First Days in Granada

Well… I’m here. Seriously, I don’t know where to start! Everything has been so overwhelming. I still can’t really believe that I’m in Spain, thousands of miles away from home. I know it kind of goes without saying, but what first pops into my head is that EVERYTHING. IS. DIFFERENT! From the times of day that people are active, to the food, to the way people dress and gesture and greet each other, nothing is quite the same as in the United States. Things that I never paid much attention to at home have suddenly become fascinating – the ingredients of packaged foods, graffiti, the ads in bus shelters – because I’m constantly trying to puzzle out the Spanish. And it’s hot! I’m still shaky on converting Celcius to Fahrenheit, but it feels like 95 degrees during the day.
Speaking of the heat, it’s been really interesting seeing how that shapes the way people go about the day here. Waking up early becomes a million times more attractive because then you can catch some cool air before it heats up. You see people out walking and shopping throughout the day, but most stores shut down for a bit in the afternoon (like from 2 to 5) and it’s after it gets dark that everyone really come outside. At that point, there are plenty of people tomando el fresco, sitting in outdoor restaurants and walking their dogs. I think what’s taken me longest to get used to about it is seeing little kids running around in playgrounds at 10 and 11 at night!
Even with my profound feeling of being a fish out of water, there are still traces of familiar things. In the airport in Barcelona, I stopped by a food stand and they had Red Bull in the beverage case – I never thought I’d be happy to see that stuff. Hello Kitty’s domain extends all over the world, and Katy Parry, the Killers and 30 Rock show up in TV ads. My host mother’s daughter Mari says that not too many films come out of Spain (although that’s been changing recently) so most of the movies featured on TV are American or British with dubbed Spanish voices. And many products we have at home are advertised in Spain. Those irritating Activia ads have followed me across the Atlantic.
I’m really happy with where I’m staying. My host mother’s name is Liberada, and she has two daughters, Mari and Sandra. Mari’s 27, but I’m not sure how old Sandra is. They both live at home; I’ve read that there are very few homes for rent in Spain, so people tend to stay in their parents’ houses until they’re able to buy a place of their own. My “roommate” (we were both pleasantly surprised to find that we each have our own bedroom) is Brittany, from the University of Portland. By total coincidence, we arrived at the apartment minutes apart.
I never anticipated just how curious it would feel to be surrounded by Spanish. In Mexico I had a bit of the same feeling, but I was constantly speaking English with friends and family, so it wasn’t absolute like here. Even as I type this I have the urge to lapse into Spanish! It’s been tough because I feel awkward speaking, knowing it’s obvious that I’m a foreigner and I’m bound to make mistakes. For instance, I was telling my family that my sister Laura lives in a neighborhood in San Jose, and I used the word “suburbio”. Sandra’s boyfriend quickly let me know that that word means a seedy neighborhood, with drug and crime problems, not a nice area like what I meant to express. Instead, suburbs in Spanish are “las afueras”, meaning the areas just outside urban centers. So it was embarrassing, but at least I got something useful out of it.
Today we went on a walk through the areas around the Centro de Lenguas Modernas, where our classes are held. I was in tourist mode, taking pictures of everything. It's incredible to me that this city is thousands of years old. We got to go through the Albaicín, which was originally the Muslim quarter of Granada, and it was beautiful. There’s graffiti everywhere, but a lot of it is so interesting that I don’t really mind. At one point we stopped where you could see part of the Alhambra – I’m really excited to go through it.
It’s been really busy, but I’ll try to write more!