Coro

I had written an enormous post about my experience at the Chorus of the City of Granada yesterday, but I didn't really like it, so I decided to summarize it for you. Here goes:

* I was supposed to join the chorus of the University, but apparently the woman in my program office who was helping just decided to google "chorus granada" and picked the first chorus that came up.

*It was in the windowless basement of an old and crumbling building which may or may not have been a church, due to the signs proclaiming that "Jesus is Love," while other walls had bizarre modern art, and still other had what must have been cards from Rorschach tests. I couldn't put my finger on what was missing from the room until the director took out a box with a battery-operated Casio keyboard with a two-octave range.

*The Spanish choir members are all over 40 and are from all walks of life, and the other half of the chorus, HALF!, is made up of foreign students who all apparently googled the same thing, mainly blonds from California.

*I was the only base at the rehearsal, which went alright except that the conductor was upset that I told him I didn't need to go over my part again, when he asked, condescendingly, how many people from the chorus weren't from Spain.

*We sang three songs; one in Latin for which I could have given a pronunciation workshop, one in Catalan (a regional language in Spain) which no one spoke nor had any idea how to pronounce, and the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah, a piece in English which I know well, which was hilarious to hear sung by Spaniards with extremely thick Spanish accents.

*The worst moment of the day was when the woman who led us to the building came over after rehearsal to tell me how great we were and to thank me for coming. She leaned in a bit while she was saying goodbye, so I figured she was doing the two kiss thing again, so I leaned in, she leaned away, and I got completely flustered. I started asking her in English, "how does the kiss thing work...," when I realized she was looking at my strangely, since she had no idea what I was saying. Then I asked in Spanish, and she replied that it was to say hello and goodbye. "Yes," I thought, "that's what I was doing," when she laughed, told me it didn't matter at this point, and walked away. Argh, different cultures!

My friend from my group who also went to sing with the chorus and I aren't sure that we're going back. Unfortunately, the group's first concert is in the Capilla Real, a beautiful chapel attached to the main cathedral in Granada where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried along with their daughter, Juana la Loca (she wasn't actually crazy, but that's another post), her husband, and a grandchild. It's a beautiful place, and would be an honor to sing there (some bishop is coming!), but I'll be in London, and my friend will be in Morocco with the group. Oh well.

On another note, I just walked into the kitchen where my Señora is already cooking, and she told me that she was preparing a homemade cream of mushroom soup for me for dinner. "Oh," I said, "I loved that the last time," because she's already made it. "You've never had this! This is special soup, with mushrooms!" I argued with her for a second, because she made the soup last week, but I've accepted that she's losing her mind - she's been staying with a sick friend at the hospital every night for the last three nights and hasn't been getting much sleep. At least I like the soup, and I've still got about 1/4 of my jar of peanut butter left - I bought it a day and a half ago, but I'm a bit of an addict.

La Ofrenda Floral

Yesterday was the festival day of the Virgen de las Angustias, or the Virgin of Anguish, here in Granada. The cathedral commissioned by the Catholic Kings is the most important church in the city, but Granada also has a basilica, which is where you can find the city's patron Virgin, so named because she is perpetually crying, holding the body of Christ. Now I never knew this, but all of these "Virgins" that pop up in traditionally Catholic countries are all the virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, with different interpretations of her dress and physical appearance, and representative of different crucial moments in her life. I guess I never made the connection that they were all Mary, but really, where else would all of these virgins have been coming from? Anyway, on the 5th of September, the whole city (it seems!) passes by the front of the basilica to look in at the Virgin, and make an offering of flowers. It's a bit like a parade, with each of the city's emergency services departments stopping by with all their vehicles, 500-member families with flags bearing their shields singing with guitars, a troop of traditional Andalucían dancers, and one idiot pilot from the Spanish National Guard who was flying WAY too low in his helicopter. After he dropped flowers out the door for the Virgin, he flew directly over the park where I was having coffee with my professor as part of our class' cultural excursion to the Ofrenda, producing so much wind that I didn't stop coughing until 11 that night because of the dust and draining most of the water out of the Fountain of Pomegranites. Most upset of all were the waiters who had taken refuge inside, who now had to come back out to sweep away the four inches of dust off of their outdoor eating areas and pick up the fallen table settings. It was a little like being in a tornado, or perhaps a scene from Miss Saigon.

These are all small bouquets of about five flowers, brought individually to be placed on the façade.
In other news, I found out that I will be able to take all four (or it might be five) of my classes directly at the University of Granada. Apparently, if I do, everyone will hate me, because no one studying at the University's Center for Modern Languages (where I am now) has ever done that, and the program I'm here with is the only one in Granada who wrote into their contract that, if one of their students wants all of their classes at the University, the Center for Languages will let them go. I'm a little apprehensive about being in classes entirely with Spanish students, but I guess that's why I'm here, and I've heard that Spanish university courses are much easier than at home ;o)

Olive Oil

Life is good in Granada: slow, but good. Not all that much has changed in the last week: I still eat my body weight in food at every meal and almost always feel sick afterwards (yesterday's lunch consisted of grilled swordfish with a green salsa, vegetable soup with hand-made pasta, and homemade fried-calamari) courtesy of my Italian "Señora," and I still have absolutely nothing to do from 8:30 when I wake up until 4:00 in the afternoon when my four-hour class starts. I'm actively trying to get involved with a chorus in the city: if the one at the University doesn't work out, I'll join one in the community, which would be like the "old people" choruses I sang with in Mystic at home, but weirder because all the "old people" would speak Spanish. That pursuit gave me an excuse to walk around the university proper (remember, I'm taking my classes this first semester in an outpost of the university called the Center for Modern Languages...), which is huge and on a hill overlooking the city, but outside of that, remarkably ugly. I try to run at night to work off some of this food, but I'm still a little sore from my fall in Madrid, and given the choice between going out for tapas and running, I generally choose to eat.

What are tapas, you ask? Historically, when ordering a drink in a bar between the hours of about 7:30 and midnight, the bartender might place a small pate on the top of your glass to keep the flies out of your drink, tapando, or topping, the glass. The tradition progressed to also throwing some Serrano ham, bread, fish, or olives onto that plate, thereby giving you a little appetizer with your drink. The custom grew so popular that they started doing it all over Spain, until they realized that they could make money off of the tapas, charging people for them instead of giving the food away for free. Now, the only region where tapas are still free is Andalucía in the south of Spain, and then only in certain places. Granada happens to be one of them, and many Granadinos move from bar to bar eating the tapas for their suppers. Now you know.

Today, I went olive oil tasting in the countryside around Granada with one of the girls from the program. Originally, a group of us had wanted to go wine tasting through La Rioja, a region of Spain famous for its red wine, but we soon found that it was all but impossible to get there by using the bus system from Granada. So, I was thrilled when I saw a brochure for a one-day olive oil tasting tour through the Lecrín valley just outside of Granada, a beautiful place tucked into the mountains of the Sierra Nevada filled with orange, lemon, fig, pomegranate, and olive trees, many of the orchards dating back to sometime around the 13th century and started by the Moors. The tour, unfortunately, was more expensive than many of us would have liked, but since my friend Juliane and I weren't traveling this weekend like much of the group, we decided to go for it. I think it was worth it. Our tour group consisted of our Spanish driver, our French tourguide, two French women, and a couple from England, so Juliane (who also speaks French) and I had fun being quasi-trilingual.

This is the 350 year-old olive tree where we started our tour. Spain is the world's largest producer of olive oil, and has over 10 major varietals (varietals - whipping out the wine vocab!) of olives. After we toured the olive orchards, we went to a 15th century mill, where we learned about ancient and modern production techniques. Only buy Extra Virgin Olive Oil! The real explanation is involved and boring, but basically olive oil classification has to do with the level of acidity allowed in the oil (Extra Virgin is under 2%), the temperature of the water used when pressing the olive paste (colder is better), and the amount the oil is refined and/or distilled before getting to you. If the oil isn't "virgin" or "extra virgin" specifically, they put chemicals into it to increase the smoothness and clarity of the oil, and can use second-press olive paste (the gross stuff left over after they get out the good oil) instead of doing it correctly. Extra Virgin has the most anti-oxidants and health benefits, the best taste, and has the highest tolerance to heat for use while cooking without releasing harmful toxins - so don't use the cheap oil to cook! And Dad, you are not allowed to make any comments in regards to this last paragraph and the benefits of Extra Virgin products...

We tried five oils in a tiny "white village" in the mountains across the street from the mill. (The village was very cool - it has only around 1000 inhabitants, was preparing for some festival or other, and had a fountain in the town square flowing with drinkable ice-cold mountain water.) Basically, the same principles apply to tasting olive oil as to tasting wine, though you try the oil directly in the mouth first, followed by sampling it on bread, with an apple slice in between each oil to cleanse the palate. I'll spare you my tasting notes, but tell you that a good olive oil should always have a peppery finish in the throat, due to the chemical composition of the olive. The last oil we tried, the boldest, most bitter, and most peppery, made my eyes water.

We left one tiny white village for another, and had lunch at a mesón, which was included with the ticket - just OK. The drive there was the most interesting, and we stopped to grab a quick picture. Until next time.

Finally, some pictures...

Clicking on the pictures should make them bigger...


My favorite plaza, La Plaza Nueva; it's not actually that new - it was built by the Catholic Kings in the 15th century.


This is my apartment - I'm up there on the thrid floor, far-right balcony. Right across the street is a family's livingroom, and somewhere some man needs to see an ENT about his mucous issues...


My coffee place, even though they get a bit uppity when I sit at a table outside alone. Starbucks this ain't.


The Alhambra, the most visited tourist site in Spain and absolutely stunning in person. It was a Moorish palace/walled city later taken over by Christians, and the setting for some Washington Irving legends.


The city of Granada.


The beach at Almuñécar. It was pretty amazing swimming in the Mediterranean in front of a castle, before I vomited up my soup on the beach. It was worth it.


This is the Carrera de Genil, named after one of the rivers that flows through Granada. At the end of the street, you can just make out the newly constructed Fountain of Pomegranates, Granada's namesake. It's not the fastest way home for me, but it's flanked by fountains, and it's very park-like. The fruit is all over the city, from actual fruit on the trees, to the fountain, to mosaic work, and the little iron bars that stop cars from driving up on the sidewalks.