Takin' things easy... después de días de mucho entusiasmo, quiero descansarme.

I love the campus and the dorms here. I have a big room and bathroom all to myself. My room overlooks the courtyard area with a big fountain and a bunch of trees and shady benches. Miranda, Aimee, and I spent a little while this morning enjoying the shade and our respective novels. The ping pong table in the hall got some use by the boys, and the sound of the table muffled by walls (even though the doors and windows were open) and the pigeons cooing and jumping in the fountain was very peaceful indeed.

I figured since today is a day for relaxing (especially since a good number of places are closed here on Sundays), I should upload a few more pictures.
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Ahh, the Alhambra... This is a big, beautiful castle once owned by the Moorish sultans, but eventually taken over by the Spanish Catholics. It brings in more money than any other European landmark because of its splendor. I love it. I want to go in someday soon, but for now, I have simply adored this building from the outside. My hostel was quite close to it, but now that I live at the University, it is much more difficult to steal a few glances of it walking around town. I kind of miss seeing it, actually. Perhaps I will walk by for a visit when the sun goes down and it's not 90 degrees outside...

I don't know the historical significance of this church, but I saw it and thought it was beautiful. Additionally, I love how it's buried in with the crowded houses on the narrow, hilly, cobblestone streets of the Albaicín.

Graffiti is everywhere and some of it is beautiful. This particular piece is pretty special because it is a trail marker. "Mira por la grafiti de dos caras. A la izquierda, hay las escaleras a las cuevas..."


...So after we turned left at the two faces, there was indeed a massive flight of stairs going up the mountainside. As you go up, there are caves that some of the local gypsies have turned into their homes. These are entrances to two of them. There was a fence around the outside one of them, but as you can see, the doors are built right into the wall. We didn't get to go in because no one was home and we didn't want to be rude, but this was a very interesting place up on the hillside. I'll probably go back up (albeit with a bigger group) for one of their flamenco shows one of these days.

This is it. La Granada Mía. This is the view from up on the hillside where the gypsy caves are. You can see pretty much the whole of Granada from over here, near the old City Wall (constructed back in the times when inside the walls was the city, outside the walls was the suburbs/rural areas). The sky is so blue, the city is so pretty and big, and I am SO happy to be here. Even after a few days, it is beginning to feel like home. I feel so privileged to have this opportunity. Unfortunately, the clouds didn't hang around for much longer than that day, but the clouds kept the temperatures in the low-mid 80s, which was substantially better than the 97 we are feeling now.

This is me, inside one of the newer sections of the city wall. It's pretty cool. It's made with short, granite bricks, but there isn't any visible mortar. It seems to be working well enough though I suppose, but this picture is mostly awesome because I'm inside the city wall, haha.

The Cathedral. It's beautiful, and right in the heart of the city. I stumbled upon it walking from my hostel to my University and was baffled that among all the city, you can just run into something like this. It was really out of the blue, and I love seeing it every time I head to El Centro.

I'm not entirely sure what this building is, but I wanted to emphasize the fact that I'm just stumbling upon buildings like this. It's beautiful here... I adore the architecture.

The sign next to this building says it is in La Plaza de la Universidad. I wanted to cry when I found out that this belongs to my University (It was founded in the 1500s or something like that). However, I have since found out that this is a part of La Escuela de los Derechos, or their School of Law, so I won't be taking classes here, but it is open for students to study in and has free wifi, so I have made it a point to study there at least once someday.

In case you never paid attention in World History, Spain is a Catholic country. If you ever forgot that, you definitely would remember upon coming here. Every church I have put on here thus far has been a different one. Perhaps next Sunday I'll attend mass, just to experience it. It's an extremely important part of the culture here. There was even a huge wedding at one of the big, old churches here that we walked by on multiple occasions. What a place to get married!!

This was the bridge that crosses the river that is across the street from my hostel. A lot of stray cats live by the river. I think it's peaceful there and it's actually kind of fun to watch the cats walk around and play down there. There are quite a few kittens, and of course I think they're SO cute!

One day we decided to make the hike up to the Alhambra. On our way, the sun began to set over the Alhambra. I had to stare at it for a few seconds and decided I couldn't leave without a picture.

This is the outside of the dorms from the courtyard. It's so pretty!!


This graffiti artist is pretty popular in Spain, but I think our "monitor" was telling us that he was put in jail or something for his work. The first one translates to "Who can save us from ourselves?" The second one says "That's funky" (in English) with a picture of dancer's hands. Our "monitor" speaks very little English and asked us to try to explain "funky" to him in Spanish. One of the girls in my group asked "¿Sabes MC Hammer?" and started singing and dancing "Can't Touch This". We all got a good laugh and I think he understood it. Anyway, these two pieces are very unique (I think) and I was happy we came across them.


And that brings me to today, my day of reading on the bench in the courtyard by the dorms. I love the setting in these pictures, I am very happy to have such a lovely place to hang out, relax, and read on a hot Sunday afternoon. Most importantly, I'm wearing the bracelet Chris gave me before I embarked on this adventure. I look at it a lot and imagine he's with me. I can't wait to hold him again.