Mi familia española

I can officially say that I am now living in Granada after spending two weekends here. My Spanish has perfected and I've done many fun activities with my Spanish friends and family.

I have a friend here named Marta, who I met through a program called Intercambio. The program matches up a local student and a foreign student so they each can practice speaking in a different language. For example, when Marta and I meet, we begin by speaking about an hour in English and finish in Spanish. I think this is a much better way to learn a language than in a classroom. 

Last Saturday, Marta invited me over to her house to eat with her family, which ended up being a super fun day. We started by going to a little market type thing (I'm not sure how to describe it) where they were selling all types of clothing items for verrry cheap. She helped teach me clothing vocabulary, which was very helpful for the quiz I had last week. Afterwards, we went to her house where I met her family, ate lunch with them and soaked in the last bit of warm sun for the year. Her family is so welcoming and hospitable, definitely got a little bit of a family-fix. We ended our day by seeing a movie, of course it was in Spanish, but surprisingly I understood the majority of what they said. Needless to say, I can sum up my day by saying I practiced my Spanish and didn't even get exhausted from speaking so much (which has happened multiple times here).

Friday, I spent the day with my host family, Elisa (host mom), Ela (sister), Antonio and David (nephews). We went to Ela's house for lunch, then went to Antonio's soccer game. Holy guacamole, those six year olds can play... better than me I think. It was a day to remember, Antonio won his first game, and David fell off a retaining wall right onto his arm. We thought at first it was broken, so I babysat Antonio while they took David to the hospital. Fortunately, it wasn't broken, just bruised and stiff. 

Sorry for more text than pictures, didn't take too many this week. Until next time!

Madrid, Spain

 My flight back from Paris landed in Madrid, so I figured I might as well stay there for a night so I could see Madrid. It is a beautiful city, much larger and more modern than Granada, but quite dirty due to the city worker strike. All the city workers, specifically those that clean up the city, happened to be on strike the week I was there, super convenient. As a result, all the streets and plazas were full of trash, quite disgusting, but when ignoring the trash, the city is beautiful!

 This plaza, called Plaza Mayor, is the center point of 6 different streets.

 Madrid is full of street entertainment.

The Royal Palace.

Madrid's Cathedral.

 It wouldn't be a traditional European city without a cathedral.

Plaza de España

 The statues are of Don Quijote and Sancho Pancho, two famous characters in Spanish literature.

 Debod Temple

 My second day in Madrid, I went to a huge park, called Retiro Park. It was amazingly beautiful and relaxing, filled with flowers, grass, trees, fountains, statues, lakes, etc.

 Not to mention the glass palace located in the center.

Thanks for reading!

Paris, France

I met Marina in Paris last weekend for the start of my second ten day break from school. Of course, we started our trip with another bike tour with Fat Tire Bike Tour, an organization I would suggest to go to if you're ever in the cities of London, Paris, Barcelona or Berlin. Saturday, we basically just did the bike tour and wandered around Paris just seeing what cool things we came across.

 This gold-domed church (yes the dome is actually made of real gold) was built by King Louis XIV. He wanted a church for himself, which he only used four or five times, makes sense right? Anyways, Napoleon's tomb is inside.

 This is Paris' famous bridge. (No, the gold on top is not real.) I'm actually not for sure why this bridge is so famous, but I think because of it's beauty and location. This is the bridge all brides go to for their pictures, and yes, we did see a couple.

 Paris is filled will many beautiful monuments and gardens. Besides the people being scary, this city is truly romantic with many different places to find a bench and hang out: gardens, fountains, monuments and green areas.

 As close to Fall as I could find in Paris.

      Le Louvre museum, probably one of the most famous museums in the world. Our tour guide told us that if you switched pieces every 30 seconds it would still take you over 4 whole days to see every piece of art inside. Pretty spectacular.

 

And of course, the Eiffel Tower.

 This was the first military school. Centuries ago, only the noble people were allowed to be in the military, but that obviously didn't work out too well after they realized all the nobles were dying. So they opened this military school that anyone could attend.

 This was a military hospital for wounded soldiers to go to if they didn't have family or friends to take care of them. Also, this ended up being the first public health care facility in France (maybe even Europe if I remember correctly).

 The patio inside the military hospital.

 Being as mature as we possible can get in Paris.

 Left: one of the light posts on the famous bridge. 

Right: the memorial of the unknown soldier, located in the center of a five lane round-about.

 The Eiffel Tower was a million bazzillion times prettier at night.

 Sunday, we started our day by visiting Notre Dame. We did go inside, but I did not take any pictures because there was mass in process. Pictures cannot possibly show how huge this building actually is.

 The bridge with the locks of looooove.

Standing in front of Le Louvre.

 We did go inside Le Louvre, but it was so crowded and we got bored pretty quickly, so we did not stay very long.

 Taking pictures of people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. I think some people actually forgot to look at it.

 Just hanging out with my best friend in Paris, no big deal.

 We climbed to the top of this church on the outskirts of the city. We sat on the steps, looked over Paris, drank a beer, listened to this guy sing and play guitar, and watched a guy doing crazy tricks with a soccer ball (Marina has those pictures).

 Marina left on Monday, but I still had the afternoon and evening by myself. I thought that it would be too expensive to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but since Zak was persistent that I couldn't go to Paris and not go to the top of the tower, I thought I'd go see how much it costs to climb it. Ended up only costing 3.5euros to climb the stairs, of course the elevator is much more expensive. So I did it!

 I think I'm going to photoshop Marina in.

 There was still this much farther to get to the tippy top. It was only accessible by elevator and a fortune, so I skipped out.

 Just a few beautiful views from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

 At night, they turn on these flashing lights for a few minutes. Just beautiful!

I left Paris early Tuesday and spent two days in Madrid. Post to come soon!