Holy hill!

Oh wow, it's been a really long time since I posted anything. Oops. Lo siento (sorry).

Last weekend, the school took us on a trip to a nearby town named Ronda. Our school excursions are usually school-ish. Not my favorite. For example, we often visit cathedrals on school trips and everyone in the art class has to follow our professor, Carmen, around, listening to her very extensive knowledge on the architectural style of the cathedral through these weird little walkie talkie thingies. Which is interesting. It really is. Except when you have just spent hours and hours on a bus and you're kinda tired and just wanna look at the cathedral! Some people can tune her out. I don't have that talent. Instead, my mind forces me to pay close attention to everything she is saying. It's tiring. Luckily for me, this was not one of those excursions.

Before arriving in Ronda, we stopped in an ancient Roman city nearby. It was pretty awesome. Most of the houses were just piles of stones, but there was one thing left that I found incredibly cool - an amplitheatre! So, I took a picture of myself in front of the theatre that was around before Christ and imagined performing there. It is bigger than most stages that I have performed on :)




You can't see the stadium seating part of this amplitheatre because its built into the hill, but there are about 30 levels. Pretty big.




Landscape around Ronda




View of the bridge leading into the old part of Ronda

The trip to Ronda was pretty much just to see Ronda (which means "surrounded by mountains"). Yes, there is history and stories to be told about the city, but the real beauty of the city is in the landscape. Old Ronda is situated on top of a giant precipicio (cliff). It's quite a long way down. It was pretty cool.


In a subterranean staircase

After Ronda, five other girls and I hopped a train to Granada. Granada was the last stronghold of the Muslim empire in Spain before it was conquered in the 15th century by Isabel and Fernando. While there, the Muslims built a huge, beautiful palace and garden complex on top of a hill called the Alhambra. This was created for no other reason than to enjoy the surrounding nature. It is luxurious. We barely got in, since we couldn't reserve tickets online due to technical problems and there are over 8,000 visitors a day, but we did and it was absolutely worth all the pain it took to get there (which including booking it up a giant hill at 8:15am - don't worry, though difficult, my heart got me up there without giving out on me)! Take a look.




Karli and me in the Patio de Arrayanes (Patio of that square shrub thing)

Trying to look regal in La sala del trono (Throne Room)




Taking pics in the Generalife gardens
























So, thus far, Granada has been my favorite city to visit. Es una ciudad preciosa y la me encanta muchisimo (It is a beautiful city and I love it a lot).




The group in front of the Alhambra as viewed from the Mirador de San Nicolas (Overlook of San Nicholas) on the other side of the valley

(l-r) Karleigh, me, and Elizabeth

If you're wondering about the title of this post, it is because this weekend felt like one GIANT hill. Literally. Everywhere I went this weekend was incredibly steep and gave me a great work out. I'm really glad I had my heart surgery when I did, because without it, I never would have made it through the weekend. It was hard work sometimes, but definitely worth it for the views and the memories.

This week was also kind of figuratively a giant hill because it pretty much marked the half-way point through the semester. In reality, that was last week or something (I think I've been here for 9 weeks and have 7 more to go), but the reality of this experience being more than half over didn't really kick in till this week. I'm super excited to come home and see friends and family, but I'm definitely not ready to leave Spain yet! I still have so much to learn and experience! But the time will come to an end eventually.

This Friday, I'm headed out of Sevilla again to visit family in Southampton, England. I'll be there for 10 days. I'm really looking forward to being relaxed and spending Easter with family and just being in England. The last few weeks have been very hectic, though fun, and I'm looking forward to a relaxing spring break with family.

I hope this post and all the pictures make up for not posting as often as I should. :)



In front of a fountain in Granada. Kaitlin Lassen, if you read this, this ones for you - CHRISTMAS!


<3 Alannah

Time flies

It has been quite a while since I wrote! Oops. I've just been so occupied here! With class, volunteering, worship band, homework, bible study, travelling, and other miscellaneous stuff, I barely have time to rest, let alone write a blog post.

As a preface to this post, I should admit that I have gotten quite lax in my photo-taking. Therefore, I will mostly be stealing picture from other people from now on. :)

Last weekend (21-22 Feb.) the school arranged an excursión (excursion) to the city of Toledo. On the way up there, which was a 6 hour bus ride, we stopped in the town of Consuegra to look at the famous molinos de viento (windmills) that Don Quijote fights. It was super windy up on the hill, but really cool to see the windmills that inspired Cervantes to write.

Alyssa and me with windmills (back left)
 

El entierro del señor de Orgaz

El expolio

Toledo itself was interesting. We saw the cathedral and a monastery, but the main reason we went was to see some famous paintings by El Greco, aka Doménikos Theotokópoulos, a famous painter we are learning about in art class who lived and painted in Toledo in the 16th century. We saw two of his cuadros (paintings) there: El entierro del señor de Orgaz (The Burial of the Count of Orgaz) and El expolio (The Disrobing of Christ). Even though El Greco isn't my favorite artist, it was pretty awesome to see in person the painting we were studying in class. El Greco has a very dinstinctive style and is very famous and well-known in Spain. The thing that I liked the most about Toledo, though, was that it was in Toledo that they made all the swords for the Lord of the Rings movies and forged the ring! They are apparently very well known for their blacksmithery in Toledo and make lots of famous swords (including the dress swords for the US Marines). It was pretty cool to see all the replicas of the swords and the one ring. :)

The next week was really short (3 days) because it was a public holiday in Andalusia - El día de Andalucía (Andalusia Day). It is pretty much a day to say "Yay, we exist!" and everyone gets the day off of work. Since it is on a Friday, nearly everyone gets another day off on jeueves (Thursday) that they call un puente (a bridge), because it bridges the work days with a holiday. For this 4 day weekend, a group of friends and I went to Madrid. It was TONS of fun! We did a lot of walking around the city, visiting all the churches we encountered, the cathedral, the Royal Palace, all the museums, parks, gardens, and anything else we could find! A lot of fun. However, I realized that I do not particularly like art museums when they are only paintings - I like a bit of variety in my art styles - and especially not when I am exhausted. But it was fun nonetheless.

The group in front of the Palacio Real (Royal Palace)

This week is a full week of classes. Then we have a 4 day week with a Friday excursion, one more full week, and then Semana Santa (Holy Week). I'll be travelling to Southampton during Semana Santa, so I'm really excited for that time to come :) My friend, Erika, is coming with me and I'll be spending 10 days with family, so it will be great. I just have to survive until then!

On that note, I am surviving! Praise God, I have not had any health problems thus far since I've been here. I tried to wean myself off of my beta-blocker (which controls my heart rate) before I came, but I kept getting arrythmias, skipped beats, etc., so I'm back on that. I've been a little bit homesick lately (never thought I would say that!), which has been tough, but managable. I am definitely excited to see family later this month and I'll be very happy to see my parents and brother and friends again when I go back to Minnesota in a little over 2 months. By the way, I can't even believe its been so long and we don't have much time left!

Like I said, time flies :)

Hasta luego,
Alannah