Granada

Hey all
This past Saturday was a great day. We went to Granada last minute as some teachers at one of the guys schools offered to take us down. It is about an hour south of Jaén and if we could get a free ride and talk to some locals on the way down, why not! So went to Granada for the day and it was fantastic. We visited the Alhambra which is a must if you do make it to South Spain. It was simply incredible. (Quickly: It is a Muslim settlement/castle purched ontop of the surrounding hills. Built by the Muslims during the occupation of Spain and then retaken by the Reconquista, it has a great mix of Arabian architecture and Christian architecture, as some rulers tried to leave their own Christian influence right in the middle of some awesome Arabian monuments...I hope that is correct..I had to have it explained to me yesterday by Conrad, one of the Canadians here, as he is a History major. So blame him for anything!)

But we toured that for 4 hours and saw some great things. Just an awesome place to see. Hopefully Eric will post some pictures of it as he took over a 100...crazy! Then we walked around old Granada for a few hours and watched the sunset..very nice.

Later, we made it back to Jaén and proceeded to a international students party. (there are many university students here in Jaen on an exchange program called Erasmus...) Very good program and great to meet so many Germans, Italians, Slovakians. Very interesting to talk to them over a glass of wine about life in their countries and their experiences. So great. Of course, it was a classic Spanish night as we did not head unti midnight, stayed at the house until 4am, and then proceeded to go the bars. And yes, there were many people still out and about in the streets. Incredible. The bars were typical of most nightclubs you can see...I´ll let you take that for what it is. But then point is that we stayed out until 7:30am...really tried to do the whole nightlife thing and I tell you, this old guy isn´t cut out for it. Really really really tired today and will hopefully sleep it all away. Definitely no plans for today. Maybe that is why Sunday is considered a write-off to all people here in Jaén as so many people go out at night.

So that is my update...a great cultural trek to Granada and will hopefully show whoever comes to Europe around that as a must see spot of Southern Spain. And I experienced the nightlife scene...how many times I participate again depends on how I hold up after this. And it doesn´t help that we were up late on Friday night and Thursday night (late in Western standards maybe - 3 am - but early over here.....)

Still so fantastic to be here and loving it all...And of course, the teaching is going well. My classes this week consist of french so I will hopefully be up to par on that!
Adam