{"id":201,"date":"2010-01-31T04:41:13","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T12:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=201"},"modified":"2010-01-31T04:41:13","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T12:41:13","slug":"come-walk-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2010\/01\/31\/come-walk-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Come Walk with Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

My walk to school has its own routine, I\u2019ve noticed.\u00a0 What I mean is that every morning my twenty-two minute walk is spiced with nearly the same exact people and events. This is how it goes: I walk down the several flights of stairs in my apartment (I live on the fifth floor), and pry open the far too heavy steel door, and enter the far too busy street.\u00a0 Anyone who knows me knows this: I am NOT a morning person.\u00a0 Thus, having to be at class every day at 9:00 am has been a challenge. However, this morning walk that I take each day helps to alert me, and acts as an alarm clock for my mind, which is the last part of my body to wake up.\u00a0 I love this walk, because it\u2019s becoming a part of me, and each day that I make my way through the plazas and the skinny cobblestone streets, I observe my routine in a different way.\u00a0 Okay, where were we? Oh yeah, we had hardly left the apartment building.\u00a0 I turn left up the street, and pass my favorite pasteleria<\/em> (bakery), eyeing the chocolate croissants and the sweetbread chocolate beauty in the window.\u00a0 Just past that, a little boy struts towards us with his parents dotingly following him as he gives what seems to be well-prepared speech.\u00a0 Chin at a forty-five degree angle with the ground, he speaks loudly and confidently as his parents listen and applaud his intelligence.<\/p>\n

Alright, we\u2019re onto Calle Pinc\u00f3n, and we pass two other pastelerias<\/em> and my favorite caf\u00e9, El Tren.\u00a0 El Tren serves coffee with all sorts of alcohol, from whiskey, to vodka, to rum. They also have the very best chocolate croissants: heated croissant, and melted chocolate. Clearly, a deadly combination.\u00a0 I was in the caf\u00e9 last night, writing in my journal and dipping my deadly combination in my caf\u00e9 con leche, when a huge chunk dropped in and splattered my journal with beige.\u00a0 I attempted to casually rescue my croissant from drowning in the overly sweetened coffee (overly sweetened because of the entire packet of sugar that I poured in).\u00a0 I was finding no success with using my fork as lifeboat, so I stuck my hand in and pulled the drowning croissant out of the dark sea of coffee.\u00a0 Hand dripping, journal stained, and half my croissant a soggy mess, I giggle hysterically to myself and continue writing.\u00a0 I might just mention that the workers are very cute, with the strongest Spanish accent I\u2019ve ever heard.\u00a0 Whenever one of them approaches my table and asks me a question or makes a comment my default answer (when I don\u2019t understand) is always a smile, a \u201cGracias\u201d, and a bat of the lashes.\u00a0 Since most of the time I don\u2019t understand them, they must just think I\u2019m some smiling, thanking, eyelash batting extranjera<\/em>, incapable of any normal human reaction.<\/p>\n

Back to the walk.\u00a0 Past El Tren, there are two primary schools that are less than a block apart. At 8:30 in the morning, the sidewalks are overflowing with parents and children. This trip is the first time I\u2019ve really been immersed in another culture, so I truly enjoy observing the details of daily life in Granada.\u00a0 Each morning I pass a certain family, two sisters (one is about three years older than the other) and a father.\u00a0 I always notice the older sister because she never watches where she\u2019s going, as she happily trudges through the swamp of people on the sidewalks.\u00a0 Her younger sister tries to keep up, both of them dragging suitcase-size backpacks behind them.<\/p>\n

Next, we enter Plaza Trinidad where the trees look as scary as those out of Snow White, ready to reach out and snag me by my new bufonda (scarf).\u00a0 There are two kiosks in the plaza; one sells lottery tickets and the other sells bread.\u00a0 Every morning the old lady working at Kiosco Enriqueta (the bread kiosk) looks as though she\u2019s won the lottery of loaves, with stacks and stacks of bread from floor to ceiling.\u00a0 Her hair is as white as the inside of the bread she sells and she looks like someone cut out of the \u201cIdeal Grandmother\u201d magazine.\u00a0 An apron, a perpetual smile, and the most hug-able round body I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 One day, I will buy a loaf of bread from her.\u00a0 And then possibly give her a bear hug, depending on how daring I feel.<\/p>\n

Past the Plaza of Scary Trees, I wind through a narrow cobblestone street with stores of every kind.\u00a0 I turn left at \u201cWomen\u2019s Secret\u201d, the Spanish version of Victoria\u2019s Secret.\u00a0 There are a lot of stores with the craziest English names, like \u201cNeck\u201d, \u201cBear and Pull\u201d, and \u201cIf\u201d.\u00a0 There is graffiti on the side of Women\u2019s Secret that says \u201cNo permitimos las fiestas\u201d or, \u201cWe don\u2019t allow parties\u201d.\u00a0 Speaking of graffiti, most of the graffiti in Granada is truly stunning.\u00a0 It is incredible artwork that should be displayed in a museum.\u00a0 There are many depictions of faces splashed across the side of buildings with inconceivable detail. One piece that I pass that reminds me of the girl on the cover of the playbill for \u201cLes Miserables\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 At some point, I will have to take a day to walk around the city and capture this art in photos, and then perhaps play curator and post them on my blog.<\/p>\n

Past Women\u2019s Secret to Plaza Bib-Rambla.\u00a0 In this plaza one can see the famous Cathedral peaking over the roofs of the buildings.\u00a0 Bib-Rambla is one of the larger plazas, and hosts a mini merry-go-round, a few mimes and of course Orange trees.\u00a0 It seems like all the plazas here have Orange trees.\u00a0 My Se\u00f1ora told me that the plazas are the best in the spring because the air is filled with the sweet smell of orange blossoms.\u00a0 In Sevilla (where I guess there are even more orange trees) there is a song about the smell of oranges in the spring.<\/p>\n

Anyway, past oranges and mimes and merry-go-rounds, we head up the narrowest street yet.\u00a0 In this street, you can find my favorite old man in Granada.\u00a0 Every morning without fail, this man comes from the opposite direction clutching a newspaper in his hand and sometimes a coffee in the other. He has a goal and is determined to reach it. But he isn\u2019t walking; it\u2019s more like he\u2019s jogging without straightening his legs.\u00a0 Just imagine that, for a second.\u00a0 Shall we move on?<\/p>\n

The traffic light at the end of this street acts like a temporary dam for the pedestrians.\u00a0 We all pile up on the edge of the curb and wait for the light to change.\u00a0 There are always a few people who sneak across in between the roaring buses and Vespas, but most of us wait impatiently on the curb.\u00a0 When the little walking green man appears (his legs move similar to the old man mentioned above), we gush into the street.\u00a0 Walking past an the large fountain, I make my way up another not-as-interesting road and turn left onto a \u201cstreet\u201d so narrow that I could probably touch both sides at the same time if I stood in the middle.\u00a0\u00a0 One last turn and I have arrived at El Centro de Lenguas Modernas. We made it, all is well, let the classes begin!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My walk to school has its own routine, I\u2019ve noticed.\u00a0 What I mean is that every morning my twenty-two minute walk is spiced with nearly the same exact people and events. This is how it goes: I walk down the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mikayla-hafner-11-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}