El Mercadillo - January 22

Cory, Andrea, Madeline and I decided to meet up again to do some more shopping on the main streets.  We heard about a “mercadillo” or a small market that happens every Saturday, so we decided to go check it out.  The walk there took FOREVER!  It was basically a flea market with shoes, clothes, purses, etc basically everything you could imagine.   It was really hectic too, I’m definitely not that kind of shopper.  By the time we actually got there Kelly and I didn’t have much time to shop because we had to be home for lunch.  We headed out before everyone else, and got pretty lost on the way home since we had never been to that part of the city before.  After walking aimlessly for what seemed like hours (ok not really…) we asked for directions and ended up being only a few blocks away from our houses so we got lucky!

After siesta, Caroline, Lauren, and I met at Hannigan’s to book our “semana blanca” vacation.  We have 10 days off of school and it’s a huge week for everyone to travel!  After much headache (almost 3 hours worth) we were able to book our trip to London and Paris!  We’re heading to London first, spending 5 days there, flying to Paris and spending 4 days there.  We definitely lucked out because Caroline’s cousin lives in Paris so we are able to stay with him and save some $$ on hostels!  It’s going to be a long week (and we’ll be living out of backpacks, gasp!) but I CANNOT wait!  Those places were top 2 of where I wanted to see while I was over here.

I ate dinner with my senora and then met back up with the group to go out for tapas.  It was our first real weekend out in Granada since last weekend was filled with orientation things and let me tell you it was a wakeup call.  All the tapas places were absolutely PACKED with people!  We definitely learned our lesson that we need to go out early in order to actually get in a place and be able to sit down.  We finally found 2 good places to go.  One of them that we happened upon by accident had the most Americanized tapas, just what we needed for our homesickness; bagel sandwiches and French fries!  We literally screamed when they came out, everyone in the bar thought we were crazy haha. 

I’m actually starting to feel like I live here and I’m not a tourist which is comforting but weird at the same time.  I try to speak Spanish as much as possible so a) I can learn it better and b) we don’t get these weird looks everytime we go out – seriously, its like they haven’t seen an American before.  We walk into a place and its all eyes on us!   So awkward.  I’ll have to work on that…