written by Guest Blogger SerahRose (Sharon’s daughter)
I, unbelievably, got an email from my brother this afternoon. He’s traveling with my parents right now through the deserts of Morocco. Oh, yes, an email.
Here’s what he says:
There is a cellphone tower so we hiked to the top of a dune and I have signal to send you this picture of our camp tonight. It is so quiet here.
Who knew what the wonders of the world could send us through the air?
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It is 23:45 and we are in our Riad in Marakeesh!! 🙂 An exciting taxi ride; and walk through several blocks of the old quarter to our place we’re sleeping for two nights — the sights and sounds were amazing (including the little boy attempting to unzipper our luggage as another boy (who we paid) pulled our luggage to our Riad.
But I wanted to get this posted from our last days in Granada. We are here for two nights and then go out to the desert. Stay tuned!
Thursday and Friday were holidays here in Spain. It is the end of Semana Santa (Holy Week) and so our school was closed.
We very pleased with ourselves that we finished 2 ½ weeks of classes. The last two days we did an extra class to make up for the holidays. We worried that we could sit in class 5 – 6 hours a day; but we did! We were very pleased with our teachers; not so pleased with the school as a whole. We’re interested to see what it will be like in Salamanca in April when we go to another branch of the same school. It was way too much grammar; interesting and useful of course, but not enough conversation.
I think from my experience with curriculum development that they have a certain curriculum that they cover. It involves practice with conversation within the verbs and vocabulary they are teaching, but not any practical skills. We had two different teachers a day, and one of them was fabulous – the practical knowledge and vocabulary we gained was really from her. We understand it is an immersion school; yet an example of the practical nature (or not practical nature) would be that the first hour of school on our first day they took us for an hour’s walk to orient us to the neighborhood, historical sites, etc. They did the entire thing in Spanish – refused to explain anything in English – including where the police and hospital were! And the last week of classes, it is, as I said, Semana Santa; our conversation theme for the day was: Semana Santa? NO! Navidad (Christmas)! And there were other things represented in their literature that was, shall we say loosely interpreted? We tried to see it from the point of view of what we are accustomed to in America; but still we had expected that with a computer room would come a printer – nope☺
But we really enjoyed ourselves; and we can go out to get a meal without our phrase book! So progress!
So, back to the rain…
On Thursday, our day off, we had a bocadillo (ham on baguette) and fruit from our homestay and we set off to have a walk in a beautiful garden with a picnic in mind. Ah, but the clouds quickly came in and it hailed, thundered and poured…..what a mess. We had taken our raincoats and hats, but the downpour was too heavy and we were quickly completely soaked. However – the garden was empty and we had a lovely private picnic in a grotto. Here’s a picture of Rich sitting at the bench side; and of us both – can you see how wet we are?!
That didn’t stop us; we walked onwards! We made our way back to the Alhambra (which was closest and had some old buildings open & free) and sat there a bit trying to dry off. We finally gave up and bought a couple of those tourist rain capes. Fortunately, we had good rain coats on and our chests were dry and warm, but our legs and feet were soaking. The capes worked to keep at least some body warmth in.
We then found a sweet (and expensive) place to have a cup of tea (Spain drinks coffee), and tried to dry off a bit more. But it was about 4 pm so we gave up on the rain letting up (the forecast had been for 40% chance of rain – they must have been at the same weather school as New England forecasters) and made our way home.
We were soaked! A long siesta took care of it though!
On Friday we returned in beautiful weather to the same garden and had a lovely day there. On the way home, we stopped to watch another church procession come out of its church – very interesting. And here, another adventure begins. All week we had been making a point of knowing what streets to use to try to not in stuck in the crowds, but somehow our figuring was off. Since men carry the floats, the timing they publish is only a guide and they can get quite behind. So we had to make our way around 4 processions to get to a restaurant. On the third one, a group of folks wouldn’t give way, and shouting broke out. Rich and I were attempting to make it through when people began to not give way ahead – we were suddenly being crushed. And our limited Spanish did not give us any words to shout back at them – Pardone wasn’t working.
I was behind Rich and had his hand. I grabbed his arm with my other hand, he yelled back to me, let’s go and we began to shove with all our might. We made it through quite a layer of people packed tight between two buildings; but boy I was really shaken up when we made it through. We walked about a block, found an open space, and had a breath. Whoosh.
Tonight we are in Madrid. We took a train here yesterday (another adventure when we used the Madrid Metro to get to our hotel to discover at 11 at night that the connecting line was shut-down – ah, but another time!)
We leave tomorrow for our adventure in Morocco where our son and daughter-in-law will join us for a week’s vacation. I don’t know when I’ll get on again; but keep checking back. We’ll be back in Madrid and I promise some interesting photos of Morocco!
P.S. Here we are on our last night in Granada watching the sunset on the Alhambra!
An extra P.S. for our Avi-do: Here you are keeping us company whenever we open our suitcase☺ 
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We’re in Madrid, leaving tomorrow for Morocco. I’m not able to get online except through my husband’s computer; but keep checking in — hopefully I’ll be able to fill you in next week on our latest adventures!
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I did it! I’m feeling very proud of myself this morning! I managed two “real” things using only Spanish – and the best part – I used a verb! Who knows if I used the correct form, but I succeeded in asking my homestay mother if she would wash our laundry today and I asked for a particular type of pastry at the shop as well! Feels good to get somewhere with the language! It’s really frustrating at moments.
Tomorrow is our last day of classes here in Granada although we don’t leave until Saturday. We take the train to Madrid for less than two days, then we fly to Marakeesh to join son and daughter-in-law for a week’s vacation. So we have no idea of when we’ll be able to connect, so please keep checking my site!
Here’s what we’ve been up to for the last three days.
Saturday: We took a bus trip with the school to Cordoba to see the important sites there. There were about 12 students from 3 different schools and about 6 countries. The tour was given in Spanish! The guide would not speak English (part of the idea of immersion); but did do many of the talks in slow clear Spanish; so I think we got more than half or better at times. We did read our tour books so that we had some idea of what he was going to say. We left at 8 am and returned at 9 so we were tired. But the sites of Cordoba are amazing. We saw the Cathedral/Mezuita; the ancient Jewish quarter, a Roman site and other things in the central city. We also went in the bus to see another ancient site of the Muslims.
The Cathedral/Mezuita is breathtaking, and I mean that literally. I wished that I wasn’t on a tour so that I could sit and really take it in. It really touched me – the beauty, the reality of the oldness of it, the spirtual presence of so many religions in one spot. Really truly breaktaking.
The bus ride on the way was lovely as well – fields and fields of olive trees. We stopped for a break in an olive oil producing area and got to taste a few local products.
Sunday
We thought we would have a slower day, right! Our homestay gave us a sandwich and fruit and we walked around the city. We went back up to the view of the Alhambra and mountains. Ate here and there, and then waited to see one of the processions.
It is Semana Santa here in Spain – a huge deal! Another astonishing event to see — each church has a procession of many many people wearing all types of costumes. Each church has a particular set of colors and one or two floats. These floats are carried on the shoulders of about 40 men at a time. A band plays a very fascinating piece of music that has a rhythm that they march to. Every now and again they set the float down, and then to see the float get hoisted up again is amazing. I wish we were seeing these processions with someone who knew all about them and spoke English – I have so many questions. YEt, to just watch is to see a passion enacted that is moving.
We have been able to catch several of them – there are 4 to 6 each night in Granada. Actually, it’s quite hard not to see them as they block the streets and we’ve had to be sure to have our map handy in order to find our way around. If you’ve done your math, you’ll figure out that’s about 25 or more churches in one small area of the central city.
Monday
We had school as usual and decided after an early dinner (7:30 pm) to go back to Paddy’s Pub and have a drink to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Well, there was a procession in front of it. It took about 20 minutes and a lot of pardoning ourselves to just get across the street. But, the best part, we got to see the float from the pub! And we enjoyed meeting some great people and talking in English for a while.
The top two pictures are just two of the floats we have seen so far from amongst the crowds. The bottom left is the float we saw while inside the pub. The last, sorry it is out of focus – the camera’s battery was about to give out – is inside Paddy’s Pub while the float went by. This is for my siblings — Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I know Dad would have appreciated my downing a Guiness while watching the Virgin Mary go by!! 🙂
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Well, at least two members of it!
Last night, after school, Rich and I walked around a bit and chose to go a bit further north in town to find a new place to eat tapas. We found a place in a lovely plaza, sat and ordered.
As we were chatting and people watching, I see David Ram and his wife strolling down the sidewalk! (For other friends and family, David is the Dean of Faculty at my college – in essence, the “boss” of my “boss.”)! Hysterical! Another small world story! In espanol: El mundo es un panuelo. (a few accents missing as my computer doesn’t have them!)
I knew he was going on a trip and intending to visit Granada but I had lost track of when — it was a welcome addition to our day! We had a drink and a stroll together. Our brains are so mixed up with new Spanish words, that it was really lovely to speak in English full sentences with someone else (and enjoy their company.)
It reminds me that I also wanted to post this picture of one of the many many fountains here in Granada. This is nearby where we bumped into David and where we strolled before heading back for sleep.
It’s hard to see but there are pomegranates in the center of this fountain which is their local symbol. It may be Granada means promegrante as well.
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