This weekend I went with 4 friends to Granada in the south of Spain to visit one of my friend's girlfriend. First of all, we stayed in the most bizarre location - on top of a mountain in hippie-central. Our hostel owner was a 27 year old man from Wisconsin who literally spent the weekend smoking in the lobby. We were clearly out of place in the area we were staying in...but at least it was interesting! Anyway, we spent most of our time in the center of the cit...

So, apparently they do celebrate Halloween in Spain. My senora told us that it is a new thing for them, and usually just little kids dress up. But considering that every where we go out at night is full of american students, we all decided to dress up anyway. The one thing I noticed is that the Spaniards who were dressed up went for all of the scary costumes - all weekend (even during the day) we saw people with full face make up on. They were goblins, vampire...

This weekend I went to my first bullfight!!! I was soo nervous and thought I was going to be completely grossed out, but it was actually one of the coolest things I have seen so far this semester!!! Although they kill all 6 of the bulls (that part is sad), there is so much tradition involved in the event that it was very cool. The entire stadium was packed and the crowds were very enthusiastic about everything that was going on. One of the most interesting trad...

Tonight, at dinner, my senora told me that my spanish was getting better. Honestly, I was actually surprised because the only time I get to practice speaking is at dinner with her. When we are at school or travelling, everyone speaks English. We do talk in Spanish alot when we go out though....we try to talk to our cab drivers every night on the ride home. We even met some Spanish locals who brought us to an authentic botellon (pre-game) where everyone was ha...

This weekend, my Spanish Culture and Civilization took a class trip to Navarra, the northernmost part of Spain. In class, we are learning about Spain and its culture during the Roman, Gothic and Baroque periods. This weekend, we went to two castles, two cathedrals, and two monasteries to look at the architecture from these periods. My favorite part was the castles. The first was El Castillo de Olite, built in 1402 for the king of Navarra. It was very well pr...