Sorry I haven’t updated in so long…we went caving in Parrano, which entailed harnessing ourselves so we could climb down the mountian on ladders and then into the actual caves, where some places required us to crawl on our bellies through guano to get to the next chamber…good stuff…

Fall break started last Thursday, and my friends Meghan and Matt are doing a mini-tour through Spain. We started in Seville, which is a city of flamenco and bullfighting and rooftop terraces…The weather was perfect, and one memorable night we sat atop the roof, ate homemade couscous and listened to some other hostel guests jam with their guitars, flamenco style…incredible. We saw the Cathedral (holy crap, is all I have to say) and the juderia neighborhood of Santa Cruz and the bull ring and a flamenco show…the flamenco show was incredible. There was a singer, a guitarist, and 2 dancers. The singer, who could not have been older than 25, sang with such emotion and power that it seemed that his face aged to match the sorrow and intensity of his song. The male dancer was clearly more experienced and i can’t say I’ve ever seen a man’s feet move so fast…

Granada is cheap and permeates the North African influence that ruled it for centuries. Today we saw the Alhambra, which took literally 5 hours, and yesterday was the Albayzin, the old Muslim neighborhood that houses the last mosque in Granada.

Tomorrow is Madrid, and then back to Rome on Saturday night!

last night when nate arrived i had just taken a nap and so we went to eat and had a scary experience at the restaurant–there was this guy at the bar who either had a seizure and fell or fell and hit his head, causing a seizure. his head had cracked and so blood was gushing out, i´m just sitting there in the booth trying not to gag or pass out from the blood and nate, being the good guy and lifeguard he is, went to help. he was trying to tell them to keep him on his side in spanish but the bartender moved him and he hit his head and bled even more. then hte bartender took a knife and tried to put it between the guy´s teeth to keep him from choking on his own blood and vomit and the guy came to and grabbed the knife–it was just a dinner knife but still–and got up and started kind of going after the people standing around, which included nate and me so we kind of ran away and went back later to pay our bill. when we went back, an old man at the bar told us he thought the guy was on drugs or something–i think thats what he said–and that´s why he reacted that way with the knife. it was kind of freaky, but i was proud of nate for helping. we got gelato and then came back to go to bed.

que interesante.

hola a todos,
estoy en espana. after a very very very long day and a half or so of travel i made it safely to barcelona. i got to see some of the german countryside on my way to the hahn airport, and it was beautiful. i had an adventure with my bag on one of the busses, as in, i forgot it and had a little óhmygodwhereismystuffi´mgonnacry moment but i found the driver and he gave me my bag back. it then took me about 15 minutes to find the metro, but after that i found my hostel fine. the whole time i´d been doing really well, feeling really confident about my travel prowess, until that moment with the bag. i had this overwhelming feeling of howcanisurviveineuropeforthenextfourmonths but that has passed.

one of the big differences about the us and here is organization. at home, if a line needs to be formed, it is a line. at the hahn airport there were supposed to be 2 lines, and i guess 2 lines really means mob, because it was just 150 people in a big clump. also, on the ryanair flight it was kind of funny because the head flight attendant was trying to do the safety presentation and he shushed people. that was funny. and when he landed, everyone clapped (it was a bumpy landing).

i slept for a few hours and i´m feeling pretty decent, althoúgh i´m starving. just waiting for nate to arrive before we head out to dinner. ay dios mio, i still can´t believe i´m in europe!