One post in three months? That's not shameful at all.

You may all want to count yourselves lucky that I have less than three weeks left in my travels, so you won't have to continue to be frustrated with my disgraceful apathy towards this blog. Suffice it to say that my grandmother, bless her heart, has shamed me into writing one last post before I mosey on out of Granada next Tuesday.

Things that I have done in the last two months since writing: visited Paris, Portugal, and almost everything noteworthy in Andalucia; finally booked something more than three days in advance; turned 21; become chronically lazy; learned a LOT more Spanish.

On weekend travels: continental Europe is expensive. Though I thought that I could continue my 35-40 euro a day budget for cities, spending five days in Paris over a long weekend nearly broke the bank. By now I have accepted this, but it caused me, to a certain extent, to curtail my forays outside Spain and concentrate on cheaper exploits, like going out for tapas instead of taking the bus to Salamanca. However, I am very glad I went to Paris--after spending more months out of the US than in it last year, I was pretty jaded to visiting famous, exciting places, so when the prospect of visiting Paris made my heart pound and stomach leap, I knew I should go. On retrospect, those sensations may have simply been caused by the Spanish coffee, which is so strong and viscous that when you swirl it around, it coats the sides of the glass like wine. Connie would love it. Anyway, five days in Paris were enough to make me jaded again, because it's hard to imagine much that can compete with Versailles and the Louvre. By the way, remember how I've never been a great fan of visiting art museums? (Sorry, Tori and Grammy Joanne...) Paris changed my mind. It started with the Musee D'orsay, which I visited to look at the amazing old train station that it is built in. When I realized that I was actually enjoying myself, I shuddered inside, thinking something along the lines of "I can't start enjoying art museums! Then I'd have to kick myself for all the great ones that I've missed!" But after spending four enthralling hours in the Louvre, I was hooked. At least I can console myself with the knowledge that it took the art museum equivalent of crack cocaine to get me addicted.

To avoid writing the thousandth boring account of a college students' trip to Paris, I'm going to skip the rest of what we did there, except to answer this FAQ: did you climb the Eiffel Tower? No. Wanting to see the sunset, we arrived in the evening to find the guards closing the stairs for the night. Note to future visitors: the stairs to the Eiffel Tower close at 6. This was news to us. And even if they are still selling the last tickets at 5:58 (the time at which we arrived), they will not accede to your gentle requests (read: pleading) to be allowed to ascend, no matter how many lies you tell them about whose birthday it is. Well, c'est la vie. Jerks.

Portugal was a much smaller trip. I've fallen in love with the town we visited, Oporto (might be just Porto in English, but now I've mixed them up and can't remember). Northern Portugal was the home to the original Port wine, something I've grown to hate a little after three (free!) wine tours. But Oporto didn't just give us plenty of cheap sweet wine; it also gave us plenty of cheap sweet pastries. This is another thing that the city is known for, and I definitely took advantage of it. And I'm OK with the fact that I went an entire day eating nothing but pastries. My stomach wasn't, but I was.

The weekend of my birthday (last weekend, to be exact--see? I'm finally catching up in my blog), Alex and Hayley and I rented a car to drive all around Andalucia, Spain being the first country I've visited that I've judged safe to drive in. Our first stop was Guadix, a city of cave homes where part of the first Star Wars trilogy was filmed. From there, we moved on to las Alpujarras, a collection of picturesque, typically Andalucian mountain villages sequestered like a squirrel's cache into folds of the Sierra Nevada's many valleys. Though we intended to spend the day village-hopping, we actually only made it to one, due to a combination of roads far windier and slower than predicted and being kidnapped for lunch. Anticipating a quick stop for lunch, when we got hungry we pulled over in the next village of maybe 50 houses. The only restaurant was in somebody's flat, where we were seated next to the boisterously lunching family and told that we were going to order comida de la casa. OK, we said, the gullible Americans we are. Four courses later, we were still not allowed to leave. Alex had gone for a walk, feeling a little ill and thinking that our release was imminent, and our gracious host refused to let Hayley and I pay the bill and leave before hearing from Alex's own mouth that he didn't want desert. When he returned, she coerced us into taking shots to toast el Dia de Andalucia. This would be a bit like drinking to Christopher Columbus day. At least she was kind enough, after we begged, to give us non-alcoholic liqueur. Finally, free to go...after paying the 49 euro bill. Had we thought it was going to be cheap because it was in a town so small that you could blink and miss it? Had we thought it would be reasonable because in several hours, we were the only customers during what is supposed to be the busiest time of the day? We did think so, and we were wrong.

Las Alpujarras left behind, we spent the night with Hayley's family friends in Malaga, and the next day on a nearby beach in Estepona, where I fulfilled my self-induced goal of skinny dipping on every continent I've been to. We spent the night there and sped on the next day to Gibraltar, Great Britain. Let me take a brief minute to explain the attitude of Spaniards to Gibraltar: they do their best to pretend that it doesn't exist. Buses don't go there. Road signs don't point there. If you tell a Spaniard you went there, they will answer with a derisive, ¿Por qué? But I enjoyed it immensely. We splurged on a 25 euro taxi tour of the rock, which is really the only attraction of the town. This tour included entrance into the caves and tunnels that the rock is riddled with, and the chance to have a monkey on your shoulder. Well worth it, I say.

We moved on that night to Seville. Unable to find our campsite after two hours of looking (another of the reasons I hate the Let's Go guidebook series: their directions are often just plain wrong), we were forced to find a hostel at the last minute. Hostels in Seville being the most expensive in Andalucia, we consider ourselves quite lucky to have escaped with only being charged 18 euros a person. The next day was my birthday, which we spend exploring the many monuments of this jewel of a town before heading over to a Cuban restaurant I'd picked out, which had so many vegetarian (and vegan! This is craziness!) options that I almost lost my head. I had what must have been the best food I've eaten in Spain along with sharing what would have been my first legal bottle of wine, if I'd been in the States. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect birthday, though I have to say, turning 21 loses its thrill when you're in a country where the drinking age hovers somewhere around 16. We drove back early so as not to be driving in the dark, and returned our car with a tearful goodbye to dear old Festy. Thank you, Alex, for some fantastic driving skills.

And those are all the exciting places I've been. In terms of future plans, I will be spending my last ten days in Italy, partly in Rome and party with a friend in Bologna. I'm particularly excited about this trip, because for what has to be the first time in my life, I actually know what I'm doing. I've ordered my Eurail pass with enough time to have it sent to me in Spain, I've booked every night of hostel, and had my airline tickets before they became prohibitively expensive. Ironic, isn't it, that this burst of nerve-reducing organization only occurs with my very last bit of traveling.

And so as I am preparing myself to say my farewell to Granada, I'm trying to decide what to take away from this experience. I came here with the sole purpose of learning as much Spanish as I could in three months, and I think I have accomplished that with more ease than I would have imagined. I am able to hold conversations on most subjects in several tenses, can do most of my listening without having to translate what's being said into English to be able to understand it, and have increased the time it takes me to read a page of Harry Potter in Spanish from an hour to 15 minutes. I, at least, am quite satisfied, and intend to continue studying when I get back. I also now want to go to Cuba to pursue Spanish further, partly because of that delicious meal we had in Seville, and partly because the US Government forbids it.

But was it worth it? On the one hand, I've spent the last few months being more superficial than I could ever have expected from myself. I have met very few people that I can hold serious conversation with, and have become so tired of being laughed at for asking people to shut the refrigerator door when they aren't actively using it, or to turn off lights, or to not leave the heater on all weekend if they aren't going to be there, that I've stopped asking, which bothers me a lot. I've spent a lot of money, which is OK but will probably require me to--heaven forbid--get a job when I get back. And I never really connected with Spain. I'll miss it, sure, but I don't know if I want to come back. This is partly because the values that Spain (or at least Andalucia) upholds just don't mesh nicely with mine, but it's also my fault, as I've been quite apathetic towards getting to know Spain.

But on the other hand, I feel that have accomplished what was, and still is, my only goal. I've made a lot of friends, some of whom I will keep back at the UW, and others I will leave in Spain. And, I've had a fantastic time. It's been a gentle re-introduction to being a student, and made me look forward to returning to Seattle. So of course it's been worth it. In fact, ha sido un rato de puta madre.*

*Please don't put this phrase into a translator. I don't think it translates, and you will think I am disgusting.