RAIN

I woke up today and it was a normal morning. Had some corn flakes, and decided I should do some souvenir shopping. When I left my apartment, it felt cool. I looked later and it was 78 degrees this morning, and when I started to consider that cool, I have no idea. I went to an area that I have only walked through, not shopped in to do my shopping. And then a magical thing happened. IT STARTED RAINING. Seriously, barely ten drops fell, but it was a big deal.

This past weekend, we went to Cordoba and Granada. In Cordoba, they have the oldest mosque that exists, and one of two mosques that exist in all of Spain. (They were all wrecked by the Christians during the revolution) You could look down into a room that contained tiles that and the structure of the room itself was built in the year 800. That to me is unreal, because the only thing that old that's still around is dirt I thought. We were in Cordoba for a few hours and then we proceeded on to Granada for the night.

Granada was my next choice of cities to study in. I can certainly see why from being there too. A major difference between Sevilla and Granada is the Morrocan population in Granada. In Sevilla, you don't find too much Jewish influence, but you could certainly see it in Granada. Also, one thing I liked better at Granada is that the people didn't look at me like I was an alien like they do in Sevilla. When you have blonde hair in Sevilla people think you're a freak. In Granada, there's more ethnicities living there (I don't know why, it's a much smaller city than Sevilla, about 1/3 of the size.) so they don't think you're too weird if you look different. Granada had more of a commercial-y feel though which is actually the reason I didn't ultimately pick it. Second favorite city in Spain, though. That night, we saw a flamenco show, which was bizarre. I'm a fan of dance, I did it for over half my life, but flamenco is weird. It's more about hand movements and the music and I can't say it was my favorite thing.

The next day, we visited the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a giant palace that the Moors built in the 1400s. It's the most intricately designed beautiful thing ever. It's a beast, it took us 2 hours to tour, complete with many buildings and a beautiful garden. I have never seen anything like it in my life. I feel like I continue to say this about every monument I see, but I truly have never seen anything like any of them.

I feel hungry all the time because I'm deprived of my favorite things, ranch and peanut butter. The things that are eaten here are so bizarre and I can't wait to go home and stuff my face. Really good pasta, a really good burger, a really good steak, and a really good grilled chicken salad are all going to be eaten within the first 1-2 days of being home. I have mentally put away adequete money so that when I am home I have enough money to binge eat.

I think I'm learning Spanish. I find myself thinking in Spanish, and it's really weird but when an English song is stuck in my head my thoughts try to mentally sing it in Spanish. So that's really good, basically why I'm here.