one letter can make a difference...

It´s been a while, so I figured I´d post some pics as an apologetic gesture... :)

I can´t believe that it´s already the 23rd. In another week we´ll be leaving for Madrid and by the time we get back we will already be a week into February-as if isn´t a short enough month! I´m getting super excited about the trip next week. It should be amazing-so much to see! We got a rough itinerary and we´re totally going to hit all the major spots and get to see all the main museums (Reina Sofia and the Prado) along with all the churches etc. Should be fantastic!

Last Friday I went on a short trip sponsored by the CLM to Fuentevaqueros where the house of Garcia Lorca is located. See, the CLM has a whole list of different trips to different parts/neighborhoods of the city (the Albaycin, old Granada, the Sacromonte where the gypsies are etc.) and as long as you are a student in the CLM (which as students of the AHA/ILACA program, we are) you can sign up for as many of these trips as you wish. There are a couple you have to pay for and even then it´s not that much, but the majority are free. It´s a very cool feature I must say. So I signed up to go on this trip to Fuentevaqueros to see Lorca´s house. The guide was a professor from the Univ. of Granada and she was amazing. She actually lead our tour of the Albaycin when we first got here and she knows so much about the city and its history. It was about a 40 min drive to get to the town and it was neat to be able to see the outskirts of the city and places that I haven´t seen yet because they are too far for me to walk to. I couldn´t believe that I hadn´t been in a motorized vehicle since I got here. You really do use your feet a whole lot more for transportation than in the states, that´s for sure!

So we got there and she showed us around his modest childhood home. It was small but very interesting. There were a lot of original artifacts and keepsakes. We even got to see the only surviving (and known) footage of him while he was alive-all 3 min of it!

When I got back, I went for a walk around the city. Just for kicks. I love the city in the evening. Everyone is out and about. Couples, friends, families. The city is alive with people! I had my iPod and in my opinion that´s all I really need-with it, I can walk around until my feet give out!

So there I was in downtown. I was slightly hungry and it wasn´t time for dinner yet, so when I saw a sign that said "frutos secos" I didn´t even think twice abont what it really meant and just immediately thought "Cool! Dried fruit! I love dried fruit."

Um, oops.

No. "Frutos secos" though it may seem to translate to "dried fruit" does not mean that at all. I walked in to the little shop and asked the man where the "frutos secos" were. He pointed to a stack of plastic bins filled with nuts...

Heh.

The "o" and the "a" really do make a difference.

So, not wanting to look silly and because I was still hungry, I looked at the bins and decided to get a small bag of a mixed nut assortment. I started munching and discovered that there was a nut in there that I really liked a lot...so I ducked into another shop that sold nuts and looked at the names on the bins and found out that the nut I like was "maiz grande".

Now, it´s been a while since I´ve had a bag of cornnuts in the States, but as far as I can remember that is what this nut most resembles. It is delicious and I plan on bringing a ton back. It would be just my luck that it turned out to indeed be cornnuts...oh well. Either way, I´m glad that I confused the "a" and the "o".(By the way fruit like oranges, pears, etc has the "a" ending-"fruta". That´s why I got the two mixed up)

On Saturday we had our visit to the Capilla Real and the Cathedral. The Capilla Real was beautiful and ornate while the Cathedral, which I assumed would be the more lavish of the two, turned out to be pretty plain. The walls were white with the exception of a few paintings.

In the Capilla Real we got to see the coffins of Isabel and Ferdinand as well as the chest that Isabel gave Columbus when he sailed to the New World. So much history and I got to see it. It´s so cool to be here and get to see all of this firsthand, you have no idea!

That afternoon I wandered around and found F. Garcia Lorca park. It was pretty nice, but was pretty barren considering that we´re in the middle of winter. I´ll have to check it out again in springtime.

I also went and saw another movie that night, "Memoirs of a Geisha". I missed it when it came out in the States and I really wanted to check it out. I´m not sure if I´m getting better at understanding the language or if they just were speaking slower but this time I understood practically the whole movie! Go me!

On Sunday, I took advantage of the fact that I got up early and ended up going to the Parque de las Sciencias, which is a combination of OMSI and a museum like the Museum of Natural History or something like that. It was very interactive but there were also more informative exhibits on the Arabs of the Iberian Peninsula and the Origins of Life. They also had a room that had all of these interactive exhibits on perception. Super cool. I was such a little kid! It was awesome though. I really want to go back because I didn´t have the chance to see it all and there is a cartography exhibit that I want to see that leaves in March.

At the Parque, they also had a bunch of "exhibits" outdoors. There was a "Mental Gymnasium" and a huge chess board that you could actually play chess on. There was a butterfly sanctuary...that was really neat (plus it was warm in there to simulate the tropical habitat they are used to...I stayed in there for a while! :)

There was also this huge, tall tower. You took an escalator to get to the top (think Empire State Building type of tower but obviously not nearly as tall!) and then you walked down stairs to get back on tierra firma. On the way down, there were signs that marked the height of a particular animal. For example, at XX meters there was a sign saying that this was how long a blue whale is, the longest tapeworm ever found in a human, a giraffe, etc. It was neat and geez, the longest tapeworm was really long-yuck!

Okay, over and out.