there were a fair amount of people from other countries as well, such as Iceland, Germany, Holland, and the UK. Overall, I was embarrassed to be with this massive group of people who reacted to their trip to Morocco as if they were at a circus, taking pictures every second to keep their memory of the trip and prove they had been somewhere “adventurous” without actually doing anything and alienating the people of the towns.
Of course, I’m not saying that I wasn’t a tourist. It is impossible to go to a completely different culture and country and not stick out and not be a tourist of some sort. I took pictures, my stare lingered on things I wasn’t used to, but I’d like to think I did my best to go into the situation with an open mind.

The trip wasn’t a failure by any means, as our guides were very helpful and showed and taught us things I would not have been able to do on my own. Also, we stayed at a very nice place and ate good food that was guaranteed to have the water boiled beforehand, since those of us who aren’t from there could not stomach the water. Our guides taught us how to say hello, thank you , and no in Arabic. For hello the first person says, “Salam Alaikum,” (shuh-laum wuh-lake-um) and the second person says, “Alaikum Salam.” This isn’t just hello, but a sign of peace and respect to the other person, said while touching your heart. Thank you is “chokran” and no is “la”. But you can’t say “lala” because that means Grandmother. Although within our guided trip we used these phrases to say hello and thank you, no one in the markets for bargaining or in the streets spoke to us in Arabic. Mostly all of them knew Spanish, as well as French and I’m pretty sure many other languages. One man approached me in a market and said, “Bonjour, Madam!” tipped his hat and kept on going.

We learned quickly that in Morocco the national sport is bartering. We were told to never accept a first price anywhere we went, and that people would hound us to buy their things. This was definitely true. Men would come up to you with jewelry, grab your wrist, put a bracelet on it and ask for your money. They didn’t even ask for Durhams, the currency of Morocco, they wanted our Euros, too. You could say no all you wanted and they wouldn’t listen, but the second you said, “La!” it was like the magic word had just been spoken, and they grudgingly walked away.

Although we visited three towns everyone’s favorite was the last we visited, Chef-Chaouén. Chef-Chaouén is a mountain village that is easily recognized by the colors of its buildings; white and blue. These colors represent peace and devotion to God, and I was pretty sure I heard also they were the colors of Israel. I could be wrong on that one though, because our tour was completely in Spanish with Arabic accent. Life in this town seemed so pure and simple, as everyone washed their clothes in the river coming straight from the mountains, everyone brought their bread to be baked at the bakery (bakeries don’t make their own bread, they bake your bread for you) and everyone bathed in the bathhouse which has specific days and times for different ages/genders.

While I was there I got henna on my hand, rode a camel, bought a woven blanket, bartered with a 12 year old for some leather sandals, and saw where the Mediterranean and Atlantic meet. This last part was especially cool, since while in South Africa this last summer I got to see where the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean meet! It really made me realize how much I've seen of this world already, and how much more I want to see.

Morocco is a place I would love to return to and learn more about it. It was so different to be woken up at 6am by the prayer call that announced to everyone the time to turn to Mecca and pray, to see women covered from head to toe but look so beautiful, and to see people function primarily as a community and use nature in their favor in everyway possible. And although I would love to return again, I don't know when this will happen. I have visited eight countries since receiving my passport. I still have a lot more to go!

Lluvia

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day.

Little Johnny wants to play;


Rain, rain, go to Spain,


Never show your face again!

-Unknown, England 1533-1603

The rain has returned and no one is happy about it. In the States when you visit cities like Portland and Seattle they tell you they know tourists when they see umbrellas. Now is the time in Granada when no one is an obvious tourist, because everyone is hidden under umbrellas, some so big they can fit three people under it easily. I don’t understand how a city that hardly knows rain is now getting more than they’ve seen in years. It doesn’t make sense to me.

The last two weeks have felt like a fuzzy dream because that’s what I was spending the majority of my time doing. I have slept more in the last two weeks than I have in a long time. On our last day in Rome, no, our last 45 minutes, Caroline and I ate gluten on accident. Gluten screws up my stomach/body/mind for a while, so I was thrown for a loop from that. We only had a three-day school week since we missed Monday and we never have class on Fridays. Then this weekend I stayed home while Caroline went to Ireland and others went roaming around Spain. That is when the rain really began, and that is when I got sick.

Not that my weekend just consisted of sleeping and being sick, but it did mostly. I spent a lot of time with Mari (Frenchy) since neither of us wanted to go outside. I was able to practice a lot of Spanish since this was our only form of communication. On Saturday we finally chose to get out in the afternoon because it was the last day of rebajas. Rebajas is a nationwide sale that goes on for months. Almost every store has rebajas and prices are cut up to 60%. So we left our piso for the first time in awhile and…every store was closed. We walked down deserted streets with metal panels covering doorways and lights turned off. The restaurants and cafes were open with people eating and drinking, but everything else was dark. “Que pasa??” we wondered. “No entiendo…” I said over and over. Finally after we had walked by store after closed store, I had to ask. Three young men walked towards us, and I stopped them.

“Chicos!” I called, and they came close, ears facing me as if what I was about to say would be very interesting. “Perdonme…que paso hoy? Por que todas las tiendas estan cerrado?” I asked.

“Pues, porque es el dia de Andalucia! Hoy es el dia para comer y beber,” they answered. “No sabia??”

“No, no sabia. Pero, no para comprar?” I asked.

“No, solo para beber y comer.”

We all chuckled, I thanked them and they walked on. Apparently, the day was a day all around Andalucia, the providence we live in, to celebrate and eat and drink. Only in Andalucia, though. How was it that we weren’t informed the entire city would be shut down to celebrate? And what was worse, Sundays are also days the city is always shut down. This meant an entire weekend of everything except restaurants being shut down. I couldn’t go to the mercado, I couldn’t try to nab a last second rebajas item. Mari and I didn’t know what to do, so we walked on.

“Los marruecos probablamente estan abierto,” I said to Mari. The Moroccans never shut down their stores.

“Ah, si si! Por supuesto. Dinero es dinero!” she replied.

The part of town where the Moroccans have their shops is one of my favorites. It is further away from my house and can be a little peligroso depending on the time of day you go. But it is a part of town that reminds me why Granada is so different from the rest of Spain. The sights, sounds, and smells pull you away and introduce you to a culture rooted somewhere else.

The area that the Moroccan shops are at have very narrow streets, splitting off into random areas. It can be difficult to navigate through. But once you hear music in the air and chatter, you know you are close. The stores are full of colorfully patterned tapestries portraying large trees and elephants and donkeys. The clothes are loose, relaxed, and seen on every hippy in town. Incense fills the narrow street, and it is impossible to tell from which store it is coming from. The street is very narrow, very compact, with stores so similar you can’t tell if they’re separate or one in the same. Teashops break up the stores, where you can see people sitting on pillows with lights low, sipping tea or smoking hookah. Stands lean against the outside walls of stores with an array of silver jewelry, tea pots, and scented oils. Music is being played by someone at all times, normally a hippy guitarist who lives in the cuevas above, and there are a few people standing around, clapping their hands, laughing and or dancing. Dogs wander the streets unaware they have lost their owners. Everytime I walk down this street I breathe in deep and let my eyes land on every sparkly and colorful cloth and I think, “I want it all!”

Saturday was different though. Everyone and their abuelita were in the narrow street. I held tight to my bag, and even though I saw items I liked I was either swept along with the crowd or chose to not make that moment the moment to look at it. Everyone’s voices bounced between stores, incense could hardly be smelled with the masses of people, and the guitar was just a faint background noise between the children, families, and groups of shoppers bored with the dead town.

Mari and I walked down wasting no time, moving as the crowd allowed us, and moved on. The cold humid air and lightly sprinkling rain, along with the failed rebajas excursion left us tired, so we returned to the apartment empty handed.

The next day was when I got sick. It has been a long time since my body felt as if I had fallen down a hill. In my sleep I dreamt of a boiling hot day in the park, eating watermelon so hot it burnt my tongue, and hot water flowing out of the drinking fountains. I woke up sweating, realizing I had a fever.

When I informed Nati, she brought me six oranges. She also recommended I drink hot milk before I go to bed. I appreciate her concern for me, but I am glad she isn’t staying with me to make sure I follow through with these home remedies. I did however go to my program office to have someone take me to the doctor.

My trip to the doctor’s office reminded me just slightly of my trip to the doctors in Costa Rica. In Costa Rican it was just a lone doctor in an office with a desk and an examining table with equipment to the side. The place I went in Granada was a clinic with each individual doctor having their own office equipped the same way. I sat at the other side of a desk with Maria, an employee from my program. The doctor was a woman and she said, “Digame,” so I told how I felt. She escorted me to the back of the office where I sat on the examining table, she looked in my throat (tentatively, as if she were disgusted) and then walked back to her desk.

“Umm….am I done?” I asked Maria.

“Yeah. She said your throat is swollen.”

“Yeah, I caught that…” I said, and walked back to the chair.

She then wrote me a prescription for amoxicillin, and told me to pick up ibuprofen (which is much stronger here) and aspirin. She didn’t weigh me, take my temperature, my blood pressure, ask me about any other drugs I was taking…just if I had any allergies, and that was that. I have insurance through my program, but I have to pay upfront and then make a claim afterwards. With medicine and the doctor’s bill I paid a total of 52€. Not bad, not bad at all.

So, I’m feeling a lot better now, minus the rain. Everyone looks ragged with hair affected by the humidity or frazzled from hats pulled down tight. In fact, I haven’t taken my hat off at all. My friend Nicola made a hat for me and gave it to me Friday, and I haven’t taken it off yet. Mari makes fun of me for it, but what can I say? It came at the perfect time.

(Okay, you can call me a hippy now)