Wednesday

Today was a Wednesday. I woke up, or rather, was woken up, by the Chihuahua next door, my alarm that never fails to stir my sleepy head at 8:15. I proceeded to climb out my crinkly bed and walk to the kitchen, where I had some delicious Muesli (granola) and sat in the sunlight on the balcony of my apartment. It was a glorious day: 72 degrees, one tiny little cloud to the west and nothing else but scary old men and dogs on the path along the river, so I went running. Every person stared at me during the 45 minutes. Have they NEVER seen a girl? In shorts? Exercising? Sweating? I guess not. The old women looked frightened that my calves were on display for the whole world and the dogs/men (interchangeable in this case) proceeded to bark in my direction and thoroughly investigate me through sight and smell. Other than those little bumps in the story, howeva, it was a nice run, got some sun, had some wheezing fun.

Entonces, I finally, finally! feel at home here. It was a loooooong adjustment period, but the weather is perfect every day, I can speak Spanish, I have a relationship with my host family, and I get to go wherever I please every weekend. It's The Life. I like it, and Granada, though I wasn't in love with it at first, has grown into one of my favorite places in the world. You should go! Come visit! I love visitors. And water.

Speaking of water, I recently went to Almuñecar, a small beach town outside of Granada, for the weekend with a couple friends. Expecting a warm, relaxing 2 days, we were unprepared when the water did not work in my host family's apartment. After an hour of talking/yelling in Spanish with my host mother and father, a convo with the handyman, and running up and down the apartment complex looking for someone to help us (the building was empty, BTW-low season), we were told that the landlord had not paid the bill for that week, so we were stuck with a smelly bathroom and no way to fill up our water balloons. Not that upsetting, UNTIL we discovered my host dad had given me the wrong key, so once the building was locked for the night we could not leave or return, so we remained in the cold, stinky prison without food or water until Saturday morning. That morning, one of my friends had eXpLoSivE poo because she drank bad water, so we had to walk to town since the buses weren't running, which was about a 45 minute walk with all of out stuff, where we finally hung out at the beach and hopped on the night bus home. What a trip! I hope everyone gets to experience Almuñecar at some point in their lives...

That's all for now, off to get tapas for St. Patrick's Day