this and that

What have I been doing recently?

--Going to class, while managing to skip only the few days the profs take attendance. Typical. Unfortunately they're not nearly as fun, nor enlightening as those in Cadiz. The fact that I have five of them instead of two and that the professors are way less personable doesn't help my attention span.

--Going to botellon for the first time. It's a huge, illegal but condoned gathering of youngsters pregaming. You can find one in almost any Spanish city. If you're not familiar with the term "pregame," you're probably one of my readers who needs to smile, move on, and imagine me doing stretches before a nice game of kickball.

--Buying a pair of genie pants. They're blue and flowery and gorgeous, but I'll have to grow a moderate sized pair to wear them in the states.

--Eating lots tapas and kebabs, as our Creator willed us to do whilst residing in this fine city. And it will be good unto your tastebuds and wallet but inflate thine waistline, thus sayeth the Lord. The best tapa you shall experience as of the 15th of September will have been a full avocado served with potato salad and half a toasted roll with olive oil.

--Getting sick. I had random stomach pains for about a week, then got a moderate fever which trailed off after a day, then more regular stomach pains. Time to go to the doctor and make sure it's not a potentially serious infection.

--Visiting a teteria, an overpriced yet delightful Moroccan-themed hookah and tea bar, of which there are loads.

--Noticing that I'm getting more comfortable with my Spanish. It's easier to transmit my personality through the language, I can remember obscure vocabulary when people ask, and on the rare occasion that I can't think of the word, I can quickly explain what I mean and the native speaker will produce the word for me.

I said a post or two back that I owed more on my immediate, general love for this city. I've indirectly covered a lot, but here is the rest, modified from parts of emails to Joel and to Tess:

Granada is surrounded by mountains--notably the Sierra Nevadas on one side, but by hills in all directions. Actually imagine a bowl in which the bottom is the center of the city: bigger apartment stores, shopping districts, offices, apartment buildings, the university. As the bowl starts to curve upwards, you get to districts like the Albaycin and the Sacromonte, with white sugar cube style houses draped with grapevines, morning glories, and other creeping plants. And of course, when the city ends, the mountains keep rising upward to the rim of the bowl. It looks more like pictures I’ve seen of Greek islands than what I expected in Spain.

The city has a seemingly endless supply of bars, hangouts, nightclubs, mountains, cool people, lax professors, and nearby excursion sites to keep me more than entertained for the next five months. The Arab quarter, the Albaycin, is full of awesome hippie stores that all sell the same gypsy pants and long skirts and hookahs and teas and bright beautiful wall hangings. Actually, the tea here is amazing. They sell it in huge bins with spots of all different colors from the mixes of plants and herbal flowers with names like Suenos de la Alhambra and Pasion de Granada. 

 One of the main hippie-gypsy-store streets in the Albaycin.

And that's all for today. I think that covers enough general Granada information. Now back to the mess of picking real classes for the semester, which start the week after next!