For no reason at all.

Today, I decided to write a blog post for no reason at all. I guess I’m bored, but it’s not like I even have anything exciting going on right now either. If you read my blog to keep up with my jet-setting adventures across Europe, you probably won’t find this interesting at all. I apologize for that.

It’s a really gloomy day today. Like really, really gloomy. I think today is the fourth day in a row that it has rained. A little cultural observation: people in Spain do NOT move around you in any way to dodge umbrellas. I’ve been hit in the face by umbrellas a lot here.

I’m writing from the lobby of the hotel (that so graciously lets us poor wifi-less souls use their internet whenever we want). I don’t know what I would do without them! I realized this week that I never post blog posts anymore about my life here in Spain, and that’s just sad. It’s so easy to get caught up in the travels to cool places every weekend and to let my day-to-day life in Granada slip through the cracks. When I think about going home in May, I picture my response to the question “How was your semester abroad?” a lot. Usually, it goes something like this in my head:

-“Kira! So good to see you-how was your semester in Spain?”

-“It was great!”

-“So what was your favorite part?”

-(struggles to pick just one thing out of a whole five months) “I really liked the hazelnut croissants.”

-“Oh, that’s wonderful! Anything else...?”

-“Yes. Mhm. Morocco was nice too!”

I mean really. That’s pretty pathetic. But how do I even begin to describe everything that’s happened to me while abroad? I think the default is to talk about all the amazing trips I went on and the places I got to see, and I have a feeling I’ll forget to tell people about what it was like to actually live here. So, that’s what I guess I’m going to try to do now.

In the mornings, I usually wake up at 7 am or 10 am, depending on the day of the week and which classes I have that day. It takes me awhile to convince myself to get out of bed. Did I mention how cold it is in the house? Carmen (my host mom) always has breakfast set out for me when I get up and it usually consists of coffee or orange juice and croissants, toast, or dry cereal. After getting ready, I walk about 30 minutes to school, which is beautiful when it’s nice out and awful when it’s rainy. The exercise is good though, especially to counteract the hazelnut-stuffed croissants I love so much.

A quick funny story about something I saw the other day on my walk to school-Granada hosts a sort of film festival thing every year with a different theme and this year’s was Dracula movies (Sadly, I did not attend). Anyway, they set up this really long red carpet on one of the major streets of the city and there were Dracula posters lining the whole street. They finally rolled up the carpet yesterday after about 2 weeks of it being out, and I was sad. It made me feel like a movie star! So the other day, I was walking along listening to my music when I saw a group of old ladies giggling to themselves and turning around with their cameras. Of course I had to stop to see what they were laughing at...day. made. One of their friends was hamming it up, strutting down the red carpet, hands on her head, pretending to be a movie star. It was fabulous.

It was probably way funnier in person. So the rest of my day, I have class till about 1-2:30 then a break where Paige and I either walk home for lunch with Carmen and her grandson Juan Antonio or we ask for a bocadillo (sandwich/sack lunch kind of) and stay at school if we have a meeting or want to just stay and use the internet. We don’t usually head back home until around 8:30pm when we have dinner, because it’s so darn cold in the house that it’s much better to stay at school and browse Pinterest (or if you’re Paige, browse Skyscanner). Dinner at home is small, usually just a sandwich, an omelet, or a couple pieces of frozen pizza and fruit or yogurt. We tend to hang out at the dinner table for a while after eating because there is a space heater underneath. It’s fantastic. Carmen likes to watch the news or Law and Order, but Law and Order is really hard to understand because it’s dubbed in Spanish so their mouths don’t match the words and they cut down hour-long episodes to only 30 minutes. It’s still good practice, though, because Carmen helps us with the words we don’t understand!

Classes are fine, but midterms are coming up in a little over a week and that could be a very rude awakening. I’m here for school? What? In all honesty, the classes aren’t that hard and I find my Spanish Civilization and Culture and Art History classes really interesting. I think I might explode if I have to learn the difference between “ser” and “estar” or review pasados again, but otherwise I’m doing okay.

I think that’s about it-hope I didn’t bore you all to death! If there’s anything else you are just dying to know about my life here in Granada, you should definitely comment below or shoot me an email. Happy Thursday, friends!