la albayzin

this is my third post today but i want to keep this updated as much as possible. only when i do things as cool as go to the albayzin. today was a very lazy sunday for the most part. by the time ella and i motivated to get out of the house it was 4:30. we met up with kathryn and walked to the park, el parque garcia lorca, thats right behind our house. this was in the middle of siesta, and was on a sunday so literally the streets were empty and the park was even emptier. we walked around for a bit but had every intention of playing in the park, first stop zipline. we used the zipline and some trampolines. we also played on this awesome see saw it was the most fun see saw i've ever been on. it was good we went during siesta and no one was there cause i'm sure people would have felt uncomfortable watching three 20 year old girls run around a parque like niñas. it was a lovely afternoon and so much fun.

after we had our tour of the albayzin. the albayzin is the old arabic neighborhood which is all up on a hill in Granada. it has all cobblestone streets and is super intricate. we went to the top called the mirador de san nicholas which overlooks the entire city and has the mots breathtaking view of the Alhambra. we gazed for a bit and took pictures and played with begonia's, our program directors, four year old daughter carolina (still in little kid mode) then headed to a teteria, or a tea house. this place had such an arabic feel it was very cool. we all sat on couches and ordered tea and lemonade which was all freshly made right there. they also gave us these sweet bread treats that were delicious and if you wanted you could smoke hookah there too. it was a relaxing place that on a night we aren't going to the discotecas or anything we could go there and enjoy tea and hookah and good company. 

decoration in the albayzin

afterwards we walked home and realized its super close to where we live. i guess really everything in this city is super close like the most we walk is maybe 20 minutes at the very most. alas, it was cool because there are a ton of nice little stores and places to eat around there its certainly a place where we'll take visitors. ella and i came home and ate dinner here (we both ate fish and didnt vomit on our madre!! so exciting) cause we needed to relax cause tomorrow we have our placement exam at 8:30 am which i don't exactly feel prepared for but we'll see. really want it to be over with and get classes started and get a routine going. ella and i are also going to start running cause we plan on running a 10k in mallorca in october! this will probably be my last trip that i book. its sad because there is so much more i want to see but i know i'll come back some day. now the honeymoon phase here is ending and all of us are getting into a real life swing of things here. these blog posts will probably become less frequent and more about the trips i take. in these first five days i've done most of the tourist Granada things so i think from now on my life here is going to be very smooth (hopefully) and i'm excited for the full immersion and eventually becoming a cultured american and not feeling like an insecure tourist traveling in a group of 30 all the time. we shall see ay? more shenanigans, and definitely pictures, to come. adios mis amores