GRANADA for the weekend!

And there's NO place I would've rather been! This weekend was absolutely awesome in pretty much every way! Moments like these are gonna make it so hard to leave!

So where to begin? Thursday night was a lot of fun! A bunch of people all got together that night to drink and then we went to the grand opening of a new discoteca in town called 5Club. It was a LOT of fun. We think that we might not be able to top this night at 5Club a different time though because until 2:30 am, all beer and tinto's were FREE. Yes, all of us we're triple and quadruple fisting. Whoops!

REALLY hot in there!

Then came Friday. Words cannot describe how excited I was for this day. We officially decided that Friday was soccer day.. As it turns out, the SPANISH NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM (aka 90% of my life heroes) were playing a Euro Cup qualifying match in Granada that day against the Czech Republic! We couldn't actually get tickets because they were really expensive, but watching it the way we did was actually probably more fun! The game was at 10 pm, but at 5:00, a bunch of us headed over to Palacio de Congresos, where they were having a huge celebration for the game! It was a GORGEOUS day, there were TONS of people there, and they had a huge screen where they played the game and there was live music and everything!

We staked out some great spots on the main steps right in front the screen, and pretty much stayed there until game time. We got there around 5 when there was a decent amount of people, then around 10 it got PACKED. And let me just tell you, it was an absolute blast. I've never been to anything like that before. And I highly doubt they'd ever do something like this for soccer in the United States EVER. It was amazing!

American bro's turned Spain bro's!

Such a nice day out, too!

REALLY wanted to play with them..

All Spanished-out!

And the madness begins!

 Live music for the pre-game!

Awesome.

To perfectly sum up the absolutely amazingness of this game...

After Spain scored, taking the lead 2-1! A por ellos, oé! A por ellos, oé! A por ellos, oé!

After Spain won the game! SO cool. But do the Spaniards even know what they're singing about? All I know is we sure did.

The aftermath!

Friday was an absolutely amazing day/night. But Saturday kept up! A bunch of us all woke up really early in the morning to catch a bus to head to Nerja, a beachtown that's about an hour outside of Granada!

When we first got there, it was a little cloudy and chilly, and we were all kind of bumming out about it. However, as the day went on, once it got around 2:00 ish, the weather was absolutely PERFECT. It was just a great day at the beach! There were roughly about 20 of us that went. We all drank a little bit, played soccer, went jumping off the rocks, and just relaxed on the beach for hours! And got a nice tan/burns as well. It was just the day I needed! Definitely want to go back to Nerja (and hopefully I will with the family this weekend!)

The streets of Nerja! Started out real cloudy, but was perfect later!

Beautiful

Clouds go awayyy

And the cliff-diving begins

Thinkin they're cool. I actually didn't do this because it was too chilly around this time, but definitely down to try it next time!

Go Bruce! Awesome pic.

Nothing like soccer on the beach!

The end of the day was absolutely gorgeous!

All of us ended up leaving Nerja either on the 5:00 bus or the 7:00. Then we came home, got ready, and met up to pregame outside the Alhambra before spending the night out at CAMBORIO! I've waited so long to go to this discoteca! It's one of the crazier ones where you have to stay out til at least 5 or 6 in the morning! And that's just what we did. I didn't bring my camera out, but I think some of us did, so potentially more pictures could be added on here later.

Later this week, the ZIELKE FAMILY is coming to Granada!! Cannot wait! See you guys soon!!!!

Weekend in Barca!

Got back from Barcelona on Monday morning. And let me tell you, Barca is definitely one of my favorite places I've been to so far. A 3-day weekend was just not enough time there! When we left, we felt like we didn't even get to see half the city. Hopefully, at some point in my life, I'll be able to go back!


Anyways, early Friday morning, Meg and I headed to the Granada airport (along with a bunch of other girls from our program) and took a plane straight from here to Barcelona. Meg and I arrived around 11ish, but we hung around the airport til around 1, waiting for Mike's plane to arrive! We laid on one of the benches outside at the airport and basked in the sun for two hours. It was actually really nice! Eventually, Mike arrived and we all headed into the heart of the city to check in at our hostel, San Jordi Les Corts. (Which reminds me: that was one frustrating thing about Barca. There, they speak Catalan, which is a very different dialect from the Spanish we've been learning at school. It's a mix between Spanish and French, for the most part. We felt dumb not knowing what people were saying a lot of the time when we were in SPAIN. But it wasn't a big problem!) For the first night, Mike, Meg, and I were sharing a room with our friends John and Tom, from Italy. When we got there, they had already checked in and left a note saying that we should meet up for dinner around 7 ish, and that's just what we did. We had a couple hours to kill, so Meg and I walked around for a bit, bought a map (which was as big as our bodies almost. Barca is HUGE), and went to the Vodafone store so I could actually call people.. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera out at all the first day, so I don't have any pictures.


We got back around 7 and met up all together at the hostel. By that time, I had already called Alyssa (Yay!) and we met up with her at the subway stop she told us to go to, and she took us to this AMAZING cheeseburger place. Absolutely delicious. Don't remember the name of it, though! So that night, we ate, bought alcohol, got ready back at the hostel, then met back up with Alyssa at her apartment where we all pregamed. We had a really fun pregame, and headed to a bar (which, of course, I can't remember the name) where we sat at a table and chilled and drank (for some of us there, that was all they could really handle) and around 3 or 4ish we went home! It was a really good night.


The next day, Meg's family was coming to Barca! They rented an apartment for the next two nights, so I actually just stayed there with them. We met them at the apartment around noon ish the next day, and the apartment was really nice! I basically just snuck in, because it was supposed to be an apartment for 6, but it was actually a really good amount of space! We all settled in at the apartment and then went straight to the beach! The beach was pretty and it was a really nice, sunny day, so we tanned for an hour or two. The only problem was that we couldn't do it much longer than that because it was actually pretty windy, so we got kinda chilly. Also, the weird thing about the beaches in Barcelona is that there are constantly people walking the beaches trying to sell you things: a beer, a massage, a towel. They were actually VERY annoying and would not go away unless you would be a little rude to them. But eventually we just ignored them and just tanned!


After that, Mike, Meg, the family, and I went out to eat at this tapas place, where we bought a ton of tapas, but it turned out, the tapas were each really small. So we mostly did some sampling. And then, to fill ourselves up, we got some gelato. Which was delicious! When we were done, we met back up with John and Tom at the apartment (who were on a free tour that day) and started to plan our night. The plan was supposed to be that Tom and John were going to try to grab tickets to the FC Barcelona game (!!!) that night since they didn't have any, then we'd meet up afterwards, with a bunch of their friends from their program, too, and then all go out together. They left the apartment early to try to see if they could get some tickets, which unfortunately, they did not end up getting to.. Then, we all threw on our Barca jerseys and headed to the game!


The game was an absolute BLAST. The game was at 7 and it was against Getafe. Barca ended up winning 2-1! Seriously, I think I was hyperventilating most of the game.. We ended up getting lucky and had great seats (Barcelona does it weird.. You buy a group of tickets online, but typically they aren't seated together! So people move around and trade and stuff.. I don't think it's a good system though because when a person does eventually want their real seat, you have to move. So we didn't all get to sit together. But Meg, Alyssa, and I had great seats!). We were sitting SO close to Messi, Iniesta, David Villa, Pique, etc., it was hard to concentrate on anything else! I couldn't believe it! And the Barca fans have SO much pride, it was absolutely crazy. They seemed crazier than the Real Madrid game fans did- maybe it was because this stadium was a lot bigger and our seats were a lot closer, but it was a blast. They had all of these different chants and songs about Barcelona, which we couldn't understand because it was a lot of Catalan, but it was SO cool anyways. We got to see some gorgeous goals as well, and the game was actually really exciting at the end! Here is me in my heaven:

The stadium. SO huge

Best ever.

I wanted to know how to sing along with this song SO bad..

Ran out of words to describe my feelings for this place.

Oh hi, Lionel Messi, only like 50 feet away from me.. Can we please get married?

Messi... There are NO words.

Random game moments..

Messi pretty much owns any field he steps on..

Seriously, this game was SUCH a blast. I could talk about it all day. But anyways! It took forever to get back home from the game because, naturally, the whole city of Barcelona was there. We also grabbed some KFC afterwards (it was one of the only things open!) so by the time we got back, it was super late and we were actually all too tired to go out. So we stayed in and caught up on some sleep!

The next morning, we got up early to go sight-seeing all day. The first thing we went to was the famous church, La Sagrada Familia. And let me just say, that was one of the most epic churches I have EVER seen. I couldn't take enough pictures.. They started building it in the early 1900's, and are still working on it to this day, and don't plan on being finished until mid-century. SO cool..

SO cool.

The artist was named Gaudi, and he was very into nature, so he made a lot of different parts of the church look like different aspects of forests and stuff.

Main entrance.

The ceiling. Looks like trees.

Other entrance.

From the top of the church. Could've taken pictures here ALL day.

STILL under construction.

Me and the Reitz's!

Christopher Columbus

Up on Mt. Montjuic

BUMPED into Gwen here! What are the chances of that!?

Visited some of the old Olympic stadiums from when they were held in Spain in the 90's

Cool Olympic thing.

Pretty view from the art museum

Museum

Me, Mike, and Meg!

After sight-seeing for the day, we went out to eat. We had delicious pizza, and then after that, got icecream, waffles, and chocolate, and it was AMAZING. After that, we headed back to the apartment because we were exhausted! We had to leave at 5am that night to make our 9 am flight back to Granada. We got back to Granada around 11ish, and Meg and I had a 35 minute presentation to do in our 1:00 class! Somehow, we managed to get it all done!

This next weekend should be really nice. Friday night, the Spain national team has a game here in Granada! We couldn't get tickets, but we're going to watch it at one of the bars near the stadium. Then Saturday, a lot of people from our program are going to hit up one of the beaches, then on Sunday, possibly hiking. We'll see what happens!