Saying Good-bye to Granada...

The time had come.  It was mid-May and we were catching a flight back to Arizona.  First we tried to say goodbye to all of our friends.  We spent a week trying to see everybody which was almost impossible, and then spent our last morning and early afternoon with Kellie, Brit, Nando, Paloma, Adrian, Daniela and Jose at Puerta de las Pesas.  Where else?

When the time came to say our final goodbyes (we had no idea how long it would be until we’d see them again) it was much harder than any of us had imagined.  Hugs all around and we found ourselves in tears as we left this wonderful family who had helped us with the culture, history, and yes, the language of Spain and Granada. 

They had been such a large part of our lives for the past year.  Even a few of the “hippies” Juan and Oscar waved and called “adios” as we returned to our apartment for the last time.

We had no idea what our future in the Peace Corps would bring and our Spanish friends struggled to understand, as they put it, “our desire to help” other people. 

Suddenly we had loaded our bags into Jose’s car and were on the way to the bus station.  A final hug from Jose and our magical year free of responsibilities was over.

The five hour bus ride passed in silence as we both were lost in our thoughts.  It was time to pamper ourselves so we caught a cab from the bus station in Madrid to our hotel near the airport.  We stayed at the HoteltaCH and it was perfect.  It had a small café/bar on the ground floor, a nicely equipped workout room and our room was clean and comfortable.  A good business hotel yet, it was just what we needed as we nursed our drinks and talked about what we were about to do.

A good night’s rest and a short hotel shuttle ride to the airport and we were checking in for our flight to Phoenix via Dulles in Washington D.C.  It was a little hard to imagine that we had left our youngest daughter in Granada, for a second time. 

After the usual airport hassles (less in Madrid than other places) we settled into our seats for the long journey back to Phoenix.  For once, our travel plans had gone off without a hitch.

Birthdays, weddings and Fiesta de las Cruces.

By the end of April, after several weeks of abnormally cold and wet weather we were finally treated to some typically southern Spanish spring weather.  The people began to fill the streets and the plazas again.  Tourists, bless ‘em, began to crowd the Albaycin once again.  The weather was fabulous by the time another Spanish holiday, Fiesta de las Cruces, came around in early May. 

The Fiesta de las Cruces is really an interesting holiday.  This holiday celebrates the emperor Constantin’s vision of the cross on the eve of a very important battle and some subsequent events involving his mother and his conversion.  That’s the very short version. 

This festival occurs in early May and is celebrated in Spain and Latin America.  The city of Granada is known for having one of the most beautiful celebrations of this holiday.

Every neighborhood that chooses to do so, decorates a square or plaza with traditional items and typically rural settings.  Each square or plaza features a cross of course, covered with red or white flowers.  Each neighborhood’s display is unique and all are stunningly beautiful. 

The holiday begins on a Friday (although set-up for some begins on Thursday) and is over by Sunday.  The weekend is one of incredible celebration as the plazas and squares are filled with people from all over Spain and Europe drinking and dancing as music is played, many times by live performers.

The children all get dressed up in traditional Spanish dress clothes, with the little girls all looking like Flamenco dancers,

and the little little boys all looking like Antonio Banderas in Zorro.  Many of the adults dress up as well but the kids are absolutely precious.

Noella was of course one of the cutest, in our opinion!

We used Las Cruces as a backdrop for our own celebration. Kellie turned 23 while we were there and Brittani would turn the same age the following month.  Of course a special cake was ordered from  Pasteles and we enjoyed fabulous food, drinks and great company at Puerta de las Pesas.

Another very special event occurred that was memorable and unique.  Brittani’s parents, Mitch and Deb were celebrating their 25^th wedding anniversary with a trip to Europe, the first for Deb.  They came to Granada to enjoy some of their very special time with Brittani, unbeknownst to Deb, her very romantic husband had been working out the details of a special renewal of their vows while in Spain.  With Fernando’s help we were able to reserve a time with the priest in the Monastery of Santa Isabella Real (a small and beautiful chapel in the monastery has a public mass twice a week).  It was built on the site of an ancient mosque within the original Palace complex in the Albaicyn.  This monastery has changed over the years and now houses and order of cloistered nuns.  They have no public contact and during the public mass twice a week they sit behind a wooden screen.  They provide the music for the mass by singing beautiful hymns.

On the evening that had been arranged we all went to the church – having explained that since it is so rarely open to the public we would all go down to see it right before the scheduled mass.  When we arrived in front of the church Mitch went down on one knee and asked Deb to marry him all over again, it was very touching and when she discovered that he had arranged for them to do it right then, in this beautiful church she was overcome.  Allie had come along with us to translate for the priest, no one spoke any English, but the service was simple and beautiful and created a very special set of memories that their family will cherish forever. 

It left quite a mark in all of our hearts as well!

A fabulous dinner had been ordered by Brittani and we were all treated to exceptional Spanish food and of course some lovely Cava (Spanish version of Champagne) at the restaurant and then the following day the folks left to head back to the states.

Kellie and Brittani still had until the end of June of their teaching contracts so they would be staying a while after all the rest of us had gone ahead.  Time was getting very short for us, 10 weeks had seemed like a long time when we planned it but it had flown!  Finally, the weather was beautiful, Spain was beautiful and we were going to be leaving in a few short days.

Semana Santa in Granada.

Okay, so it was pouring rain when we arrived in Madrid….. 

Okay, so it was raining off and on when we arrived in Granada the following afternoon, but…….

Two weeks later it is still raining!  This is now causing a problem.  We thought we were being so smart by catching Carnaval in Montevideo and arriving in Spain in time for Semana Santa.  Well, we did okay for Carnaval…….

Around the city of Granada there are more than forty churches that organize a procession with fabulously beautiful and meticulously decorated floats at specific times during Semana Santa.  These processions move very slowly along their routes, generally traveling from the church to the cathedral and back to the church.  These processions can take as little time as 4 hours and, in the case of the gitano procession, as many as 14 hours.

The processions feature penitents in color coordinated robes with conical, face covering hats.  Each procession has an accompanying band which is preceded by women dressed and veiled in black.  The women in black are preceded by the penitents and the floats. 

There are generally two floats, one with a story from the life of Jesus and the second, and seemingly most important, is the Virgin.  The floats are large, heavy and hand carried by 20 or 30 strong young men; thus the very slow pace with many stops.

It is highly preferable that these floats do not get wet!  Some of the sculptures date from the 17th century.

We were unlucky in 2013.  The rain during Semana Santa only allowed 7 or 8 of the scheduled 40+ processions to take place and there was much weeping and crying by the women of the churches whose processions would have to wait for another year.  Some of the floats had not been out for several years due to bad weather.  Fortunately, we did manage to see and photograph several of the processions that did take place.

So we spent our time with family and friends knowing we would not see them for quite some time.  Carlos was the first to surprise us by showing up at Puertas de las Pesas the second or third day after our arrival.  Riki and Mabel, from our Spanish classes almost a year previous, were back in town.  We made a new friend, Anita, and were able to get to know Sean and Grace a little better.  We spent some quality time with Tony and John (mostly John) at Hannigans listening to some oldies but goodies.

 

For the most part, we simply enjoyed being with our friends Tony, Chessa, Rory, Eva, Andrew, Allie,

Miles, Sue, Antonio sin gafas, Antonio sin pelo, Miguel, Aurora, Rafa, Bea, Ash, Donna, Dylan, Richard, Nicole, Francisco, Ray, Hassan, Manuel and Manuel, Juan, Gordi and Oscar and many others.  Okay, so Gordi’s a dog but we were going to miss him too.

Most importantly, we had ten weeks with our family, actual, adoptive and Spanish; Kellie, Brit, Fernando, Paloma, Jose, Mai, Alvaro, Adrian, Danielle, Noella and the baby, Diego.

Back in Granada, Spain.

Thirty hours of flying connecting and flying some more and we are once again in Spain.  It’s raining in Madrid of course and we bypassed the taxi stand preferring to catch the free hotel van. 

Why is it always raining when we arrive in Spain?

We had charged our Spanish cell phone battery prior to leaving Montevideo and had visited our carrier’s website to add a little money to our account.  Inexplicably our phone did not have a charge by the time we reached Madrid and we couldn’t call the hotel to find out what time to expect the van.  After a 40 minute wait with cars and buses splashing water on us and on our luggage we returned to the taxi stand to acquire transportation to our hotel.  The taxi driver could not find the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza  Madrid Airport and 30 euros later we staggered into the lobby of our hotel.  At this point all we wanted was a shower and to collapse into bed.

Too tired to sleep after showering we moved to the hotel’s cafeteria where we had a couple drinks and a warmed up pizza.  After watching an entire futbol game we finally retired to bed where we slept like rocks.  We had good intentions of rising around 5 in the morning and catching a workout in the hotel gym but were so tired that we slept until 7.

At 7 we quickly rose and checked our email on the hotel WIFI finding a disturbing message that the apartment we had so carefully and frustratingly arranged would not be available and the landlords intended to put us into a different apartment in a completely different part of the city.  This, of course, was absolutely unacceptable  because to us location is everything, but since it was early in the morning we could not do anything about it prior to boarding our bus to Granada. 

We caught a taxi to the bus station in time to board our “Supra” bus to Granada.  The Supra costs a little more but provides snacks, drinks and free WIFI which we fully intended to use.  There were only 7 people on the bus and the seats were very comfortable but, as was becoming normal for us, the WIFI was not strong enough to use email.  This became more of a problem because while we had recharged our phone, the minutes we had purchased had not been downloaded to our phone (or however that works).  Ultimately we determined that we had to have the phone turned on, while we were in Spain, to get our purchased minutes credited to our phone.  Oy!

So now, in spite of all our planning, we were arriving in Granada, in the pouring rain, needing to catch a taxi but without a destination.  We couldn’t even call our friends to ensure that they would be home! 

Not to worry; our friends were home when we called them from a pay phone at the bus station in Granada and they had already worked out a better plan with our landlord.  We were to be put in a different apartment in the same building as the one we had rented, the catch was that we would have to move in about 3 weeks to the actual apartment we had expected to be in from the beginning.  Fine, we could deal with that.  

We parked our luggage in our friend’s apartment and walked to Plaza Larga and surprised our very dear friends at Puerta de las Pesas.  The surprise was everything we had worked so hard to create, we were so happy to be back!  Later that afternoon we met our landlord  and got settled   We found ourselves feeling like we were at home in Granada.

It was Allie's birthday and she had managed to keep our surprise arrival from our daughter and had engineered a meeting by inviting, well insisting, that Kellie come up to Plaza Larga for a drink to celebrate with her after work.  We waited out of sight with our Spanish friends inside Puerta de las Pesas and they watched for Kellie to come by, she had to pass us to get to the bar where she was to meet Allie.  When she passed by Fernando called out to have her come in for a moment and when she did he opened the door and there we were!

It was a very touching moment for us because as soon as she saw us the tears started welling up in here eyes.  We will never be able to adequately express how much it meant to us to share time with our daughter and her friend Brittani in this new place that had begun to feel so much like home to us.  We only wished that our older daughter Jasel could have been there as well.

Kellie is not nearly as good at keeping secrets as Allie had been so as soon as she saw Brittani the next day we got a welcome back text and then were able to catch up with her too.  What a fabulous welcome back to Spain experience.

Thank you Allie and Andrew for helping us make the arrangements and for keeping secret our return to Granada!

Spain to Uruguay via Venice....shipping bags and all.

With October passing in the blink of an eye we found ourselves getting down to the last crazy things that we needed to finish in order to transition from Spain to Uruguay.  Having found Bag Express we had solved the very expensive and awkward problem of carrying your entire life with you everywhere you go, for this transition anyway.  We were already starting to wonder if we could get by with less stuff….

Bag Express needed to pick up the bags that we were shipping ahead no later than 5 days before we wanted them in Italy.  We booked a hotel for a few days in Venice prior to embarking on the ship since we had never visited Venice, and it gave us a little leeway if something happened to the bags.  The bags were to be delivered to the hotel on the day that we arrived.  We packed them with the idea that we would not open them up until we were on the ship.

We wanted to keep only what we would need to survive in Granada for the last few days we were there and the things we would need while being first time tourists in Venice.  Venice in early November is usually pretty cold, so sweaters and coats and other bulky stuff had to be packed in the bag that would stay with us.  Now, for those of you who know me well you know that I never have a problem fitting a ton of stuff into a bag, however, the problem is weight.  I can get way more weight into any bag than it is ever supposed to hold because I am such a good packer.  With airline weight restrictions that strategy is no longer an option.  With no scale available to check our bags we just decided to make the ones we were shipping heavy and try to keep the final one that would travel with us light, an organizational challenge to say the least.

The weather had turned quite cold and rain was starting to be a regular feature so cleaning the house inside and out and getting all the laundry done so we could pack it away became a bit more challenging than we had anticipated. 

Our friends Allie and Andrew were back from their trip to the US happily married and ready to get back into their real life in Granada.  All four cats had survived the summer without them but were definitely very happy to have their family back together.  We packed in a lot of tapas evenings so that we could spend time with as many of our friends as possible.   We knew we would be back at some point, but with the Peace Corps situation still unknown we really did not have any idea when that time would come and expected that it would be at least a few years. 

Granada does that to you; as soon as you know you must leave you start trying to figure out how you are going to get back someday.

And of course, just to make it memorable my birthday came in the middle of all this and we were able to spend it with Kellie and Brit at Puerta de las Pesas.  Fernando and Paloma were there with us and fixed a spectacular meal, had a very special cake made for me, and served it all with love and a wonderful Spanish Cava (Spanish version of champagne).  

This new life is all about the quality of our experiences.  This was absolutely the best birthday celebration I could have wished for.  The only thing missing was our other daughter Jasel, but she caught up with us on Skype so it was almost perfect!

Monday morning we began our last month of classes with the added bonus that soon we were going to get to see Kellie and Brit almost every day, even if just for a few minutes when we are on our morning break since both schools share the same buildings and gardens.

 Beautiful weather made for great outdoor activities and we took advantage of it!

In mid-July, our school offered a special activity.  Granada has an International Ballet Company and every summer they put on a very unique program at the outdoor stage in the gardens of the Alhambra.  Just imagine this 1,000 year-old fortress encompassing what seems like miles of palaces and gardens beautifully sculpted into the top of a hill with majestic views of the surrounding city at night.  Even without the ballet it would have been an evening to remember, but this year I was delighted to find, they were doing a show incorporating the story poems of local poet Garcia Lorca combined with the ballet company and a company of authentic Flamenco dancers and musicians. 

Michael was completely uninterested preferring to hang out and drink beer and speak Spanish badly with his friends but Kellie and Brittani got as excited as I was.  We bought our tickets, had dinner at Puerta de las Pesas before we left to go up to the show.  Being summer in Spain and an outdoor venue, the start time for the production was 10:00pm.  Unfortunately we were asked not to take photos during the performance but it was one of the most memorable of my life; all three of us were moved to tears at one point or another.  It so well performed that we were able to follow the story; even though we did not understand much of the language, or in the girl’s case, none at all.

 After the ballet we made our way to the bottom of the hill where Mike waited to have a beer and walk home with us.

When the girls had time, which was not often during their 4 week TEFL course, we managed to take a few hikes around the surrounding area and get some beautiful shots of Granada from the hills.  It was certainly a summer we will always remember fondly.

We were getting to the end of our school experience, many of the students that we had met were already gone and we were following their new adventures on FaceBook. 

We had a great group of friends and acquaintances that was expanding both in Spain and spreading out into the other places in the world that they called home.

Importantly, we had made some very good Spanish friends who did not speak any English.  We really needed these friends because communicating with them forced us to use the language we were learning.  

The family at Puerta de las Pesas, Fernando, Paloma, Jose and now Adrian and Danielle and sometimes even Ana were so patient with us. 

Incredibly, they didn’t seem to mind the abuse and in fact seemed to enjoy these crazy Americans with bad Spanish language skills.  This was important for us since we did not have a television to use for practicing our listening skills (highly recommended) and we needed Spanish speakers with whom we could converse without feeling the need to speak grammatically perfect as we were required to in our classes.

In addition to listening to our bad Spanish, they talked with us about the history and the local traditions of Granada, allowing us to feel more at home and to help us understand the people and culture in southern Spain.  We jealously watched their grand-daughter Noella speak freely and easily, with very few mistakes and we envied this little 3 year old conjugating machine.

 We were able to watch how she was learning the language and listen to the way she was corrected in her own native tongue.  We spent so much time sitting outside this particular restaurant that all our classmates and professors started referring to it as our salon (living room) and we totally agreed.

One drizzly day, Fernando took us on a walk around the Albaycin and we brought Kellie and Britani with us.  We walked out of Plaza Larga through the new gate and then stayed within 1 kilometer of the top of the hill, on just one side in a small section of the Albaicin and saw more historical features than we could have imagined in this small area. 

We took a few photos but mostly just listened to Fernando explain the history of each place and tried to understand the details of what he was telling us.  Knowing that we were only grasping a very small part of all that he was telling us was both frustrating and enlightening.  We wanted to know it all, right then, but somehow knew that we would enjoy the telling of this history over and over as our language skills improved and we spent more time among and gained a better understanding of the wonderful people who live there.

We were living in a little house that is as old as our country, walking to school every day on paths that have existed for centuries, and learning from the people who live with this everyday of their lives, it is an experience that does not readily translate onto paper. 

This new chapter in our lives was shaping up to be incredibly interesting.  Fernando brought books, drawings and photographs to the restaurant and patiently explained the perspectives and history piece by piece.  There is a lifetime of learning to be done in cities like Granada and we have been delighted that we chose it as our first home away from home.