New and Improved: Now Skypeable!

Without further ado, let me introduce some information that I expect you all to a) memorize and 3) (that's for you, Jerome) utilize daily:

1) My new Skype account: sbzellison
(I'm more excited about this any bit of technology that has entered my life since tamagotchis. For the first time in--how long?--I can talk to everybody who has been missing from my life, for free or cheap. This means you. Please, please, PLEASE let me know when I can call you!)

2) Numero de movil: (0034) 665 316 817
(Use to text me before we talk on Skype. Or, just to text and say hi, even though it's ridiculous and costs something awful like 15 euro cents to turn it on.)

3) Address:

Sarah Ellison
Calle de Santiago, 22 - 1(degree sign)A
18009 Granada, Spain

(Use frequently to send such tasty delights as chocolate bars, peanut butter, and tofu.)

En Granada
After a month in Granada, you'd think I would have at least been able to write you one paragraph about my experience here. Of course, you'd have thought wrong, but I wouldn't have blamed you for it. However, I refuse to make another excuse for my lack of blogg-age. Don't judge me (Rachel).

I'm currently writing this from my own computer (courtesy of Mom and Dad), which is very exciting for me, because all of the question marks and @ signs are in the right place for once. After God only knows how long of moving on average every 3 nights (final tally of beds I've slept in, by the way: 34 in 3 months), I have my own room again. I have posters on the wall. I have (gasp!) my own underwear drawer. But, before you all get jealous over my life of luxury here, let me also say that I have no hot water... and that taking cold showers is my Waterloo. So to speak. I'm not exactly sure why the scalding hot water in the kitchen refuses to reach the shower. Perhaps it's scared of it (I know I am). But when I asked my landlady, she said, "oh, I think that's just how it is in the winter" as if this was no big deal, you pansy. This means that, even though I have a consistent place to wash my four pairs of socks and am definitely not spending all day up to the elbows in compost, I still smell a bit like one of the piles of dog woopsies that grace the streets here. Well, you win some, you lose some.

Expecting to escape another rainalicious, Prozac-popping Seattle winter (so far I'm two for three), imagine my surprise upon arriving in Granada to find, despite the fact that it's less than an hour away from the Mediterranean coast and that my guidebook told me I could wear t-shirts in January, that it's--ahem--a bit nippy. Due to my propensity to pack exactly the wrong things, I spend most of my days huddled around the most ingenious Spanish invention ever: a radiator under a table with a heavy, floor-length blanket for a table cloth, under which you put your legs and immediately melt into a small puddle of joy on the couch. But it's not all bad; for instance, the other day my friend Hayley and I walked up to the Alhambra where, in the sun, I was able to finally chisel off my down vest and wear nothing but a t-shirt. Until I realized that I looked like a hobo in comparison to all the high-heeled, ridiculously-large-sunglass-wearing, flawlessly-made-up Spaniards.

I'd heard that Spain was, on average, poorer than the rest of Europe. To me, this meant that, just maybe, they weren't as ostentatious and fashion-oriented as, say, Greek women, who apparently melt like the wicked witch of the west if they don't have a new pair of designer boots every day. However, I think I've found out why Spaniards are probably poorer than the rest of Europe: they all spend their money on cigarettes, fancy bottles of wine at 10 in the morning, and clothes. Like fur coats...didn't those go out of fashion in the 60s? I feel like I should be walking around with buckets of red paint. Do I feel a bit out of place with the four shirts and one pair of jeans that I brought? ummm...maybe....

I study at the Centro de Lenguas Modernas for four hours every weekday, but as my one and only priority is to learn Spanish, I also study on average three hours a day in addition, and have, to date, five intercambios ("interchanges" involving meeting with somebody trying to learn English to exchange broken versions of awkward pleasantries). Except the usual number is one, at most. The result of this intense "lameness", as my frat-boy friends call it, is a solid base of Spanish, and a vocabulary that sometimes has my teacher relying on me in class to explain things to the other students, or to translate their questions. I think I may know more Spanish than my teachers know English... wierd. Conclusion: in a little under three weeks, I've accomplished far more in Spanish than I did in German in FOUR YEARS. I'm not sure if this is a testament to how poorly taught high school languages are, or how easy Spanish is relative to German, or how suddenly motivated (woops, I mean lame) I am after taking such a refreshing break from school, but either way, I'm very excited to be able to waltz into a store and ask, without needing to think too hard about it, if they have these boots in a size 40.

This is not to say that when I first arrived in Granada, I wasn't immediately terrified by the incredible difficulty of getting around. Of all the countries I've traveled to, Spain is definitely to most unwilling to learn English. Seriously, who do they think they are, not taking years of their education to learn a language in order to help out the tourists who saunter around without a drop of Spanish to their name? If it's good enough for the Germans, it should be good enough for them. Pssha, honestly. My lack of ability to say anything other than ¿habla español? (which I later found out is improper) led me to have an absolutely miserable first few days. Though, I suppose it also could have been the three days it took to recover from the most miserable international flight I've ever taken, and then the three days it took to recover from the most miserable stomach flu I've ever caught. Either way, I spent most of the first week huddled in the hostel, frightened of going out because I didn't know what to do in this town of scary Spaniards who weren't even nice to me when they realized I didn't speak their language. So obviously, it was a cinch to find an apartment. After going to the secretary at my school, where I had read on the internet (heaven forbid UW actually help us figure out what to do when we got here) that they would help us find a place to stay. This help turned out to be a list of numbers we could call to inquire about apartments...but out of the 15 or so numbers, only one spoke any English. The rest answered my nervous inquiry about English the same way you probably would if somebody called you out of the blue to ask if you spoke Spanish. Fair enough.

So, after four days of the most stressful apartment searching, I now live with that one bilingual española. Her name is Carmen, she's around 35, and she works with other American students at the University of Granada. The flat is great--only about five minutes from class, and with a rooftop terrace where I spend sunny afternoons with views of the Sierra Nevadas and the (occasional, haha) glass of vino tinto verano. Class is in the morning, after which I eat lunch, dink around, and take my siesta (just to be part of the Spanish culture, of course). I usually get up around 4, study for a while, then make dinner or go out for tapas...which, for those of you who don't know, are the hippest and cheapest way to eat in Granada, which is one of the only cities that offers these partial portions free with even a six-ounce glass of beer. Hayley (vegetarana tambien) and I have become pretty good at figuring out the only tapas bars in Granada that give something other than ham. It's a hard life.

And that's a short synopsis of what my life will be like for the next few months! On the weekends, we take trips here and there (a few weeks ago we went to Cordoba, and this week we're going to Paris for five days). By "we" I mean the few other UW students I've met up with. In terms of friends, 98% of the people in my classes are other white American girls, and the Spaniards we meet are mostly disinterested in making friends with Americans, who I think are seen as mainly not worth the effort. But Granadinos are renowned throughout Spain for being aloof and unfriendly to strangers, a reputation I've definitely encountered to the tenth degree. I think I can count on one hand the number of smiles that have been returned by people pushing past me on the narrow sidewalks. However, Hayley and I do have one non-American friend, a friendly Moroccan shopkeeper who, upon hearing how difficult it was for us to find good vegetarian food, sympathized and offered to make us couscous. Speaking of which...

¡Hasta luega!

PS I've heard that it's difficult for people to post comments on my blog, so I've changed the settings for comment posting. Try, try again!