The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on Jenelle McClean: Wow!

Where to begin?!?

Last week in one of my classes we had a conversation with a Catholic friar who is in seminary. Very interesting. It was a group of American, 20 something, "evangelicos" and this poor guy who they brought in for a question and answer session with us about Catholicism in Spain. It started out with easy questions like "How do you become a pope?" and eventually became a heated debate about whether hell exists and how you can go to heaven through good works. (He said, "There are 2 ways to be saved: good works and faith in God." not exactly sure how that works) So it was very interesting and definitely opened my eyes into what catholicism is actually about from someone who has studied it ALOT. (I think he said 6 years of university.)

THEN... here comes the fun part... I went to GRANADA this weekend. Favorite place so far outside of Sevilla. It is gorgeous and in the mountains. A quaint little town, but so much to do. It's one of those places that you just can't capture in pictures. (This is why I took over 400 in 2 days.)

Every where you go is a climb up hill or an attempt not to trip and roll down. They are steep! There is a lot of Muslim/ Arabic stuff there. There were all kinds of street vendors and tea shops. It was a totally different atmosphere than Sevilla. We did a lot of walking and my legs are still dead, but it was totally worth it for all we were able to see.

We went to a neighborhood of Granada that is built on the mountains where people live in caves. Here, we had our first encounter with the gypsies of Granada and learned first hand where the word gypped is derived from. We are walking on our merry little way, basking in all the beauty, thinking everything in the world is good, when a lady comes out of a flamenco bar and tells us we can go in and look inside if we want. We had just been talking about how cool it would be inside one of the caves, so we went immediately realizing it was probably a mistake. All of the sudden she had given us all a beer and a pot (to remember Granada) and was trying to read our palms. We knew we needed to get out of the but weren't sure how. We were kind of cornered and were like, "Oh my goodness, look at the time! We have to go! We're late to meet some friends!" Then she demanded 7 euros from each of us for everything. None of us had even drank the beer and we didn't want the little pot thing, so we were like, "We don't have any money sorry." She got all mad and we got some change out and were like, "This is all we have." We ran out with her screaming at us. In the end, we felt stupid... caught in the trap like idiots, but the experience and the story I'm pretty sure are worth the 4 euros (1 euro a piece... not terrible).

From that side of the river, we could see on the other side more caves and saw people walking around on trails. THAT is where we wanted to go. So we decided that the next morning we were going to go on adventure up the mountain. We walked... up hill/mountain... right up to the caves where people lived. They had doors, tables, chairs, it was amazing that people actually live like that, and that we were that close. You can kind of see the paths that we were walking on. However, the whole time we were a little timid to get to close. We didn't want another gypping scenario, so we went back and walked around other parts of the city. It is completely and utterly awesome all over.

Finally, we made it to the main attraction of the city, the Alhambra. It is a huge fortress that the Muslims built before the Christians came and took over their area. They knew they were going to be taken out because all of the surrounding areas were already conquered. As a last "hurrah", they built the Alhambra as a piece of heaven on earth more or less. It is completely filled with gardens and there is a palace with unbelievably detailed decoration. It's so much that again, pictures can't really capture it. It was also one of the things we've studied in my art class so again... I was able to actually appreciate it because I knew a good amount of the history behind it.