Various happenings

Palabra del día: Agobiado
Translation: Stressed out, overwhelmed
Frase: Me sentí agobiada esta semana porque tuve que escribir un ensayo de 10 páginas, preparar para exámenes y encontrar un piso para la próxima semestre.
Translation: I felt stressed out this week because I had to write a 10 page essay, prepare for exams and find an apartment for next semester.

Comida del día: Migas
This is a very traditional Spanish food that I ate for the first time half an hour ago. "Migas" literally means "crumbs," which is actually a very accurate description.  They sort of resemble cous cous and are basically little balls of flour mixed with garlic and usually some sort of sausage, though the vegetarian version I ate had green peppers.  They are commonly eaten with melon because the migas are dry so, according to my host mom, the melon prevents them from sticking to your mouth.

Foto del día: actually a video today! Two weeks ago, the band I've been playing with had a concert, so here's our version of "Persis."  It has some great horn parts - let me know what you think! This band wins the prize for being the loudest band I've ever played with, but it's always tons of fun, and despite some tuning issues I think the concert was a success.  And we already have another one coming up next weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuYU6aDtz54#t=36

The best part of the concert was that afterwards we all went out to eat, which of course lasted for 4-5 hours (typical for Spain), and after that some of us went to a bar that had salsa dancing.  This band really knows how to celebrate!

It's been a while since I've written - the end of the semester is a crazy time of year. The first half of the semester I couldn't believe how little work I had, but as it turns out, all of the work for my classes is actually due at the end of the semester - it probably would have been a good idea to start earlier!  I guess that's what next semester is for...

I've also had to spend a lot of time planning for next semester, including extending my visa, finding a place to live, and planning three weeks of travel in January.  For my visa extension, I had to travel an hour and a half to Málaga to get a form so that I can go to the police station next week to have fingerprints taken so that I can get my criminal record form from the US... you would think there would be a more efficient way to do this!  For apartment hunting, I spent two days last week going to look at three apartments, all of which seemed quite pleasant on the internet but were quite horrible in real life (choose between dark, cold and lonely and empty beer bottles everywhere). After these two frustrating days, though, my friend from band informed me that his roommate is leaving next semester, so it's very likely that I can live with them, which will be lots of fun.  For traveling in January, I have two weeks planned to go to London and Paris over Christmas and New Years, and then three more weeks that are completely open.  My friend Annie and I are tentatively thinking of going to Rome, Venice and Florence and then Prague, Budapest, Vienna and maybe Berlin.  So many exciting options!

Other various happenings:

Thanksgiving is not quite thanksgiving in Spain, but IES organized a fancy dinner in this awesome restaurant that rotates so that you can see the view from all angles.  The view wasn't that great because it was dark outside and there was no pumpkin pie in sight, but the food was still good and it was fun to be around friends on a holiday when I couldn't help but miss my family.

Hanukah was also last week, and although there were no latkes to be found I did find choco-euro Hanukah gelt in the grocery store!  I celebrated the first night of Hanukah by going to this tiny Sephardic Jewish museum where an IES professor gave a talk about what Hanukah is and various Hanukah traditions to a group of her IES students and some people who take a Hebrew class there.  Spain has so much Jewish history but hardly any Jewish culture - most people at this event had never heard of Hanukah, seen a menorah, or spun a dreidel.  I've been so focused on learning about the culture of Spain and Granada while I'm here, but I'm realizing that being in another country also gives me a chance to teach people a little bit about my own unique culture and background without them having to even leave home.

Speaking of holidays, the Spanish word for holiday is the same as the Spanish word for party (fiesta).  There are only two weekends left in my first semester in Granada, and since next weekend we will be knee-deep in exams my friends who are leaving decided that this was the weekend that we needed to do some serious Spanish-style partying.  We started last night with tapas, of course, and then went to a cowboy themed bar. At the cowboy bar we ran into an IES orientation leader who is a student at the university, and he was nice enough to show us  a fun discoteca that was playing 60s music and had far fewer tourists than some of the ones I've been to.  We landed at the discoteca at 3:45 to find it completely empty - the Spanish people showed up 15 minutes later after the bars had bars closed.  We finished out the night with churros and chocolate with three new friends we found at the discoteca from France and Germany (some of us had met one of them before, don't worry, we weren't hanging out with strangers).

I was worried about staying out all night because I'm someone who values my eight hours of sleep every night, but it was definitely worth it  - I had so much fun that I completely forgot about being tired until I finally went to sleep at 8:30 am (if you find any typos in this blog post, now you know why!)