Tuesday, June 23 2009

Hello again!

Today is Tuesday and my last week here in Granada. I have truly been enjoying myself, but three week is long enough to be away.

My weekend was really fun and full of interesting activities. Friday night my friends, Jo and Anyita went to several bars to sample tapas. By the way, Anyita is from Sweden, not Switzerland. In Spanish Sweden is Suecia and Switzerland is Suiza. They sound very similar. Anyhow, we had gotten a list of places that serve good tapas with their drinks. It was fun and luckily there is a popular drink here in Granada called ¨Tinto de Verano¨ it is basically a mild sangria, very little alcohol. So I was able to drink several and still find my way home. Some of the tapas we had were tuna with tomato on bread, sardines (local favorite) on bread, ham (another local specialty) and some little hamburgers; not so Spanish but good regardless.

Saturday morning we left for a tour of Las Alpujarras. Las Alpujarras are the little villages that are scattered around southern side of the Sierra Nevada. When the muslims were exiled from the country there were many that didn´t want to leave. They had a choice to leave what had been their home for 700 years or convert to Catholicism. Some chose to do neither and moved to the mountains instead. There are about 80 little villages that make up Las Alpujarras. They are cute little towns with wonderful views of the mountains. We had a great guide named Juan who had a wealth of information to share.

On Sunday we left for Córdoba. We had the same guide, Juan, on Sunday as well. In Córdoba we saw ruins of a muslim palace, a Jewish synagogue, the muslim mosque which was converted to a cathedral, and a bridge that dates back to the Romans. We also took a walking tour of the city center. The temperature that day was 43 celcius - I was shocked to discover that that equates to a toasty 109.5 farenheit! There was hardly anybody else in the streets except our group - smart people, eh? Them, not us.

I am uploading more pictures and will post a link soon.

My classes are great. I really enjoy my teachers! This week we have been reviewing areas of Spanish that tend to be difficult for students. And guess what?? They are difficult! I have not been feeling so intelligent this week; the good thing is that nobody else in my class feels too intelligent either!

Hope all the Father´s had a nice day on Sunday!