There's No Place Like Home

Sitting in an Anthill

 ¡Buenos!

I sit here typing this entry with somewhat bittersweet emotions.  Today is my last day in Granada.  We leave for Seville tomorrow morning and spend a couple days there and then move on to Madrid where we finish up our trip.  I'm excited to see those places of course, and I'm especially excited to see my family back home, but it is sad to leave here.  This day kind of snuck up on me.  It wasn't until last night that I realized I have to pack up all my stuff and say goodbye to my madre tomorrow morning.  It's just kind of sad, that's all.  "That's all I'm trying to say.  That's all."  (100 points for whoever names what that's from)

So this weekend I went to Nerja.  It's a smallish town in Costa de Sol of southern Spain.  My chicas who I usually hang out with during the week and such went to Paris for the weekend.  I debated on staying in Granada and not going anywhere, but I heard too many stories of how beautiful and fun it was in Nerja.  Nerja it was.  Took the bus Saturday morning in unbearable heat.  The AC wasn't working too great, and I swear at one point it felt as if the heat was coming out instead.  Not cool.

We started getting close to the town and I could begin to see the beauty of the place.  This was the type of beach I imagined when I heard about going to the beach in Spain.  Bright blue Mediterranean Sea with giant rocks along the coast and white sand everywhere.  There was one spot at the beach we were at where you could climb a rock coming out of the water and jump.  I was pumped when I first heard about it.  When I had to swim out to it and climb up a vertical wall I began to get a little nervous.  And when I was standing at the pinnacle of this mountain I started to second guess my initial excitement.  I took a few breaths as my logic tried to convince me not to jump.  Then the leap of faith... I think the fall might have been 1.5 seconds, but it felt like I had died and was falling to my watery grave.  SPLOOSH.  My back brushes up against the soft sand and I stay under for a second or two with a feeling of accomplishment.  I resurface to see a 9 year old girl about to land on me.

The rest of the weekend was pretty fun.  We all met up for dinner around 9:30 at this place called California.  Oh by the way, Nerja is basically run by the Brits.  You might as well talk with an English accent because everyone else does.  It's kind of weird, but I guess they go there for vacation or whatever...except a lot of them own businesses there.  So yeah, California is owned by England.  We are seated on the roof and have three separate tables because there are about 16 of us.  My table only has four people.  They take our order and we carry on our conversations (while listening to British accents at surrounding tables).  Then, the owner comes up to us.  My friends had met her before because they had been in Nerja the past two weekends and ate at California both times.  They love it because the food is great and the service is wonderful.  Well... third time isn't always a charm.  The owner comes to our table with a list of our food order.  JD ordered chicken curry.  I ordered spaghetti.  Laura and Jenny ordered a steak to share.  Along with a thing of wine, two soft drinks and an order of bread.  So she says in her British accent, "Um, you guys... I just wanted to double check the order you placed."  We're like, okay...  Supposively last week when our group came some people didn't order food.  They only ordered drinks and the owner got a little mad.  I guess that's understandable, whatever...  so this time when we came in Jenny said that we would all be eating and not to worry about people only ordering drinks.  So she continues, "I only have three meals here and there are four of you."  Jenny says, "Well, we're sharing the steak because it's such a big portion and last time we couldn't finish it.  And they're each getting their own entree."  She shakes her head, "Well I'm sorry, but frankly that isn't good enough.  This is prime seating space and you all said that you would be eating and we could easily have sat someone else here."  New paragraph.

Um, what?  Are you serious Britain?  You are freaking out because one person is sharing when our meal is easily €70.  Not only that, but you're meals are huge and they didn't want to waste your blimey food.  Don't come over to our table trying to tell us what we need to order.  We are paying like every other person in that restaurant and have every right to "take up" your precious space.  Go back to England and don't make us go all 1776 on you.  Gah...anyway, we convinced her that our order was fine the way it was.  Put us in a bad mood because we had really liked them and then she randomly freaks out about that.  The rest of the staff was great to us.  The lady who brought us our food was like, "Ok my lovelies, here you are..."  And that made us smile.  Of course, the owner probably spit in our food.  And we continued to speak in British accents the rest of the night.

After dinner, we went out and stayed out til about 5.  Went to a few discotecas and danced the night away.  Most of the time I felt like I was at a middle school dance, just with older, creepier people.  But later we took a dip in the Sea, watched the stars and the crescent moon, and did the neon green bacteria thing in the water.  Haha, know what I'm talking about?  When you go into the ocean at night and move your hands around in the water, tiny little green lights will jump around.  It's like bacteria or something.  Yeah, it was freezing cold (to me, at least).  Waited for everyone else to get out.  I walked back to the hostel in just my underwear.

Next morning, we left the hostel.  I didn't really feel like going to the beach again because it was so dang hot.  Intense, intense sun is not good for the soul.  I went to our favorite little restaurant place overlooking the ocean and got another chicken, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise sandwich.  I had four of them between Saturday and Sunday.  So good.  (it's not like American mayonnaise)  Met up with some people and decided to try out the beach again.  They were sitting under the shade of the rock we jump off so I decided to stay.  I sit down and within minutes realize I'm sitting in an anthill.  Normally I would quickly get up and brush them all off, but for some reason this time I just continued eating my sandwich.  I had lunch with my friends the ants.  They ate my crumbs.  I ate on top of their kingdom.  It was a beautiful relationship...until they really started revolting and I decided that I didn't want ants in my pants after all.  I left the group once again and sought out more shade.  Spent the rest of the time at a litte cafe talking with my friend Shadè.  Good times.

Finally time to catch the bus.  Thank God there was AC this time around.  Though it was still an annoying ride home with high-pitched spaniard kicking my seat behind me.  Came home in time to watch the final game of the EuroCup: Spain vs. Germany.  Spain won 1-0.  Major party in the streets afterwards.  It was the first time they won the title in 44 years.  I've never been that into soccer, but that was a lot of fun.  We danced our way to this plaza where everyone was climbing the fountain and dancing around it.  I decided to climb a street light and wave the flag in the midst of a sea of people.  My favorite chant of the evening:  "Yo soy español, español, español!  Yo soy español, español, español!"

Rocco, el gato.

El narval.  I got my teacher side-tracked discussing the anatomy of a narwal.  :)

Mi clase.  :)

Un amigo en Nerja.

Mis amigas, las hormigas.

Baby at our favorite sandwich place.  Haha.

Kids jumping off the rock (the one we jumped off is to the right of this and is much higher).

¡Viva España!

Marruecos

Hola mis amigos.  ¿Como le va?  :)

First off... I'm sitting at the computer in the internet cafe and am looking at my Skype friends list.  I only have three screen names from people in the States, and two of them are my family.  What's up peoples?  Get me some Skype and I love you long time.  My sn is micah.goldberg  I wants to talk with you (and it's free).

But yes, this weekend was pretty "interesante" (I know you don't speak Spanish, but that means "interesting."  Now you know.)  I decided to go to Morocco for the weekend as part of a study-tour group.  It cost €190 for the entire weekend and included everything except spending money.  I figured that was a pretty good deal, considering who knows when I'm gonna have a chance to go to Morocco again.  My friend Allison decided to go with me, and we were the only two out of our entire group (from Georgia) who ended up going.

So Friday rolls around and it is almost time for our departure out of Granada.  I skip my second class (Allison skips both of hers) in order to catch the bus.  We take about a two and a half hour bus ride to Algeciras where we catch a ferry to Morocco.  Except it's not really Morocco when we land...it's still Spain.  The city of Ceuta is on the African continent but it belongs to Spain.  So I couldn't kiss the ground when we landed, because it wasn't Africa yet.  (don't worry...I wasn't really going to kiss the ground.)  After the ferry we take another bus to the Spanish-Moroccan border.  We are at border control for about an hour in a hot crampy bus.  Let me just say... I am SO thankful that we did not make it to Morocco the weekend before.  We probably would have died.  For real.  They don't speak English.  They don't speak Spanish.  We would have probably been kidnapped.  :)  We finally get to our hotel where we eat dinner at about midnight.  The food is good and we are content.  Sleep is much needed.  P.S... the hotel looks like a creeper designed it.

Bright and early the next morning we leave for Teutuan (all these names are gonna be misspelled...crap...how do you spell "misspelled?"....that seems wrong).  It's a sketchy city.  Right when we get off the bus we are haggled by some locals.  Thankfully the group I was with provided security in each city, and they took care of the problem.  Nothing major though.  Allison and I try to get some Moroccan money but our ATM cards don't work and we only have a few euros to exchange.  We then walk through a bunch of streets that are incredibly nasty smelling and I feel like I'm going to catch some worm disease just by walking through them.  We walk by a guy slicing a fish with a machete and the blood almost splashes on me.  No joke.  So far Morocco is beautiful.

Our tour guide's name is Michael Douglas.  At least that's what he told us to call him, because nobody ever remembers his real name.  He is from Morocco and could speak like 5 languages.  Impressive.  Though he reminded me so much of Borat.  He would say stuff like,

"Guys, please.  I just say..."  or  "I love you peoples."

So his English wasn't the best, but he could speak it none the less.  One of the funniest quotes from the trip was between him and Allison...

Allison:  "Michael Douglas, is there an ATM where we're going?"

Michael Douglas:  "Yes.  Yes, lady."

After eating lunch in Teutuan and visiting a Bazaar where they tried to make college students buy €300 rugs, we departed for Tanger.  This place kinda sucked, to be quite honest.  Before getting off the bus, Michael Douglas warned us about the amount of street vendors, pick pockets, and drug dealers.  He said to take only what we needed.  I left my video camera on the bus.  Right after getting off the bus the "human mosquitos" began to swarm.  These people were insane.  I mean, they were relentless.  Everywhere we walked they were trying to make us buy some piece of crap.  And for real, it was all crap.  Like something you would find at the thrift store.  We stayed for about 2 hours and put up with the vendors yelling at us the whole time.  Only one guy offered me hash.  I said no.  Just say no.

We went back to the hotel and ate dinner.  Early to bed because of the early departure the next morning.  I slept through the basketball gym that was right outside our window.  Why the heck is anyone playing basketball at 1 in the morning?  7 am departure for Chef-Cheafuan.  This was by far the best part of the trip.  The city is more south than the other cities but it's in the middle of the mountains.  The city's symbol is a blue door, so all the doors throughout the city are painted blue.  It was so pretty because a lot of the streets were completely blue: doors, floors, walls and windows.  It was very cool.  We had a different tour guide (I was sad not to have Michael Douglas anymore).  Walked around and had some free time to do some shopping.  The prices were pretty good in Morocco, but only because you had to convince them of the price you wanted.  At first I thought this was fun, but it quickly became annoying when everytime I wanted to buy something I had to argue with the dude.  I got some cool stuff though.  :)  Lunch and then departure for home.

The grand total of travel time home was about 10 hours...most of it being on the bus.  The last bit was torture.  We had to listen to the soccer game on the radio (which would have been cool, but the reception was absolutely horrible and they had it on pretty loud).  It was annoying.  Spain beat Italy which was cool because that hasn't happened in like 80 years or something, and now Spain is advancing to the semi-finals.  Spain vs. Russia on Thursday night.  It's gonna be crazy.

When we got back to Granada the entire town was celebrating the victory.  I appreciate the enthusiasm of the country for their team, but it was kinda annoying when every car that passed us on the street was blaring their horns and shouting at us.  Funny though.

Morocco was great.  I'm glad I went for the weekend and I'm REALLY glad I was with Allison.  It would have been kinda miserable if we didn't have each other.  Listened to Brian Regan, jammed out with Disney, learned a few Arabic words from Michael Douglas, saw some weird stuff, and smelled the worst smells I have ever smelled.  Morocco is great to visit.  But only for about a weekend.  And never to live there.  It makes you really appreciate being in Spain, which makes you appreciate being in the US even more.  Thank you Lord for our country.

I also rode a camel.

  Lighthouse near Tanger.

  Driving through some villages.

  My friend, Sylvia from Australia, riding a camel.

  City of blue doors.

  The house of Haman's cousin, Hamam.

Màlaga and the Weekend of Failures

Hola amigos.  ¿Como estais?

So this weekend was free for us, meaning that we did not have anything planned through the school.  We could either stay in Granada and chill or travel somewhere at our own expense.  Personally, I did not want to stay in Granada when there is so much more to see around here, so a few friends and I decided to go to Málaga for the weekend.  There's a nice beach in Málaga and because it's on the southern coast of Spain, it's a lot closer to Africa.  :)

All week last week we scrambled to organize and finalize our travel plans.  Many hours were spent in the internet cafe trying to figure out bus times, ferry times, hotels, and prices for everything.  There ended up being 8 of us in total (much of the rest of the group traveled elsewhere...like Barcelona, Mallorca, Berlin, Paris, etc.):  Allison, Jessica, Stephanie, Caitlin, Michelle, Simona, JD, and myself.  We booked two rooms with two beds each and basically only paid for 4 people.  If we had told them that 8 of us were staying in the rooms, they would have doubled the cost.  And plus, since when can't two people sleep in a double bed?  Why do they have double beds if only 3 people are allowed to stay in a room?  Spain logic, perhaps.

So Friday we hop on a bus to Málaga, skipping our classes for the day (we're allowed to...don't worry.  Well, kinda.).  Our plan is to arrive at the hotel, hang out at the beach and whatnot, and then go to Morocco the next day.  That plan quickly faded into an abyss of failures.

I am about to explain a series of unfortunate events that in reality are not that bad.  But it's more fun to blow them out of proportion.  We all had a wonderful weekend, and I am so thankful...it just was not exactly the weekend we had got our hopes up for.

1.  We're going to Morocco!

Our plan was to arrive in Málaga, find the nearest ferry for Saturday, and spend the day in Morocco with a return to our hotel later that night.  We find out the ferry from Málaga to Morocco is 7 hours long and €35 one way.  This will not work.  We decide to take a bus from Málaga to Tarifa (which would be about an hour or two bus ride).  The ferry from Málaga to Tarifa is only 30 minutes, but the price is €40 one way.  (because that makes perfect sense).  Plus the bus from Málaga to Tarifa is about €20 round trip.  All being said:  this one day Morocco trip is way too expensive and not worth it for only a few hours in Africa.  Allison, JD and I shed some tears.

2.  Let's just rent some scooters.

So with the first failure underway, JD and I develop a master plan to rent some scooters and drive around the coast for the day.  We look online for cheap rentals and find advertisements for daily scooter rentals at €20 each.  This was a lie.  Why?  Because they don't rent scooters in Málaga.  Saturday morning (the morning intended for a ferry ride to Africa) JD and I hop on a bus and go to the city center in search for a scooter.  We go to every information station and car rental agency around.  Nobody knows anything other than that they do not rent scooters.  Operation scooter has failed.

3.  Well, we're in town...we might as well get some sun glasses.

Bummed from not being able to go to a different continent OR rent scooters for the day, JD and I walk the busy streets of Málaga.  Stores everywhere.  Expensive.  Cheap.  Nice.  Sketchy.  Many resemble the American dollar store.  Neither of us have sun glasses with us for the weekend.  It's bright and at the beach it is especially brutal.  Surely one of the hundreds of stores carries sun glasses for us.  Nope.  Out of the six stores we venture into, each one only carries women sun glasses.  "Las gafas solo para mujeres?" I ask.  The Asian cashier replies and points to a pair of shades, "No, no.  Hombres!  Muchos hombres."  She is pointing to a pair that is sparkly and has flowers on it.  Muchas gracias...por nada.  We are squinting moles walking through a scorching hell.

4.  We can get off at the next stop.

No Africa.  No scooters.  No sun glasses.  We hop back on the bus to return to the hotel (where the girls are hanging out at the beach enjoying the sun...with their sun glasses).  It's a 20 minute bus ride to the hotel from the city center and there are two stops for our hotel.  The first is on a one way street and about 5 minute walk to the hotel.  The other is directly in front of the hotel, but the bus has to do a loop around a few blocks in order to get to it.  JD and I decide to get off on the second stop (directly in front of the hotel).  Once again, fate decides to pick on us and the bus starts heading back towards the city center.  Our hotel quickly becomes smaller and smaller and panic strikes.  Should we get off now while we can?  Is the bus going to eventually turn back towards the hotel?  It has to.  There's a bus stop directly in front.  What do we do?  I go to the bus driver, "Señor, necesitamos salir ahora por Hotel Tryp Guadalmar?"  He splurts something out in Spanish.  I stare blankly.  "Um, okay.  Necesito salir ahora.  Por...favor."  He opens the door and we exit the bus.  The hotel is now the size of my thumb.  The fourth failure is a long hot trek through scorching sand with no sun glasses and no hope left in the world. 

5.  Well, at least there's a bull fight tonight.

We get back to the girls.  Hang out on the beach a bit.  And inform them of a poster we saw in the city advertising a bull fight.  It starts at 7 and is at Plaza de Torros.  It's about 3:00 now and we are deciding on whether or not to go.  Eventually we go back to the hotel room and I call the number that was on the poster for the bull fight.  In Spanish, I ask if there's a fight tonight and how much it is.  €45.  Expensive, but when else am I going to see a bull fight?  That's a million dollar question right there... We make the decision to go and splurge for the cultural experience.  We call the hotel desk for a taxi for 5 people.  They say there are taxis waiting outside already.  We go downstairs (Allison, Stephanie, Caitlin, JD, and I) and there are no taxis.  Um, okay... So we go back inside and ask them to call one for us.  They can't call one.  They need to call two.  More money.  The taxis arrive 10 minutes later (the fight starts in 30 minutes and it takes 30 minutes to get to the arena).  Caitlin, Allison and I hop in the first taxi and JD and Stephanie are in the next.  I start small talk with the driver, asking him if he likes bull fights.  He says he kinda does but doesn't think there is a fight tonight.  I ask why not.  He says there normally isn't one.  I'm like okay.  He pulls the car over to converse with the other driver who supposively has a way of finding out through his radio.  While we sit there I tell JD and Stephanie what's going on.  We're being charged money for sitting on the side of the road.  They don't think there's a bullfight.  We start double guessing ourselves on what the poster said.  We decide not to go any further because it will be more expensive if we go all the way and there is no fight afterall.  We pay €18 for a cab ride that took us 3 blocks.  At this point I was ready for a drink.

So we walk back to the hotel and stop in a local bar for tapas.  At this point, the series of unfortunate events has come to an end.  The waiter is very nice and tapas (you buy a drink and they give you free appetizers) were only €1.  Extremely cheap for the rest of Spain.  We hang out there for a bit.  Eventually we meet up with the others back at the hotel, sharing our misfortunate taxi ride story.  The eight of us gather up a picnic and walk down to the beach to watch the sun set.  Everything is beautiful and we spend about 4 hours on the beach, goofing off and bringing in the 22nd year of JD's life.  His birthday is today and we tackled him at midnight.  The picnic on the beach was a wonderful way to end an unfortunate day.

So that's my story.  Today is Sunday and we left Málaga at 4:00 and arrived in Granada around 6:00.  God is good, even when things don't go according to your original plans.  Which they usually don't.

Currently Listening Once By Original Soundtrack see related

La Semana Primera

Hola mis amigos!

Things are good.  Today was my 21 birthday, the second time I celebrated in another country outside of the US (the first being my 18 in the English country side).  It's definitely different when your family is not around.  Even though this was my second (large) birthday away from home, this is the first time being completely away from the rest of the family.  I missed them today.

But I am so thankful for being so blessed.  Today was great.  Started the 21 year by having a drink at midnight in an Irish pub (of all places in Granada).  I had a Guinness with some tapas, which was great because I actually like Guinness.  It reminds me of Ireland and makes me want to go back.  Ryan bought my drink, which was nice.  Even though the drinking age is 18 over here, I felt special drinking as a legal American.  ;)

Many photos were had, as usual, and then off to bed.  Class this morning from 9-1.  Four hours of sitting in a tiny (right-handed) desk learning nothing but Spanish.  It's not too bad actually.  Met up with some peeps afterwards and walked around.  Lunch at 2 and then siesta time until about 5:30.  Met up with everyone in Plaza Nueva (the main meeting place in Granada) and hung out for about 2 hours.  Then we all walked up this mountain in the old part of the city where all the gypsies live.  I think it has been dubbed "Hippy Hill."  Beautiful (beautiful) overlook of the city and the Alhambra palace across the way.  The sun set over the next few hours as we sat around and talked.  Gypsies playing guitars, singing, smoking, dogs running around everywhere, tourists, and hundreds of birds (swallows, I think) flying in the sky.  Ajmal, my roommate, brought his hookah and a lot of our group smoked.  *for those who don't know... hookah is flavored tobacco, which is filtered out by water when you smoke it.  No nicotine.  No addiction.  Practically harmless, but I still won't smoke it.*  I like saying that I have never smoked anything and don't plan on doing so.  God is good.  Peer pressure is bad.

A few of us were tired of sitting around watching everyone else smoke so we decided to try to find a better view of the setting sun.  We left the rest of the group and headed to the other side of the mountain we were on and found a good look out area.  Lots of photos.  Dog poop everywhere.  Fun times were had.

Lots of time deciding where to eat, but eventually we chose a pretty low-key outdoor restaurant.  Had some gyro-like food and a Coke Light.  Stephanie paid for my meal and Allison took care of the drink.  Very generous ladies.  I like our group a lot and we all seem to get along pretty well.  No drama yet, and everyone is pretty laid back.  It's gonna be a sad day when all this has to end, but as they say in The Wizard of Oz, "There's no place like home."

I miss all you Americans very much and hope that all is well.  I'm working on getting some photos on my facebook, but no luck yet.  For some reason it keeps "failing to upload" which is lame.  I will keep you posted as the trip goes on.  Much love!

Shalom.