A Little Sun & A Lot of Walking

February 22, 2011 8:53 a.m./3:53 a.m.

The last few days have been pretty busy. Saturday night, I attended the flamenco with some friends from school (they are from Holland, Denmark, and Spain). I liked the music of flamenco but the dancing lady was too over the top and reminded me of my sister’s interpretive dance with the “tree” and the “rock”. It was too dramatic and exaggerated.

I slept in until noon on Saturday and 12:30 on Sunday. I had not gone to bed that late but I guess I was exhausted from all the jet lag. I spent most of Sunday afternoon sitting in the grass in the park studying my Spanish. When the sun was out from behind the clouds, it was pretty warm. When it was behind the clouds, it felt fairly chilly. I found it interesting that it was difficult to locate a patch of grass on which to sit in Granada. There are a plethora of benches in many plazas but grass is hard to come by. Luckily I was able to find a small patch in an area that was not shaded by any buildings. I studied there for several hours and “drank the sun” as they say in Spanish.

Monday, class began at 9 a.m. and finished at 12:30 p.m.. The school had a walk scheduled through the center of the city at 3:00 p.m.. During the time between class and the walk, I had a snack and took a walk around the southern part of the city. I then attended the school’s walk/tour with mi amiga Ida who is from Sweden. After that walk finished, we sat in a large park and did more “drinking of the sun”. We then walked to Spanish Target to get a few things and I returned the apartment of my host family in early evening. All in all, I walked four hours on Monday and all of it in knee high boots with a heels. Ouch. I was so exhausted that, at 8:30 p.m., I was falling asleep while sitting and writing the answers to my homework. That was the first time I’d ever fallen asleep while writing before. I gave up on the homework for the night and just went to sleep.

Today, in addition to regular class, Ida and I also attended an extra lecture on grammar. It was great and cleared up quite a few things. Our teacher, however, distracted me. She was a new teacher and had to be close to 6 feet tall and was a little broad. This is extremely unusual for a Spaniard yet it is our understanding that all of our teachers are from Spain. Women in Spain are not tall like this and not broad. Thus, it was hard to focus on verb usage when I kept trying to figure out where she came from.

After class, Ida and I went to find a café that serves churros with chocolate (for dipping) that was recommended by my dad’s cousin. That was a great recommendation. The churros were very delicious. They tasted similar to elephant ears plus you could dip them in the chocolate. It was a tasty snack but one should not have them often. I think I will call that my supper for the night. All in all, I really didn’t have a long walking day with only 1 hour 45 minutes logged but all of it in comfortable shoes, thank goodness.