Hey sorry its been so long, this week has gone by fast! I'm typing this on my computer on the bus to Barcelona, we're about half way there; it's about 1 am. The entire group left for Granada and Cordoba last Friday morning—that's about an 8 hr bus trip. When we first got there we went to the hotel and had a little bit of time to rest before looking around. One block away from our hotel was the Royal Cathedral of Granada, where Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand are buried. In front of the altar is an intricate white marble sculpture depicting them laid to rest, and below that they have the crypt open and we got to see their actual sarcophagus!

Next we went to the adjacent cathedral of the Catholic Kings, easily the biggest cathedral I've ever seen-check out the pictures (that I promise will be up soon…ish) Its 1 am so forgive me if I get the name wrong, but I want to say that Rey Carlos V was the one who commissioned its construction for his burial monument, but he died before it was finished so he never even saw it.

Granada has the oldest university in Spain, and they have a huge foreign exchange program, so we met a lot of students from the US, England, Germany, all over. That night we ate at a buffet!!! But there weren't a lot of 'local' foods, a normal salad bar and pasta; even so it was great.

On Saturday we went to La Alhambra, on a mountain above the city.Granada was the last city occupied by the Muslims, and it was taken by the Catholic Kings in 1492. La Alhambra was constructed by the Arab people over their 800 year occupation of the city. Its divided into 3 parts, at the back are the remains of the 'city' of commoners—the maintenance men, artists, farmers, etc that the nobles required.

I'm not going to try to describe the royal palaces, the amount of detail is just amazing. The colors, patterns, everything all was done for a specific reason with a certain symbolic meaning. When the Catholic Kings arrived they took over La Alhambra too, but they kept almost everything in tact since its so beautiful. Rey Carlos V built his royal palace right in the middle of La Alhambra (destroying a little, but that's impressive considering usually the invading culture destroys everything left behind). In the 'front' is the defensive part of La Alhambra, with the traditional castle walls, towers, battlements, etc. The soldiers had the best view of Granada for sure though, from the tower you can see the Sierra Nevadas behind and the entire valley below.

After that we walked back down to the city for lunch, grabbed a Kebob with our art teacher and ate out on the square. A little chilly for us Spaniards, it was about 60 and sunny haha. After some great cinnamon honey ice cream we got back on the bus and headed to Cordoba, another 3 hrs or so from Granada, but back towards Caceres at least. We got in late, with just enough light to do a little walking around but not much. Our hotels were actually 3 person apartments, so that was a nice change!

The next morning we took the bus outside the city to see the Madinat al-Zahra. Basically this city was built in about 60 years by a noble who named it after his wife (I guess his favorite one…) Zahra. Thirty years later it was completely destroyed by a revolution—they didn't see the point in having a royal palace just outside Cordoba. Somehow it was forgotten and buried by erosion for hundreds of years. In 1901 a writer wandering in the mountains looking for a legendary city happened upon it and they started excavating. It was a pretty advanced city—it had hot water for bathing, running water, an aqueduct to get water, and a paved road back to Cordoba. They're still excavating it and trying to piece together all the pieces of chiseled stone from inside the buildings.

Next we went to the Mezquita, Mosque, of Cordoba. A huge building that, again, I'm not even going to try to describe. In 800 a.d. the Arabs built the mosque on the same site as a Church, and many of its structural elements come from that—they reused all of the stone pillars, but since they needed taller building they built on top of the columns. When the Catholic Kings conquered the city, they built an amazing Cathedral right in the middle of the mosque; preserving the mosque itself but devoting most of the chapels to Saints.

We got back into Caceres at about 9:30 Sunday night, and on the bus ride home our coordinator decided to cancel classes on Monday! All weekend had been 'carnival' throughout Spain and all of the K-12 kids (including Sara) didn't have school on Monday or Tuesday, and most of the University students skipped class to go to Carnival. Carnival is almost a cross between Mardi Gras and Halloween, technically it's a medieval fair but everyone dresses up in costume—from Zorro to the Ninja Turtles—for the party.

Toni cancelled our classes so that we could go to Badajoz if we wanted, about an hour and a half from Caceres, where they had bigger and better parades/festivities. I opted to stay in Caceres, with the trip today I didn't want to go another night with no sleep. In Caceres they had a celebration too, the Plaza de Santa Maria near my flat was packed with people and there was a parade through town. There was also a student band from Portugal playing classical music, and they were really good.

They cancelled our first class on Tuesday too, for the people who went and had to catch the 7:30 am bus back to Caceres… I didn't complain.

Today I got my library card and checked out a book by Hemmingway. I was hoping to get the chance to read it on the bus but there's a guy next to me that just kept talking to me until I ran out of daylight.

So I'm off to sleep, hopefully we're in Barcelona before sunrise!

- ps we made it, got to watch the sun rise over the Med. Sea!