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. 
Here are some food photos!
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