Bucket List. Check.

Second to last weekend here and I can’t believe it. It’s been such a crazy adventure. I figured since I have one more weekend left to relax with friends, I wanted to use this past weekend to do things that I haven’t done yet that I wanted to.

 On Friday I went to the beach in Nerja with a whole bunch of people from my program. It was such a blast. The weather was perfect, the water wasn’t too cold so I could actually swim in it, and the company was great. We blasted music, ate food, played games (like everybody vs. everybody chicken and paddle ball) and spent some time relaxing in the sun. Perfect day if you ask me.

Friday night a group of girls from the program and I decided to head up to the Albaycin neighborhood to watch the sunset. Being up there made the city seem so small, but it was beautiful to look out over entire Granada. It gave me chills a little bit to know that this was the city I had been living in for so long. My beautiful Granada.

My friends (: Amelia, Kelsey, and Ashley

Saturday our program had one last trip to Ronda, a city near the southern coast. We spent most of the trip around its main attraction: Puente Nuevo (new bridge). It overlooks the huge canyon of Ronda and there are multiple trails to get to the water.

On Sunday Kelsey and I decided to catch a bus up to the Sierra Nevadas to go hiking. Although, our hike wasn’t something that was expected. We accidentally got off at the wrong stop. Instead of staying on the bus to the trailhead we got dropped off at the very base of the mountain at the ski station. So we hiked all the way up the mountain (yes I’m not kidding, pretty much all the way up) for about two hours to just get to the trailhead. We continued on for another hour or so, until we found a nice rest area of rocks to sit and eat lunch and look out over the city. Unfortunately, because of the smog, the views of the city were pretty hard to see. But we enjoyed the sunshine, relaxing on different viewpoints, and being up on the mountain. We ended up summiting a different path than we originally intended, but due to time we couldn’t continue on with the one we wanted. However, we still got our exercise in, still got to see pretty views, and still got to spend the day on the mountain.

Ski Station

At the Summit of another trail

This weekend I got a lot of sun since I was outside all weekend long! It’s really starting to feel like summer over here. Hot weather, Sunshine all day long, shorts, sandals! Although it’s exciting to finally get warm weather and hit May, it’s a bittersweet because it means my time here is almost over. I’m very happy that I got to cross off the things I hadn’t done yet this past weekend, so now I can just enjoy the city, my family and all my friends here for my last week.

Portugal!

As a last little side trip before the end, my friend Ben and I decided to get over to Lisboa, Portugal. We were only there for two and a half days but got to see a lot of what the city has to offer.

The first day we were there we hit all the big parts of Lisboa, as well as the sights in the side town of Belem.

          We took a long walk down to the edge of the city. Along the way we ran into a couple parks and plazas and ended up stopping at the Elevator (where you could take a ride up to a platform to look out over the city).

 In Belem, we saw the Torre de Belem (Belem Tower) as well as the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) which would both fairly large and represented Christopher Columbus’s journey to the New World.

We finished the day at the Belem pastry café, where we inhaled their famous pastries. Also on a side note, while we were there eating, a woman came up to me and asked me if I was from Sweden. I politely told her no, but she asked me if I wouldn’t mind having my pictures taken with Ben for a Swedish travel magazine about the pastry shop since I looked swedish. Um….what? okay! So we got our pictures taken by a journalist who traveled from Sweden to cover the restaurant to be in a swedish magazine, while traveling around in Portugal from living in Spain but really from the States. Confused yet? Me too. My face will be in a magazine in Sweden! Craziness.

Picture in the Swedish Magazine

Picture in the Swedish Magazine

The second day Ben and I took a day trip to Sintra, which was my favorite part of the trip. The town literally looked like the town from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I busted out the first song in the movie, until Ben and other people starting staring at me. Oops. (In my own world over here folks, sorry!) Ben and I headed to the Quinta da Regaleira, an estate with a luxurious palace and huge gardens. It was definitely my favorite spot. The gardens not only had lots of paths, but underground tunnels, wells you could climb down in, and towers to overlook the whole property. I felt like a little kid in a huge playground.

Sintra, Portugal

Sintra, Portugal

After the Quinta, Ben and I decided to hike up to the top of the city and look out at the view. The hike reminded me a lot of the hikes I go on with my family in the northwest. Lots of trees, lots of steep hills, and lots of little lookouts.

 Overall, it was a very quick trip. But I enjoyed seeing another country and was grateful I had the opportunity to go.

Corrida de Toros

On May 1^st, Granada hosted its kick-off corrida de toros for the season. Corrida de toros is essentially what we call a bull fight.

Ashley and I at the Corrida de Toros

There were six bull fighters and six bulls, each bull fighter gets 20 minutes with their bull. Each torero has six assistants—two picadores ("lancers on horseback") mounted on horseback, three banderilleros – who along with the matadors are collectively known as toreros ("bullfighters") – and a mozo de espadas ("sword page"). The picadores come out on horseback and as the bull charges the horse (who has protective gear on), they aim to stick a spear in the mound of muscle on the fighting bull's neck, weakening the neck muscles and leading to the animal's first loss of blood. This enables the torero to actually have a chance in fighting the bull because it weakens the bull. Then the mozo de espadas comes out with six different barbed sticks decorated in spain’s colors (red and yellow) and andalucian colors (green and white). As the bull charges them, they stab the spears again behind the neck, around the shoulder area. This further weakens the bull. Finally the torero (bull fighter) comes out with his muleta (small red cape). There’s a myth that the cape is red because it aggravates the bull. However, bulls are colorblind. They react to the moment of the cape. It’s only red to mask the blood of the bull. The torero uses his cape to attract the bull in a series of passes which serve the dual purpose of wearing the animal down for the kill and producing a beautiful display or faena. He may also demonstrate his domination over the bull by caping it especially close to his body (which then the audience shouts OLE!) The bullfighter’s turn ends with a final series of passes in which the torero with a muleta (sword) attempts to maneuver the bull into a position to stab it between the shoulder blades and through the heart. After each bull is killed, the audience decides whether or not the kill was clean and if they want to see more. They wave white handkerchiefs (or hats, napkins…anything white) as the bullfighter takes his bow around the arena. Then the process starts all over with a different bull and a different fighter.

Many people argue that this spectacular is very cruel and violent. I do agree with this. It was very hard to watch the bulls die. However, I also understand that the Corrida de Toros is a part of Spanish culture. It’s a piece of their history as well as an art. The way the bullfighter maneuvers the bull with his cape, the lines of his body, and the elegant-ness of the kill….is all an art. Although I would not like to go to another Corrida de toros anytime soon, in all I’m glad I participated. It was definitely a culturally experience and something you can never truly understand until witnessing it yourself. I learned a lot more about the atmosphere: how the bulls are treated like royalty and have superiority, how the people cheer and clap when the bull charges the cape, how the people encourage the bullfighter with Ole’s and waving of handkerchiefs. It was very neat to learn about the Corrida de toros in class and then actually going to see one.