Las Alpujarras

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Classes started two weeks ago and have been in full swing. All my classes are super interesting, with the exception of one which I started out despising. Nonetheless, it is starting to grow on me, so that’s good. All my classes are PLU size and with basically all Americans, although there are a couple of Europeans thrown in there as well. We only have classes Monday through Thursday, so three-day weekend for the rest of the semester!

I’m going to start volunteering at a small center for disadvantaged students—most of whom come from messed-up households. I’m excited for that and should start this coming week.

This weekend we (my roommate, some of our friends, and I) went up to The Alpujarras—a mountainous region outside of Granada. It is littered with “white villages” (tiny villages where all the buildings are painted white). We found a really cheap apartment in the village of Bubión and stayed there for one night. We took a bus up on Saturday (1.5 hrs) and explored Bubión and another nearby village where we ate a fantastic huge lunch. [Sidenote: in Spain, ALWAYS order the menu of the day, it’s three times the amount of food for the price of a meal (we got a beverage, a salad, a huge soup, a main dish, and a desert for the same price Lange paid for his main course. If we had ordered all of it separately it would have been 3x the price).] That night we bought some firewood and made a fire in our apartment, drank some wine, and talked the night away. It was really nice to do that because none of us are allowed to have friends over at our houses/apartments in Granada. Hanging out at people's houses isn't really something many people do in Spain—at night if you want to do something with friends, you go out to bars or discotecas (which are a lot fun, but sometimes I miss having a chill night with friends at someone’s house). The next morning we cooked an “American” breakfast (scrabbled eggs and French toast) and went on a hike. During the hike it started pouring, which was fantastic. I think that’s the first time it has rained since I’ve been here and it was really nice. We also found a 17km trail that leads to another village higher up so we decided that we have to come back when the weather is nicer and hike up to the other village one day, camp out (if we can find sleeping bags here, if not then we’ll stay at a hostel), and then hike back down the next day—I’m super excited. It was so nice to get out of the city for a while and be in the mountains.

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Comments

[rich]

nice
sounds great, how about a little bit about Morocco? How did you end up at the little place near Marrakesh?

[Laura]

Wow
Way to go, Buley. It sounds like you're having a ton of fun. Keep living the dream!