ah so much has happened in a week! i guess there´s no better way than to start from the beginning..

thursday was a rough day of class after la noche de san juan but all the teachers took it in stride and just kind of made fun of us for looking exhausted and ridiculous, some of us more than others. i could hardly open my eyes because they were so puffy from fire smoke and stolen bookbag tears. the rest of thursday was spent napping and studying for friday´s finals, with a brief descanso for dinner with alicia and peter, who were visiting valencia for the weekend. we got an awesome dinner at a place close by and it´s always awesome spending time with them and hearing about their trip through spain so far.

i took my finals on friday, not too bad considering the heinous amount of vocabulary i had to learn thursday night and friday morning. i finally joined a gym on friday afternoon and it felt really good to get back into an actual weight room, although i think i´ll still exercise outside too cause it´s just so pretty and appealing. but i did the whole "i don´t know how to use this equipment" thing and it was kind of awkward but a nice gym. it´s a good thing i worked out that day because our goodbye lunch was an insane amount of delicious food, bread and mejillones and salad and olives and paella and helado. saying goodbye to kara proved a little more difficult than i had anticipated, and by that i mean that buehler basically had to drag us apart while we were bawling on the street causing a scene. luckily the rest of the night was busy to help me keep my mind off the fact that most of the friend i´ve made here were leaving that night. watched the spain soccer game to qualify for the next round and celebrated afterword with chris´family, who was in town, and then a last trip to casa blanca with everyone. a few more tears and some goodbyes later, i

headed to the trainstation for granada to meet hannah and her friends. the overnight train wasn´t too bad, a little uncomfortable but a good way to travel so that i didn´t miss any day time sight seeing opportunities.

i hopped a cab to the hostel from the trainstation at around 8:30 am. this hostel broke all my previous notions about hostels being scenes for murder movies and gross dingy places where all your things will get stolen. it was clean and cute and we got free breakfast and free guided tours and free storage after checkout and nothing got taken. and there was a beautiful rooftop terrace with couches and beanbag chairs that was perfect for hanging out to rest after a long day. i went and woke up hannah and her friends and we all showered and had some delicious toast and cereal (what isn´t delicious when it´s free?) and some tortillas de estuarte (stu´s homemade pancakes).

we walked up to the alhombra, which was like a 20 or 30 minute walk. did i mention our hostel was in an insanely perfect location for everything? the alhombra was built in the 1300´s as a stronghold and palace grounds for muslim royalty, and was taken over by Christian rulers in the late 1400´s. King Charles V put a more Roman Catholic style palace on the grounds in 1527, which contrasts with the style of everything

else and in my opinion was kind of boring and ugly. we walked through the gorgeous gardens and up around the palaces and castles. the views were incredible and

the architecture was mind-blowing. serioulsy, so elaborate and planned out and precise, with walls and overhangs that looked like concrete lace. there were reflecting pools and gardens everywhere, and the day´s perfect weather made it even more enjoyable to stroll around thinking about what it would be like to live as a king there. it was pretty moving to be in a place with so much history, dating back to the 1300s. we stood in the room where christopher columbus proposed his idea to sail west toward asia and that the world was not flat. how absurd.

we were all exhausted and starving after 4 or 5 hours of walking around the alhombra, so we stopped for shawarmas (kebab style pocket pita kind of things with chicken and veggies and delicious sauce) in a plaza. we walked around the town a bit and had some ice cream. we went to a normal ice cream place and then saw a different ice cream shop two stores down with insane works of ice cream art and double the flavors for half the price. i´m talking like watermelons shaved into roses and stuff. we rested up a little on the roof and showered off before the USA v Ghana futbol game and were sorely disappointed after the loss and after making a scene in the bar starting lots of USA chants.

After some serious enthusiasm rallying efforts and some more shawarma, we ended up meeting a girl in a bar who got us in free to the largest discoteca in granada, granada 10.

it used to be an old theatre so it had crazy high cielings and lots of old movie chairs and couches lining the entrance. we danced the night away to a really wierd selection of music (spice girls, i will survive, eminem, and some salsa) and got lots of stares from the spanish people who don´t

typically dance as enthusiastically as we do. we called it a late night saturday but made sure to set extra alarms for sunday´s waterfall hike.

it was so worth the early wake up and trek to bus stops (since buses here don´t really come when they´re supposed to on sundays) to go out into the country side a little. we walked through a little cave town where all the houses are built into the mountain to hide from the heat and had a nice walk past a pretty waterfall and followed the river up into a gorge. there was a little path but with cliffs right beside you so sometimes we had to squat and duck and hold onto rocks in order to pass, and there were lots of rock climbers half way up these huge rock faces. henry and greg and i got in the freezing water to freshen up before heading back, because it gets a little hot and tiring walking in spanish heat for 4 hours. it was so refreshing to see some nature after being in the city for so long, i hadn´t even realized how much i needed that but it felt really nice.

that evening after a siesta and shower, we all made our way up to saint nicholas´viewpoint overlooking the city for sunset. talk about surreal. sitting on a wall overlooking all of granada and snow

capped mountains watching the sunset with amazing people. and then we walked to the other side to look at the alhombra all lit up and reflect a little on how insane it was that we had the opportunity to go in there and how we wished there was something more we could do besides just look at it. like hug it or hold it or soak it in more somehow. we had a big classy dinner at a restaurant at the viewpoint and felt like proud young adults. after some toasts and lots of delicious food with lots of bread for sopping up the yummy sauces, we walked back toward the hostel and stopped for tea and hookah at one of the many hookah bars. that night really couldn't have gotten much more perfect i don't think. i didn´t know how moorish and arabic granada was before i went but the whole atmosphere is so different than outside of andalucia.

the next morning was spent in search of souvenirs in this cool arabic marketplace, after meeting up with hannah and rebecca who had a nice sister breakfast. it's always nice to see rebecca, she's like the little sister i never had/cooler than me so maybe older sister. we all bought tons of tea glasses and hookah periphenailia and i bought a little magic lamp style oil lamp and some gypsy pants and various gifties. hannah and her crew had to catch a 1 pm bus so we split up at around noon and i left my stuff in the hostel and explored granada a little more until the hostel sponsored street art tour in the afternoon.

granada is renown for its graffiti artists, who are actually encouraged to paint up the buildings, especially in the less touristy parts of the city to bring in people to the businesses there. we also stopped in a few cool places, the first was a cueva or cave house of this man who was so cool. he knew like 7 languages (with awesome accents might i add) on the spot and our tourguide guy told us he'd never seen him not know the basics of any language in the group. he walked us around his cave house (they live in caves to protect them from the extreme hot and cold temperatures, but still can have all the amenities of daily life, electricity and water, some even have jacuzzis and swimming pools..??) and it was full of cool pictures of his worldtraveling life style. he's apparently carlos santana's cousin and has met the beatles? who knows if he was pulling our leg or not but he gave us all incense in exchange for donations to his biannual trips to india to help out kids there. next stop was at the highest mirador in grandada, overlooking the whole city, followed by a trip to a viewpoint overlooking sacramonte, the famous cave town. there are also people who live up in tiny caves in the woods, about 500 people in fact, who are squatters but the government kind of leaves them be to keep them from coming into the city and squatting in old buildings there.

later that evening i had paella at the hostel and met some cool people there, and ate dinner

on the rooftop terrace watching the sunset, while a canadian girl with a regina spektor voice sung and played guitar. nothing better. i was pretty overwhelmed with unidentifiable emotions as i gathered my stuff and walked to the train station after dinner to catch my overnight train back to valencia: starting a new session with new people, missing my first session friends and family, overwhelmed with how amazing my weekend had been, leaving hannah and my new awesome friends of hers and making plans to visit them in colorado next year. just a lot. luckily it helped me get a little sleep at least on the train home that night.