"¿Qué quieres comer para tu último almuerzo?"

"What do you want to eat for your last lunch?"

The wifi is down, as usual, so I'm sitting in the hall where the cable is. My new host mom Ana Maria poked her head out of the kitchen to ask what I want for lunch on Saturday, my last day here. Everything. Really what I want every day for the rest of my life is tortilla española, but that's not the point.

I don't want to go back and redo anything, and I'm grateful for that. I'm really happy with how my semester went. There were a few things I wanted to do but couldn't because of either time or money, but if I'd done those things, valuable or not, I wouldn't have done what I did, which is more valuable. That said, if I could change something, I wouldn't have gotten sick. Just as my cough was FINALLY going away I got hit by this dumb strep/cold thing and I've been out of commission all week. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my last week, but it's better to have spent all semester running around outside and being inside the last week, than to have stayed inside all day, every day and suddenly realize it's my last week here. That's how some people are feeling right now.

One more exam, a goodbye party tomorrow night, and all the tapas I can squeeze into my mouth.

Me and my padre!
Don't be fooled, he's quite jolly normally.

El espectáculo de flamenco

The flamenco show

Yesterday was our much-anticipated flamenco show! I was really nervous but it ended up being a lot of fun. A whole semester of practicing turned into a routine that lasted about three minutes, but that's good because my friends in the audience didn't get bored. The padres were all invited, and our professors too, but mine arrived just after we finished. Things are wrapping up....

My class in the opening stomps

Don't worry, Mom! Here's one of me

La ciudad, le encanto

The city, she loves me

At least some of you I'm sure know the Red Hot Chili Peppers' song "Under the Bridge". It's about loving a city. I'm lucky, because I have two cities who love me. Granada's sunshiney plazas are holding my hands, the cathedral is laughing with me when a creeper is creeping. Sometimes when my human friends get a little bit too overwhelming, I can sit with Granada and she makes me feel better. It sounds silly, I know, but I'm not the first person to fall in love with a city.

I have a favorite nut vendor. His stall is right next to my favorite fruit vendor. Actually I think it's just different sides of the same stand. Anyway I went to the nut vendor today and surveyed his wares, but he didn't quite have what I wanted. He said, "Tell me everything you like," so I said salted peanuts, corn nuts, raisins, etc., and he started grabbing things and made me my own trail mix, a little salty and a little sweet. He only charged me two euro for the huge bag, when it should have been between 5 and 7. (I love you, New York, but you're not nearly as kind as Granada).

Today was the last day of classes. How weird is that? It doesn't feel like a semester has really gone by. Spain is still like Narnia to me. It's magic and strange, and time in the real world doesn't move when I'm here. Three weeks ago I was surprised to realize it wasn't still winter in the states. It doesn't at all feel like I just finished my junior year.

Padres nuevos

New padres

We call our Spanish host parents our padres to differentiate them from our real parents. But that's what they are: parents. Anabel left for Vienna yesterday. I miss her. I liked our routine. Her parents are here now and everything is different. It's hard to get used to, I don't know what is appropriate or anything like that. Also the food is different, I have to keep a smile on those adorable little faces.

My mom (my real mom) said I'm a stubborn eater. If I decided I don't like something, I won't eat it. Even if I'm hungry. Even if everyone else says it tastes delicious and it's starting to smell good. No matter what, I wouldn't eat it. Now I don't know whether I've just opened myself to more foods, or whether it's something about these cute little old Spanish people, but I've turned that stubbornness onto myself, for better or worse. So now, when she points to the blood sausage, I pick up a piece of black, spongy meat. And even though I'd rather let a spider crawl up my hand than eat it, I stick it in my mouth and chew. And I look right in her eyes and smile. (Don't ask me what it tasted like, I don't think my tongue touched it, and even if it had, I was concentrating too hard on not thinking about the ingredients).

There are only three weeks left. Two weeks of classes. I can do all the work I still need to do, I can be late for class because I have to stay in and eat breakfast. I hope the rain stops so I can enjoy the last of my time here. I hope the British Airways strike gets resolved before I have to fly back to New York, and that damn volcano shuts up. On the bright side, my cough is almost gone!

A todo el mundo le gusta London, pero no Paris. A algunos les gusta Paris.

Everybody likes London, but not everybody likes Paris.

I got back from Paris last night! I went with four other friends and we stayed in a hostel in Montemarte and had a great time. We saw lots and lots of things, had some frustrations of all sorts, and got glared at by French people in restaurants. Such fun!

On Friday we went to the Lourve. I've been waiting and waiting for years to go to the Lourve. I don't know how to say this, but honestly, I didn't like it. I guess the main problem was that it's just too big. Needless to say, there are some spectacular things in there, things that made me stop midstep and stare and forget to breathe. But between those things are miles of things I don't want to see but have to hike past.

More problems:
1) Many of the good things, like Ingres' Grande Odalisque and David's Oath of the Horatii, are not listed on the map and I found them completely by accident.
2) Of the things that are listed, the key to finding them is so confusing I spent more than half an hour wandering between two rooms looking for the Venus de Milo when in fact it is in another wing.
3) An entire wing of the Lourve is listed "Paintings."
4) Do not even talk to me about the nightmare of procuring tickets. Worse than you could imagine. Worse still, they ended up being free for some absurd reason only French people would know about.

And compare all this to the heaven-on-earth that is the Musée d'Orsay. We got in free by flashing our student visas (so satisfying) and grab the completely legible map and immediately discover that not only is Manet's Olympia there, so is Renoir's Moulin de la Galette. I was nearly in tears. We walked through room after room of paintings I've studied and written term papers about, favorite paintings that flitted through the screensaver on my old computer, paintings that started revolutions. Everything I could have wanted to see was there. More than once I was standing with one of my friends, telling (boring? I hope not) her about a painting that related to this one because of x y z and I turn my head and gasp, because there is the very painting I was talking about! And the two are together! The most exciting comparison for me was that Olympia was there, and so was the (well-painted but slightly boring and expected) painting that won the Salon the same year Olympia was submitted, and caused such a scandal. To see the two of them together, to see Olympia's fierceness and power next to the languid, silly Venus, was incredible.

I was surprised that all buildings in Paris are roughly the same sandy color. It adds to the elegance. In Granada, in my neighborhood, every building is a different color, citrusy and gemlike. For some reason even though I considered this comparison while in Paris, I didn't think to take any pictures. In fact, I didn't take very many pictures at all. Sorry. You know, I'll just have to go back.

On our last morning, we ventured into a tourist shop to get some knickknacks that say Paris on them, and were surprised to find... whole sections of the store devoted to I ♥ London merchandise. Why? We're chuckling about a plastic I ♥ London beer mug when the store owner comes up and tells us it's a very good beer mug.
-"But...we're in Paris," we point out.
-"Yes," he says, "but everybody likes London."
-"Well, that's true, I suppose. But doesn't everybody love Paris too?"
-"Yes, Paris is good. But everybody likes London. Not everybody likes Paris."
I can think of another city everybody likes best and I'm not about to let it get overshadowed by these low-buildinged villages, and this situation is obviously beyond sense, so I ask where the New York goodies are.
-"Ah. New York is very far away," says the guy, "But you are right. Everybody likes New York. I will show you my New York things." ...And starts leading me to the other side of the store.
-"No...that's okay... I really like Paris."

Liz, Alex, Michelle and me in front of some monument or whatever. :) Yay Paris!

(This is Amanda's picture. Thanks, Amanda!)

Hace mucho tiempo

It's been a while

Sorry everyone! Things have been moving so quickly with visits from my parents and trips and piles of projects, on top of being endlessly sick with a bad cough. Some summaries of the last few weeks:

Africa was amazing! I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that we were actually IN AFRICA. We rode camels along the other side of the Atlantic (I waved at you all!). We went to an Arab bath and had our skin rubbed off. Every meal I was sure was the best thing I'd ever eaten. We stayed with host families in Rabat, and our host mom dressed us up in all her fine robes...for an hour. We had lunch with a family in a village in the Rif mountains with the cutest little boy on the planet. It's only a matter of time before Angelina Jolie finds him. I spent the whole four days gazing around open-mouthed because everything was so beautiful and colorful and so different from anything I've seen before. I've thought things in Spain seemed third-world sometimes, like when I find the entire spine of a pig in the street, or the fact the Granada is crawling with stray cats and dogs, but seeing these things in Morocco, to a much greater degree, was really shocking to me. Kids were playing soccer with a dead rat, there was a cat giving birth under a shoe stand, and the highways were lined with donkeys and sheep and skinny horses. In America we always hear about how lucky we are to have shoes and running water and basic luxuries we take for granted. I believe(d) it, but I had sorted it to the file in my mind of things I know, logically, are true, but don't ever think about as reality. I don't know if that makes sense. And I wasn't even in a very poor or rural part of Africa. It's taken me a few weeks to process the experience and I think (I hope) I take it with me for a long time.

Amanda, Liz, and I in our host mom's gowns.
There are more than 120 of these pictures. Niiice.

Camels on the other side of the Atlantic!
Look at the baby one!

Just a few days after we got back home, my mommy arrived in Granada!! Despite the volcano, which had me worried for a little while. It was so nice to see her and share this city with her. We went to a great fondue place in the Albaicin and watched the sky darken around the Alhambra as the flood lights came up around the base. Moms are the best.

In the Alhambra

And then the next day my dad flew in and we wandered around Granada. We did little watercolors and ate more delicious food, and then off to Madrid for a weekend of art. Unfortunately we were both a little under the weather so we spent a lot of time in the hotel. I'm so glad I'm in Granada instead of Madrid. It was so nice to see him, I wish I got to spend more time with both my parents.

Statue of Don Quixote in Madrid

The whole time I've been coughing. I haven't been able to run because I'd have to stop every few feet, so I've been feeling so restless and antsy. I hope it goes away by the time I go to PARIS on Thursday!

As the end sneaks closer I'm finding myself so torn between wanting to go back to the states and wanting to stay in Granada forever. I'm trying to appreciate every second I have here, knowing I'll be in Lancaster all summer and all next year, missing Granada. I don't have to wish to be there because I will be, before I know it.