Liv

Simple pleasure #1, getting ready slowly without obligations and a cup of tea.

I'm off to Madrid for five days! After that, I promise the posts will start rolling back in! I love and miss you all.

Happy birthday Dad! I'm thinking of you!

I've been getting a lot of traveling in lately! I feel pretty spoiled, spending a week in Paris and directly thereafter spending a weekend in Barcelona.

I can honestly say that Barcelona is my favorite city thus far in Spain, and probably one of my top four cities of all time. I guess I have to start learning Catalan!

( històries i fotografies )

Barcelona makes me feel alive.

If you are ever in the throes of any kind of crisis, I recommend that you pack your bags and without a second thought, take off for Paris. This is your prescription from Dr. Liv, Paris is the answer, always.

( take too many, too many times a day )

I will definitely be returning.

I just had a HELL of a week, and so now, I'm heading off to Paris for best friend therapy and better bread than is available to me here.

I probably will not have internet whilst there, so please forgive me if e-mails go unanswered for some time.

Love you all. xoxo.

( The Parade of Maria de las Angustias )



Maria de las Angustias.

This weekend was crazy! We went to Cordoba on Saturday and then to Granada's most famous historic point, the Alhambra, on Sunday!

( Saturday, culture clash. )
( Sunday; worth the hype. )

To anyone who made it through all of this- thank you!! And with that, good night (for me)! Wish me luck on my exams this week!

We returned to the Albaicin, the oldest barrio in Granada, but this time we went to the side that isn't inhabited by the Sacromonte. Granada being a relatively small city, none of the barrios are very far from the other, but the Albaicin feels like an entirely different world.

( same old thing )

I went for a jog today after lunch rather than take a siesta just to clear my mind, and I found a huge string of street art by my favorite street artist. I'm going to bring my camera tomorrow, and I hope I can find that street again!

Until the next- thinking of all of you.

P.S. Happy birthday mom, I love you, and I wish I could have been there to celebrate.

I forgot my camera!!!

Three days in Jerez, and I forgot my camera! Sad, sad, sad. Fortunately, my friends did have their cameras, and I managed to steal some pictures from their facebook albums.

( like Granada, but different )

I loved Jerez! The perfect city for a couple of days of relaxation.

Yesterday I went on an educational paseo around Granada. Alfonso, our professor took us up to the Sacromonte (which translates to The Sacred Mountain), which is in the oldest neighborhood in Granada, the Albaicin. I'm so sad that the vast majority of my pictures from yesterday did not turn out at all, and I didn't take half the pictures I wanted to. In my defense, however, cramming 20 students into a street about 1/4 the size of a normal European street makes it hard to get pictures of the landscape and not just of people's backsides.

( There are a couple though! )

I believe we're returning to the Albaicin in a few weeks. Hopefully, better pictures next time.

This post is a couple days late because the Spanish server that connects me to livejournal was down. Honestly, I have no idea what that means. I assume it has something to do with computer bits because my computer was giving me messages I didn't understand. However, I hope that the whole thing is worth the wait because on Sunday, my day sin obligaciones, I took a very long paseo to explore this new city of mine, and I took some of my favorite pictures of the trip thus far.

As with most cities, lots of buildings are tagged with names, dates, swear words, and the like, but there is some real street art- emphasis on the art- here in Granada. It's especially apparent on Sundays when all of the tiendas are closed and they have the screens coving their storefronts down.

( random acts of kindness, and senseless acts of beauty )

I'm so relieved right now. We, the students of AHA, took our level-placement tests today, and my interview was so brief that I was stressing all day thinking that it might mean that I was in an extremely low level class, but hark! A sign from heaven that this might just have been a good call- I tested into Advanced Level B. There are four levels; bajo, intermedio, avanzado, and superior. There is a level A and B for each, and for some reason in Spain, B is a higher level than A (my American breeding feels that it should be the other way around). Only one girl in the whole program (who was raised by linguists) got into the superior level, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself! More importantly, in order to take classes that fulfill my 400-level credits, I have to test at least as an Advanced Level-B, which I did! In one month when the intensive is completed, I get to take it again to see how much I've improved.

I really appreciate you all looking at my pictures and reading this. I miss you all, and it makes me feel like you're here with me.

Also, happy birthday Carol! I'm technically on-time in the U.S.

lots of love, abrazos y besos.

I'm so tired after this long day, but Ronda was incredible, and I couldn't wait to post pictures!

( Keeping in mind that pictures never live up to the true beauty... )

I can't speak from any place of authority on the matter, but I'm starting to think that falling in love with a person has nothing on falling in love with a place.

The honest truth is that I'm not as good at this as I thought I would be academically (granted, I've only taken one practice test), but I am so much better than I thought I would be at actually living here. Early in the morning and late at night are the times when my Spanish falters and I begin to lean heavily on my English brain, but for the majority of my day, conversation is easy, and even the waiters will speak with me in Spanish instead of assuming that I'm an Alhambra-seeking tourist and insisting on English.

My only class at the moment is a culture and civilization class, and we're getting the stereotypes out of the way immediately. Tomorrow we journey to Malaga to see the Rondo where la corrida de los torros is, and on Tuesday we slip on las faldas for a Flamenco lesson. I feel like I'm starting to understand.

Trips I want to take: the Lorca house, Portugal, Paris, Italy, and Barcelona. I'll make it work.

( Granada, the home edition. Click Click Click. )

Fun fact, Granada basically the only city that gives free tapas with drinks.

Allow me to begin by saying, I hate traveling. No, not the actual cool part, the part where you see new places and meet new people. I don't like the plane part. This is why I didn't post last night, as opposed to tonight. Yes, tonight there will be a distinct lack of traveling bitterness that clings so tightly to my general joie de vivre that I am usually high strung for at least a day following.

However, Spain has touched me deeply with Sangria, kind people, and a general relaxation that has touched the soul of this haggard, strung-out, plane-o-phobic, live-journalin' witch in under 24 hours. So, I will sum up my 20 hours or so of travel with this; crying, crying, saying goodbye to my parents, crying, heightened security because of the DNC is ridiculous, a little more crying, a strange Asian man next to me working on a powerpoint entitled "Explaining the Qualitative Aspects of Nuclear Physics" for the entire flight, me trying to figure out how the heck he got his computer battery to last for nine hours, watching the Chronicles of Narnia; Prince Caspian 2.5 times, sleeping weirdly, can I just say that there are freakin' pigeons in the bus terminal at Heathrow, lots of waiting because the ticket counter was down, taking the nicest bus I've ever had the pleasure to ride in to Stanstead, Stanstead changes its gates a lot and makes life confusing, flight to Granada delayed one hour and I didn't notice because I fell asleep, two blonde birds squawking incessantly throughout the flight, a frenzied cab ride, and walking up and down Paseo de los Basilios to find the ever elusive Edificio #5.

Honestly, I'm exhausted just typing that. However, salvation came in the form of the ever-present, ever-adorable, Sacramento. She is everything a Spanish abuelita should be; opinionated, caring, tiny, charismatic, and of course, an unspeakably fantastic chef. When I buzzed up to the apartment, she was still up at the very normal Spanish hour of midnight, and by the time I got to the door, my dinner was on the table and she was in full-fuss mode, walking me to every room of the apartment and making me touch the towels. To say the least, I feel very at home, and very spoiled by Sacra. Sarah, my roommate is very sweet, and we have to trouble going on for hours in Spanish, which is great practice and a huge relief. All of this fuss is followed by a full night's sleep- the jetlag monkey never had a chance.

My first day of class was fine. I'm still nervous about doing well, but I at least feel like I have everything else taken care of. On Friday I take my first placement exam, and I'm biting at my nails for a chance to get at it and get it over with. I also got my first homework assignment today, which was to go on a scavenger hunt around the city for information. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to bust out the camera and get a little bit lost, and I did get a bit lost with a meandering pack of exchange mutts, but in the midst of searching for specificity in the city, and finding it in a glass of sangria at a dirt cheap tapas place, I only took a couple.

( click for these meager offerings )

Hello everybody!

I'm usually off journaling over at maelstromfruit, my private journal, but since I'm planning on traipsing around Europe and wherever else my whims and wiles lead me, I thought I'd start up a public journal just for talking about travel, my life in Spain, and posting my various faux-arty pictures and videos.

So, welcome to my journal, major updates will probably begin in several weeks.


Until then!