A Taste of Spain: Help me, Ronda

Hello everybody! The main focus of this post will be my exciting day trip yesterday, but we'll safe that for a minute! I finished up my first week of class here in Granada. Overall, I would say it went pretty well! I enjoy all of my teachers and my classes seem interesting and fun...and not too terribly difficult! Tuesday and Thursday I only have two classes (Spanish lit and Grammar) and am finished at one in the afternoon! This leaves a great amount of time for a little exploring (or...pastries) and lunch and siestas! Or something productive like exercising...but maybe not :) I have no classes on Friday, which I could definitely get used to! Although this Friday it wasn't super exciting as I had a stomach virus at the end of this week! After a few days of feeling pretty icky and bummed that Nati's amazing food was going to waste, I am happy to report that I'm back to feeling like my normal, (hungry...) self!

This weekend, my genius friend Alison from Michigan had the brilliant idea of doing a day trip! I loved the idea as soon as she mentioned it to me! There are several good day trip options around Granada, and most are easily accessible by bus or train. We decided to take the train to Ronda (no, I didn't misspell a Beach Boys song in my title), which is about 2.5 hours away by train. I left my apartment at 6:10 to catch a taxi to the train station, where I boarded a 7 AM train with six other girls. This early departure seemed like a good idea when we were making the plans, but obviously we were rather exhausted! We arrived in Ronda at about 9:30. The sun was shining and the weather was absolutely beautiful! Not a cloud in the sky. We walked out of the train station and realized....nobody had a map, we had no idea where in Ronda we were, and we didn't know how to get to anything we wanted to see! Definitely something that will only happen once! It actually wasn't that bad though, we followed some signs to the center of town and got a map! We stopped at a little cafe for, what else, pastries and some much-needed coffee. After munching for a bit, we ventured to the side of the mountain/cliff, where we saw the most gorgeous views ever. I think I could have stared off into that beautiful mountain range for days. Truly breath-taking. We took some pictures and then eventually moved on to find our way to some of the sights of the city.

First, we came upon a huge statue of a bull, which was outside the oldest bullfighting stadium in Spain! A man was standing by the bull statue, and he came up and started talking to us...in English! There were two other older men who would do this to us later on in the day...it seems that they were tour guides who knew English for their jobs. They were all super precious, and every single one of them told us the same thing--Did we know that Mrs. Obama had come to Ronda a couple years ago?? Seriously, they were kind of obsessed with her! Too funny. We then took a walk down to the Old Moorish King's House, a palace with a garden and water mine from the 14th century. The garden was beautiful and the water mine was very unique--we climbed down at least a billion scary and steep steps (in the dark) until we got to a body of water at the bottom! It was unlike anything I had ever seen...I cannot imagine the legs on the person who was assigned to carry the water up and down those crazy staircases everyday!! We were all hungry again (of course) after hanging out at the garden for a little bit, so we ducked into a cute little restaurant for some lunch. After eating and enjoying our especially cute Spanish waiter, we walked down some more steps to go to the Arab baths in Ronda. Again, a very enjoyable sight, especially in the fabulous weather! The baths offered beautiful views of the countryside as well as the town--I will never get tired of seeing a bunch of white house on a hill! We headed back toward town, stopping for some tinto de verano (my favorite drink in Spain by far) and a snack before catching our train back. We had a little bit of time to kill so we walked around a little bit and sat in a plaza near the train station. People kept stopping to talk to us...they were so friendly in Ronda! We left Ronda at about 5:30 and arrived back in Granada around 8...just in time for dinner! As you can imagine, I was beyond exhausted so I ate and just chilled for the rest of the night. Today I did a little homework (little being the key word...although I have kind of forgotten how to do school work!!) and did a little walking around the city. Since most things are closed on Sundays, it seems that Granada natives literally just walk around the city aimlessly! When the weather is nice, it's a custom that I don't mind!

Well, that's about all the exciting news for this update! I'll add some pictures below. I've been doing really well--I was feeling a little culture shocked this weekend though. It suddenly hit me how DIFFERENT everything here is! Not necessarily good or bad, just different. Even the simplest tasks require more effort and planning here. We don't know where to buy the simplest things, because there doesn't seem to be a Wal-Mart in Spain! The language barrier adds to this difficulty. When I was sick, I went to the pharmacy without knowing exactly how to tell the pharmacist what was wrong with me...stuff like this happens every day! I think I have officially ended what they call the 'honeymoon' period of study abroad and moved on to 'culture shock'. Adjusting to all the differences will take a little time, but I know it will be great after that. It's exciting and terrifying knowing that this will be my life for the next 3.5 months. There's even beauty in the scary part though. It's unbelievable that I get to have this experience, so even the hard parts are worth it :)

Special shoutout this post goes to my cousins Nicole and Abby, who turned 12 on Thursday! Happy Birthday, girls...I'll take you to Subway for a BLT when I see you in July (there's no bacon in Spain...I'll have a lot of catching up to do!!)

Love and miss you all so much!!