Granada - Taryn Hawkins
I will spend about 4 months in Granada, Spain. I leave on August 28th and come back December 22nd.

5 weeks...
Woodbury, United States
I just got the Yellow Fever vaccine today, the last of the shots I need for my trip! That's pretty much all I have done to get ready so far...I don't know where/how/when to start packing!!
Right now I am more SCARED than anything! I am looking forward to experiencing a new culture, but I have NO idea what to expect!
written by  Taryn Hawkins on May 29, 2009 from Woodbury, United States
from the travel blog: Granada

panic mode!
Woodbury, United States
I leave in just over two weeks and I am FREAKING OUT! I have not done a thing to pack!
I am trying to make a list of things to do and places to visit before I have to leave Argentina so if anyone has suggestions, feel free to send them my way!
I did receive my home stay information and Liz and I will for sure be living together!! That is very comforting to know. We will be living with a single woman named Monica in the neighborhood Recoleta.
This time, in two weeks from Friday, I will probably be beginning my 12-ish hour flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires!!
written by  Taryn Hawkins on June 17, 2009 from Woodbury, United States
from the travel blog: Granada

H1N1
Woodbury, United States
So I am supposed to be on the plane to Buenos Aires right now...obviously I'm not. We got an email around 3pm yesterday saying that the University we are supposed to go to is shutting down until August due to the Swine flu. We got a call around 7 saying they canceled our flights and won't know anymore until Monday afternoon,other than the earliest they can get us there is the beginning of August... So here I am..all packed and mentally prepared to be gone, and yet I am still here. ha.
So as of now, I refuse to unpack, and I feel like this next month is going to go by soooooooo slow. I literally have nothing to do for a month.
Everyone in our group has so many questions..we don't know if our trip is just going to be cut short a month..which means we get 5 less credits than we are supposed to, not to mention a month less of the experience..or if they'll tack it onto the end..meaning we'll be missing thanksgiving.. or if we'll even get reimbursed for anything..
the big question right now is if we will even be able to go at all. It's just the beginning of their winter so the flu is expected to get much worse in the next couple of weeks. Also, it's looking like if we go we won't be able to get there until a few days after the semester actually starts. oh boy..but until Monday..I was told to "sit tight".
everything happens for a reason...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on July 3, 2009 from Woodbury, United States
from the travel blog: Granada

I guess I need to change the name of my trip...
They canceled our semester. They offered us to go to Granada, Spain, or Salamanca, Spain instead. They leave August 28th and come back in the middle of December. I am seriously considering going to Granada, it all sounds amazing except for the class choices :\ . It is all extremely overwhelming though. We have to let the program know by Friday at the latest. If I choose to go to Spain, I need a visa. So I currently have an appointment for Tuesday in Chicago...meaning I have to fly to Chicago to apply for the visa, and from what I understand, I have to fly back there to get it in 4-6 weeks. Which is cutting it pretty close.
so frustrating...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on July 8, 2009 from Woodbury, United States

Spain!
So I made the decision to go to Granada, Spain. I feel even less prepared for this trip than I did for going to Argentina. I leave tonight to go to Chicago (for the second time since I found out I was not going to Argentina) to pick up my passport and visa. I come back tomorrow night and have about a day to recover, a day to pack, then I'm off to London for the weekend. From London we'll head to Spain.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on August 24, 2009 from Woodbury, United States

Question of the day
London, United Kingdom
Hello all-
i made it to london safe! it has been a very long day in airports and on planes.
it was hard not to giggle at the flight attendant saying to me this morning..'cawfay oh tay for yau madaam' i have been the typical obnoxious american gawking at the new culture.
i ate fish and chips at a barlike place for lunch today. i have mostly been hanging out with the people from MN who were on our flight. most seem very friendly.
london is beautiful! all the buildings look so cool. they drive a lot faster here, we saw a man come about a half an inch from getting hit by a car that came around a corner going about 45 mph. yikes
it was weird seeing people driving on the 'wrong' side of the road, and car!
so my question is, are people supposed to walk on the same side of the sidewalk as the cars in that place drive in the street? it sure seems that way because i feel like i am bumping into everyone on the sidewalk!
tomorrow we have a tour and the rest of the day free, then up at 345 am to catch our flight to Spain.
remember, london is 6 hours ahead of mn right now, and Spain is 7.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on August 29, 2009 from London, United Kingdom

end of london, beginning of spain
Granada, Spain
so the rest of london was amazing. liz and i decided to take our own tour (aka we slept in and missed the planned one) we went to westminster and Covent Garden. both places were spectacular. we saw big ben and parliment which were super cool. we also saw london bridge (is falling down :p) and tower bridge which was beautiful!
the night before we went to picadilly circus for dinner (thanks becky!!) it was a very cool neighborhood. i decided i wish the cities had the tube. SO EASY SO FAST. i loved it.
we got to granada yesterday. we were up at 3am to catch the flight and didnt go to bed til midnight. its been a long couple of days. granada is beautiful. most of the sidewalks are made of marble. i do live with liz, thank god! we share a decent sized room with two twin beds and a giant armour thing. we have to make our beds every morning. haha not my thing, but its alright.
the food so far as been pretty good. i havent been very hungry probably because on top of being in a very different place and culture, i´m sick! yuck. but our host mom refuses to stop feeding us. its just liz and i at the table, she doesnt sit down and eat with us. for every meal so far she has cut up a whole loaf of bread. lets be realistic here. and that is just one of our about five sides. she gave us like a half a pack of deli ham and cheese and this weird apple stuff to put on top of it. and the main course was a potato egg pancake looking thing. here it´s called a tortilla, its kind of like an omelette. it was good, but i cant eat so much. we say we cant eat anymore but she keeps bringing food. i guess its considered rude to spaniards if the host doesnt continue offering food until we get up from the table.
i miss everyone SO much more than i thought i would, and i knew i would a lot. :(
written by  Taryn Hawkins on September 1, 2009 from Granada, Spain

first days of class
Granada, Spain
This was our first week of class that started yesterday. I go to class from 9-1 and half way through we switch professors. Both of my professors are really funny. There are 17 kids in my class. Everyone in my class is from the United States except for one girl is from Japan. We have been doing a lot of get to know you kinds of things and very little actually learning, but I'm sure that will change soon.
Today was the first ever day that I realized how much I appreciate knowing a second language..kinda. Ha I'll explain.
The prof gave us partners to do a get to know you game, I was paired with the girl from Japan. She know zero English. It was SO COOL to be communicating with someone who doesn't know English, and obviously I know zero Japanese. Very interesting. It kind of made me realize the importance of communication...I don't know if that makes sense, but it provoked thought :p
We plan to go to the beach (the Mediteranean coast!) on Sunday. Tomorrow we are hiking up to see the Ahlambra.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on September 4, 2009 from Granada, Spain

Siestas and Fiestas
Granada, Spain
I’ve heard a lot about the siesta in spain, but never really thought too much about it. Siestas are real and are taken very very seriously here. From about 2-5 pm everything in Granada is closed. The few big stores that are kind of like macy’s and walmart are the only things open during this time. Everyone goes home to take a siesta. Sure enough, if liz and I come back to the apt between that time, our host sister is back from work and sleeping and our host mom is sleeping as well. After siesta our host sister gets ready for work again and is off to another job. Our resident director, paula, told us that the only people on the streets during siesta are the weirdys and the Americans. The siesta is something I can definitely get used to and once we get settled in I for sure will take advantage of it.
On our first Friday night in Granada about 15 girls from the group (I think I have only met about 3 guys from AIFS, they are way outnumbered here) went out for tapas. This is something I also read about before coming here, but couldn’t fully understand it till I tried it. When we told our host mom we were going out for tapas, she was thrilled because they, along with the siesta, are such a huge part of the Spanish culture. With every drink you order, you get one free tapa, which is kind of like an appetizer. For 15 people ordering one drink we got four plates of tapas. We were told that the more drinks you order, the better the tapas get. Good for me, a diet coke counts as a drink  our first tapa was potato salad and four pieces of bread with a very thinly sliced piece of beef? Maybe? On top of the bread, per plate. The second one was pieces of meat, again, not quite sure what kind, and slices of this egg/potato/onion bake thing. Lastly, the group got these baby fried salmon…which pretty much still had eyeballs, and this salsa salad. The salad was probably the best thing I’ve eaten since I’ve been here. It was a very comfortable atmosphere to be in. We were sitting outside for three hours at the tapa bar. After dark is a nice break from the extreme heat of 100 plus degrees that we have been having.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on September 5, 2009 from Granada, Spain

maiillll tiiiiime!
helllloooo hellloooo
so even though I have my best friend here, I still get lonely. Actually, we both do. For the past few nights we have been pushing out beds together to make one big bed so there isn't two and a half feet between our beds. So! If anyone wants to send me mail, and it's a decent price to send mail from the U.S. to Spain ( i have no idea how much it would cost) then here is the address you can mail it to :)
Taryn Hawkins
AIFS
Plaza del Campillo, 2
Edificio Maciá, 3^E
18009 Granada-Spain
**replace the ^ with a little circle degrees sign :) (that's the 'rd' here)
other than that we went to the Alhambra which was beautiful, I'll try to put some pictures up, and tomorrow we are going to an Arabic tea ceremony.
Also! If anyone wants to visit...cough uncles danny and mike and maybe ronny cough.....or anyone else. I would love visitors..... :)
just let me know asap so i can make sure i don't plan individual travel during that time. I have Fridays off of class too :D
hasta luego (in granada, hathta luego)

Araaaabian nigghtts and...pants
A couple of days ago we went to an Arabic tea party. the place we went to was very cool. unfortunately i could not locate my camera while we were rushing out the door, but hopefully i will be able to get some pictures from someone else.
we all got to sit on those pillow like chairs super close to the ground and they had very relaxing music...and this woman did some belly dancing. she then told us the story of 1001 nights. it's pretty interesting and quite popular so if you don't know it, you should look it up :p
she also showed us how to make arabic tea. she used spearmint leaves that smelled SO GOOD, and hot water and about 6 tablespoons of sugar in every pot. haha yikes. the whole thing was pretty interesting, but mostly relaxing and nice to be around a lot of the people from the group.
so there's this pretty...cool..trend going on here. haha. the women and some men wear these genie pants. like..full on aladin pants. the women here are stick thin and absolutely gorgeous and can totally pull them off in a very bizarre way. they are everywhere though. other than that kind of quirky thing, most of the clothes here are..normal? i guess. i don't think we have to do much to blend in, but i'm sure we still stick out. we were actually stopped a few times for directions so i guess we don't stick out too much! very cool to be able to tell someone in spanish how to get somewhere when i've been here for less than two weeks...
other than that it seems to have slowed down quite a bit...school is starting to feel like school, and the semester hasn't actually started yet. everyone is very very ready for it to cool down, but last night was the first night that i actually used my sheet to cover up with so that might be a good sign, and all i can think about when i'm hungry is how much i miss my mom's food! i am already thinking about what i'm going to want to be my first meal when i get back... :)
ps- i miss my grandmas a lot. anyone know if grandma hawkins' virus was fixed? and anyone think grandma june will get email anytime soon? haha
pps- our friend morgan, liz and i booked flights to florence! we'll be there the beginning of october

weekend festivities
Nerja beach
friday night we went for tapas again then one of my professors told us about free, outdoor, live music. we had no idea what to expect but decided to try it out. it ended up being this huge carnival with tons of little kids rides and bouncy things and a people selling jewelry and clothes and stuff everywhere. we found the music..it was a huge concert. it was obvious that this band, los delinquentes, are pretty popular here because there were SO MANY people and every single person knew every word of every song. and it was HUGE. a giant stage and tons and tons of people. we ended up getting about ten rows from the front. it was very fun for the first few songs, but i'm not so much a big group person..
last night half of our group went to a rave in Malaga :\ and everyone else who was here wanted to go to a discoteca which is basically a club, but is only open from 3am to 8am. so i went out for tapas with that group then came back to the apt and went to bed! ha i'm lame. i decided it was a very good decision seeing as i rolled over at 630am and my roomie was still not back. i enjoy my sleep and like i said before i don't like big groups either..and i don't drink.
today was our first sunday here in granada and it was pretty boring...which was alright for today. liz and i went out for churros, she got chocolate and i got honey :) the churros here are not like churros in the US. they have no cinnamon or sugar on the outside, its just basically fried dough with either chocolate or honey. i was not a huge fan.
back to class tomorrow then the beach next weekend. i'm looking forward to an uninterrupted, warm shower, and supposedly great food.

"La vida Española es como el teatro"
In class today, we talked a lot about the differences between the cultures in the US, Japan, Norway, and Spain. Mostly between the US and Spain, there is one girl from Japan, and one girl from Norway in our class.
My prof told us the way to really get our señoras to stop giving us food. She said to say "no quiero más, de verdad" which means, I don't want more, it's true. HA
She also said that basically the spanish life is like theater. If someone asks you if you want to do something, they really don't want to do it unless they say it AT LEAST three times AND say "de verdad"
So if a group of friends are walking home and someone says, do you guys want to come hang out? the polite thing to say is no...maybe some other time, and if thats the end of the conversation, leave it at that, but if they say, yea come hang out de verdad come hang out, lets hang out, then it's okay to say alright let's hang out.
When asking for something, it's rude not to explain why. So if I say, do you mind if i open the window? it's "maleducado" or rude, to not say, it's because i'm hot. And the response i'll get is, "si abrela, abrela, abrela"....or yea, open it (3 times) ha.
If you go out to eat with someone, when it comes to paying the bill, if one person offers to pay, it is maleducado to not say no i'll pay it..which I think is sort of similar to the US. BUT what happens here is that the two people go back and forth until the waiter comes over, then at that point the person who offered first, must pay the bill.
(so why go through the whole motion every time...??)
If you're out with a big group of people, when it comes to paying the bill, it is usually split. This is where I would be missin out! So weather you drank water and owe nothing, or drank ten beers, you split the bill between however many people are at the table, end of story.
If someone says oh i have a headache, you are supposed to say something worse...oh i broke my toe three years ago...and this will go back and forth. I said..it's not a competition when it comes to pain, and she said, oh yea, in España it is.
que diferente...

week 4
Almeria, Spain
I'm not really in Almería anymore, but when I put it in the city, it shows where i went on my map. can you guys see the map of where i've been?
we left saturday morning to go to the beach for the night. it was very nice to get out of granada. we ended up with good weather which was lovely. i only have a few pictures from the weekend because my camera decided to temporarily break, it's fine now, but i'm really hoping i won't have to deal with that again while i'm here.
the picture is of my friend at dinner...i said something like people would think we havent eaten in three weeks the way we're eating this free buffet, and everyone kind of looked at eachother and said...that's because we haven't been eating for three weeks...
a week from today is our exam for this class. it's hard to believe i'm going to get 5 credits for it, we have done just about nothing, but i'll take it.
there aren't too many new updates. i was having trouble with my phone so all week i have been trying to get it clarified. i ended up having to argue with this woman for over 20 minutes about a mistake she made and wouldn't admit it, in spanish. that's the first time i've been in a situation like that by myself.
i'm trying my hardest to stay positive, but i'm still having a really hard time adjusting to all of this. i'm having a hard time staying focused which worries me with classes starting soon. we had a culture shock meeting tonight that didn't give as much info as i would have liked, but i talked to my resident director and she said that at this point culture shock shouldn't be as bad as it's affecting me...
this is what i've been doing to keep me sane.
i appreciate all of your notes and emails, they keep me goin
written by  Taryn Hawkins on September 22, 2009 from Almeria, Spain

12
this is outside of the hotel we stayed at in almería, its very hidden by the palm trees, but it was a grogeous hotel, very big and spacious.
when my camera decided to work again, we were waiting for the bus, so the only picture of monito that i have is of him in the lobby of the hotel...at the bottom of the palm tree.
so i finished another week. i dont remember if i've said what this class is like, but it's four hours a day. the first two hours i have with one professor, and the next two is with another. my second professor has been gone all week and our exam is on tuesday...
my days here right now basically go like this..
wake up at 730, hit snooze til 8, have my two pieces of toast and water for breakfast, walk 30 minutes to class that starts at 9, class til 1, walk back home and hang out maybe mini siesta til lunch at 230, then real siesta, which is usually about three hours for me when i can sleep, then liz and i usually just hang out in our rooms, maybe read the books we bought in spanish, maybe watch the jungle book that i bought in spanish, but cheat and really watch it in english, spanish subtitles if we're feeling ambitious, then dinner at 930.
something we have been kind of...wondering about, i guess, is what we're supposed to be doing in all of our down time. because we have a lot of it. all of our friends say the same thing too, we just hang out in our rooms. it almost seems rude but we don't know what else to do. conversation during meals is usually pretty forced to begin with, and spanish tv gives me a headache. plus, i dont know how much more of the TMZ-like spanish gossip tv i can take. this is what our host sister watches all day every day when she's not on her computer.
just about every day since we got here, the story has been about this matador who had an affair with this woman who had his child. so the girl is ten years old now...and it's still being talked about...every day.
tonight we are going out for tapas. tomorrow we have a four hour hike which i am very scared for. the past hikes we've had have been two hours, i cant imagine having to climb up these mountains for four hours straight.
sunday i'm going to a corridas de torros...running of the bulls. i absolutely do not support this event whatsoever, i actually think it is very cruel, i'm going to root on the bulls!!
i saw something recently that said that hunting can only be called a sport when the animals can shoot back. i sort of see the running of the bulls kind of like hunting. i'm going for the cultural experience fully expecting not to be able to make it through the whole thing.

hills & valleys, but mostly hills
yesterday was our hike called the hills and valleys of granada. think they just put 'and valleys' in there so people would go on the hike. they lady leading said that it would be almost vertical the whole way, up and down.
they were very, very steep. the only 'valley' we walked through was at the top of the mountain where we ate lunch, then we went back to the hills.
it was crazy knowing that i was actually in the mountains. all around me were mountains..
the hike left me very sore today...
i got to skype withmy whole family minus jake yesterday and grandma hawkins was there! it was very nice to see and talk everyone.

corridas de toros
we went to the corridas de toros today. it was horrible. i did learn that it was a benefit for downs syndrome so i guess that makes it a little better. there were three matadors, they each went twice. they all went once, then it was break time. it was pretty funny, everyone pulled out their 'bocadillos' which are sandwhiches made at home. we need to get one every time we arent home for a meal. then each matador went again. the first one was really bad. i had no idea what to expect. it was very hard to watch..a lot of our group actually left after the first one. the second one made me feel a little better because the bull was very feisty and was NOT taking it, the matador actually fell and got stabbed with a horn...sadly, this was my favorite part of the whole thing. it was so graphic and bloody and very very cruel. i'm glad i got the 'cultural experience' but i will not go again. here are some pictures.
the first one i tried to use an interesting feature on my camera where it brightens a certain color, in this case, red.
the first picture is of the second matador. if the audience thinks the matador did really well they wave white rags, if the majority of the audience is waving the rags the matador gets the big prize...the ear of the bull he just killed. so that's him showing off his prize.
i took a few videos so if anyone is interested i can try to send one to you through email, i can't upload them. but be warned, it can get icky. i have one where it's just the bull charging the flags, but other ones where the bull is hurting quite a bit :(

Only in Spain...
Okay probably not only in Spain, but by that I mean...not in the US...
1) se permite fumar aqui
smoking is permitted here. and by here, they mean everywhere. i was studying with some friends in Dunkin Coffee today and had to get up and leave because the place was worse than a bar at home. so imagine what the bars are like...but my prof said that that will come to an end in october or november when the will prohibit smoking inside public places. i cant wait.
2) the manly man with a sweater
it is seen as very masculine for a man to wear his sweater or scarf around your neck. very european, i don't think that's seen too much in the US, and if it is, the man isn't seen as manly.
3) let's meet at the corner at 2
2am that is, to begin the night. i've said this plenty, and will probably continue, people here don't start their nights til 2, and that's actually seen as early here. from what i've heard the discotecas don't get busy until 3. it's normal to stay out until the cafes open to eat churros y chocolate around 8.
4) maddy's thriving business
you may or may not know that after i left, maddy started walking dogs for dimes. well here, she could easily make a living. there are men walking dogs, women walking dogs, children walking dogs, dogs walking dogs...good thing i love puppiesss
5) bad smelling good luck
i was told today that if you step in dog poop, it's considered good luck. well as we all know...there are lots of dogs here, which also means there are lots of lucky people here. fortunately...or unfortunately? i'm not considered lucky yet.
6) permanently dirty feet
okay, my feet have not been clean since i got here. i swear the dirt is in my skin and won't come out. but, if my feet are this dirty, can you imagine my shoes? and yet we are not allowed to take our shoes off in the house. they see it as dirty to wear socks or bare feet. why do they want me trudging around in my shoes that probably have dog poop, bird poop, and plenty of dirt and mud on them?
7) gripe A
They are freaking out about gripe A (aka swine flu) and yet there is never toilet paper or soap in any public restrooms. We go through a lot of tissue and hand sanitizer. Thank you grandma for the purell!!
8) milk that lasts for 6 months
the milk and eggs here are not refridgerated. some of the people in my program have commented on how they found a stash of milk in the cupboard. funny, it lasts forever too...que extrano
9) no pasa nada
no pasa nada...it doesn't matter..they say this for about everything. gracias..no pasa nada...but the funniest thing i've seen so far that they use it for is while parking cars..parallel parking here must be so much easier than it is at home. all you have to do is go til you hit the car in front of you, reverse til you hit the giant trash bins behind you...no pasa nada
only in spain...
everyone should keep maddy lou in your thoughts and prayers these next few weeks...
Maddy Loop- I love you so much and I know you are so strong! you are the bravest person I know!! good luck sweetie, i hope you are super comfy in your new pajamas and i hope all the doctors and nurses love your brett favre jersy!! i miss you so much! much love and many hugs and kisses. xoxo

When in Rome
Florence, Italy
I was in Rome for about 45 minutes at the airport that's all. ha
The only time I've eaten better food than what I'm eating here is when I eat my mom's food. Morgan's very very pregnant cousin (8.5 months) and their family own a restaurant here. I keep thinking about Anthony because her cousin talks about how she now knows how the food is made here and now that she understands that she realizes there are two really good italian restaurants in Florence, one is theirs. ha, but when we ate lunch i thought that was the best meal, then we went back for dinner, and it was even better.
my next big adventure in life is going to be learning italian after i feel more comfortable with spanish...but i would enjoy coming back here some day.
today we are going to the duorma? for mass then to acadamia and to explore florence.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 4, 2009 from Florence, Italy

gondelaaaa
Venice, Italy
We spent the day in Venice today. It was so pretty. I really had no idea what to expect other than what I heard from the Mitch Hedberg joke Jacob sent me titled 'Venice' but it was very cool. I did get to ride in a gondela. It was super nice, very relaxing. I thought I would learn more about the city, but not really. And our gondelierre didn't sing to us, haha ah well.
So overall consensus is that I love Italy. Venice was nice, but I definitely loved Florence so much more. I plan to come back sometime. And I am going to learn Italian sometime, I will do it.
For the most part that we were here we had really good weather, 80 and sunny. Last night it was a little rainy, but not bad at all.
Morgan's family was SO nice. They treated us so well at the restaurant and they got us a really good deal at the hotel. Tomorrow for lunch will be the fourth time we ate at the restaurant, it was SO SO SO good. Amazing. And last night when we were there for dinner, her cousin's husband bought us a bottle of wine. I had both pizza and pasta and we had dessert. I took pictures of everything I ate so I will put them up when I get back.
Tomorrow we are actually going to academia to see the david and to do more shopping. I have never done more shopping in my life than I have done here. Tons of cool stuff.
Back to reality tomorrow, we have all been complaining about granada pretty much the whole time we've been here because we love Florence so much. We have a late night flight, then an overnight bus from Madrid to Granada. We get in at about 630 then my first class of the semester starts at 1230.,,
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 5, 2009 from Venice, Italy

strange things
so i have had all of my class once. on monday and wednesday i have my spanish communications class which is basically just grammar and conversation, and i have a spanish culture and society class. on tuesday and thursday i have a translation class, literature and teaching english to spanish speakers.
for the most part classes went well. i think my hardest class will be the translation, but i will probably learn the most in that class. the culture class will probably be hard too just because my prof is kind of boring.
liz and i actually decided to drop the teaching class within the first five minutes of class...the first thing she said was this class is going to be taught in english, then we spend the rest of the two hours playing board games and throwing around a stuffed penguin playing getting to know you games. one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone treats me like im ten years younger than i am, and thats basically what she was doing. i think it would probably be an interesting class for people who want to teach, but just not for me...and the lady snapped at me when she put a board game in front of us that on each square had questions like 'what is your favorite book' 'what are you good at' 'what is your favorite color' and i asked her if we were supposed to play in english or spanish...i was just taken aback that an advanced level class would be taught completely in english.
so strange things...
i've caught myself thinking in spanish on several occasions,
i tend to not remember words in english...i find myself searching through my english vocabulary for synonyms of words i can't remember, and after a conversation with someone, i have to ask myself if they were speaking to me in english or spanish because i fully understand what they are saying...yay
and while we were in italy, all of us instinctively started speaking spanish to the people we met..which suprisingly worked...i had at least three conversations with italians...them speaking italian and me speaking spanish.
best day ever: i got back from ITALY and i had two letters from friends in morris, and a package from my family that was so big that i had to go to the post office to get it, then the next day i had two more letters from friends in morris!! :D
liz, morgan, and i were going to go to madrid again this weekend but decided we were way too exhausted, so we have a four day weekend here in granada, then in two weekends we are going to sevilla, corodoba, and gibralter, then the weekend after that is dublin. then we go to morrocco at the end of november, and then we are going to paris at the beginning of december for liz's birthday! when we get back from paris theres a week and a half left.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 8, 2009 from Granada, Spain

say whattt??
so a few things i forgot in my last post..
the airports. you would not believe the airports. we seriously walked right through customs on our way there and back, no one asked any questions at all. sad though because we didnt get a stamp in our passport :(
also security...it was very strange...so much more relaxed than in the states. coming back the thing beeped when i walked through and the lady looked at me and patted down my legs then let me through...and you dont have to take off sweatshirts or shoes...kind of scary
and we didnt walk straight on to the planes at all. we had to take a shuttle from the airport to the plane, in one case it was probably about a three minute walk that they drove us.
okay finally the accent here. i know i've talked about it before, but it is becoming much more obvious that i am going to come back with a disgusting southern Spain accent. all of my proffesors have a very thick accent too. when i first got here i would say Gracias...and now, all of us say gratheeahh. nice lisp goin on. people in my spanish classes are going to think im so weird speaking with a lisp and dropping all the endings of my words.
ok thats all
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 9, 2009 from Granada, Spain

playa
Nerja, Spain
we went to the beach again yesterday. we've been having really nice weather which we're told is uncommon for this time of year. we had quite the adventure coming back. the city bus driver kind of blew up on us and we had no idea what he was saying so we just got off. ha. it was the last stop apparently, but he didn't stop at our stop...bleh
today is a holiday in Spain, i'm not sure exactly what the holiday is, but we don't have class and just about everything is closed.
somehow i got very sick overnight, probably from the heat yesterday, but it's times like this where i just want to be home the most!! :(
but how can i complain...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 12, 2009 from Nerja, Spain

language barriers?
so when i first got here, i needed to get some shampoo and conditioner. well, when we were in florence, i realized that indeed i got shampoo..and another bottle of shampoo. oops! for about ten weeks i have been using two shampoos! don't worry, i still use them both.
that same shopping trip, i needed body wash. well yesterday i realized that my body wash is for "el hombre", glad i've been smelling like man for two months.
the day i got my package from my family, i was with some friends and we sat on a bench on the corner to snack on my goodies. well about five minutes into it, a women comes up, leaned over, and told me she wants my candy. i just looked at her, stunned, and she said give it to me! so i gave her a reeses. then she looks at me and says, i want two. HA, this women just stole two of my reeses! and less than 5 minutes later, another woman comes up and does the same thing!! before i had a chance to give her some, one of the girls i was with yelled NO, GO AWAY, and the poor old woman wobbled away. que triste.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 12, 2009 from Granada, Spain

intercambio
so an intercambio is a person you pair up with that speaks the language you want to learn. so tonight we went for tapas with a group of intercambios that AIFS set up. i was kind of skeptical because most people tend to use the intercambio thing as like..a dating service.
in the CLM, the place i take my classes, anyone can go sign up for an intercambio. funny thing, you have to put your name, age, and picture in it. so there were a couple of girls who were telling me they went to sign up for an intercambio and they just looked for the guys within a certain age range and then of course had to make sure they looked good too.
so anyway we go to this intercambio, which is 7 american students, and well..4 spanish guys. HA.
it ended up going better than i thought it would. i was very nervous and didnt really get to talk too much until towards the end. we sat every other and the guy i was next to told me he was really good at English, but only really wanted to speak English. towards the end i was speaking spanish to someone else and he was speaking English. very strange at first, but it eventually worked out.
after three days of being miserably sick, i'm feeling a lot better, but still not fantastic. but we were told that at this exact time every semester the students start to get sick like this. when i left the office this morning my resident directer said, 3 down 47 to go, ha so that made me feel a little better...

first hostel experience
Lisbon, Portugal
when i decided to come to europe i had a few places in mind that i would have liked to go to. portugal was not one of them...a group of people were going and it was very inexpensive so i decided to go. it was amazing. lisbon is beautiful and very clean. our hostel was in a great location, right near the water. we took a ferry and saw the bellem tower and the cristo statue. the weather was great too.
so i had no idea what to expect from a hostel...but we lucked out. our hostel i would go as far as to say it was just as great as hotels ive stayed in. the people who worked there were very friendly and very intelligent, there was free wifi and computers to use, cable and flat screen tv, free internet, and free use of the blankets and sheets. ha, ive heard thats quite rare when it comes to hostels. there was also a kitchen so we cooked a wonderful meal one night. we had pasta with homemade tomato sauce. yum so delicious.
we spent a lot of time just walking around the city. there was so much to see..
i think the best part of my hostel experience was the people i met. the first day we were there we met two guys from australia. they have been traveling for a month and have quite a bit of traveling left to do. just for fun. but they were very friendly and we ended up hanging out with them the whole time we were there. they went out to lunch with us the day we left and it was so sad to say goodbye! in three days we felt like we've known them forever and yet we will never see them again...
we also met some people from spain, which was wonderful to be able to speak spanish! someone from Belgium, who says they dont really eat that many waffles in Belgium, but french fries originated there :p and some girls from france who were friendly as well. and someone from arizona who was just finishing up his world traveling adventure.
it was great they had a huge room where at night everyone just hung out and got to know each other. they also sold one euro beers..liz, morgan, and i made a toast to maddy on the she got out of the hospital :D i have a picture but well.. my camera is broken again.
ps-if you have facebook and were not friends you should find me..its much easier for me to put pictures on facebook than it is to put them on here... i will be buying a new camera before we leave for gibralter this weekend.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 21, 2009 from Lisbon, Portugal

day trip
Sintra, Portugal
this is mostly for the use of the map again, but one of the days in portugal we took a day trip to Sintra. we walked around and saw castles. we walked up this really windy road to get to a place with a great view of the city. there a guy who works at a store we went into told us about this great pastry place and the two pastries portugal is known for, which were delicious! and he also told us that Sintra is the most populated city in portugal. before we left we ate at pizza hut :)
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 21, 2009 from Sintra, Portugal

MONOS
Gibraltar, Gibraltar
so i still am not 100% sure what gibralter is..but we were there. i know its part of the UK, but thats it. slash..according to this website it is also a city...? we drove up to the border than crossed on foot. a lot of the hotels in gibralter are built in the water...it reminded me a little of venice, but not really
so everyone there spoke English and spanish, but they used the gibralter pound, which is different than the English pound...we could use euros there, but we got gibralter pounds back.
gibralter is 6 square Miles...very tiny. its kind of hard to explain.
theres what the call 'the rock' which ive been trying to get the picture on here but its not working. its basically a giant rock, and when we went to the top of it we got to go in these caves that were HUGE and so so so cool.
and the BEST PART of the whole weekend slash my whole love was this..
SO cool. i got to hang out with monkeys...spectacular.
monos
other than that we just toured the city..one of my friends got hit by a moto :( a group of a bout 5 of us were crossing the street and this girl on a moto swerved to miss a car and hit debbie instead. shes fine now but she had to go to the hospital in an ambulance and ah it was very scary...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 23, 2009 from Gibraltar, Gibraltar

these boots were made for walkin
Sevilla, Spain
on saturday we went to Sevilla. i LOVED Sevilla. its about twice the size of granada and there are tons of people and buildings and traffic, and yet it was quiet and chill. it was perfect.
we did a tour for about two hours and then from there on out we were on our own. a group of 8 of us walked around all day, we did the math and figured we walked at very least 27 Miles on saturday. HA.
we also went on a paddle boat thing where you pedal on the gudavivir river which was so fun! we had very nice weather when we were there too. we had lunch at dominoes..ha we've kind of gotten into a pattern of eating american food whenever we're not in granada. then we just did some shopping and explored the city. a bunch of people went to the fubol game saturday night which it seems like they had fun, they tied 0-0. it would have been quite expensive for me to go slash the seats were in the boonies too. i feel like im forgetting a lot so if i remember later ill have to write again..
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 24, 2009 from Sevilla, Spain

another cathedral
Cordoba, Spain
maybe it was because it was the end of our trip and everyone was tired and ready to sleep, but i didnt really like cordoba. it was pretty small and we just had a tour of the city and the cathedral...tours are nice sometimes, but we have toured SO MANY CATHEDRALS and they are all. the. same. and our tour guide didnt seem to thrilled to be doing his job either so im sure that played into it as well.
and we shamelessly ate burger king for lunch...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on October 25, 2009 from Cordoba, Spain

so happy to be irish
Dublin, Ireland
Ireland might be my favorite place on earth...
the first night we were there we ate dinner at at a pub. we were a half an hour past the time they stop serving it, but they served us anyway. very nice people. i also learned that they dont really say 'your welcome' in ireland. they say 'cheers' instead :)
The first full day we were there we tried to go to Dunleighry..(im going to butcher the spelling of everything irish...) but we got on the train going the opposite way, oops. so we ended up in Howth (pronounced Hoat). it ended up being beautiful! it was right on the coast and there was a pier and a lighthouse...just everything i pictured ireland to be. it was actually raining and cold most of the time we were in ireland, but it was alright, thats my favorite kind of weather :)
then we went out for mexican food, that was delicious. later we went to a pub called 'whalen' which was definitely the pub that part of the move ps i love you was filmed in! so cool. :) suprisingly it was all locals there. we were told that they dont advertise it like that so no one really knows thats where it is. lucky for us :) we also went to a pub o'donahughs..that was also recommended to us by several people. it was very funny, we were the youngest by far. the next closest in age people to us were at least twice our age, but it was a lot of fun. everyone in dublin is so friendly! they even bought us a few beers :p
on halloween we actually did make it to dunleighry..but i like howth better :) the weather was nicer that day though. its kinda funny, we were told several times that halloween originated in ireland, and we could tell. it seemed a lot different from home. people were dressed up all day! and everyone was talking about it all weekend.
we also toured the guinness factory on halloween. that was a lot of fun. it was basically a self guided tour of a museum, but it was interesting to see how the beer is made! then we got a free glass at the end. theres a special way to pour it. at the pub the night before we were wondering why there were like ten glasses of half full beers on the bar, but learned why! that night we actually ended up staying in our hostel with some wine and playing games :) which was lots of fun.
the next day we decided to get a little extra sleep so instead of eating breakfast at the hostel, we went out for breakfast. SO delicious, finally a breakfast thats not toast! then we did TONS of shopping and took a look at the famine statues. they were very artistically done well, it was very cool, but at the same time errie. they're a memorial to all those affected by the potato famine, and also kind of a thanks to everyone who moved to the states and canada during it because it helped build the foundation they have now.
then a friend of mine who spend the summer in dublin recommended we go to a pub called porterhouse to get some strawberry beer. so we found it and they told us they had actually been out for three weeks and just got it back at 5 pm that day. what luck. and! a traditional irish rock band was performing that night too, which was SO SO SO cool! i loved it :) annnnd we went out to eat at fridays :) we ate tons of irish food while we were there though, which was a lot better than what i have heard.
the first couple of days we were just so excited to be in IRELAND..but after a while we started to realize what was happening around us. there was a homeless person on every corner. and it was very obvious that alcoholism is a very big problem in ireland. during the afternoons we saw far too many people stumbling around or passed out on the sidewalk. one night two guys who were at very oldest 15 years old came up to the group of us girls and were trying to talk to us. one of them had a beer in each pocket, a beer in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. he had just gotten kicked off the train for being to drunk. i loved so much about ireland, especially because i had the mix of such a wonderful experience and at the same time it was very eye opening...
i would love to go back
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 3, 2009 from Dublin, Ireland

gripe a, siempre en mi vida
i thought that after the whole argentina ordeal, i would be done dealing with gripe 1, aka swine flu..but turns out thats not the case. i got really sick the day before danny and mike got here, then today i had to go to the doctor and they told me i cant leave the apartment until monday. i was so bummed! out of the two days danny and mike were here i got to hang out with them for about two hours :( it was still very nice to see them though! my senora loved having them over, and she also loved that danny speaks spanish! good thing for me too because my sick brain could not think in spanish.
some weird things that dont seem to be so weird anymore..
street signs..there arent any. some of them are on the buildings, but they're hard to find. its been like that everywhere we've traveled so far. its been confusing, but now i just expect to be confused.
the mean granadiño...the people in granada strive to be mean..its not a joke. and its only in granada. the people at the stores wont smile or say hi, its something they literally try to accomplish. we learned this in one of our classes..theres a word for it, but i dont really remember it. same thing with people on the streets, they bump into and they dont apologize...it was very weird at the beginning, but now im just so appreciateive when people do apologize...which are usually tourists.
my señora moving my stuff..it was very bothersome at the beginning of the semester, but ive really gotten used to it. i come back looking for my slippers and i just have to check three different spots everytime. im not really sure why she moves them every time, but she does...oh well.
profs swearing in class...i was taken aback by this the first few times it happened, but now im realizing that the profs here are just really layed back...two of my proffessors know english, only one of them is almost fluent..but he'll randomly start speaking english in the middle of a sentence then go right back to spanish. its pretty funny though because usually the only words he says in english are swear words, not sure why. he says them in spanish too..just different, i dont think any of my profs in the US have ever swore in class..
terrible internet...when im at the internet cafe my internet cuts out whenever someone else signs on, when im at the apartment it cuts out when the phone rings and when someone rings the doorbell. its still irritating, but now i just expect it. if the phone is ringing i just have to stop what im doing and wait until my señora hangs up the phone to continue
thats all for now, im sure there is more, but again, my sick brain is foggy..
i did find a new way to get to class though a while ago, and its the best part of my day. i walk past a frutería, or fruit stand, and the owner has a huge husky...if you dont know this, huskies are my favorite dogs in the world. so every morning on my way to class and ever afternoon on my way back, i make sure i leave in enough time to stop and play with him for a while. :) i havent figured out his name yet, but i hope to before i have to leave!
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 11, 2009 from Granada, Spain

so.much.stuff.
so im sitting in my bed at 3 in the afternoon because there is nothing else to do on sundays...still sick... so i decided to make a list of all the things i want to get before i leave. bad idea. theres quite a bit...it is going to be a miracle if i get everything home...ive already made a pile of the things that i brought here, that i plan on not bringing back. they have those big boxes on almost every street where you can put clothes and shoes in that are free for people to take, i think i might be making a few trips to some of those boxes...im avoiding buying another bag because that would be quite a hassle..i think id rather have heavy bags than too many bags...oh man what to do what to do...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 15, 2009 from Granada, Spain

really spain?
I have had intercambios galore lately and im loving it. Today the intercambio that I do with Erica, took us to a teteria in the Arabic part of town. His name is perry and he is my favorite intercambio. Hes something along the lines of erica’s host sister’s fiancé…or some weird connection like that. But hes studying to be a professor and in order to do that, he needs to pass an English exam. Usually with my intercambios I like it better when we are speaking Spanish because I learn so much, but with perry I like speaking English better. The first time we met with him he knew nearly zero English, it was so hard to understand him. We’ve been meeting at least twice a week since then and it is SO COOL to see how much he has improved. It’s a great feeling to hear him use words that we have taught him. He picks up on the language so quickly its crazy. Every once in a while ill hear him speak three straight sentences perfectly and if I passed him on the street and heard him speak those three sentences I would think he’s fluent. LOVE intercambios and I will be hunting for them in the states when I get back.
Fun fact: perry told us today that when you are with a group of people and then there is what we would call ‘an awkward silence’, in spain, they say an angel passed through the group of people. Que chulo, one of the reasons spain is so cool. Ha
I also learned today in class from my lit prof that English is the language with the most words. We have words that derive from just about every language, therefore our vocabulary is never ending…one of the hardest parts of learning Spanish for me is learning the vocabulary…no wonder English is so hard to learn…
Okay, dear spain, you are out of control, love taryn…
so yesterday was my first day out of the apartment in over a week due to my gripe a…because of this I missed a few exams, one being my culture exam. So I show up to class and we have a substitute who is SUPER guay (cool) and then all of a sudden he starts talking about the exam, so I told him I haven’t taken it yet..and he said oh really? And I said nope..and he said okay. And hands me the exam to take…he proceeds to go ahead and teach class. Full on discussion happening between 25 other students, while im sitting amongst them taking my exam. Our grade is based on the grades of two exams. It was no problem whatsoever for me to take my exam in the middle of class with him walking in and out of the class doing whatever he was doing. This would never happen in the states, ever. So weird to me. really spain??
off to AFRICA for the weekend! i really enjoy traveling...
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 19, 2009 from Granada, Spain

uh oh sea sickness
Tarifa, Spain
so we started out our morocco trip with a bus ride starting at 5am. we drove for 5 hours to Tarife where we caught our ferry. This is near where we were in gibraltar...where we could see Morocco from Gibraltar..
i thought that i would have no problem with sea sickness but boy was i wrong. i didnt end up actually getting sick, but for the rest of the day i was not feeling well at all. but the first day was mostly traveling time on the bus. we got out a couple of times, but we were on the bus from 5am to about 7pm...
and im making multiple entries, again, for the purpose of the map
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 20, 2009 from Tarifa, Spain

hercules?
Tanger, Morocco
This is the first place we stopped on the first day. It’s a really big city, its also where we ended up on the last day.
here we stopped and went to ‘hercule’s’ cave. If you look through the cave to the water, it’s the shape of a man’s head, if you flip it around, it’s a map of Africa…completely done by erosion and other things. The rest of the cave was home to gypsies for bazillions of years.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 20, 2009 from Tanger, Morocco

big fish
Larache, Morocco
This is where we had our first taste of Moroccan food. People rave about the food there so we were all very excited. Turns out it is a meal of completely sea food, okay I can do seafood, but not if it looks like it was living 5 minutes ago. No lie, my fish still had eyeballs and the shrimp looked like it could get up and walk, yikes. Dessert was good though :)
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 21, 2009 from Larache, Morocco

cluck cluck
Meknes, Morocco
The second day we were in Meknes. This was our first taste of Moroccan culture. It was so crazy, so different, nothing that I ever could have imagined or prepared myself for. We walked through markets with kids 6 years old trying to sell us keychains and other things. They followed us and followed us and followed us. We would say no over and over again and they continued to follow us. Very eye opening…
we would also walk through the markets and see full cows skinned and gutted hanging from the outside of the shop that was selling the meat, I heard several chickens getting their heads chopped off and feathers plucked. Our tour guide(AMAZING tour guide) brought us to a store that sold traditional Moroccan dresses. All very beautiful, the women there wore the most colorful clothes I have ever seen. I loved it!
For lunch this day after we were all finished we were told we ate lamb… :\ I just cant stress enough how I will not be eating meat when I get back in the US. I can do it to experience the culture here, but once I step foot on US soil, no mas carne…
for dinner we went to a traditional moraccan dinner. People who bought the dresses wore the dresses. During dinner there was a band playing some awesome drums and there were belly dancers. So cool and so much fun!
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 22, 2009 from Meknes, Morocco

sally the camel
Fezna, Morocco
This day was another intense day of culture shock. Instead of cows hanging in the markets, there were camels..full on camel heads.
So intense.
Our tour guide brought us to several shops where we could buy rugs, steel, and spices. Very cool, very cheap for what it was, but still really expensive.
There were also quite a few girls in our group that got..proposed to? Ha, for example… ‘working husband for you, you spend my money’ haha and my favorite ‘I will give you 1000 camels and a House if you be my wife’
We were told that people trade women for Houses and camels…so bizarre.. that was also very eye opening…the way women are treated there. Just so different, they basically have no rights to anything. Even just observing while on the bus, all the cafes had ONLY men sitting outside, there were very few women seen on the streets.
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 22, 2009 from Fezna, Morocco

tourist day
Tanger, Morocco
This was the most touristy day/city we were in. bright and early we got to ride camels! So so so so fun and so so so cool, but it was on the side of the road for less than 30 seconds and it walked in a circle. Ha.
Also we got henna tattoos which were super fun! It should last about 3 or 4 weeks, so I might be able to show it off when I get back :)
Here we also did a lot of shopping. We had to haggle, oh boy im not good at that! I didn’t buy too much because im just so afraid of talking to people haha but I did buy something for 150 durham which is equivalent to 15 euro, when he asked for 600 durham. But that’s about it. Very interesting process though, they are all very secretive about selling and haggling…
and we went to a leather tannery this day..and this is a picture of them dying the leather..very interesting and very stinky. they gave us mint leaves to put under our noses so we wouldnt get sick..
written by  Taryn Hawkins on November 23, 2009 from Tanger, Morocco

the world is like a...kleenex??
first of all, i did not go to fezna morocco? i went to fez, but aparently that doesnt exist in the blogabond world.
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!

THE best weekend of my life..
yes, the best weekend of my life took place in granada. all the traveling ive done has been wonderful, but this was one of the very few weekends i was in granada and im thankful that i was.
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

The city of [christmas] lights
Paris, France
my lasssst trip within europe (FOR NOW) was to paris. i went with my friends liz, catherine, sarah, sera, and kara, and we met liz's friend katrin there, who is studying in Gronoble, just outside of Paris.
we spent the first night of our trip in the airport, how fun. NOT. after that we swore we wouldnt ever do it again. we got into paris at about 930 and didnt actually get in and out of our hostel until about 430, almost a whole day wasted waiting for people to do their hair ha, ah well.
this was katrin's third time in paris so she was able to show us around. we went to the latin quarter (called that after the language, not culture) notre dame which was HUGE and so so beautiful with a wonderful christmas tree all lit up right in front. we also went to the panthium...? ha, wow im good at remember stuff.. :\ then we went to dinner and ate the mos delicious cheese ive ever eaten in my LIFE and also i had es cargo!! what! can you believe it?? i ate snails! and reallly enjoyed them :)
then we met up with my friend sam, who is studying in paris for the year, and went to the eiffel tower. its the 120th year anniversary so they had light shows all night so we watched one of them. so beautiful. i cant wait to show everyone pictures.
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

ten things
each week we get a newsletter updating us on whats going on in granada and within our program, this week was the last one and it had something fun i wanted share...because almost all is 100% true. so thats the ten things...
other than that it talks a lot about reverse culture shock and what to expect from friends and family and LIFE when i get back in the states. its all pretty overwhelming and very scary! but here's the fun stuff :)
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

el tiempo vuela
sometimes erica and i feel like perry and mariolas children. last night they took us to see a movie kind of on the outskirts of granada, so mariola drove. this movie theater was crazy, so different. we got our tickets then went through and we were definitely standing in a candy store. just candy everywhere, and popcorn and bags of chips, everything you could ever want to eat in a movie theater. so mariola went around and came back with a giant thing of popcorn, two giant sodas, three bags of candy and a bag of chips. and so we tried to help her pay and she said no, in spain i pay for this, then you invite me for a beer afterwards. haha. so we go into the movie theater and its HUGE! at very least 600 seats in the theater and mariola said it was the smallest theater. what?! the normal theaters are three times the size of this one. could you imagine watching a movie with almost 2000 people?? and! we had assigned seating! even though not nearly every seat was filled, we had to sit in the seat that was on our ticket. so different. i bet when the spaniards go to the states they are so confused. also mariola told us that that its normal for the spaniards to go to movies once a week. hmmm
so afterwards we 'invited' them for a beer ha. we had a lot of fun, and both mariola and perry said several times throughout the night that they wish they could meet my parents! and i wish that everyone important in my life could meet them too, definitely two of my favorite people in the world. ive learned more from my intercambio with perry than i did in any of my classes here.
side note..its funny to hear the english phrases perry is picking up. i say 'so good' all the time and i never realized it until perry started saying it, everything in the world is 'so good' to perry. ha
mariola told me last night that my mother has nothing to worry about because she is taking good care of me
heres an everything happens for a reason story. when i went to portugal erica was supposed to come with. then last minutely she decided not to go because her credit card stopped working and it would have been a hassle not having her money basically. so that weekend was the weekend she met perry and mariola, if her card would have worked, she would have went to portugal, she wouldnt have met perry or mariola, and i would not have met perry or mariola. so thank you ericas bank for not letting her card work the day before we left for portugal :)
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!
written by  Taryn Hawkins on December 13, 2009 from Granada, Spain

morocco video
one of my program directors, inma, did a lot of video taping while we were in granada, then made one big video of it. take a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x48Nf-XpQvY
written by  Taryn Hawkins on December 13, 2009 from Granada, Spain

home dulce home
Minneapolis, United States
good to be home
written by  Taryn Hawkins on December 20, 2009 from Minneapolis, United States

Ireland

me in the sierra nevada mountains

me, perry, mariola :)

our room

the view from my room

Another phone booth

Me and the Phone booth :)

Tower Bridge