Organized Wandering

Hello again! This blog will be a bit shorter than my previous post, so if you have been following along and haven’t seen the Sevilla entry, I highly recommend it! And for today, as always… I’ll start off with the previous day’s events~!

Yesterday afternoon for lunch we had a chicken and potato soup, with large pieces of potato wedged in it. As always, delicious! I particularly enjoyed the chicken bit, very tasty!
Had a quick siesta yesterday afternoon as usual, and spent a good hour yesterday fixing my blog post and uploading all those Sevilla pictures! In the computer lab I met up with Scott, and we decided after finishing our respective internet messages, to go off somewhere!

Of course, that somewhere turned into where and how. As we didn’t have any planned trips until Wednesday, it was up to us to figure out something to do. (There’s a lot to do in Granada, so it’s pretty much figuring out what to tackle the day of.)

We decided perhaps, a walk to the western side of town? We had never been there before, as our school and our homestays are all on the east side of town, and I really wanted to see where the bullring was, despite no bullfights going on in the rest of June. So with that settled, and our plan of action laid out on a map, we left the language center.

We walked down the main street near the center of the city, and as soon as we were about to cross an intersection, Scott recognized a girl from his Spanish class, and we met up and started to chat. Apparently, she was going to meet a girl from her school group, and two other students that were in her class. She asked us where we were going, and we said for some "organized wandering." She then invited us to join her group for churros at a restaurant, and we decided, heck, why not?

So we went with her to the restaurant, which was back at a plaza had crossed. Her name was Beth, and she was from a university group from Louisiana. (LCU I think?) We then walked over to a large open area with tables, and grabbed a table for six. The outdoor waiter stopped by and gave us two menus, and we read over it while we waited for the others.

The others then arrived, a girl from Beth’s school and two students from her class, who were from Hong Kong, and spoke very good English and Spanish. We then ordered some churros and talked about our respective time and trips we had had this week in Granada! We then got churros, since I was the only one who had ever had some- and as before, they were really good, and very popular with the whole group!

After getting some churros and talking for a bit, we then all split our separate ways- however, me and Scott came to the conclusion that going to the west side of Granada at that point would have taken us way too long. The two students from Hong Kong, Janice and Zack, asked if we would join them to go get a sim card for Zack’s phone. So, since had no plans, we said, sure!
We then walked down a couple of streets from the restaurant to shop at a cell phone store. (the LCU girls had gone shopping in the other direction) Zack and Janice got onto buying a sim card, while me and Scott just browsed and looked at all the phones. After they got the sim card, we were then at the same problem as before: Where should we go next?

We decided check out the cathedral and see if there were times to visit inside, as I really wanted to go back and look around more, and did Scott. Janice said she had been inside before, so I wanted to see exactly where to enter, as the main doors had only been open on Sunday. So all four of us walked over to the Cathedral area, and Janice showed us where we could enter inside to tour the church! I am particularly happy to know where, as I am planning sometime this week to stop in and check it out!

Afterwards, we got on the topic of teahouses, and neither of the Hong Kong students had been to one before. Scott remembered where the tea house we went to last week was, so we all decided to walk all the way down the main road to go and revisit it! I checked the map while walking, and realized that the tea house was a little into the Albacin, or the Arab-influenced quarter of Granada, so I was very excited to discover that- as I have been very much wanting to explore that area!

We then showed the two students where the teahouse was, and suggested they go there, which they were quite interested in returning to visit! We then walked around and talked some more, until it started pushing 8:30, and we all went our separate ways to our home stays.

I then went back home for a 9 PM dinner, and my roommate (who I had tried calling earlier, but she had turned her phone off) suggested that we go out and go visit a tea house, as she hadn’t gotten to one in Granada! Of course, having such a great time last week, I lead her over back to the tea house I had just visited not an hour ago. We both got to sit, chat, and enjoy some good tea after a long day, so that was a lot of fun! After the tea house, we came home near 10:15, as bedtime for us is 11 PM!

Today was class in the morning, and for lunch was a delicious noodles with spinach! Our home mom was out on an urgent call, so we both had a quiet lunch at home that had been already set out for us to eat. Later today, us Abroadco kids are going to meet up with some Europeans and watch tonight’s futbol (soccer) game of Spain versus Russia in the European Cup, and maybe go for some tapas too! It sounds to be a lot of fun, and I am very excited to go.

Until next time!