October in pictures

This is my faculty, "Facultad de Comunicación y Documentación". It's located in Cartuja, beautiful area, on the top of a hill, but a bit far from the city centre and where I live. The faculty is the most pretty of them all, it's an old jesuitt building, and it has an amazing library. Believe I have the best view from my classrom that a student can ask for! Takes me 40 minutes to walk up in the morning. I'll be quite fit after one year!¨

So, lots has happened. Moved to a new apartment! Coincidence, really. Was a bit bored in the other place, then got the offer of living with 3 hilarious people and a dog (!), for a cheaper price, with a bigger room to myself. So here I am! Arrived the first night to a welcoming-dinner and this text on the livingroom board.

Nena and me in the kitchen! Together with the spanish guys Zafra and Manolo, plus our crazy dog, we make quite the family. Nena is from Belgium, here for Erasmus as well, and to make sure me and the two others don't put too much salt in our food...

Otto is my savior, as I've been going crazy missing my own dog Mira. Now I no longer have to go looking for dogs to pet on the street... Otto is actually Zafra's dog, but he's been living on the countryside for a while. There he got into a big fight, which now can be seen as a few scars here and there, and which is also the explanation, I believe, that Otto is a bit... well. Subnormal. He's not quite right in the head. Only two years old, but acts and looks older. Mix between Samojed and Bulldog, I say no more. But oh, how much pleasure there is in having a dog in the family!

Just one of those chaotic late night dinners in our apartment. Manolo standing up. Have no idea who takes these horrible pictures (and with my camera), but they're fun to have=) And the dinners are always delicious...

Roommate Manolo and me, at the Mirador St. Nicolas, one of those lazy october afternoons... Alhambra in the distance.

Roommate Zafra from Zafra with his pride: The Pasta Carbonara

Grafitti in the Albaycín.

Gorgeous sunrise seen from the bus on my way from Granada to La Manga. Took the nightbus, and arrived early in the morning to spend a lovely weekend with friend Ingunn and her parents from Norway!!!

View from the place we stayed at on La Manga, at night... There was wine, cheese, more wine, and the joy of speaking norwegian for hours and hours and hours with Ingunn...=)

Ingunn and I went SWIMMING, for real, the last week in october!!! Viva la playa... And these are the only photos I have from La Manga, meaning only, that Ingunn and I had too much fun and too much to talk about to be worrying about our camaras=) A big thanks to Ingunns parents for hosting me and serving me brown norwegian goat cheese!

Intergration

Have fulfilled following steps to fit in with my 19-year old roommates: started playing poker and watching bad american movies dubbed in spanish, and stopped caring about cleanliness in the house. So far mission successful, although I still don´t understand half of what they´re saying because their andalusian accent makes them pronounce only one fifth of all conconants.

On the bright side: The day you are able to understand the andalusians, you´re able to understand all spanish accents out there! (says my professor)

Went to class today, takes me half an hour to get to Cartuja, and surprise surprise, there was no teacher present. I´m noticing that I don´t care anymore. Time has another value here. It´s tranquilo, tranquilo. I´m turning spanish! Had a chocolate ice cream instead.

End of summer

I’ve been told I’m a lazy journalist who isn’t maintaining her blog, and while it might be true, I’ll tell you, there’s no lazy days around here!

The first era of my stay in Granada is coming to an end. It’s a Sunday, and I’ve had the summer of my life here, two whole months of spanish, tapas and fun. Seven weeks in intensive language course has given results, and my worries about starting university without speaking enough spanish are gone with the wind.

Street poetry found on the river fence

The courses will start tomorrow already, and this whole week we will be attending as many different classes as possible, trying to decide which ones we wish to do for the rest of the year. The faculty of Comunication and Documentation is located in Cartuja, the university area a bit outside of the centre. A fellow journalist student and I have decided to be quite ambitious and walk the 2- 2,5 kilometres uphill already Monday morning, and hopefully get there on time.

The faculty is quite small, set in an old, majestetic jesuitt building. There are only a handful of international students, and we’ve already been given a tour of the house and individual counceling sessions with our coordinator, so this far very happy with where I am. We’ve seen the library, the radio studio and the television production room, which are all small but seem well equiped and with good and creative feng shui.

Flamenco in "La vieja escuela" one random thursday night

This week has been one of fever, caughing and litres of tea, and it seems like everyone’s been sick at the same time. Thanks to the spanish kind of aspirin, which must be like ten times as strong as what they sell in Norway, it hasn’t been all too bad. Had the whole apartment to myself for some eight days, as my three spanish roommates have all been visiting their families in their little pueblos.

One of the guys arrived this morning, bringing his set of very spanish parents. Two minutes, four kisses on my cheeks, and the whole kitchen was turned upside down. So now our dishwasher machine is somehow working (it’s never been working before), there’s laundry in the laundry machine, our freezer is full of little tupperwear boxes containing homemade spanish delicasses, and the place is cleaner as ever. Also, my roommates carpenting father has made sure all our cupboards and handles are functioning as they should, and put up a mirror and a writing board on the walls in my bedroom. The spanish parents have now left to feed their son a gigantic lunch (I’m sure), after inviting me to their home, and bringing out all the garbage from our kitchen.

More funky street art

The (only) things I miss from Norway:
- my dog
- makrell i tomat

and that’s it. Well, of course I’m missing my friends and family as well, but they’re all coming to visit (yes, you are!), so what I’m trying to say is that I’m more content than ever=)

Su casa, mi casa

Found an apartment! I am going to live with three spanish guys in the very MIDDLE of Granada, close to everything. And I'll be fluent in no time!!! Moving in this saturday, updates will follow=)

House hunting

Walking the streets of Granada I've collected fifty-something little pieces of paper with phonenumbers to people who rent out rooms. Have visited 5 today, at least 4 more tomorrow. Feet are aching, but have improved my spanish! Met some crazy people, saw some dirty places... Decision to be made in a few days. House hunting is a full time job, hombre!

Granadian nights

... and friends who come, stay for a week or three, and then leave again. C'est la víe, non?

Lately

It's time for an update.

I've been living in Granada for a month now, and I actually believe that tonight is the very first night I haven't gone out. Still, it's 1.30 in the morning, but the blog is suffering.

So far:

My plan was to find an apartment within the first 2 weeks of my stay here. This, evidently, hasn't happened. For the first two weeks I lived in a massive, great apartment with Laurence from France and Lovely Laurel from Ireland, but after two weeks I had to move out because the school was uncapable of working out the house of cards, as we say in Norway, so that I could stay there. Ended therefore up with moving in with a spanish man of 39, who rents out the rooms in his apartment. The apartment is in Camino de Ronda, where they are BUILDING A METRO, and I'm sure you can imagine the NOISE and the DIRT. Still, the cocarachas (kakerlakker) make it cosier. The trafic signal that sounds like an ambulance and goes off every 3rd minute is just a bonus, makes attemts to have a siesta even more interesting. I should look for a place to live this week. Should. Could. Might. Want to go for tapas... =)

Justo, the guy who ownes the apartment, has gone for holidays to his little pueblo. His roommate, Manolo, arrived two days ago, after having spent one month in HIS pueblo, with his family. The first thing Manolo did when he arrived was cleaning up the kitchen, hanging up little pink and yellow towels with "monday, tuesday, wednesday" etc. and buying a new shower curtain. I feel guilty, but swear I'm not the one who's messed up the place! Manolo works as a pharmasist researcher, and I guess that's why he knows about cleanliness. He's worried about me getting sunburnt, too; "You're using SPF 30?? That's not enough! You're scandinavian, you need 50!" (Like my mama says...). So now I guess I have to go buy better suncream. Anyways, Manolo is lovely, and it's great for me to practise my spanish over lunch. Today we've been discussing the "eldrebølgen", religion and effects of the recession in Spain. In spanish. So my head is spinning a bit.

I finished 4 weeks of language school, 5 hours every day. It's been hard work, and it's been a delight. The school is ten times better that I could ever imagine it to be, and the teachers are amazing. Chech out http://www.proyecto-es.com/ if you're looking to spend a fantastic, yet educating time in one of Spains wonderful cities. I eventually decided to stay 2 more weeks in the school, and so I will, instead of traveling to Barcelona. It will cost me some money, and it will mean even more work, but I'm having the time of my life, and I'm realizing that picking up a language takes more time than one perhaps thinks. University doesn't start until end of September, so there might be time for some traveling as well, later on.

I drink a lot of wine. And water, litre after litre. And I loooove the spanish ham. And the cheese. And the oranges we buy in the fruit market.

Today I woke up and went straight to the bus station to say goodbye to Igor, my russian goofy journalist friend of nineteen, who finished his one month in the language school. It's like this EVERY week for me. Friday it was Laurel, who went back to Ireland. It's stressful, and I hate it, but I know that I have friends for life, and always someone to visit if I'll ever travel Europe again, and we all know I will.

So, this week it's a mission to make more spanish friends. The Granadians are still on holidays, I think, shops are still closed, and the city is sleeping, reboosting for eventful september. I'll try do some intercambio this week, which means the school puts me in contact with a local who wants to learn english, and we meet up to speak in spanish/english for a few hours. Should be good!

Pictures will follow. I've been terrible. I'm too busy. I'm having the best summer of my life, and I don't want to distance myself from it, so I take the photos in my head instead.

Oh, and if you didn't get it by now: Granada is paradise (but don't go telling everyone, it's a sacred secret). I might end up staying for life, I don't see how I could ever leave it.