So here we are! Hope your holidays are being celebrated well. My personal favorite is New Year's, and this year I'm going to Philadelphia's famous Mummers parade. Thousands of Mummers march down Broad Street, from South Philly to Center City, wearing elaborate costumes and accompanied by string bands. It's one of Philly's longest standing traditions, and I've only been once before, so I'm excited to go again.

It's been a very weird adjustment period since coming home from Spain, where I spent 4 months. I came home sick and so was cranky for a while. Every thing I say starts with "In Spain..." or "This one time in Granada..." and I'm overwhelmed by the number of people who speak English. I've kept in touch with all of my friends, including my intercambio buddy (a boy I met in Spain who is learning English; we helped each other improve), and so that's helped to make this easier. Still, I cannot wait to graduate and get a job that allows me to move around, experience new places, and return to Granada...

My advice to you-- Study abroad! No matter where you want to go, just explore somewhere new, new people, a new way of life.

Christmas decorations in Granada

By our grandparents' Christmas tree with my sister in Devon, PA

Posted by Nikki Gleason at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When people found out I was coming to Spain, the wittier of them would whip out an "Hola" or "Olé." But the true meaning of 'olé' was a bit lost on me. An interjection with what significance? A word brought into the American culture has what weight in its own? In the way that my Spanish professors here drop a couple of English expletives in class because they have no significance to them, the way I have heard Americans use "olé" was a bit the same.

So anyway, I finally found the appropriate outlet for the word "olé." A bunch of the kids from my program and I went to a flamenco show. We trekked through the rain to the venue, tucked away in the Albaizin. The wall on the back of the stage was made of glass, and so we could clearly see the Alhambra as a woman exuded the emotion of the song through her feet, body, and facial expressions, as a man played some crazy tunes on his guitar, and as two other men crooned in only the way flamenco signers can. And after every particularly intense dance sequence or song, the crowd would shout "¡olé!"

The rest of my life is being spent sort of studying for finals, hanging out with every person I have met here, prematurely missing my Spanish parents and dog (and roommate and friends and intercambio buddy, etc). I won't write again until I'm back in the States and will probably try to convince all of you to study abroad/live in Granada during your lives. But until then, I'm gonna go grab another café con leche.

Posted by Nikki Gleason at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Córdoba, Sevilla, and Las Alpujarras are three terrifically different places, and I happened to visit all three in a week and a half or so. The STHM student in me was able to observe more keenly all the stuff the city governments and tourism bureaus use to bring in tourist money-- signs, fast food, the cleanest city streets you've ever seen.

Córdoba at one point (somewhere around the 10th century) was the largest city in Europe, or perhaps even the world. Today it's fairly moderate and is home to an insanely beautiful mosque, which started to be built in the 700s, and also to the Alcázar, a 14th century hangout of the Christian kings who took over the city and turned the aforementioned mosque into a cathedral.

Please note in this picture the bottommost sign... Burger King takes prominence to the world famous mosque (Mezquita). Kind of interesting.

Sevilla, much bigger than Córdoba, is the cleanest city I have ever seen. There's no denying it was a beautifully packaged combination of romance and modernism, perfect for tourists, but it definitely was packaged. Still, we had a ton of fun, enjoying the park, Parque Maria Louisa, and visting its Cathedral, the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world and the 1st largest Gothic building. There you can take an audio tour in about 10 different languages.

In the Plaza de España, many Spanish cities are represented by beautiful paintings. Alyssa, Bethany, and I took a picture in front of Granada's painting.

Lastly, all the kids in my program ventured to a couple different towns in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, Las Alpujarras, to celebrate Thanksgiving. In Trevélez, the highest town in Spain, we visited (for lack of a better name) a ham house. There wasn't really that much else going on in Trevélez, or in Pampaneira, the other town we visited. But we had a lot of fun trekking around the mountain and enjoying a quiet Thanksgiving together. The next morning we woke up to feet of SNOW and so drank lots of Cola Cao (Hot chocolate) and played Spanish Cranium until our bus could manage the roads.

Evan in the ham house. Hahaha

This is a bridge from the Roman era (1400- or 1500-something). Below the bridge was a flour mill.

Now, though I hate to think about it, I'm down to 10 days here in Spain. I've got a ton of work to do, not including finals, a bunch of Christmas presents to buy, and too many places that I still want to check out in Granada.

Good luck to you guys on finishing up your semesters!

Posted by Nikki Gleason at 4:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)