Aventuras de España: With a heart of thankfulness

Hola todos! So here I am again, one week later, writing a blog post... Time is going by so fast now, I can hardly believe it! This past week has been a really great one, one of the best actually, which may possibly contribute to the whole going by really fast thing! It was a week of new experiences, travel, and a lot of thanks!

On Tuesday, I went with a group of friends to the Universidad de Sevilla, where they have a free salsa class. There were probably 100 people there, the vast majority being students at the University. We spent 2 hours learning bachata and salsa in the humid stuffy basement of school, which was a fun, and somewhat humorous experience for me. First of all, this class has been going on all semester, and so the majority of people already knew what they were doing, except us! Also, being a tall american female dancing with short spaniard guys resulted in a few elbows to the face (and it wasn't my face). After the class, a group of us went over to the apartment of some of our spanish and finished the night off watching Tangled in spanish! Which watching movies in spanish is always a good time!

Wednesday afternoon started off with another lovely meeting with my Intercambio. We had a great time and talked for 2 hours (which unfortunately meant that I wasn't able to get over to Encuentro until it had just ended!). Afterwords, a group of us went to the theater to watch the new Hunger Games movie, Sinsajo. Seats are always assigned in Spain, and when we got there they only had seats in the front 2 rows open, but we went anyways. The movie was really good, and I loved that I understood the majority of the plot and conversations... there is something really fun about watching movies in theatre in Spanish when you can understand them! If you haven't seen the movie, you totally should!

Although Thanksgiving is not a thing in Spain, we still knew how to celebrate here! In the morning our school took a trip to a city outside of Huelva, where Christopher Columbus spent a lot of time. We visited the monastery the he went to when he was planning his first trip west, and we also went to a museum where they have real size replicas of his ships the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María. It was really cool to see what they looked like, and they were a lot smaller than I expected! That evening, the school rented out a restaurant and gave them american recipes to make for us. We all dressed up and ate a delicious dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin and apple pie. I hadn't eaten mashed potatoes in 3 months, and let me tell you, I didn't realize how much I had missed them! At this dinner we all had "amigos invisibles" (like Secret Santa) that we had to buy a gift for, and some of the gifts people received we pretty hilarious. It was a Thanksgiving unlike any other, and one that I will never forget!

Friday morning a group of us left for the beautiful city of Granada! We got there in the afternoon, and spent the evening wandering through the many colorful shops selling Indian and Arabic items. Every store was so colorful inside, it made me happy just looking at everything! Once it got dark we made our way to a lookout where you can see la Alhambra, a muslim palace built in the 14th century (I'll get there shortly!). The lookout was right by some caves in the mountains where people live year-round, legally and illegally. One of my favorite games in Granada was "cave of no cave?", where you had to guess if someone was living in the caves or not... It was usually pretty obvious though! Saturday morning I went to la Alhambra, which was by far the highlight of Granada. I had a ticket for 8:30am, so I was there early enough to see the end of the sunrise behind the Sierra Nevada mountains, where Granada is situated. We spent a good chunk of time in my art class learning about muslim architecture, and la Alhambra has some of the best muslim art and architecture in the world! The palaces and gardens were just stunning! The amount of detail put into every corner of the buildings is incredible, and something you simply have to see for yourself. My favorite spot though, would have to be the top of one of the defense towers. From this tower you had a view of the snow topped mountains that was absolutely breathtaking... Did I mention there was SNOW?! My first, and probably only glimpse of snow in Spain, and it was wonderful!

On Sunday afternoon my host family pulled out the Christmas decorations! Christmas isn't as big here as in the US, but my family still has a small tree and some other decorations! It was so much fun listening to Christmas music and setting up the tree with the kids... it felt just like home.

Seeing as it was thanksgiving this past week, I just want to take a second to share a few things I've been thankful here in Spain. First, I'm so thankful for the fact that I have even been able to come to Spain. This has been one of the best times of my life, a semester I will remember forever. I'm also thankful for all the people I have met here, because people really make a place, and I have been blessed with the best people! I have a host family that cares for me, teachers and other staff at school who are always there to help me (with everything from travel plans, to speaking spanish, to understanding Sevilla in general!) and friends that are truly irreplaceable. God has provided for me and grown me in ways that I never could have asked for or imagined, and for that the word "thanks" hardly seems strong enough!

Anyways, as always, I am so grateful for the prayers and support I have received from the stateside! All of the thanksgiving messages were especially cherished! As I look towards the home stretch, continued prayers for diligence in my work and good time management would be really appreciated, especially with final exams coming up! Love you all, and hope you had a wonderful Thankgiving!
Hasta luego!
Rachel :)