No es possible... It is just not possible to describe the outrageoulsy-awesome weekend I just encountered. But alas, I´ll give it a go:
Let me start by explaining just how things go down here in old España. We begin weekends on Thursday nights by packing all of our stuff into our backpacks (ie- toothbrush, couple of t-shirts, extra underwear if you're lucky, camera). Then we take all of our gear with us to school friday morning. After school we meet at the fountain to see who is in for what trip. I´ve managed to talk a fare amount of people into the places I´ve wanted to go so there has been a trip every weekend. Once we´re set on the group we make a mad dash to the bus stop and then to the bus station. We attempt to A) buy bus tickets to where we need to go with the limited amount of Spanish we have (one horrible time the tellers made fun of us in front of everyone and gave us the wrong returning tickets), or B) talk one of the more fluent members of the group into buying their tickets first so we can all just say "mismo" after them. Sometimes there aren´t enough tickets for everyone, or we are too late, or the bus schedules don´t work out so half the fun is seeing where we actualy end up friday night. The best places are recommended word of mouth on the student or backpacking circuit. Once we get where we are going we find the first decent...or, in some cases, not so decent hostel and dump our packs and head out for the night. No rest the weary until late Sunday night when we head back to Granada for another week of class and adventure planning.
I´d have to say this last weekend was my favorite. Aside from hitting Malaga four times in one week, three of us headed off to Ronda, a four hour very windy drive up the mountains (think hills). Ronda is to Spain as Rothenburg is to Germany. Its old world charm is unsurpassed in Andalucia and the three of us had a blast. The old architecture is beautiful and I´ll never get tired of spending the day shopping down cobble stone streets and getting lost in whitewashed villages. Ronda is the home of bull fighting and we were so excited to find the bullfighting musem included free time in the Ronda bullfighting stadium (the most beautiful of all). We played around for a few hours, took some great pics and had a blast seeing all of the classic costumes and art. It is a treat to spend time in the bull ring because Ronda hosts only three bullfights every year. I wonder how much those tickets would be. Ronda was made famous by 1920´s ex-patriots, particually Hemingway who wrote about it in Sun Also Rises and called it the ultimate "honeymoon town." It has an amazing stone bridge and sits on cliffs that overlook miles and miles of spanish hills and countryside. The shopping was amazing and, overall, Ronda made my trip to Spain a success.
But Ronda is only the beginning. Saturday we caught a bus from Ronda back to Malaga (yes, we managed another 15 minute pit stop at H & M) and then onto Nerha where we met up with most everyone from SUU. We managed to grab another hostel and headed down to the beach to begin the festivities of San Juan (a celebration/holiday in honor of John the Baptist). Even though the Mediteranean is mucho frio, we swam in the ocean at midnight and did a little firedancing to say goodbye to the hardships and regrets of the past year. After that we went dancing in the square and later spent the rest of the night (and much of the morning) on the beach waiting for the sunrise. It´s been awhile since I skipped an entire night of sleeping but, for a 27 year-old married chic, I did pretty well. Sunday, three of us headed back to Malaga and rented chairs on the beach. We made it home late late Sunday night and I think I might never recooperate from getting only 7 hours of sleep total in three days and two nights... but at least it´s nice to know I still have it in me! I feel that I´ve gotten a bit of a taste of what backpacking Europe feels like and I love the network of travelling students.
It was one of the best weekends/trips of my life and probably the only thing that could have made it better would have been to have Quinn with me. I miss him so much and can´t wait to see him. He is so perfect and cute and wonderful and amazing! It has been hard to be apart but good to realize how much we miss eachother and need eachother.
In other news: School is going well. I have enjoyed the content and teachers at the University of Granada (which have been well suited for my level and learning style) but the other students in my class are aweful. Drinking and drugs aren´t really regulated here so most of them waste their energy wasting themselves. Also of note is the new adition of an AC unit in the comp. lab!!! This is a big deal since I´ve lost about 4.2 lbs in water weight sweating to death everytime I come to check my email. You´ll be pleased to know my estomago de steal is contuing to fare well. Everyone else that went to Morocco had been severely ill and two even went to the hospital (they´ve had the big D going on 9 days now). We discovered it was the water... the sealed BOTTLED water that we were told and read in the ravel book was safe to drink. Luckily I brought my own agua and only drank a little of the bad stuff just at the end of the trip. I still have the bad water bottle and when you open the lid it feels the entire room with the smell of rancid pond scum and rotting roadkill. It´s pretty bad. The sickest girl drank almost two liters of it... the good news is she says she still doesn´t regret Morocco.
Experience of a lifetime and all things pertaining. Pictures to come. Hasta luego.
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