Granada: My European Home

One day a few weeks ago my friend and I realized that we have no pictures of the place we have called home for the last ten weeks. Looking back at my Facebook albums and posts on this blog, I found that I have shared a lot about all the other cities and countries we have visited, but very little about Granada, mostly because it's strange and embarrassing to act like a tourist after you've lived in a city for more than two months. However, yesterday, my friend and I got over ourselves and took a little walk around the city to capture some of the sights we see here every day.

The street my building is off of.
My building looks kind of like this!

Puerta Real. The city center.

Puerta real, with too-early Christmas decorations at the top.

The Plaza on my walk to IES where protests periodically take place.

On my walk to IES.

Plaza Nueva, where IES is located, with the
Granda justice building in the back.

The water fountain where I fill up my
Columbia Sportswear bottle ;)

La Ventana. The store where the lovely, friendly
shop owner gives us IES students a discount.
And keeps us from dying of dehydration
in this land where no one drinks water...

Plaza Nueva, across from IES.

The street/alley in front of IES
(that's the entrance on the right!)

This is where I go to school every day :)

Living in this city and taking in all the beautiful sights it has to offer on a daily basis, you begin to take it for granted. For example, when three class visits in two days offer the following sights, I think you start to become numb to the beautiful, historically amazing views you are seeing. I'll be honest, on this particular day there was more than a little bit of complaining about the subiring we were doing (subir = to climb in spanish…our Spanglish has become impeccable in the last few weeks…). We subired through the old albaizin neighborhood to paint the Alhambra in my watercoloring class, we subired back behind the ancient parts of Granada to see the view in the second photo and learn about the Islamic history of Granada, and we subired to our visit at the Palacio of the Alhambra for at least the fifth time. Although, I will admit, as much as I dislike the subir and complain how we do the same climbs over and over again, I always get to the top and find myself awestruck by the beauty and history of this city.

The Alhambra. Taken during a watercolor class visit.

Granada. Taken during Islamic Civilization in Spain and
Northern Africa until 1492 class visit. 

The Palacio de Leones in the Alhambra.
Taken during Islamic Art & Architecture class visit. 

Every time we reach the top of our climb and I look out at the ancient gate to the city or take a closer look at the the arabic carvings in the walls of the Alhambra, I am reminded how grateful I am that I have this opportunity to live and study here and how thankful I am to have chosen Granada. 

Personally, I chose to study here because, having studied Spanish since kindergarten, I wanted to go to Spain, I wanted to go to a smaller city, and I knew some people who had studied in Granada. That's it. I thought those were good enough reasons until I arrived and other people in our program were all, "I was really interested in the many cultural influences of the city," and "I really wanted to go somewhere that wasn't like anywhere else in Spain," and "I was captivated by the Alhambra and the Islamic history in Granda." Cool guys. I didn't even know what the Alhambra was until AFTER I decided to come here. And I didn't know about all the Islamic influences in the city until AFTER classes started and I started getting educated on them. 

Now, here is where my Spanish friends (if you're reading) will laugh at me and potentially judge me for being an ignorant American. Go for it. While I do feel like an idiot for clearly not having done my research before choosing Granada, I think my lack of knowledge makes the discoveries I am making here that much more exciting for me. I have enjoyed every minute of each of our Alhambra visits (after the subir) and I was fascinated to learn of the discrimination of Muslims in Granada even though it was the last Spanish city to be under Islamic rule before the Catholic conquering.  

Not only is Granada the coolest historical city in Spain (in my newly enlightened opinion), it is also wonderfully small and beautiful. I run into people I know or have seen before on the streets all the time. I love it. I also can't help but be amazed at the beautiful architecture I see every day, when I take the time to look at it, that is. I do love traveling, and at times I have found myself bored during the day here in Granada, but then I take a moment on a day like today, when I am spending my second weekend in a row in Granada, to walk through the city to Puerta Real (the city center) and I am reminded how lucky I am to be living here for four months. I may not have known it at the time, but I definitely, without a doubt, chose the most amazing city in all of Spain in which to study. And for that, I can never be grateful enough.