Its been a pretty crazy few weeks. First and foremost on our minds is my sister Mary, who was just confirmed to have a mild grade and stage of ovarian cancer. This is the link to her blog where she explains everything.
http://goingtothefarnorth.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/stage-1a-grade-1-mucinous-adenocarcinoma.html
Its been hard being so far away from home and news during this whole process, but Mary seems to have a lot of support and love coming from everywhere.
On top of that, I moved from Madrid to Granada in this past week. My last weeks in Madrid were lovely and relaxed. It snowed! Holy moley for the first time in a long time I got to see snow! It was only for half an hour, but they were genuine large flakes. Wow. I spent my last days saying goodbye, I found a replacement au pair who is with the family now, so I know that the family will be fine. My last night in Madrid I went salsa dancing with a good friend. Wow. Salsa dancing. I absolutely love it, and I think I'm pretty good at it too! (for a complete beginner) Hopefully here in Granada I will find a good place to go and dance, and good people to dance with. Oh salsa is just fantastic. Lots of sad goodbyes the next day, and I went on the train to Granada. The train went out of Atocha station, which is my favorite train station, because of the lovely indoor botanical garden, and all the turtles! Legend has it that years ago there was just a pond by the garden, but then people started leaving all their unwanted turtle pets in it, and this is what it looks like today. Fascinating. I arrived in Granada that night and was met in the station by Ben, who has been here for three weeks already. The next day I got oriented in the Hostel, and figured out my work there. The work is your run of the mill cleaning stuff, but its only three hours a day, and I quite like hanging laundry. The owners are lovely and the other helpers are fantastic. The hostel has a lot of things going on, its a hostel/language school, and also has art and yoga classes. Cool! I don't start helping in the ceramics studio for another week, so I have mostly been cooking and wandering around Granada. I am so happy. Granada. I am head over heels in love with this city. Hard to explain, but every time I walk somewhere I am delighted. Its an old interesting city with Moorish and Christian influence. It has cobblestone streets, mountains in the background, lots of graffiti and warm colors. Stray cats and dogs wander around, there are lots of colorful stalls selling Moroccan goods, and I have never seen so many tea shops. I love this city. I found a market where we get fresh fruit and vegetables! I found a library where they have an English section! I'm happy. The other thing that I have been doing here is cooking. We make all of our meals and with a combination of being at home, Holden Village, and au pairing, I really haven't had the opportunity to cook. Its been awesome, I'm waiting for it to feel like a chore, but I love it so far. Its really nice cooking for two, if it was just myself, I wouldn't put as much of an effort into making real meals. Because the meals are so lovely and yummy, I decided that I am going to take photos of every meal we make and eat together, I'll put the pictures up at the end.
There is a lot of strange activity that goes on outside of our front window. When I came to Granada a few weeks ago we got to watch the 3 kings parade go by, then the other morning, the kids from the school all came out and formed this peace sign and released white balloons. Something very odd, because we were quite literally the only ones who were watching from the window. No one else saw the peace sign. Then this morning there was a protest going on. I'm not sure about what but it was enthusiastic.
My friend Nathaniel is studying in Granada for a couple more weeks, and we took a hike up a large hill overlooking Granada. Granada itself is a really large hill, you are always going up or down, on top of that (pun!) my room is on the 5th floor. By the time I leave I am going to have some killer calves. We bought a flight to Rome! After Granada I am planning on volunteering on farms in Italy for two months, before returning home to work. I will travel with Ben for two weeks before he goes home.
Here are some food photos!
Valentines Day! Oh boy, I was excited, it was my very first ever valentines day I've experienced dating someone. I was not disappointed. We had the day off and went to a nearby village to go hiking in the morning. That evening Ben took me out to a lovely Italian dinner, with the whole shebang, candles, flowers etc, and gave me beautiful earrings from Granada. It was a fantastic day and everything my suppressed romantic had wanted. Sadly Ben has been quite sick in the past 10 days or so, with a fever and tiredness. Its taking a long time to get over it because he still has to teach. The past few days he has been recovering though, and hopefully will be well soon. Its scary being sick in a foreign place, and I'm amazed that I didn't catch it. We have about a month left here in Granada and then we are heading to Rome! We plan to be in Rome then volunteer on a farm for about a week before Ben heads back to Michigan. I am going back to the US in May where I plan to spend the summer withe my parents in Klamath Falls Oregon, being a babysitter and helping my aunt with general maintenance. More food pics below!
