My First Week Here

It's been a crazy first week! We left last friday and spent over 24 hours of straight traveling which was very tiring the first night.  I was with two other girls and we passed out at 9 pm and then didn't wake up till 9 am.  The next day we then met our host families and I live with just a host mom and she is a grandma.  She has kids but they are all out of the house and living in different cities.  She doesn't know any English and I know barely any Spanish so it's been pretty interesting.  Now I can figure out for the most part what she is asking but I can only respond with one or two word answers.  When we can't figure out what the other one wants we either do charades, use a dictionary, or google translate.  The google translate has been the best one because I can tell her exactly what i'm saying.  The weather here is in the 50's-60's which is really nice though.  The houses however are freezing! I have only 5 minutes of hot water a day and then a small heater in my room that only goes off for 2 hours at night and 2 hours during the day.  I am a baby when it comes to being cold at home so this is definitely a change.  I am constantly wearing sweats and slippers in the house but when I go outside I only have to wear jeans and a sweatshirt.  On Monday through Friday and this next week we have orientation before school starts.  In the mornings we have a meeting around ten for an hour and then class from 4-7 to review our Spanish.  Since I know barely any Spanish it's me learning everything.  I'm doing pretty well though  because I know lots of vocab and am able to make complete sentences now.  We have taken two excursions since I've been here to visit the city.  The first one we did was a tour of the downtown of Granada where we saw all the influences of Christianity, Islam, Moorish people, and Morocco.  We also learned a lot about the history of Granada and how the royal family used to live here.  They are also really big in politics because this is where the Supreme Court is of Spain.

Then a couple days later we went to visit the Albazien which is the older part of Granada.  To get to the top you have to climb up a really steep hill with lots of steps.  Let me tell you my butt was getting a workout and was hurting the next day.  If I lived up there and would definitely be very fit for when I came home.  Once we got up there the view was amazing and definitely worth the hike.  Granada is such a beautiful city and I can see why people like it here.