so some more cultural things im learning from my sweet intercambios. they dont really celebrate christmas here. they do, but its not as big as our christmas, which i thought it was bigger. all they do is have dinner with the family on christmas eve. the 5th of january (wow, january 5th is really what i meant to say, just thinking in spanish...ha) is three kings day. and thats their equivelant to christmas. 20 years ago, papa noel, aka santa clause, didnt exist in spain. he does now thanks to coca cola! but on three kings day, the kids go to this one spot in the city to 'see' the three kings, and while they are there someone puts their presents under their bed. and when they come back, the three kings left them their gifts. very interesting..

today we taught perry the phrase 'holy cow' and he taught us the phrase 'el mundo es como un pañuelo' the world is like a kleenex. this is their equivelant to 'small world' like when you see someone you know in a random place, or someone you know knows someone else you know and you didnt know it. haha im sure you all understand.

perry gave erica and i a gift last time we met. its a small button that says 'habla bien, habla andaluz' which means, speak well, speak andaluz...which is the province? granada is in, andalucia. aka, the lisp, and the dropping of the s and the d in words. basically hes saying that we are picking up not only the spanish accent (which is not like the mexican accent we are taught in the states) but the andalucian accent too.

im starting to realize very quickly how much im going to miss my friends here. not only will i miss the people in my program who ive gotten really close to, but even more so the spanish friends ive made. chances are slim, but better, that ill see my american friends again, but realistically i probably wont ever see perry again after these next three weeks. its a very weird feeling to have, seeing as i see him three or more times a week while im here, which is really more than i see most friends at home. weird..

anyway, big weekend ahead. turkey dinner tonight! happy thanksgiving by the way! and some people are putting together an american football game tomorrow, woohoo! and arabic baths, renting motos. and most importantly...the barcelona v madrid soccer game. perry invited erica and i to go with him and his finace to a bar to watch the game. someone compared this game to the superbowl, and someone else said every time barcelona and madrid play eachother, its called 'el partido del siglo' the game of the century. im rootin for barca!

i hope everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving, ive realized more this year than ever how thankful i am for everything/everyone/every situation that ive ever been in. love you and miss you!! hasta pronto! see you soon!

written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 26, 2009 from Granada, Spain
from the travel blog: Granada
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the weekend started off on thursday, thanksgiving, although we did have class, weird.. we had an intercambio with perry, and we all know how much i love perry! so that was a good start.
then our program set up a reeeeallly nice dinner for us at a restaurant, one of the very very few in granada that serve traditional thanksgiving food on thanksgiving...some wine, turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, and...blueberries? ha, but it was delicious. then for dessert we got pumpkin flan! yummyyy
afterward just about everyone in our group who was at the dinner went out together. we were walking around looking for a place to go, a pack of about 30 americans, and a bartender outside of a bar offered to give us all one free drink if we went in, so the empty bar quickly became very full. sadly, this was one of the first times i hung out with several people in our group, how did that happen?? but we all had a lot of fun

on friday a group of my close girlfriends here went to the arabic baths. they had 7 baths, basically 6 hot tops, but pool size-ish, and one cold pool. they also had a tea room. so we hung out and relaxed for a while, then got a massage. that was so much fun and a great change of pace. its nice to be in a relaxing setting where we can just sit and hang out together. that night we went to my friend sarah's apartment. her home stay is set up a little differently. her and her roommate have their own apartment, and their senora lives in the apartment next door. so cool. so for dinner we made grilled cheese sandwhiches, YUM! and we watched baby mama (THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!!!) while eating popcorn and m&ms. it felt like home.

saturday we went to the Sierra Nevada. unfortunately, yes, unfortunately, there was NO SNOW! sad day. i was looking forward to making a tiny snowman in the mountains, oh well. but we had the whole day to ourselves with nothing planned. and since there is no snow, none of the skiing stuff was open, so me and a few friends hiked to the 'top' aka about as far as we could make it in the amount of time we had, then came back down. it was so beautiful. we all had a good time. when we got to the bottom we had the best hot chocolate i have ever tasted. tasted like a hershy bar melted and put in my cup. yum
saturday night was the best night of my life, no joke. although i think its one of those things where i can describe it as much as i can, but no one will ever understand it unless they were there. perry told erica and i to meet him and plaza nueva because him and mariola had a suprise for us. they took us up near the alhambra for tapas and a flamenco show. (just a side note, mariola used to be much, much better at spanish than perry, now perry is much, much better than mariola, and he gives full credit to erica and i, how cool!) once we sat down at flamenco mariola leans over and says 'this is not suprise yet'
four people came out, two on drums, one on guitar, and one singer. behind them was this giant wall about the size of a movie screen. right as they began to play, a big..blind? shade? type thing started coming up revealing the 'wall' behind them. turns out to be a window. once i realized it, i was like wow..this is going to be a great view of granada. no. i was wrong...BAM right there was the alhambra all lit up. SO beautiful. never in my life have i seen something so beautiful. and never in my life have i cried over something that i thought was beautiful. it was one of the many moments ive had here that i just have to think about the life im living right now. do you understand why we love perry so much???

sunday we were going to alquilar motos, but it was raining so i bummed around and did some tarea instead. pardon the spanglish.
but sunday night was the big futbol match! we basically spent our whole weekend with perry. him and mariola invited us to go to a bar with them and mariolas padre to watch the game. so we went to this little completely spanish bar to watch it with them. so typical spain. so much fun. afterward they invited us to their piso. mariola told us that 'when' we come back, we only have to pay for our plan ticket and that we can stay with them. they are so sweet. its making me wonder how on earth i let time go by so fast here, and also how i need to make up for lost time. while at their piso they showed us tons of pictures of the festivals that take place in the spring in granada, including semana santa. every time we bring it up perry says to me 'you! dont cry!' because he knows how sad i am about missing it. GREAT night.

so there it is. the best weekend of my life. filled with great people, food, and fun. of course, it was nothing like i was able to describe, but i did the best i could. i will most definitely be coming back to granada some day.
i still really want to travel more around the world, especially south america, but i know im biased now. if i have the time and money to travel, i know im going to want to come back here...

on another note, im headed to paris for the weekend to celebrate my best friends 21st birthday. who does that...que vida tengo

written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 30, 2009 from Granada, Spain
from the travel blog: Granada
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the next day we took a walking tour of versaille. that was pretty fun, a little rainy. we learned a ton about the 93874289 king louis'. that was actually very intereseting and we had a really great tour guide sooo the next day, we did a walking tour of paris with him.
but before that, we discovered a friend in our hostel room...a mouse, yep, and i asked the hostel guy for a mouse trap and he said. oh..you dont want to kill the hostel pet. funny, not. so we slept with a mouse for the rest of our time in paris.

okay, walking tour of paris, also very interesting. our tour guide is from new zealand and hes been in paris for 6 months and he is so so so intelligent. it was POURING rain so i got my one and only souveneir in paris, a paraagua...an umbrella. woo
k so we saw the fountain that the lady threw her phone into at the end of the movie
we saw the arch de triumph...totally going to butcher the spelling of every french word, we went to a museum that has monet's water lillys, which were spectacular and we also learned that king henry was cremated, but he was put in a box that was put in a box in a box in a box...for 7 times and he was put in this building, but in the ground in the building, so everyone who goes to see him still has to 'bow' to him. so hitler went to see him, but refused to bow to him, so he brought a mirror and looked at him through the mirror, but as he was leaving his thingabob fell out of his hair and instinctively he bent over to pick it up..accidentally bowing to king henry. ha
the last day in paris was liz's 21st birthday. her and i went to the louve, saw the mona lisa, which funnily is about 2 feet tall, and on the wall across from the biggest painting in all of the louvre, there are 35,000 pieces of art in that museum. it would take three weeks of being in the louvre from open to close, looking at each piece of artwork for 10 seconds, to see every piece of art in the museum. SO GIANT! but it was beautiful, i loved it. funny story. liz and i went expecting to pay the 11 euro to get in, and we walk in and are extremely confused when we cant find the place to buy tickets so we just walk in...and for about 20 minutes we were just kind of laughing and wondering how we just walked into the louvre..without paying..and no one stopping us. turns out they're on strike, which we knew, but the museums had been closed, but for some reason they opened it up and just decided not to charge people for the day, que suerte. how lucky.
then we went to the eiffel tower again, but during the day which was cool to see, or to not see...there were massive amounts of fog so we could only see about the bottom half of the tower. kinda funny actually. but this is where my favorite monito picture took place, (get excited sammy!)
then lastly we went to..uhh.. montmontra? its a little area just on the edge of paris. its completely different than paris, small and windy roads and a big hill with a beautiful view of all of paris. we sat and ate a crepe with nutella at the top of the hill at a really cute little cafe then made our way back down, in the midst of a gazillion christmas lights. so beautiful.
and well whatdya know, our flight was too early in the morning, earlier than any transportation was available, so we spent another night in the airport, the worst night ever. not fun. ha.
then liz and i spent the day in madrid on tuesday. we wanted to go to the reina sofia museum to see dali's stuff, but oh what luck, the museum was CLOSED! so we just walked around then headed back to granada.

one week til home. yikes!

written by  Taryn Hawkins on December 10, 2009 from Paris, France
from the travel blog: Granada
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10-you try to flush the toilet by pushing on the top and when that doesnt work you start looking for the string

9-your friends cant understand why you call them 'agua fiestas' when they're tired at 3am

8-you give each of your family members 2 kisses when you step off the plane

7-you actually think about what you are going to wear to class

6-you get extremely hungry at 3pm

5-you eat boring sandwhiches

4-you cant stop saying 'vale'

3-you go unto mcdonalds and demand a cerveza

2-you have to wear 'the patch' for 5 weeks so you dont go through withdrawls from second-hand smoke.

1-you realize you have had the most amazing 4 months of your life and that you see the world differently

written by  Taryn Hawkins on December 11, 2009 from Granada, Spain
from the travel blog: Granada
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this morning we got up and our senora told us our host sister bought liz and i churros for breakfast because its our last sunday en casa. and then our senora started crying because she doesnt want us to leave. bleehhhhh this is the weirdest feeling in the world.

heres the eiffel tower

Big Ben!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x48Nf-XpQvY

written by  Taryn Hawkins on December 13, 2009 from Granada, Spain
from the travel blog: Granada
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