The Hills: LC and Lo see naked people

September 16, 2009

3:36 PM (Siesta)

Homestizzle

 

 

It’s been too long since I’ve written, and it’s becoming daunting, so I decided to end my misery and write again. So much has happened. The Spanish adventures are beginning.

 

Since the last entry, in summary, we have done the following: hiked 14 km along the southwestern coast, seen nude people, finished orientation, started classes, spoken Spanish, eaten tapas, and taken pictures. Doesn’t seem like that much, but oh how you are mistaken. I’ll leave out what isn’t important.

 

Cabo de Gata is an area that has a huge national park that includes both land and sea. You can hike for miles and miles and miles on this path that has desert as far as your eye can see to the left, and the Mediterranean for miles to the right. To say it is breathtaking just doesn’t cut it. At 845 AM on Monday morning, after waiting an hour for three girls who got lost walking to our meeting point – not an easy feat considering all they had to do was follow the river a couple hundred feet – (in case you’re wondering, they followed it in the wrong direction) we headed off on probably the MOST nauseating ride imaginable. False. Not the MOST, but ONE of the most nauseating rides ever. We piled off the bus (all 80 Americans) to the beauty of the bright blue Mediterranean and started off on our hike. 

The setting was unbelievable and we actually moved pretty fast considering how many of us there were. We were all relieved to arrive at our first stop, the beach, after a couple hours walking in the hot sun. 

Unfortunately, there were several downsides:

1: The wind was really strong, causing sand to whip up into your face and stick to your arms covered in suncream (that’s how Spaniards say sunscreen).

2. Getting wet in the ocean didn’t help.

3. Everyone who was already swimming there was nude.

4. I had to pee but didn’t realize it until AFTER I got out of the water. F.

5. Putting my socks and shoes back on for the remaining several hours of the hike was DEATH. Sandy, sticky, painful death.

Despite the discomfort in my shoes and everywhere else on my body, we surged on listening to a constant stream of information from our guide who seemed to legitimately know everything there is to know about nature. Take that Jeff Corwin. I was only disappointed when I asked her if there were any rattle snakes around (which I had obviously been looking and listening for the whole time), to which she responded, “Of course, but never so close to the beach!” Damn. Eventually we arrived at beach #2, at which point I was completely out of water, and stayed there for an hour while some decided to swim. I opted to stay dry, avoiding the misery of putting on sandy clothes AGAIN, and enjoyed sitting in the shade, observing the naked, and listening to the water. Some preferred to talk on their blackberries. Puke.

At the end of the day, we arrived at a town whose name I cannot recall, but it looked EXACTLY like Greece. Dinner was awaiting us at a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of town, and we all scarfed it up happily while watching the tv (they somehow had found an Italian channel in Spain), hanging out and wanting to die from sunstroke, dehydration and fatigue. Some people got drunk, so it was a good day.

 

Since then our adventures have been mostly school based, but as my time here turns from days to weeks, I have made some interesting, important, non adventure related observations:

1. This city is obsessed with cleanliness. There are crews of people walking down the streets with brooms all day long, and there is ZERO trash in the streets. In addition, the city washes the sidewalks everyday. Nevertheless, this city as a whole has a major B.O. problem. I don’t know what it is, but it just doesn’t seem acceptable. Moreover, at different times we’ll catch strange whiffs of poop or other similarly bad smells. It really is an anomaly.
2. The sidewalks here are really dangerous. As aforementioned, the city washes the sidewalks everyday and afterwards they are extremely slippery because they are made of tile, not cement. Luckily, we have to be at class every morning at 9 and therefore walk on them directly after the cleansing process. I lose my footing a lot and cuss often on the way to school. Some other sidewalks are really steep and composed of cobblestone, which is dangerous for other reasons. We’ve noticed that the elderly folk here have a whole different level of competency than those at home.
3. Food here is really cheap.
4. German tourists wear their clothing too tight.
5. People in this city eat helado like it’s their day job. There are probably at least two heladerias on any given block.
6. In this city, if you take a word and can add –eria onto the end of it, it’s a shop. Some examples include: heladeria, libreria, papeleria, panaderia, pasteleria, joyeria…you get my gyst.

 

Last week a bunch of us walked up into Sacromonte, one of the three old residential areas in Granada. It is a “gypsy” village, in which the houses are actual caves built into the mountainside. Magical, right?! Wrong. They look just like normal houses, and no one who lives there is even a gypsy. I feel like I was gypped. J. Had to do it.

 

In conclusion, on a more personal note, Sydney and I have been watching WAY too much True Blood for our own good, and are completely addicted to it. We are also in our first week of IES classes, and will begin classes at the university on the 28^th of September. The idea that in the next two weeks some 70,000 students will descend upon this city and that we will have to assimilate and adapt to their way of life is terrifying, but I think we’ll get the hang of it. Both of us are starting to get the hang of speaking Spanish, but that doesn’t mean the discouraging moments have disappeared. Today, after I talked to the doorman for 25 minutes and understood about 7 words, he told me he was speaking slowly for me and that I was really great at Spanish. Discouraging. But things are always looking up! It snowed this week in the Sierra Nevada, and we can see it from our school. Granada is really wonderful.