Week 4 in Granada, Spain

Hello everyone. This week was the pick up for school work so it was a little quieter on the activity front. I spent this week going on short walks, trying to capture the memory beyond pictures. It’s beginning to hit me that the global seminar is coming to a close and that in a week's time, I will be touching down in the states rather than waking up in Granada. So I’m trying to make do and continue to appreciate what I still have. So, this week was spent retracing my steps and settling down what I loved the most about the city. I love that people walk around at all hours of the night, and it won’t be individuals, it’ll be whole families. I love the jewelry shop that is technically never open so I have to call ahead for them to let me in. I love window shopping and deciding after weeks that now is the time to make a purchase. I love the walk up to the Alhambra and the statues dotted around the path. Basically, I’m very nostalgic for a place that I’m still living in. 

On another note, we did still have an overnight excursion to a nearby city, Almeria. In one word, humid. I loved the area and it was great to see a new city. I could not get past the unbearable heat though. I’ve been pretty fortunate (or maybe continuously unfortunate) in that the Granada heat felt just like home, and I could go out at the hottest hours of the day and still be relatively unfazed. I was fazed by this. So while I was trying to ignore my own rising body temperature, I was appreciating our surroundings. We went to the Alcazaba, and although walking around the unshaded areas was kind of brutal, it had a great view. Seeing any sprawling city is fun, especially with Spain’s narrow streets jumbling the lines of what was what. 

Then we returned back to Granada. This was the first weekend that I actually spent fully in Granada, so I was really unprepared for the shift from a Saturday to a Sunday. On Saturday, everything is lively, people go out for meals, they go shopping, and the city feels like it’s bustling. Then Sunday comes, and nothing is happening. People aren’t even walking around. Although the change of pace was briefly unnerving, it quickly became calming. It was my short escape from the pressure of class and planning for my return. In a way, it was the exact return to normalcy I needed, and I might not have been going on the craziest adventures I could, but I’ve found comfort and familiarity with this place, and that’s more than I hoped for coming into this.