This is it!

If you've ever come to the end of a chapter in life and realized that everything you're doing is the "last" something, you know how I feel. Last classes, last weekend, last runs at the park, last post-dinner TV sessions with my host family....last days in Spain. ¡Hay que aprovechar! (Seize the day!)

It's been a pretty exciting week. The other day when I was running at the park I ran into some surprising entertainment (pun intended). I thought I heard something like a band playing, which actually turned out to be a  small brass band casually playing along the side of the trail. Then I saw a guy in the distance balancing on something that looked like a tightrope, which turned out to be a guy actually practicing his tightrope walking on a rope tied between two trees. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, as I've come across flocks of sheep and flute-playing tai chai masters at the park before too. My expectations for running scenery are going to be quite high when I get home!

Speaking of seeing cool things, I saw my first Spanish Ibex yesterday! My brother told me to keep my eyes open for them before I came, and up to this point the closest I had gotten to seeing one was almost stepping in some feces. We were on the bus home from the excursion for my environment class, trying to avoid nodding off as the professor insisted on lecturing us (via the excessively loud microphone system on the bus) the entire time (no joke - we would happen to pass a truck on the road, and he would say, "look to your right and observe the truck that is transporting some kind of material for something somewhere". He was also fond of singing to us when he wasn't talking.) Anyway, I was keeping my eyes open for wildlife - my brothers would be so proud of me - and I saw the ibex grazing on the hillside. When we're traveling as a family at home and someone spots a deer, they immediately point and shout "deer!" so the rest of the car can partake in the glory of seeing the deer. I really wanted to shout "ibex!" and share the moment with my fellow (at this point, sleeping) classmates, but I don't think they would have appreciated it quite as much.

On Wednesday our group went to see a flamenco show at Cueva la Rocío, apparently where Michelle Obama went when she visited Granada. It was very, very touristy but still an enjoyable experience. The cave was probably ten feet wide and about fifty feet long. We sat along the sides and the dancers danced in the center, so it was very up close and personal. Just a side note -as your friend and  a student of Spanish culture I am going to give you a piece of advice for if/when you see flamenco: never try to clap along. Ever. I'm serious. Unless you are familiar with the rhythm patterns, you will not be able to keep up. It's a beautiful, dramatic style of music that contains three crucial elements: the dancer ("bailaor"), the singer ("cantaor"), and the guitar player ("tocaor"). Check it out on youtube - Sara Baras is one of the more popular dancers (and just try to clap along...I dare you).

Entrance to Cueva la Rocío in the Sacromonte neighborhood of Granada

To add to the greatness of the week, we went to the beach at Salobreña on Sunday. The water (Mediterranean Sea) was very calm, very clear, and very cold - perfect for swimming! It's been on the hot side lately, somewhere around the mid-90s. Because of the heat, my host family made gazpacho, a refreshing dish typically served in the super hot summers. It's kind of like a cold tomato soup, but it has other vegetables in it too. I made it at home last summer when we had lots of garden vegetables, and it tasted pretty similar to the gazpacho my host family made! They served it to us as an appetizer, not a main meal, so it was in a glass. I was waiting for a spoon to eat it with until I saw my host mom take a drink of hers. Then I realized that we didn't need spoons - oops! It was one of those "aha!"moments you have in your head but keep it to yourself because it's kind of embarrassing. In any event, the gazpacho was delicious!

Salobreña

Well, friends, our time (virtually) together is coming to a close. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for vicariously experiencing my adventures this semester. It has occurred to me that my blog title is somewhat deceiving (not the "adventures" part, I hope) because my travels have definitely not been limited to Spain. Looking back, "Adventures in Spain - and Beyond!" would have been more appropriate. I hope that you and I both will continue the "beyond" part of our adventures in life - the possibilities are endless!

cha-cha flamenco

Yesterday in one of my classes we were talking about Flamenco, a stereotypical Spanish dance that involves a lot of energetic stomping, skirt swishing, and intense concentration.  Out of curiosity (or desire to humiliate us), our professor asked us for an example of a traditional American dance that we would all know. Had we known that he was going to actually blast the song and make us get up and dance, we would have tried to come up with a less embarrassing example of our culture than the Cha-Cha Slide. So we all stood up against our will and did the "sliiiide to the left. sliiiide to the right. one hop this time (hop)....clap your hands now y'all" and felt seriously ashamed  of our culture's lack of culture. To be fair, Flamenco is a beautiful work of art that no everyone here can dance, play, or sing. However, the juxtaposition of these two musical styles was thoroughly entertaining.

       
Just to clarify the common misconception that all of Spain is home to Flamenco: the dance originated in the gypsy culture of Andalucía, the southernmost of the seventeen autonomous communities (like states or provinces) in Spain where Granada is located; because it is such a tourist attraction, it can be found all over Spain now. There are many cultural dances that take a back seat when Flamenco is around, which is a shame because the country is more diverse than you can imagine. For instance, if you were to see a traditional music show in the northwest of Spain, the bagpipes and kilts just might make you think you were in Scotland. And in Pais Vasco (north-central Spain) they have, as my professor calls it, a very "curious" dance in which there is a series of dancers who take turns jumping on a glass of wine without spilling it.

photo copyright belongs to:  http://performingarts.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/royal-scots-dragoons-with-bagpipes-marching.jpg?w=300&h=300

If you couldn't tell, our professors are fond of reminding us that many Spanish stereotypes are somewhat or entirely false. Another good one is bullfighting. In reality, the majority of Spaniards are opposed to what some would call this "barbaric massacre of an art form", and in Catalunya (the autonomous community in the north in which Barcelona is located) bullfighting has officially been banned. But in cities like Pamplona they take a different approach. Instead of fighting the bulls, they run away from them. Literally. In the annual event called the "Running of the Bulls", a group of about a dozen bulls is set loose on a sectioned-off (thank goodness) street in the city where a bunch of crazy people are waiting. The bulls run down the street typically towards the plaza where the bullfighting ring is located, and the people run away from them and try to avoid getting stampeded or gored. Sounds to me like a wonderfully charming idea.

photo copyright belongs to: http://www.filmapia.com/sites/default/files/filmapia/pub/place/running_of_the_bulls.jpg

Speaking of cool things in Spain that you might not be aware of, Spanish is not the only language used here. There's also Catalán, Gallego, Euskera, and a variety of others spoken in smaller ethnic groups throughout the country!

largest (known) stalagmite in the world

Well, the excursions continue-this past weekend in Nerja we visited the caves that house the largest stalagmite in the world! The caves were discovered in the 1950s by some kids who were outside playing and just happened to stumble across them. Pretty sweet. On Friday, I have an excursion with my Environment class to an undisclosed location. I think it will be fun, though - it sounded promising when, in a completely serious manner, our professor reminded us to bring our hiking sticks/walking poles. Because I obviously packed that in the one suitcase I brought with me here.

Seriously, though. I can't believe the semester's almost over. Like good ol' Don Quijote says, "the wild winds of fortune will carry me onward, oh whithersoever they blow" (yes, whithersoever is one word). ¡Vamos, adelante!

Is this real life?

The theme of my semester seems to be disbelief; "is this real life?" is a common thought that I have when I'm traveling, reflecting, or just walking around. For instance, I just went to Rome for four days and had an absolutely amazing time. Then I returned to Granada on Tuesday, went to class on Wednesday, and today I have one class and then it's the celebration for Día de la Cruz (Day of the Cross) this afternoon. Tomorrow morning we leave for Nerja, a coastal city in Spain, where we are staying for two days for (cough, cough) academic excursions. Where was I....oh yes. Rome!


We were able to fit a lot into four days in the city: pizza, pasta, gelato, the Vatican Museum, St. Peter's Basilica, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, and beautiful walks around town. The Vatican Museum is an immensely impressive collection of art that ranges from busts of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses to mummies to Rafael and Michaelangelo to Christian Modern Art. Supposedly, if you spend one minute in front of every piece in the museum you would be there for thirteen years! The last stop on the tour was the Sistine Chapel. It's beautiful, of course - an absolutely amazing work of art - but when you've just walked through hallways and rooms that are literally covered with frescos it's not exactly a surprise to see the chapel filled with art too. St. Peter's Basilica  is definitely the most awesome church I have ever been in (and I've been in lots and lots of churches). It's magnificent. There are letters bordering the upper walls inside that say "TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM. TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORVM" ("...you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. ... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven..."). Each letter stands a full 2 meters tall, or 6'6". The Chapel of the Pieta just inside the narthex houses Michaelangelo's famous Pieta, a sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus after his death. I could go on and on about the awesomeness of the basilica...it's just so cool. When we were there on Saturday I tried really hard to figure out the mass schedule for Sunday. I asked several Italian guards who spoke broken English, and I got several different answers regarding timing. Then one of them mentioned that there was a special mass with the Pope at some point in the day, and based on a general consensus of my polling I derived the time of this mass: 9am. At this point I was on a mission. Another guard mentioned a ticket that I needed to have if I wanted to get in, and sent me outside to the "bronze doors" to ask about it. When I got outside I asked the post office (yes, there's a post office inside St. Peter's Square right outside the basilica) and they told me I had to go back inside to the "bronze doors" to get my free ticket, which meant waiting in line again to get back in. So I did. Then I asked at the infamous bronze doors and they told me there were no more tickets left. Ay caramba. But don't worry, the story is just getting started.


play-by-play action: 
On Sunday morning I leave our hostel at 6:30am and arrive at St. Peter's Square at 7am, just in time to start lining up. At this point, based on the extremely clear information I had received the day before, I am thinking that there is mass a 8am. Since I don't have a ticket for the special mass at 9am (I think), I figure I would at least get in for the earlier mass and then maybe hang around outside afterwards. My friends told me the day before that I should look for ticket scalpers to try to get in. Not sure that works for church, but at least it was a thoughtful idea. 
So, I'm standing in line and it's almost 8am. There's a large Italian family gathering in line right in front of me, and I see that they all have tickets. I ask one of the guys if he knows if there are any more tickets anywhere, and he replies "Family only." Based on his few others words of English, it becomes apparent to me that there will be priests being ordained during this mass and that his tickets are for the family of these to-be-priests. Which doesn't offer me any hopeful prospects. A little after 8am the line starts moving to go through the metal detectors and enter the church, and I still don't have a ticket. 
I'm almost to the metal detectors when I turn to my left and see a little nun dressed in her habit standing there clutching a ticket. So I decide I have nothing to lose. I ask her about the ticket, but she doesn't appear to understand English or Spanish. Then she motions for me to stay still, turns around and signals to a friend located slightly farther back in the line. The friend (also a nun, I assume) doesn't say a word, but reaches into her bag, pulls out an extra ticket, and passes it up. This is my ticket. I say "Grazie, grazie" (thank you, thank you), pretty much the only Italian I know (and I'm not even sure this nun was Italian) and almost start to cry. They are letting people in without tickets, but they had to stand along the sides of the church where you can't see anything, behind walls that blocked off the center. But thanks to my new best friend I now have a ticket, so I get a complementary missalette and an excellent seat. I suppose ticket scalping for mass with the Pope works within the economy of God's love.
That is the story of how I got to go to mass with Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. 


Anything else I talk about now will be overshadowed by the fact that I somehow went to mass with the Pope, so I'm just going to leave you with some pictures and say that my last trip outside of Spain for the semester was a phenomenal one. I can't believe this was real life!

St. Peter's Basilica

Michaelangelo's Pieta

Pope Benedict XVI

Papal Blessing in St. Peter's Square

Pantheon

Trevi Fountain

Spanish Steps (under all the people)

Colosseum

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood :)

I think the rain is gone for good - I put on shorts today for the first time this semester! This past week has been awesome. One of the girls in our group is playing in an orchestra here, so on Friday night we went to see her concert. It was fantastic! Music makes life so much brighter. In one of my classes we had an assignment to find a song by a Spanish artist (in Spanish, of course) and bring it into class so we could learn some colloquial lyrics. Easy, right? However, there was one stipulation: the song could not be about love. It is incredibly difficult - in any country - to find a song that's not about boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses/heartbreak/fillintheblankallthingslove. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it would be nice to see some more tunes with deep, meaningful themes....like traveling, or food. Food is good. I'm kind of hungry. Which reminds me...after the concert we went to dinner at a restaurant called Hola Pizza Metro. Hola=Hello. Pizza=Pizza. Metro=Meter. The idea is to order a meter of pizza (3.3 feet), which takes up the length of the table! But our group of ten didn't want a meter of pizza - we wanted two meters of pizza. Slightly disgusting, but oh so delicious.

(My homework song: "No Dudaría" by Rosario Flores (click to link to video on YouTube)

La Capilla de la Mano de Santa Teresa

To continue my mission of a new church every weekend, on Saturday I went to mass at Nuestra Señora Regina Mundi. It was a very modern church, without the super old Gothic cathedral feel that so many of the churches have here. At the beginning of mass two giant white projection screens were lowered on the wall behind the altar, and throughout the mass they displayed announcements and lyrics - lyrics for the fun, contemporary music provided by a small, young choir and a guitarist. It was phenomenal! I made sure to thank them after mass, because it totally made my day.

Paella! (taste test)

Sunday was a day trip to Ronda, a smaller city in southern Spain a couple of hours west of Granada. It's a place rich with history of bandoleros (think Robin Hood), resistance to Napoleon, and bullfighting. The Plaza de Toros (bullfighting ring) there is supposed to have the largest ring in the world, and the standards for bullfighting originated in the city a couple of centuries ago as well. There's also a chapel called "La Capilla de la Mano de Santa Teresa" (Chapel of the Hand of Saint Teresa), named quite appropriately, because it actually does contain the hand of Saint Teresa of Ávila. While we were there, we also saw some of a Catholic youth group-type concert in the park and a group of Spaniards making ginormous portions of paella. Paella is a traditional Spanish rice dish that also contains veggies, sausage and seafood. It's delicious!

View of the landscape in Ronda, with the Sierra Nevadas in the background

Plaza de Toros

Puente Nuevo (New Bridge), built in 1751. I guess it's new-er than the others. 

If you are on a bus in Spain chances are this is your view out the window - olive trees are EVERYWHERE  

My host family likes to watch a TV program after dinner called "Hormiguero", which is usually pretty entertaining. They have had lots of  famous guests such as Daniel Radcliffe and José Mota (Spanish comedian/impersonator-check out his "Survivorman" rendition), and last night the star of the show was Rafael -a singing icon in Spain who looks about sixty years old. But somehow he's also had a sixty-year career. There's cosmetic surgery in there somewhere, for sure. Anyway, they played a game on the program in which a random person would sing a Rafael song from some point in his career and he would have to figure out which song it was. The catch - the person singing was a non-Spanish speaking individual from China who was listening to the song through headphones, attempting to regurgitate the melody and lyrics. Somewhat awful, yet very funny. Awfully funny.

At the request of one of our professors back at Bucknell, a few of us here Skyped with sixth and seventh grade students from the states to tell them about our experience and answer questions about studying abroad, Spain, etc. Before then, I hadn't taken the time to realize how much I've learned about Spanish, Spain, the world and life in general. Thinking back to my first years learning Spanish, I can remember being a little lost when my teachers talked about tapas, bullfighting, and flamenco. Now, having seen the culture first-hand, I can appreciate it so much more. I never, ever thought I would be in Spain blogging about how much I know about the country,  but what do you know - I'm here!  Life has a way of being wonderfully surprising sometimes.

"The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly on the Plain"

Recent breaking news here in Spain: The king broke his hip. While in Africa. On a safari. Hunting elephants. The king, who in reality has no true political authority, but whose "modest" salary is derived from taxes. He is also immune from prosecution under the law. So, for example, if hunting elephants was illegal, well, it wouldn't be for him! Oh, modern monarchies.

In addition to some rain that has plagued a good chunk of April (although the worst is in the mountains, not the plain), I have two new Spanish cities to add to the list: Córdoba and Barcelona.

Inside the temple/church/mosque/cathedral

The "torre" of the cathedral

 You may have never heard of Córdoba, but it was a hugely important city in the world about ten centuries ago. It was a famous intellectual center, and the Caliphate of Córdoba (an Islamic capital) ruled the Iberian Peninsula and part of northern Africa for about 100 years. The cathedral there, formerly a mosque that used to be a Visigoth Christian church that was originally a pagan temple, is beautiful.

Barcelona, located on the northeast coast of the country, is Spain's second-largest city, and the proud host of the 1992 Olympics. It's also extremely well-known for all of its Antoni Gaudi architecture, including the world-renowned unfinished Sagrada Familia. Construction of the cathedral began in 1882, and there are rumors going around that it will be finished in the next twenty-five or fifty-years. When asked about the long construction period that would surely not be finished in his lifetime, Gaudi famously remarked, "My client is not in a hurry." (Just to clear things up, he was talking about God.)

Work in Progress: La Sagrada Familia

Casa Batlló - Gaudi's house for St. George, built in 1877

  I went to Parroquía de la Concepción for mass there - luckily it was in Spanish. You have to be careful in Barcelona because they speak a lot of Catalán, which is a language similar to Spanish but different enough that I would not be able to understand it very well, especially when spoken. It was a nice little church, with a courtyard housing some chickens and roosters attached to the side. I thought the animals might be a symbol of something; at the cathedral in Barcelona they keep exactly thirteen white geese in commemoration of Saint Eulalia, co-patron saint of the city who was martyred when she was thirteen. So I asked a guy working there. He just looked at me like I was some kind of crazy American tourist, smiled, and said, "No, they're just for decoration." Some things just are, I suppose.
The other patron saint of Barcelona is Saint George, the dragon slayer. We accidentally sort of ran into a marathon (literally - don't ever try to cross the street when thousands of people are stampeding) and saw people holding large dragons as a tribute to the saint. Gaudi also built a house that is supposed to symbolize Saint George slaying a dragon. You have to use your imagination a little bit, but like all of his art it's quite interesting.The local name for the building is the "House of Bones"; the railings on the windows are supposed to be bones, and the roof is supposed to look like dragon scales. Therefore, the cross represents the sword plunged into the back of the dragon.




I'll leave you with a totally random yet somewhat amusing story: if you're working out for swimsuit season (that means you Jim), you'll be able to put a new name to those abs of steel: "una tableta de chocolate", which is basically a chocolate bar. My host mom was telling me that my host dad had a tablet of chocolate when he was young; I wasn't sure what that had to do with our profound conversation about love and marriage until she explained the colloquial phrase. I found that wonderfully ironic somehow, but then I realized that a six-pack probably isn't the most appropriate name for a group of muscles either.

Only five more weeks to go here in Spain, but I promise you the adventures are nowhere near close to ending!

Follow the Fellow Who Follows a Dream

Wow - where to begin? For Spring Break last week I went to Morocco, Portugal, and Ireland. I know, this trip didn't make much geographical sense, but when you're planning according to cheap flights and hostels, you can't be too picky. If you don't know what a hostel is, you've probably never been a college student traveling around Europe. Anyway, here you go:

MOROCCO

Located on the northern tip of Africa, and right across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, this country is an entirely different world. I went with a program run by a native Moroccan who lives in Spain, and we took a tour through three cities over the weekend. Spain has a territory on the tip of Africa called Ceuta, which borders Morocco. While we were waiting on the bus at the border, we were watching these guys jumping down from a  part of the wall where there was a break in the fence. When we asked the Spanish photographer with the program what they were doing, he casually explained that they were sneaking into Spain to work because they didn't have legal papers. No big deal.
The first city we explored was Tethuan. We got to see market day in action, which was really cool but also really not glamorous. The people were selling everything from beans to clothes to henna, but there were also lots of dead fish and chickens waiting to be butchered. Morocco is slightly more than 99% Muslim, so we got to see some mosques as well (entrance is prohibited to non-Muslims). The language spoken is Arabic, but the street vendors knew enough words in other languages to get your attention. In our group, we had students from Spain, France, England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Japan, and the United States. One street vendor even knew how to say "bargain" in Swedish!

After Tethuan, we went to Tanger, which is a much more touristy city. Our tour guide was fond of telling us about the American celebrities who had houses in different parts of Morocco; Malcolm Forbes apparently had two houses in Tanger, of which one is now a museum. There are also two American neighborhoods in the city, appropriately named San Francisco and California. On our way out of the city, we rode camels (which were technically dromedaries) and stopped at an outlook by a lighthouse, where you can see both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

The next day, we traveled to Chefchaouen. It was a closed city (no tourists allowed) until 1959, and is apparently adapting very well to the new touristy culture. From a distance the city appears to be all blue and white, and when you get closer you realize that it actually is all blue and white. Five times per year, on Muslim holidays, the inhabitants of the town blue-rinse the buildings, a tradition that is supposedly left over from the former Jewish population. There's a strange mix of somewhat primitive living and a rapidly booming tourist sector. Along the river there are two pavilions where the women go to hand wash all their clothes, but right down the street there are new hotels and restaurants. There is a local currency called the dirham, but euros are also accepted everywhere. The best part about the shops is the bargaining - at first the seller sets a super ridiculously high price, then you set a super ridiculously low price, then you haggle back and forth until you agree on a price that makes you feel so proud of your bargaining skills when in reality it's still way too high. But at least we're boosting their economy, right?

PORTUGAL

Well, I don't really have that much to say about Portugal. We stayed really close to the beach, but the weather didn't exactly cooperate. So we ate lots of food, including the local favorite Chicken Piri-piri, and tried to soak up a few rays of sunshine in between bouts of rain. One day it was chilly but somewhat sunny, and I really wanted to swim, so I jumped in the frigid pool while everyone looked at me like I was crazy. But I didn't have as much Park Shark left in me as I thought, so that swim lasted all of ten seconds. Oh, well. At least I got to put my feet in the ocean a little bit. Now I know to avoid the beach during Semana Santa, or Holy Week. In Spain it has probably rained for a total of two days since January, and this past week was all rain. Apparently it does that almost every year for Semana Santa, severely inhibiting the processions throughout Spain (more on those later).

IRELAND

I still can't believe that I actually went to Dublin! We were only there for two days, but I loved it. The people there were incredibly friendly and helpful, and the Irish accent just made them seem more happy. One of my travel buddies burned her fingers pretty badly on a straightening iron one morning, so we set out to find some burn salve and band-aids at a pharmacy. When we got to the store, the pharmacist working there opened the ointment, applied it to my friend's fingers, got a band-aid strip and cut it into the appropriate sizes, finished dressing the wound, and equipped us with knowledge and supplies to treat the burns for the next day and a half. It made me proud to be Irish!

Lady Justice

Liffey Bridge (a.k.a. Ha'Penny Bridge)

Our first day happened to be Good Friday, a rare holiday in Ireland when the sale of alcohol is prohibited. Everyone, especially the tourists, seemed to be kind of confused, and nobody really knew what to do with themselves since many restaurants and pubs were closed. We went on a walking tour throughout the city that lasted most of the day. A few highlights from the tour were the Dublin Castle, Trinity College, Christ Church Cathedral, a Viking Settlement (well, sort of), the Dublin Doors, and St. Stephen's Green. I can't help it - there's so much information about these places that I just have to share a little. At the castle, there's a statue of Lady Justice; she has her back to the city, has her sword unsheathed and raised, and is holding a scale that is unbalanced. Nothing about her says "justice" (although the tipped scale is supposedly due to rainfall). Trinity College has plenty of interesting and crazy rules on the books, some of which students dare to challenge. One student showed up at his exams in a full suit of armor, riding a white horse, and demanded a free meal as per an old rule on the books. The administrators had no option but to hand over the meal, but the next day they intercepted him on his way to class and fined him for not bringing a man to watch his horse during the exam, which is also a rule. A computer generated image of the library there was also used in Star Wars and Harry Potter. Sounds like a fun place to go to school!

Christ Church Cathedral

Famine Memorial

The Protestant Christ Church Cathedral is where the mummified heart of St. Lawrence was kept until its theft a few weeks ago. Apparently one of the most photographed pieces of art in the building is a stuffed mouse being chased by a stuffed cat; two animals that had been found clogging an organ pipe, now dubbed the "Tom and Jerry" of the cathedral. On to the Viking settlement...it actually existed, and had been buried in mud during a flooding of the Liffey River. But instead of preserving history, the city decided to build office buildings on top of it. So now there are stones set into a plaza that outline parts of the settlement. You're probably wondering why the doors of Dublin are noteworthy. It's actually very simple: when many Georgian homes were built a few hundred years ago they all had the same exterior, so in order to set themselves apart the homeowners painted and decorated the doors. The concept of the Dublin Doors has just become famous in the past fifty years or so, but it's already on postcards everywhere! St. Stephen's Green is an absolutely beautiful park that borders the shopping district; at the entrance to the park there is also a memorial to the potato famine.

P.S. I Love You bridge

On our second day in Dublin, we opted to go on a tour of the Irish countryside. We saw the fields where Braveheart was filmed and the bridge from P.S. I Love You, as well as Bono's house (well, the gates, anyway), Guinness Lake, and dolphins jumping in the Bay of Dublin. There is also a beautiful area that contains a graveyard and the remnants of St. Kevin's Monastery. Here we were shown a yew tree, which was the source of the original English longbow, and an elder tree (as in Harry Potter's hollow elder wand).

I also went to Easter Vigil mass at St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin, celebrated by the archbishop of Dublin, which was fantastic. The music was phenomenal; I especially enjoyed the Hallelujah Chorus as the closing hymn. Attending my first English-speaking mass in over three months was somewhat refreshing, but I was slightly confused when they started praying the Our Father in Gaelic. Gaelic is actually on all the street signs in the city and taught in the schools. The Irish language is alive and well in Dublin!

Guinness Lake

About the Semana Santa processions...like I said before, many of them were rained out. Granada is definitely the place to be to see them, though. Starting on Palm Sunday and ending on Easter Sunday, the people of Granada take to the streets to be part of this religious tradition that dates back to the sixteenth century. Different parishes have their own "tronos" (or floats, for lack of a better word); it takes about forty people (called "costaleros") to carry each one, and they are all adorned with candles, gold, and statues. The processions can last up to eight hours and include "penitentes" or "Nazarenos" - people who walk as a form of penance. They wear special clothing, as you can see in the picture, as a way of hiding their identity. With the robes and "capirotes" (the tall hats) you can't tell how tall, short, thin or fat they are. The processions have created a massive tourist attraction out of a religious aspect of Spanish folklore. Right before Semana Santa, I went to a flamenco show of the Passion of Jesus. It was sort of like Mel Gibson meets flamenco - very dramatic.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my adventures galavanting around Africa and Europe! For some reason, throughout the whole trip I couldn't stop singing "Look to the Rainbow" in my head (it's a great song from one of my piano books at home). So I've decided to make it the theme song for the trip. It's quite inspirational, and very Irish!

"Look, look, look to the rainbow.
Follow it over the hills and stream.
Look, look, look to the rainbow;
Follow the fellow who follows a dream."

It's bath time!

Entrance to the baños. Under "Hammam", the plaque reads "Bañate en la historia"
(Bathe yourself in history)

Prepare to experience the ultimate cultural immersion: los Baños Árabes (Arab Baths) here in Granada. Since Granada was the last stronghold of the Arab people in Spain, they have had a significant cultural impact in the area. Centuries ago, the public baths, or "hamman" served as social gathering spots as well as places to be spiritually and physically cleansed; private baths existed as well. This concept is essentially adapted from the Roman hot baths that were found all over the Roman Empire. The "Bañuelo" here in Granada is the most culturally significant, as it is truly authentic (although non-functional). To get the full experience, a group of us went to the modern version, which is quite spa-like. In a silent, dimly lit environment with relaxing music in the background, bathers can enjoy three separate pools ("baths"): hot, temperate, and cold, in addition to the sauna, masseuses, and tea. I highly recommend this to anyone who comes to Granada - purely for the sake of understanding the culture, of course. 

Besides the baths, the Arab influence here is very prominent. We learned about a major religious debacle in class last week, dating back to the 1500s, that I found absolutely fascinating (sorry, I'm kind of a nerd). The Moorish Granada fell to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, and by the early sixteenth century the Arabs were being severely repressed. In an effort to improve the dire situation, two Arab intellectuals, who also served as translators for the Catholic Monarchs, "discovered" a series of lead tablets and relics in Granada. These books included the story of Cecilio, the name they gave to the blind man healed by Jesus (note the play on words: "caecus" is Latin for blind), and the "relics" included his bones, etc. According to this story, Cecilio was an Arab man, and was also accompanied by eleven other Arab "disciples" of Christ. Basically, this was an attempt to appease the Catholics by saying, "Look, our ancestors helped found your religion. So please don't outlaw our language, religion, food, and clothing." It didn't really help the whole oppression thing; the Arabs were expelled from the region a few years later. Nevertheless, many people in Granada believed in the books. It wasn't until 1682 that they were officially condemned by the Pope. The relics were not declared fake, however, and Saint Cecilio - supposedly the first bishop and founder of the archdiocese of Granada - is the patron saint of the city. Several statues of him throughout the city have been "censored" (the arm that was holding the lead tablets is mysteriously missing), but every February there is a grand festival on "St. Cecilio's Day".  Oh, the mysteries of history.


The lead tables were returned to Granada in 2000 and are housed in the Abadía del Sacromonte, which is chock full of culture, religion and history. There is a series of underground chapels, connected by tunnels carved out of the hard, rocky hill. ("Sacro"=holy, "monte"=mountain; "Sacromonte=holy mountain). In one of these caves s is a magic rock! Upon hearing this, one of the guys in our group immediately went up and touched it. Then the tour guide told us that if you touch it you will supposedly be married within a year. The guys who touched it literally ran away, and the rest of the group soon followed.  Not to worry, though, closer to the exit of the tunnels, there is another stone to bless the rocky marriages (pardon the pun) in case a divorce is on the horizon. One legend says it will cause your husband to disappear within the year. You can always count on the magic rocks to come to the rescue.

Entrance to the Abadía del Sacromonte

Just out of curiosity, I went to mass this weekend at - you guessed it - la Iglesia de San Cecilio. Surpisingly, the statue of Saint Cecilio on the front of the building portrays him holding a book that suspiciously resembles something of a lead tablet....anyway, I really enjoyed mass. On Friday night I went to stations at Nuestra Señora de Perpetuo Socorro, which was awesome - they even passed out a song sheet to sing a couple verses for each station! I sort of accidentally went to two masses before, though. I stopped by another church on the way there to see if they had stations, but mass started so I couldn't leave. Then I went to Nuestra Señora de Perpetuo Socorro but was early for stations, and they had mass right before. On Saturday when I went to San Cecilio I got there early and there was a rosary group praying in front of the exposition of the blessed sacrament. I'm not sure if it's impeccable timing on my part or the fact that you're bound to run into some kind of church service in this land of abundant iglesias, but I'm leaning toward the latter.

Iglesia de San Cecilio (looks like this statue escaped the censorship)
At the top of the picture is the Latin phrase "domus dei et porta coeli"
(the house of God and the gate of heaven, according to google translate)

Life is quite busy now. I just finished a week of exams, started volunteering at a local preschool (I thought I was getting good at Spanish until I tried to converse with 2-year-olds) and am now preparing for our spring break trip next week. But I'm never too busy to appreciate life, especially while I'm walking through the city. I was coming back from mass on Saturday evening and passed a musician playing the accordion on a corner. Then a guy came running up to him in a hurry and asked him to play "La Cucaracha", which, as you may know, is a traditional Mexican song (with mostly terrible lyrics but a catchy melody). "How random," I thought, until I actually saw the cucaracha (cockroach) - a guy standing on the sidewalk in a giant cucaracha costume. At that point it wasn't random, just strange. I have no explanation. ¡Así es la vida en España!