Almond Trees and Orange Groves

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This post is well over-due, and normally I would attempt some sort of excuse like, "gosh, things have been busy over here!," though the opposite is the case, and that's precisely why I haven't written. Upon my return from Rome, I experienced the wave of melancholy I had anticipated, knowing Granada well but no longer having my friends here. My room initially helped to make up for the lack of people, what with its own bathroom and all I never had any reason to leave, but my soft, noisy mattress through which I can feel the boards of my "bed," the bars on my window which overlooks the underside of a pedestrian walkway and a brick wall, and the obnoxious, screaming Portuguese girls down the hall all conspire to make it less than perfect. Had I been on the other side of my building, I would have had sweeping, southerly views of the entire city, the mountain range in the distance, and the Baroque, 16th century Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, but who really needs that when there are plenty of rotting clementines to enjoy just outside my window? I can't complain about the bathroom, though.
I needed some flowers in my room to brighten things up. I keep my lights on even at noon.


The views which my friends have out their windows, and which I at least enjoy on my walk up the hill.

In Spain, it is most common for students to live with their parents while attending college; most of the time, this means going to the school closest to their town and commuting every day if it's close enough. If it's a bit of a trip, many students live in a residence hall during the week, and then head for home on the weekends. Because of this, the school's cafeteria, where I am subjected to two plates of unidentifiable fried meat once a day, is closed on weekends and holidays. This leaves me on my own with my microwave for dinner, though, inexplicably, there are rooms here with full kitchens - thanks, Arcadia. I've become well versed in microwave omelet preparation, and have gotten pretty creative. A normal dinner might be a plate of scrambled eggs with avocado, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, or perhaps a salad with honey mustard dressing, warm goat cheese and chopped pear, with microwaved pumpkin bisque. This, however, all pales in comparison to Irma's cooking last semester, when I rarely felt the need to offset my consumption of fried fat at lunch with nothing but vegetables at night. It's odd to me that, for the same amount of money, I had three square meals a day last semester, when I'm now forced to spend about 30 euro per week on food, not to mention the six meals I don't get on weekends - it's getting expensive! I do like the faux feeling of independence I get from cooking for myself, and I've decided that one of life's little pleasures is stopping by a local bakery every day to pick up a soft, warm loaf of bread; I eat about three a day.
A typical dinner - sandwich, soup, and The Office. Hey, it keeps me company when my friend Tess isn't around to corroborate my complaints about food and our program.
Recently, though, we've been getting more creative. Our most recent discovery is strawberries, melted goat cheese, and honey. On anything.

About two days after I got back from Rome, I found myself entirely alone in the dorm. The contingent from my program was away in Madrid, and none of the Spanish kids are ever around on weekends. Because of this, in a burst of spontaneity, I decided on Thursday night that I would leave the next day to visit my friend Steve in Oxford. My spontaneity was quashed a bit by the fact that there is essentially no internet in my dorm room, so I walked further up the mountain to the steps of the beautiful orthodontia building (the only building on campus not in the style of 1960's dictatorship and fascism), where I used the wifi at midnight and in the drizzling rain to purchase my plane tickets. It was great to see Steve, and I would not have made it through the weekend here by myself after two weeks of isolation in Italy, but I did have to endure the taunts of the three drunken Spaniards left in the dorm who yelled something out their window about how pathetic it was that I was searching for wifi at twelve at night when I should be out getting drunk. I agreed with them.

I made a stop at platform 9 and 3/4 in King's Cross on the way home with my friend Curstin. Anyone? Rach? Harry Potter - get it?

Thankfully, the weather pattern which had been hanging over Granada since I left finally broke after I returned from London; the temperatures soared to the mid sixties, it was sunny every day, and everything was a lush green from the rain. La Cartuja, the huge hill on top of which you'll find my dorm, used to be the orchard for the monastery after which it's named, so it is currently pleasantly scented with almond blossoms and oranges, which almost makes up for the nearly impossible trek up here. The weekend of the third week in March marked carnival season here in Spain (and in Italy, for that matter). The biggest celebration of the historically pagan week of drunkenness, revelry and excess before lent takes place in the coastal city of Cádiz, where I travelled with a bus-full of drunken, Halloween-like costumed Spaniards and my new group of friends from my residence hall. Cádiz is beautiful, and seems to me like it would merit a return trip when the city doesn't look like New Orleans after Katrina hit. The main idea of carnival, at least originally, was to dress up so that no one could be recognized, and mock the Church and the government. It was also an opportunity for the villagers of Europe to revert to some of their pagan traditions before being whipped back into shape by Christianity. This year, for example, some of the most popular costumes involved men dressed like nuns with necklaces of phallic symbols - my theory is that these men thought they were being clever, but really had no idea how they played into the traditional concept of carnival that's been around since the 15th century, but I can't prove anything. Our plan, the same as everyone else's, was to get to the city around four in the afternoon, spend the day on the beach, watch some parades, drink in the streets, and stay up until we got on the bus back to Granada at nine the following morning - apparently, sleep and the booking of a clean, comfortable hotel is not a concept which exists during carnival. Cádiz' carnival is especially famous for the city's comparsas, groups of men who practice singing for months to parody governmental figures and recent news, which we were all eager to witness.

My enjoyment of the evening sank with the setting sun; the beach was gorgeous, somewhere around 70 degrees and overlooked the Straight of Gibraltar, and the sunset there was absolutely spectacular. I wish I could say that the rest of the evening was a blur, but it dragged along with spectacular slowness. The comparsas made no sense to any of us because they sang in regionalized Spanish about issues we had never heard of, the temperatures plummeted, and the cafes in which we took refuge all closed around three in the morning. That left us out on the drenched streets, though oddly it hadn't been raining, leaving us to ponder just what interesting mix of bodily fluids and alcohol was soaking into our socks. We wandered the streets avoiding the shattered glass until the busses finally opened up at around eight, and I vowed I would never, ever go to a carnival again in Spain. I understand that my friend who spent carnival in Venice had a great time, though!
Before...
...well, you get the idea...

What else is new? I went skiing again, which was, frankly, amazing. I won't bore you with the details again of the stunning views, but, really, you wouldn't believe them.

I got smart and rented a helmet this time, mainly because the girl from Sweden with whom I was skiing convinced me to do the equivalent of US black diamond pistes. They were fun, but the helmet was a good idea.

I joined another chorus, this one with the vast resources for an accompanist and actual piano. There are about 75 members, though no one is under about 30, all of whom are pretty good. It's just what I was looking for last semester, though they meet from eight till eleven on Friday nights - I worked very hard to have one class on Thursday and none on Friday, so we'll see how that works out. Currently, and hopefully finally, I'm taking Introduction to Romantic Filology, basically the comparative study of Romantic languages through historical texts - I think it's my favorite class; Geolinguistics, which has something to do with dialect maps and linguistic atlases; Spanish Dialectology, which is what it sounds like; and French. I'm glad I've got the opportunity to take classes which would never be offered at Bates, even if they are for students already finished with the equivalent of their Masters'. At least it's a challenge. I'm still tutoring the kids in English; they're great, though it's about time I look for another book for the younger one. I'm going over there twice a week at the moment, which is good for the money, but a huge pain now that the bus stop is a 40 minute walk, plus the 40 minute ride, each way. I have a language "intercambio" with a physics professor from the university - it basically means that I meet him for lunch or coffee and we talk for half the time in Spanish, half in English, which has been helpful. And, I might start volunteering at a hospital, but that's only if I'm feeling particularly anxious to overload myself.

I think that's about it. I'm going to put up a random sampling of my pictures from Italy, since I finally got them onto my computer. Stay warm!

Il Duomo, gorgeous cathedral in Milan.


Gift-wrapped, cold lasagna.




Venice, wonderful, ridiculous eight-euro cappuccino.

Pre-dinner "snack" in Rome.
Climbing the dome at St. Peter's Basilica.
St. Peter's tomb.

Coliseum.


The Roman Forum and the Palatine.

My favorite site in Rome.