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Published: August 16th 2010
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1st lady day
Granada was all decked out with new flowers for Mrs. Michelle Obama. Weeks 4 and 5
lots of studying and time for goodbyes!
I bunched these two together because I really haven’t done too much that is super exciting. These two weeks have been more filled with school, exams and hanging out with the people that I have grown to love.
Classes for the last two weeks have been good and helpful for the most part. We had one class which was all about movies. Our teacher had some interesting tastes and there were a few movies I absolutely did not watch half of due to the content in the scenes. During the reign of Franco there was a huge censorship. We watched few movies that were created by people who fled Spain, and then a few movies that were censored. It is interesting because really under the censorship everything seemed perfect. After Franco died there was a bout of “rebellion” only in that people had freedom to do what they want, and they decided to do just that. We watched a movie that demonstrated the liberty very well…well, the class watched. I watched my jeans for a lot of it, it is neat the fibers that are in jeans!
1st lady day
and there were plenty of people around...
There was a bit of excitement one day as Michelle Obama made her way to Granada. It was amazing to see the people hard at work getting it all set up with fresh flowers etc. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what was happening until the day before. There was an obscene amount of police officers and secret service, it was incredible. A few of us decided it would be worth it to say we saw the first lady overseas so we stuck around, but were hungry so we headed to Los Italianos (one of the best icrecream places ever). While we were in there we noticed a group of police and secret service entering…yup, we were kicked out for the first lady. We saw her car pull up, but it was sort of hard to see her. I saw her, but no proof. Oh well. was a neat experience.
One day we decided to head to the birth house of Federico Garcia Lorca, one of my favorite Spanish authors. I went to his summer house last year that is in Granada, but his birth house is in one of the outer towns.
1st lady day
more police than i had ever seen in Granada at the same time... There was a bus that you could take for 1.20 Euros that took you straight to Fuentevaqueros, the little pueblo. The house was a typical Spanish farm house. Lorca’s sister is still alive and had a hand in organizing the house based on her memories there. Lorca only lived there until he was about 8 years old and then they moved to another house, they were a bit of a wealthy family.
One of the guys in our group had a friend of a friend locally, Carmen. She took us to one of her favorite restaurants off the beaten path. It was a neat little sight, but the food wasn’t my favorite. It was fun regardless. Carmen then dropped us off at the pueblo Santa Fe. Santa Fe is a historical city. Long story short: Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand (los Reyes Catolicos) signed the agreement with Boabdil (the last Sultan of Granada) to sign over the city of Granada to the
Reyes Católicos. The city is set up in typical Spanish Catholic fashion - a plaza in the center, and the rest of the town surrounding it. There are four different
puertas to the city as well which
1st lady day
flowers, planted that morning. are neat to see. They are neat only because they have the history of being built by the
Reyes Católicos and that they still stand. Spain is full of old history, as I suspect is the rest of Europe.
It has been a good last few weeks. Am ready to head home!
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