Seville and more...

                Midterms were fast approaching.  Having been sick the entire previous week due to a bug that I contracted in Morocco, I was still trying to subdue my fever such that I could attend my most important classes.  I would feel better for a short time, but after my two mile power walk to school, I inevitably wondered how I would get through the next ninety minutes of Contemporary Art.  Salsa class every day was out of the question, and I was hibernating in my five foot long bed for hours at a time.  Forget afternoon hikes, going out with friends on the weeknights, or anything secondary; I was just trying to convince my host mom that I was not avoiding her food because it tasted bad, but in fact because my body physically could not handle it.  Nevertheless, I stumbled to week’s end with my prescribed medicine crumpled in my nifty travel backpack and I plopped on the bus with forty-five friends destined for a weekend in Seville, the capital of Andalucía.

                María, our program director, enthusiastically skipped through the bus aisles striking up conversations and, after a few hours, we made a quick stop outside the city.  It may have been due to my lack of attention in class on Thursday, but I had no idea what I was looking at when our guide walked us through mazes of ancient looking ruins.  Fortunately, I eventually realized that we were walking through a city that is over 2,000 years old!  It was constructed by the Romans during their empire, and it contained entire excavated homes and sculptures, not to mention an impressive coliseum.  The concept of walking on the same platform where warriors fought for their lives literally thousands of years ago was undoubtedly very thought-provoking and, inevitably, my friends and I joked that we would have probably been the best warriors back in the day.  The whole tour lasted two hours, but walking on Medusa’s tile floor in a home that housed children centuries ago was an experience unlike any other.

                Eventually, we arrived in Seville, where I spent most of my time wandering through the city streets and overlooking the city from the Cathedral’s impressive viewpoints.  We ultimately packed into the bus on Sunday evening with just enough time to return to Granada at 10 pm for dinner.  With a test at 8:30 am and 6:30 pm the next day, I wished that my final grades would just reflect all the educational tours that I had taken in Seville.  Luckily, I survived the extensive essay questions and eventually made it to this weekend.  With a nation-wide strike being held on Thursday, my school week was cut short, and I took to the streets to curiously wander through the thousands of protestors who desperately want economic change in Spain.  Surely, many union members were protesting with a purpose, but I was amused to see that the confetti, organized drum squads, and hundreds of flags resembled a joyous parade more than anything.  Even so, the twenty-four hour marathon of whistles and fire-crackers ended at midnight and it brought yet another work day in Granada and the rest of Spain. 

                With Friday brings the official start to Spring Break, and I am preparing to head to Barcelona for the next week.  A five hour bus ride and a quick plane ride await, but I hope to be taking in the beautiful northern Spanish sun within the next twenty-four hours.  This is a trip that I have been excited for since arriving in Spain, and I am excited to share my experiences in the coming week!

Africa: Dreams Realized

We walked out of the airport, passports in hand, with the name of a hostel and a few hundred dirhams.  Five of us, all friends from the Granada program, had no idea what to expect other than a new world experience when we landed in Marrakech, an Islamic city of over 1,000,000 people located more or less in the center of Morocco, Africa.  Other than a questionable camping trip that we had organized online through a third party organization, we decided that our first day would be spent “experiencing the culture.”  We did not have to wait longer than two minutes before we realized this was no longer Spain and surely not the United States.  About ten taxi drivers approached us offering their services, a theme that would recur time and time again throughout the weekend.  Eventually, an Arabic speaking gentleman convinced us that his “derpy” taxi was absolutely the best and we crammed into a tiny, run down car headed toward the main region of the city.  After dodging donkeys, horses, camels, and oncoming cars (there were no street markers or lines), we finally got off the taxi only to be overwhelmed by mobs of locals who saw an opportunity to pounce on obvious tourists.  We spent the next day eating amazing Moroccan food, taking pictures with cobras, watching monkeys back flip through the crowded streets and, more than anything, take in the sights and sounds of a city that none of us had ever even come close to experiencing. 

Friday morning, our second day in Morocco, we woke up at 6:30 a.m. with plans to meet a stranger in front of a post office who would drive us to the Sahara Desert, a six hour excursion, and leave us with camels that would trek us in for a night camping under the stars.  If it sounds a little bit unscripted and questionable, it was surely all of the above, but we were optimistic that our twenty euro online deposit had not been stolen and our excursion a fiction of the imagination.  Surely enough, we cautiously approached our preliminary meeting spot and a nicely dressed local stepped out of the nicest mini-van in Marrakech and muttered, “Michael Dildine?”  Seeing as how our reservation was under Michael’s name, it appeared as though this might be a legitimate operation after all.  Eventually, we made our way south and made stops in the mountains and at the site where Gladiator, The Prince of Persia and other famous movies were filmed.  As the sun was setting, the driver finally pulled off in a city called Zagora, where he instructed us to follow a couple locals who would lead us to the camels.  Before we knew it, the five of us were watching sun bow below the desert dunes while we realized that camel riding was not exactly comparable to sitting on our luxurious living room couches.  We finally got comfortable two hours later, at which point the guides dropped us off in the pitch black desert and walked the other way without saying absolutely anything.  Curiously, we stumbled up and down the sand hills until we came across a camp site.  In the middle of the African Desert with camels resting in the background, we set our bags down and spent the rest of our night beating on drums, conversing with the locals, meeting people from around the world and letting the smooth Saharan sand run through our dirty fingers.  My dream of visiting Africa was officially a reality.

                Eventually, we rode the camels back to Zagora where we were subsequently driven to Marrakech.  Three days after first arriving in the marvelous other-worldly city, we were again dodging honking cars and buses, this time on foot, in a desperate attempt to find a taxi that would take us to the train station on time.  Fortunately, the five of us piled into our Harry Potter-style train cabin just in time for our ten hour overnight ride to Tangier, the northern-most city in Africa.  We had to untwist our pretzel shaped bodies when we awakened just in time for our train stop and, within three hours, we were disembarking the ferry that had taken us across the Strait of Gibraltar and back into Spain.  The whole traveling adventure lasted a mere twenty-four hours, but I finally returned home on Sunday night with the most eventful weekend memories of my entire life.  I unknowingly mentioned in my blog a few weeks ago that, if my experiences and excursions continued to open me to new world experiences, I might just find myself riding a camel through the Sahara Desert in the near future.  Evidently, dreams continue to become realized and, while I prepare for a week in Barcelona and northern Spain, you can expect that I will continue filing away the hundreds of memories that I will cherish for a lifetime.               

Vacation in Madrid

               I sat listening to my favorite Granada playlist while en route to Madrid last Friday.  It was a trip that I had long awaited because fifty of my friends would be traveling through three of the most historical cities in Spain together.  While we spent the majority of our time in Madrid, we took day trips to Segovia and Toledo, and every excursion was filled with new and memorable experiences.    

                Once off the five hour bus ride to Madrid, we went straight to El Museo del Prado.  With some of the most historical and famous paintings in the world, it was impactful to see the very same artwork that we had studied during the months prior.  With hundreds of works by El Greco, Goya, and Velásquez scattered throughout the three stories of showrooms, I was most impressed by the self portraits of kings and nobles that could easily be confused with modern day photographs.  As opposed to the contemporary art museum, El Museo de la Reina Sofía, which contained some of the most odd and inexplicable “art” that I’ve ever seen, El Prado contained absolutely stunning masteries.  Aside from spending countless hours in museums, we took a guided tour through the famous plazas that give Madrid its reputation as a beautiful and bustling metropolitan city.  At one point, we visited a historical site in which many people were killed during the Civil War, and it evoked a sense of eerie wonder as to what the scene may have looked like in the serene park just decades ago.  Excluding Granada, the many sights and wonders of Madrid make it my favorite city in Spain thus far.

                Sunday was an exciting day because our program took a bus ride to Segovia, famous for its Roman aqueduct that pierces through the heart of the city.  Constructed literally 2,000 years ago, the aqueduct measures eighteen kilometers and its sheer mass and masterful engineering overwhelmed me.  Not only was it built two millenniums ago with ancient techniques, but the massive structure is held together entirely by the weight of each rock that was carefully placed one on top of the other.  Although the city is the third smallest in Spain with a population of 50,000, its atmosphere and beautiful sights were something to hold onto.  As our guide weaved us through the ancient streets towards famous churches and palaces that appear in Disney’s Snow White, we dodged the thousands of families that were gathered in full costumes for the city-wide carnival.  What an incredible way to spend a Sunday afternoon, for myself, but also for the hundreds of families that call Segovia home. 

                Before trekking back to Granada for a short school week, we spent a day in Toledo.  Having researched and presented information on the city last semester, I was especially excited to bring my silly PowerPoint presentation to life.  Store after store, block after block, we came across thousands of swords, switch-blades, knives, and virtually anything with a sharp point.  Had I not been walking with two guy friends the whole afternoon, we probably would have spent more time in museums and cathedrals, but our undeniable attraction to pointy objects lured us into dozens of stores that girls might propose are all the same.  Regardless, I finally did find my perfect memento in the form of a hand-crafted knife, and I hopped on the bus for a five hour bus ride through the beautiful Spain countryside.  Five hours later and with yet more experiences to cherish for a lifetime, I crawled in bed in preparation for one more fantastic day in Granada.