January 18th Update

Hello to everyone from Granada! I hope everyone is doing well. I am doing fine. I cannot remember what I told you about my life in the last post (I am currently writing this from my home where I don't have internet), so here is another general update. I live with a widowed woman named Carmen. She is incredibly nice. She has 2 daughters, a son-in-law, and 2 grandchildren. She watches her grandson, Juan Antonio, who is 2 years old, during the day. She is a good cook. The past couple days we have had soup for supper because it is "cold" here by their standards, but it is really in the 50s. We have bread ( pan) and fruit (frutas) with each meal minus breakfast. For breakfast we have coffee and a large cracker type of food called tostado. Today during lunch Carmen and her daughter were asking Juan Antonio what mine and Amy's names are. He would say my name when asked, but whenever he was asked Amy's name he would say "Ni idea.", which means "no idea" in Spanish. It was adorable. I also live with another girl from my program, Amy. Amy goes to Central College in Pella, Iowa. She is very nice and she and I are becoming fast friends. We walk to school each day with another girl from our program, Tesla, who is also very nice and we are becoming fast friends as well.  Each morning we have about a 30 minute walk to school, we walk back home for lunch, take a siesta, then walk back to school for more classes, then walk home for the night. It's a lot of walking! :) Right now our group is in orientation for 2 weeks. Orientation is a period of time that allows us to adjust to the home life, the language, the country/culture, etc. Each morning we have a meeting with our program director, Veronica, where we go over things we need to know. After that there is an excursion, the whole group is divided into 2 groups so one day group 1 goes on an excursion and the next day group 2 goes. My group does not have an excursion today. Yesterday my group went on an excursion around the City Center. Basically Granada is built in rings. The inner-most ring is the Cathedral, which is part Islamic and part Catholic.  The next ring is the business center or mercado, this is the heart of business in Granada. Next is where most of the people in Granada live. This is what I learned about Granada on my excursion yesterday. Tomorrow my group takes an excursion to El Albaycin, which I am not really sure what it is, but I will tell you what I learn after my excursion. :) After the excursion and lunch our group has class. Our classes are divided into sections depending on how we tested in our pre-placement test. I tested into level 4 , but hopefully  I can jump up to level 5 on the official test because that is where I need to be. We have about 3 hours of class and then we are done for the day. If you didn't know, the meal times are very different in Spain than in the US. Breakfast is around 8 am, lunch around 2 pm (most businesses close during this time), siesta or "nap-time" is after lunch, and supper is around 9 pm. It has been a challenge to adjust to the new eating times. Wow! I wrote a lot! :) Ok, that is probably enough for now. Everyone will have to wait for pictures because I need to take my computer to school to put them up and my computer is kind of heavy, so I will probably upload a bunch at a time. Feel free to comment on my posts...I have no idea how you have to do it, but I have received 2 so far from Mom and Cindy. I love hearing from you all! Roseanna