Mid-semester Evaluation

All the talk about midterm elections in November (shocker, I am keeping up with US politics) I've decided to do a mid-semester evaluation of my time here in Granada because as of yesterday, it has officially been two months since I started my program.

This week was exceptionally rough due to this weird thing called homework and studying. Three midterms in three days was not the most pleasant experience of Granada and stress-usually my most common emotion-reappeared in my life and it had a less than stellar stay. I also felt really disconnected from home and felt extremely incapable of doing anything productive regarding home, school, or (especially) this summer. I missed a few deadlines because I wasn't on top of my stuff and was not being pestered by e-mails and yet when I bother other people with e-mails, I rarely get a response. These types of situations have been extremely stressful, especially during a stressful week.

However, overall this continues to be an incredible experience. Between friends, trips, and the daily events that make this time so special, I truly am discovering a new part of myself that I have enjoyed meeting. I am so happy that I chose Granada-it truly represents and has provided for me everything that I wanted out of my time abroad--new experiences, a new home, interesting people, and plenty of stories.

I have finally begun to see a true improvement in my Spanish. If nothing else, I have become more confident/less scared to say something wrong. This has allowed for a greater relationship with Juanie and Nuvie and the opportunity to walk around the city by myself with confidence knowing that I will be able to say and get what I want. I love this language and am so excited that I feel knowledgeable in it.

Tomorrow my parents and Dylan arrive into Granada and I am anxious to show them the city that has quickly become my home. I think that everyone at home will have a greater understanding of what is going on over here once they can hear it from the horse's mouth (because we know Barb Simon doesn't lie). Monday morning we leave for Paris we are spending a week and I am eventually meeting up with Julie--another person that I am really excited to see in this environment. It is definitely time for a little bit of home to come here, but I can truly say that I am not ready to come home yet. There is still so much to do, so many places to see, and so many more stories to be told.

So for those keeping score, know this. Granada is incredible. I feel amazing for the most part. Europe is changing me in ways that I am proud of and comfortable with. And I am about to have the most amazing Spring Break with a few of my favorite people from the States.

Below, is a picture of one of the most memorable days in Spain: skiing in the Sierra Nevada. Part of me putting this up is to make Jonah Cohen EXTREMELY jealous, but mostly, here is a taste of how incredible my life is right now. And yes, we were skiing above the clouds.Now I leave you to pack for my week in Paris!

Hasta luego!

So I don't have any more food...so here is a picture of Granada from the Alhambra!

Midterms are Here...

...and I have a shit ton of work. Here go, there may not be an update for a bit. But, I promise I'll upload pictures from skiing and such before PARIS!!

Religious Contemplation

I have been talking about this post for awhile because it has been in my mind for a very long time. I've taken this week to take in my experience in Cordoba last Friday and really get a grasp on how I am feeling and why I am feeling this way. I have talked about it with a lot of people here and written about it already in my own journal, but I may find out more things as I write this post so if I ramble, I apologize ahead of time. However, I think that Judiasm in Spain--past present and future--truly deserves a close examination.

Now let´s be honest. Growing up in Westfield and then going to school at Brandeis, I have dealt with very little strange reactions or comments regarding my religion. Everyone in Westfield went to at least one Bar/Bat Mitzvah and swore they knew the basic prayers. Meanwhile, at Brandeis, as I tell everyone, I feel the least Jewish since there are people who are so much more religious than myself. In that regards, I guess I should classify what kind of Jew I see myself as. I am definitely not as religious as the Conservative sect would like me to be, but in terms of culture and tradition, Judiasm is part of my very core being and the person that I strive to be everyday. I knew coming here would be different, but honestly it didn't even cross my mind that religion would play a role in my experience in Spain.

In a group of 65, there is substantial number of Jews and I am good friends with four. We all are pretty much on the same page regarding the religion, and if anything, some are less religious than myself. However, I spoke with my friend Alina about finding a temple and going to a Friday night service. Sarah then told me some news that her ¨Memories and Identity of Sephardic Jews¨professor told her--there is not one temple in Granada. Not one. Suddenly, I became much more aware that I was not in the Northeast anymore. In a city of 280,000 there were no Jews. And if there were any, they weren't going to synagogue.

I was, and still am, so baffled by this idea and yet how could I be surprised? The Inquisition is all too often forgotten or thrown to side to discuss the Holocaust or the latest war in Israel, but the Inquisition did tremendous damage to the world Jewish population. And, in my opinion, it was done in the worst way possible. There are modern Spaniards, practicing Catholics, who can trace their family back to a Jewish heritage. Fear is the strongest weapon and during the Inquisition, Jews converted to Catholicism to save their lives, never turning back. Of course thousands were killed, but so many simply gave in. There could be a booming Spanish Jewish population today, but instead many are completely unaware of their ability to be a part of a religion that I find to encompass so much more than faith. Instead, the Jewish population is forgotten about, ignored completely. Spaniards don´t even talk about the Jews negatively--they simply don't talk about them.

Moving forward. Last Friday we had the amazing opportunity of going to Cordoba. We saw the 11th century mosque, located in the Jewish neighborhood, and were able to walk around and enjoy. We also went to a small, centuries old, synagogue. As we walked in, Alina turns to me and says, "Doesn't it feel like you are coming home?" and suddenly, without any warning, I started to cry. Trying desperately to hide this strange emotion, I started frantically searching for an answer as to why I reacted this way. All I knew was that yes, this was home and yes, I had missed it incredibly. It wouldn't be until later that I would get my answer.

I stayed with about half the group and went to "La casa sefardi: la casa de memoria," a museum-esque place that tells the story of the Spanish Jews so often forgotten. There we met Jaime, a Jewish man who takes pride in his religion and his country, but not so much regarding how one treats the other. We ended up upstairs in a small room that is the first synagogue in Cordoba in centuries. He read some Hebrew, waved some challah tauntingly in our faces, and then welcomed us to return for any Shabbat.

Here is where it gets interesting. Emily, Sarah, Alina and I (all Jewish) walked out of there and immediately started planning. Pre/post Passover sedar, coming back to Cordoba, making kugel. Our friend Sara was also there and she had no idea what was going on. A devout Catholic, Sara is a Religion major at GWU and is/was dying to learn more about Judaism. Questions began to fly, plans were being made, and suddenly I got it.

What that strange feeling was, why I started to cry, why I craved a Friday night service even though I haven't been to one in years. Suddenly I understood that this is my lack of comfort zone. I never had any culture shock really, at least none that was apparent to me. My shock is the lack of culture, my culture. I've always been surrounded by Judaism, always had the option to go and simply chose not to. Now I can't go and I see nuns everyday on the street. This is my "wow" factor. There is little I can do to change the circumstances I am in, but I can--and have--begun to recognize my need for the Jew. I had no intention of this trip having any influence on my religious practices, and realistically it probably won't, but its nice to be reminded by my own self how important my religion is to me. And by religion, I mean culture because Judaism is nothing short of that. It is culture, a way of thinking, a lifestyle choice. I consider myself fortunate enough to be apart of all of it and have become very aware to of that while in Granada.

This experience has, and will continue, to open my eyes to the world around me and change various parts of myself. Right now, I'm really happy where I am--mentally, emotionally, physically (well, maybe I should cut out the pastry a day)--and I'm excited to explore more. My relationship with Judaism in Spain is something that I plan on continuing to explore for myself and to share with you.

And with that, on this partly sunny Friday, I hope you all have as fabulous as a weekend as I plan on having. Tonight I am seeing a concert and tomorrow I am going skiing in the Sierra Nevada, really could life be better?

Hasta luego!

WHAT IS THIS?!

What is that thing that comes out when rain clouds leave?

Oh, that´s right...SUN!

Today, the entire day, there is a 0% chance of rain!! I never thought the day would come, but alas it has!

Granted, it isn´t even reaching 50degrees, but at this point, beggars can´t be choosers.

Sadly, I will be spending most of the day indoors in class, but for all those back home that were getting tired of my whining regarding the rain--there is hope for you yet.

Hasta luego!

People, Streets, Architecture, Oh My!

One wall or one room of our crazy hostel--awesooooome/we wonder who decorated...

Some great, old, Mediterranean architecture there for ya.

Lindsay and Val just hanging out in one of the numerous small and narrow STREETS found in Portugal. Yes, that is right, cars do drive on this--very fast.

After a wonderful few hours at the museum, Andrew, Sarah, Katie, and I decided to hike up and get a glass of Porto and take in the gorgeous view.

This is Sintra, the suburb of Lisbon, in the pouring rain. I was fortunate enough to take it from the safety of the palace, but seriously--pouring rain.

A Portuguese Getaway

Yesterday was Dia de Andalucia, otherwise known as FOUR DAY WEEKEND! Basically everyone on my trip left Granada to explore because it was such a perfect opportunity to explore a city with a little bit more time. A group of 13 (I know, right!?) went to Lisbon (Lisboa) for 3 days and truly got to experience the city. It is a remarkable city that time has forgotten with little renovations to the old buildings and mosaic facades found throughout the city. It is extremely Mediterranean-based in regards to architecture as well as personality. The Portuguese are extremely nice and helpful, which would be nice if I could understand them. Contrary to popular (or at least our) belief, Portuguese is NOTHING like Spanish. Nothing. And on top of it, they don't pronounce anything making it even harder. Overall, it was a remarkable city to be seen with amazing people, despite the poor weather. I am going to post pictures when I have some more time this week so be on the look out, but right now I'll give you the ever-so-interesting play-by-play of my three days in Lisboa!

We left Granada at 7pm on Thursday for a 5 hour bus ride to Madrid. As you will see on the ride home, traveling outside of Granada is extremely difficult. There is an airport here, but it is extremely small and thus only flies to a few select places--which are really expensive.

Anyway, so we got into Madrid around 12am (after watching Pretty Woman in Spanish--well, I fell asleep) and headed straight to the airport before the metro closed at 1:30am. In Madrid (and maybe other cities), security shuts down for the night so the airport becomes a hostel for those waiting for their early AM flights. The 13 of us found a nice little post to call home and attempted to sleep on the cold marble floor with the bright florescent lights in our eyes. Magically, I was able to get a half hour or so of sleep, which is more than most can say. Finally, 5am rolled around and we were able to go through security and sit on actual seats at our gate until our 7:05 flight boarded. And by "boarded" I mean, take a shuttle to the plane, get off, climb up the stairs, and scramble to find seats together because there is no assigned seating (gotta love bargain flying). I was asleep before the plane even took off--quite a feat for the girl who barely slept on her 6 hour flight from Newark to Heathrow.

We arrived in Lisboa around 7:30am (gotta love the time change) and realized that we didn't have to go through customs because we were traveling to another EU country, which was extremely exciting. A side note, security here is so different. You could pick the Americans out in security in Madrid because we were the ones taking our shoes off and showing anyone and everyone our passport to prove our existence. I think one person may have actually taken a good look at my passport throughout my entire travels this weekend--an extremely interesting (and potentially scary) thought.

Anyway, so we all went bleary eyed into the world and got on a bus to get into the center of Lisbon and arrived at our hostel at around 9:15am. So, to recap the transportation methods: Granada bus to bus to Madrid to metro to Madrid airport to airplane to Lisbon to bus to hostel. Welcome to traveling from Granada.

Our hostel was awesome--a perfect first hostel. It was decorated a little out there (pictures to come), but it was clean and the people were extremely friendly. After we were all checked in (which took over an hour because there were no computers), we went on a desperate search for food in order to properly begin our day. We couldn't get into our hostel bedrooms until at least 2pm and we didn't want to lose the day, so we hit the ground running and started wandering the streets. Lisbon is truly a port city and you could see it with all of the ships on buildings and the monuments gracing the coast. As I mentioned earlier, the buildings are brightly colored or the facades are decorated with mosaic tiles--truly a remarkable view.

We ended up at a cathedral, which was incredible and it also launched the group into a discussion about religion, something I am always extremely interested in. I promise promise promise that religion post is coming up soon, especially since Friday I am going to the Sephardic Jew Museum in Cordoba. For now, just know that my friends are incredible because we all know how to joke and have a good time, yet we can launch into a serious discussion at the flip of a switch.

After the cathedral, we decided to go to the docks and see the modern part of the city. And oh is it modern. With its extremely linear architecture, I was reminded a lot of Chinese architecture, specifically the Bird's Nest (see CMU Architecture Summer Program did pay!). At the docks there was a really cool water fountain-thingy, some modern art lying around, a gondola ride, and an aquarium! I wanted to do both the gondola ride AND the aquarium, but my student budget forced me to choose one and so I took the quick, but nice, gondola ride with my friend Sara Winters (SWinters as we call her because there are an infinite amount of Sara(h)s on our trip). After that, we made our way back to the hostel for a nice hour and a half nap since we still had yet to sleep all night/day.

For dinner, we went in search of Fado. Fado is a traditional Portuguese-style of music and is very similar to Flamenco in terms of national pride. It is usually extremely sad, but since we didn't understand anything that the singers were saying, it seemed pretty upbeat to us. There were six performers throughout the meal and it was truly an amazing experience. The singers were incredible and the guitars had a voice all their own. We left happy, stuffed, and excited for bed.

Saturday was a brand new day with excited faces and walking shoes aplenty. A bunch of us had one mission and one mission only--to find the flea market. We were told that it was great and therefore we were all dying to go. We ended up splitting up because some people decided to follow one set of directions and the other group followed another. Of course, my group's directions were uphill and the wind (remnants of the really bad storm that hit Portugal/Spain on Saturday) that was going on did little to help. To our surprise, the flea market was more like a garage sale of trash, rejects, and possibly some stolen goods. We wandered down to the National Pantheon, and after playing in the wind for a little bit, we took advantage of being a student and went inside for free.

We eventually met up with everyone else and headed to Belem, a neighborhood of Lisbon about a 20-30minute tram ride out. And the reason why we went to Belem? The most amazing pastries ever. Picture this: inside--creme brulee/tapioca/pudding-like deliciousness; outside--a perfectly cooked filo dough/crust thingy; and on top? cinnamon and powdered sugar. Basically, a party in your mouth. They were INCREDIBLE. That is all I have to say.

Then, four of us (Katie, Andrew, Sarah Levy and I) went to the Berado Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art which was hands down the highlight of my trip. There were two exhibits that truly stood out. The first was a retrospective of American artist Robert Longo and his incredible charcoal drawings. I encourage everyone to Google/Wiki him and look at any of his works. He plays with light and shadow and negative space in a way that I simply have never seen before. It was truly remarkable. The second exhibit was a collection of photographs from Swiss journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach during the 1930s. She traveled all around Europe, United States, parts of Africa, and a little bit of the Middle East. It was really interesting to have a woman's perspective during such an interesting time (she disapproved of fascism in Germany, but had nothing bad to say about that or the imperialism practiced by Portugal) and I think she truly captured what it means to be an foreigner in a strange country, something that I can obviously relate to presently. These two exhibits were hands down two of the best I have seen in a really long time and I feel extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to see them.

Then, when everyone else bailed, the four of us continued our day and went up to Barrio Alto (Tall Neighborhood) for some world famous Portuguese Port Wine. We may have paid a little too much for it, but it was worth it for the view. We sipped our port overlooking the entire city, immersed with the idea of just how lucky we truly were. Eventually, we made our way down and had dinner with the rest of the group at the hostel (they cooked while we saw the sights) and chatted drinking ginga (another Portuguese drink) into the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday we woke up and took a 40min train ride to Sintra, a suburb of Lisbon with lots of castles. We wandered around looking for a place to eat lunch and we found a really cute cafe/restaurant. Only issue--took us four hours to eat lunch. However, once again, good company helped alleviate (almost) all hunger pains and American frustration. Once we finally got out, it was already getting late--and then it started to POUR. Throughout the weekend, the weather was not horrible, but definitely not pleasant. However, I have not seen anything like what I saw Sunday in a very long time. We ran for cover into the the Palace of Juan I and had a nice (free) tour of the castle and its wet grounds. Afterward, we grabbed some coffee and made our way back to the train. There was definitely more to see, but I feel like we got an idea for the place and had a lot of fun even if we mostly just ate (note: it was a 5 euro bus ride to go all the way up to the castle--keep in mind the student budget).

When we got back to the hostel, we hung around for a bit then made our way to dinner for some good ole meat. A traditional Portuguese way to cook meat is called "churrasco" and don't ask me what it is or what it means; all I know, is that it was delicious. It was a great way to end the trip--full stomachs with smiles on our faces.

We woke up yesterday morning at 4am to catch our 7:30am flight. We landed in Madrid around 9:30am (time change!) and then had time to run up into the Madrid sunlight for lunch. We got on the bus at 2pm, got stuck in an hour's worth of traffic, got into Granada around 8pm and I was finally back home around 9pm. See what I mean?!

Okay, now that I've written an essay, it is time for bed. Keep a look out alter this week for pictures!

Hasta luego!

PORTUGUESE EDITION
poached white fish with potatoes, carrots, and cabbage
BELEM PASTRIES
port, ginga
arroz con gambas (rice with shrimp)
tomato salad
mixed meat kebab churrasco

PS-Julie Judson, how is the font?