Buenas tardes!

I can't believe how fast time is going by here! We only have 8 days of school this month. Next week we have Feria de Abril, then one more week of classes, and then finals week. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was just receiving my rooming assignment to stay here!

Last Monday we went over to Emily's intercambio's apartment for dinner with her other Spanish friends. We enjoyed paella (delicious) and hung out for a while, we were practicing our Spanish and they wanted to practice their English. One of them also knows French, and she taught me a few sentences in French, but she said it was difficult because she had to think of it in French, then translate it back into Spanish and English to teach it to me. Her friends were impressed that we were speaking French to each other!

This past weekend was pretty great! On Thursday night, I experienced my first real Spanish futbol game! It was Sevilla vs. Zaragoza, and we won 3-0! Before the game, 2 of our friends that live really close to us came over and met us at our house to get ready and met everyone else at the stadium for the game. The game was really fun, and it reminded me of being at an OSU game a little bit! Everyone was chanting and singing the whole time for Sevilla. It was great!

The next day ISA took us on our last excursion to Cordoba and Granada.  We walked through the little streets in a cute little part of town, visited the Great Mosque of Cordoba, and had tapas and icecream before heading out to Granada, where we spent the rest of the weekend. I LOVED Granada!! My first thought when I got there was that it reminded me of Sevilla a little bit, but there were a lot hills and mountains also.  It was quite a bit colder in Granada too, and after the first day it pretty much rained the whole time.

Cordoba

The first night, we went to see the "viewpoint," where you can see the Alhambra and the rest of the city on top of a mountain. After that, we went to a Flamenco show. We all sat around in a circle, which was great because we could all see the dancers in the middle of us. We saw about 6 of them, and they were all great to watch! We wandered around Granada for a little bit, got some Kebabs, which are really famous in Granada, and found some interesting things, like a bachelor party where everyone was dressed up in the streets like Romans doing different things, a girl dancing with fire, etc. Eventually it started raining and we went back to our hotel.

at the viewpoint

flamenco show

The next day we visited the palace and gardens of the Alhambra in Granada. It was raining pretty much the whole day, but we got lucky and found someone selling umbrella hats outside the entrance! I think they made for some great pictures. I wish we could have seen the gardens during the spring, in one of the pools you are supposed to be able to see a perfect reflection of the building inside, but since it was raining and cloudy, I didn't get to see that :(

Alhambra

Umbrella hats!!!

OSU girls at the alhambra

After the Alhambra, we went and got tapas. The great thing about Granada was they had free tapas if you order a drink! So you could order a drink and get a huge thing of noodles (chinese tapas..glorious) for only 2 euro! Perfect! We went to some little shops and explored, but decided to go back to the hotel and hang out because it was cold and rainy outside. We rested, hung out, had dinner, and went out for tapas at 1am, and then went out! The next day was rainy and cold again, but we ventured out for more chinese tapas, kebabs, and icecream (i'm on a diet). Luckily Sevilla was warm and dry! A lot of the trip I kept thinking how much I liked Granada and that I would like to visit it again, but then as soon as I got back to Sevilla, I changed my mind and decided I could stay there forever instead. Either one!  Here are just some pretty pics of Granada: