Diciembre

Hello! I guess it has been a while since my last blog update!
We are continuing to enjoy our time here in Granada (despite contending with a seasonal cold or two...) and I wanted to update you all with a few highlights of this month :)

Las Alpujarras
We went on a little bike trip to the Alpujarras (a mountain range nearby) at the invitation of a new friend, Fran, who is a journalist in Madrid. He was in the midst of filming a cycle-tourism pilot tv show, and wanted to have a few companions along. (Our tandem might make an appearance in the pilot, who knows?)

Our destination was Pampaneira. I had been there once before, but had gone by bus. And let me say, it was MUCH more fun to go by bicycle. The roads in the Alpujarras are very steep and they slowly wind up the sides of the valleys to reach little villages that are perched high on the edges of the valley. In a bus this is a perfect storm for the worst motion-sickness you can ever experience.... (see: switchbacks and pinturns for 2 hours) but on a bike it is fantastic! Yes, it was still steep, but as the road is right on the edge of the valley the incredible views more than make up for it. And even the roads themselves were in perfect condition. It was as if they had been paved just before our visit, plus at this time of year there is very little traffic :)

Audition News

Some other exciting news is that Nathan had success with an audition for a choir project in Germany! The news came on Nathan's birthday, which was fun :) It is a three week project that starts at the end of February. The rehearsals will be in English and German so he will also have the chance to practice a little of his German as well :) He is definitely looking forward to the project.

Villancicos

Every year my friend/colleague Joaquín hosts a Christmas party for children. All of his friends who have kids come together and hear a creative re-telling of the Christmas story, followed by Christmas carols and lots of food and candy. Even though we don´t have children, we were invited :)

It was very cool to listen to the Christmas story with all the drama and mystery that Joaquín and several other parents wove into it. The only light was by candlelight, there were sound affects, music, and pictures projected on the wall at key moments. The 15 or so little ones seated on the floor were mesmerized (well, other than for a few VERY young ones who were more intent on putting keys, instruments, and anything else they could find into their mouths rather than listening to a story).

The Christmas carol portion of the evening was fascinating, as the ¨villancicos¨ that they have here are very different from what we usually sing in Canada. There are a few that overlap, but not many, and even the style of singing is quite different. We are, afterall, in the south of Spain, the heart of Flamenco country, and you can really hear how influential it is when people get together and sing! Not only do the villancicos have some of the same rhythm and harmonies, but the style of singing is also more like flamenco than anything else. One of my favorites was "Los peces en el rio" (you can listen to a version by the Gypsy Kings here, lyrics here). The Gypsy Kings version will give you a good taste of the flamenco-style singing I am talking about.

Posada Mexicana

One of our good friends, who also hosted the Día de los Muertos party in November, hosted a mexican posada party the other night. In Mexico there are 8 or 9 nights of these celebrations leading up to Christmas Eve. The evening starts off with a villancico of the dialogue between Joseph & Mary, and the Innkeeper (Please give us shelter - No I don´t have room - Please, my wife is pregnant - No, go away or I´ll beat you with a stick - Wait, you don´t understand, my wife is Mary and is going to give birth to the savior of the word - Oh! I didn´t realize! Of course, please come in!*) *Note: very loose translation...

The guests of the party divide into two groups to sing the song, and once everyone in the Joseph & Mary group have been invited in, everyone drinks ponche (which is like hot apple cider but with many different kinds of fruit) and eats snacks. And then it is time for the piñata/s!

When Luke and I spent a Christmas (way back when) in Mexico, we got to go to several posadas and they were absolutely one of my favorite highlights of our trip. And although that was a long time ago, I obviously still have strong memorizes as the instant someone yelled "Dale!" (hit it!) I suddenly remembered the song you're supposed to sing while someone tries to hit the piñata. Loli laughed when she heard me singing it because she had forgotten to teach that to everyone before starting. With the singing, yelling of instructions, and sticks and piñata flailing about in the air, it was just the right amount of chaos :)

Christmas Plans

We are very fortunate to have many invitations to various dinners over the holidays. For Christmas Eve we will be spending the evening with several other students who are also not home for the holidays. Christmas Day we have been invited over to join in a friend's family dinner and then we have several other invitations for various occasions. The only downer is that we are both still fighting the tail end of a cold, and so also trying to get as much sleep as possible as well!

I hope you are all doing well. Wishing you many blessings of health, joy and peace during this beautiful time of year.

Blessings,

Candyce

Me cortaron mal el pelo

Today a collection of amusing moments:

Quality of Sound
We continue to be very dedicated to speaking in Spanish all the time, even with just each other. Sometimes this means it takes two or three tries to get our meaning across clearly, but after two months of practice we have made enormous progress so we know in the long-run it will be worth the effort. :)

However, our current level of fluency doesn´t always have the speed we would like. This can lead to some hilarious, if somewhat misadventurous moments. For example, today I was reviewing some vocabulary through Quizlet (an awesome online vocab study tool, btw) which has a particular tool that reads vocab out loud so that you can type what you hear. This was helpful for me, but distracting for Nathan.
No problem, I thought. I´ll wear headphones.
So I popped the headphones in, plugged them in and suddenly the next word resounded in my ears with such force that I almost fell off my chair.... I forgot that while my computer speakers are poor (and I therefore have the volume cranked all the way up, pretty much all the time), our headphones are actually of a fairly high caliber... And as such, the volume was about 9 settings too high...

Nathan, meanwhile, witnessed the whole event and tried to warn me, but in the few seconds he had between the plugging in of the headphones and the next vocab word sounding, the translation of ¨Wait! Turn the volume down first!¨ didn´t quite make it out in time...

Eventually we hope to reach a point where even in time sensitive situations we can find words quickly!

Haircut Research
Even after you can communicate fairly fluently on a basic level, there are always so many more specific words to learn. The other day I decided it was time to learn some hairdressing vocabulary (in preparation for a haircut). How does one say ¨sideswept bangs¨ for example? Or ¨textured layers¨? Having never had a haircut in Spain before, these words were not yet part of my vocabulary.

With an interest in avoiding a strange or random haircut due to miscommunication, I did some research and now have all the words I need (hopefully). Along the way, I also found an article that pointed me to this video, which I found quite hilarious. Hopefully I will end up better off than the singer did with his haircut.

Acento Andalu(z)
Last weekend Nathan went on a hike organized by the Campus Ministry group. It is always interesting to listen to the variety of accents in that group, as many students who participate are Erasmus students (which means they are on their required year abroad of their undergrad) from many different European countries. However, on this particular outing there were mostly local students, which meant the predominant accent was Andalusian.

The acento andaluz can be a bit hard to understand for foreigners. They speak very rapidly and they ¨eat¨ many of their consonants. This is especially true with ´s´, ´z´, and ´d´ and most endings of words. (For this reason, it is always referred to as ¨el acento andalu´, not ¨el acento andaluz¨ because that ´z´ is dropped)

Nathan, with his singer´s ear (and more importantly, his singer´s experience of studying, practicing, and mimicking vowels in many different languages), got to listen to and practice the acento andalu all day. At the end of the hike he was taking a photo of the whole group and counted out ¨Uno, Do, Tre¨ (instead of uno, dos, tres) and the priest who organized the group proclaimed with much laughter (and some pride) that Nathan now speaks Andalu! ;)

While the locals are very proud of their Andalusian accent, within the global community of Spanish speakers it is not exactly the most posh of accents :) We´ve been joking that we might need to spend some time soon in a different part of Spain before Nathan´s accent becomes irrevocably andalu  ;)

Winter has arrived

Well, pretty much immediately after my last post about how fall has graciously extended into November with lovely weather, winter suddenly arrived. It is now definitely cold! (Not below freezing or anything, but colder than 10+. Gloves and scarves are now in order!)

As proof that we have not yet dipped below freezing point, there are still certain types of flowers that are still blooming!

We went on a lovely excursion with some friends this weekend to Las Cahorros. It is a beautiful spot on the edge of Monachil, a small town about 8kms away from Granada. The trail runs alongside a river, there are several hanging bridges and some parts of the trail go through caves/natural tunnels. It is quite lovely! It is also a popular destination to go rock climbing (Nathan is dying to go back there with some climbing gear and try out some of the many routes that are already set up for sport climbing).

 

Hasta pronto :)

-Candyce

Weather and Television

We have been really enjoying the weather here so far. It is hard to believe it is already the middle of November without the expected daily gloom and rain of a west coast winter.

The weather here is unique compared to other parts of the Andalusian region. Granada is right on the doorstep of the Sierra Nevada and they strongly influence the weather patterns here. We´ve been warned on numerous occasions to expect rain and at least some cold weather,  especially in December and January. But so far the temperature has been quite moderate and lovely.

It is not unusual for the mornings and evenings to be cool (8-15 Celcius), but midday still warms up to over 20 degrees. Dressing in layers is usually a good idea, even though in the middle of the day it is hard to believe that you will want a jacket later. As I am not a fan of hot weather, this is pretty much perfect for me. :)

Apparently this fall has been especially warm and dry, which is a bonus for us. And we´ve been taking advantage of it in various ways: we went on an all-day hike with Joaquín and his friends last weekend en Los Alayos, we went on a tour of the Sacromonte neighbourhood (where the gypsies live/lived) with one of our language exchange friends one warm evening this week, and we are planning on going on another smaller hike in Monachil this weekend with a few other friends. (Unfortunately, for unknown reasons we´ve been forgetting our camera lately, so I don´t have photos, but as other friends took photos on all our various excursions, maybe eventually I can include some of those. :)

One weird thing we´ve been incorporating into our schedule over the past month is TV. In Canada we pretty much never watch TV. We don´t have one. We don´t follow TV programs. We never know what upcoming shows are, what the latest commercials are, etc. Which is fantastic, in my opinion, as there is too much life to live to spend hours and hours of it watching TV (besides, I have facebook and too many other ways to waste my time, so TV doesn´t normally make the cut in my books).

However, our apartment came with a TV and basic cable, so we do have the option to watch it. And since all programming is (obviously) in Spanish, we can actually use it as an ´educational´ tool. Programs are a mix of Spanish and US shows (including some ridiculous Spanish gameshows). One interesting thing is that the US shows are never subtitled - they are always dubbed. In fact, we´ve been told it can be a good job to be a voice star on a program, as you can be the voice actor for season after season for a character. And as long as you don´t focus on the characters mouths, you can almost forget that the original is in English. (Although when watching Bones it is a little funny to hear Booth constantly refer to Temperance as Huesos...).

Things continue to go very smoothly here, which we are very thankful for. We are especially enjoying the opportunities to continue to get to know folks here. :) I hope you are doing well and enjoying November (no matter what early winter weather you may have)!

With love,

Candyce (and Nathan)

Mission: Make Friends

The hardest part about moving is leaving behind a loving community: family, friends, church, choirs, etc.  To suddenly be in a new city with much to learn and new faces always surrounding you. For us, traveling as a couple, it is a little easier since we have each other, but our main mission (post-finding an apartment) has been to make some friends!

We weren't starting at zero of course, because we already had my friend and colleague, Joaquín and his family, who hosted us for the first two weeks. And of course I have met a few people through my work here. Joaquín has also introduced us to quite a few of his friends (he invited us to a weekly prayer service, "house church" style always followed by lots of food and conversation). We even got to meet the Archbishop of Granada as he happens to be part of Joaquín's circle of friends. :)

In addition to Joaquín's network, we have also attended a variety of Taize-style services where we have met quite a few very friendly people. Last night we attended a "Día de los Muertos" party that a new friend invited us to. She is from Mexico and for the past 6 years that she has been in Granada she has hosted her own Day of the Dead party to celebrate this Mexican festival. She invited many international as well as local students that she knows and it was a very fun evening. Spanish with all sorts of accents: Slovakian, Italian, Polish, Mexican, and of course the very strong local Andalusian.

We have also joined a choir! Through a friend of Joaquín's we learned of a choir that specializes in Baroque and early music. It's not a professional choir (and therefore both Nathan and I can sing in it!) but it is a very friendly group who get together for a couple of hours on Sunday evenings.  Apparently rehearsal is almost always followed by conversation and tapas at the restaurant across the street, so it is another good opportunity to get to know folks better. :)

And, of course, all of these new friends are extremely helpful for our language goals. We are studying many hours each day and both of us are making rapid progress, but practicing in real conversations is what really solidifies new vocabulary and grammar structures. :) For me it is exciting how much I am remembering, which enables me to speak with more and more confidence. After a 4 year hiatus from speaking Spanish it is coming back to me. And Nathan is already at a higher level than he has ever been at after being here for only 1 month! So we are both fairly stoked regarding our language studies. :)

Wishing you a blessed Sunday as you enjoy your extra hour of Daylight Savings sleep this morning. :)

Love,
Candyce

La comida

Schedules are very different here compared to Canada. Here are a few details about mealtimes and food stories to share. :)

8am-10am: Breakfast (el desayuno)
Most likely toast, jam, and coffee. We have trouble breaking the oatmeal and tea habit though... so while we indulge in a toast and coffee breakfast occasionally, oatmeal is the norm in our apartment. After all, toast doesn't get you very far up a mountain.

2pm-5pm: La Comida
This can't be translated to lunch, as it is not the same. It is much more like supper for us Canadians, because it is the main meal of the day, usually with meat, grains/starches, vegetables, and wine/cerveza followed by coffee and fruit for dessert. Most jobs and shops take their siesta starting at 2pm, so 2-5pm or even 6pm is generally for preparing food, eating it, and taking a short nap afterwards. It is fairly taboo to call anyone during these hours as everyone is expected to be at home with their families. Around 6 or 7pm shops re-open and people go back to work for a few more hours.

9pm-12am: Supper (la cena)
It is totally normal to start making supper at 10 or 11pm. This is usually a rich but small meal (meat, cheese, olives, tomatoes and wine, for example).

Now this is obviously a different schedule than what we keep in Canada. But switching to having "La Comida" in the middle of the day makes sense here since everything shuts down at that time. Although if we're honest, we still have a noon time snack and possibly a 7pm snack as well... I honestly don't know how the Spanish routine happens without snacks, but maybe that's just me...

Tortillas
The Spanish tortilla is very different from the Mexican tortilla. Instead of a soft flatbread, a Spanish tortilla is actually a thick omelette made mostly of potatoes, onions and egg. Everyone is very proud here of their "proper" tortilla. Apparently a regular omelette (of just eggs, cheese and veggies) is called a French tortilla, and Spaniards consider it to be inferior to their own version. Fascinating, eh?

Here is a photo of one of our attempts of a Spanish tortilla por la comida:

Other funny food/language moments:
Did you know baking soda comes in various forms? I have never purchased or known you could purchase baking soda in a more granular style. We accidentally bought this version, and tried using it to make a cake. The result: a really strange cake that did not rise and felt weirdly fizzy in your mouth. Unfortunately we had to give that cake up and count it as a point lost to the language/culture learning curve. Upon returning to the supermercado we saw that there were actually TWO kinds of baking soda: a more coarse style that is best for cleaning (a.k.a. what I put into our cake), and an extremely fine style that can be used in baking (which we recently successfully used in some chickpea chocolate chip cookies).

Another day at the store we were buying honey (miel) and saw a jar of "miel de caña" on the same shelf. -Interesting! - we thought. - What kind of unusual new food is this? - As it was not expensive and claimed you could put it on toast, cheese, in coffee, etc, we decided to try it. Upon arriving home and sampling it we laughed the moment we tasted it. Miel de caña is molasses. Not actually a new and unusual flavor. But now perhaps we can make gingersnaps. :)

And my final anecdote for you today: some foods come in unusual and strange quantities here. Yogurt, for instance, is apparently only consumed in tiny amounts. Or at least you can only buy it in tiny tiny individual-size containers. We have only found one store so far that had the very large size of a whole 500 grams, but you had to pay about 5 times the price to ditch the little containers. This does not make sense to me.

On the other hand, if you would like a large jar of Saccharine or Aspertame to use in whatever quantities you want to, this is available. ¿?

Wishing you good food and good company wherever you are!

Hasta pronto,
Candyce

Las excursiones

We have officially been in España for 3 weeks now :)

We have discovered one of the advantages of living in Realejo (our neighborhood in Granada) is that it is very easy to cycle out towards the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It is quite an epic bike ride to cycle all the way to the summit (we have not done so as of yet) as it is almost 40km of mostly going up. We did go to the summit with my friend and his family by car, which is where we took this photo:

Had someone told either of us in highschool that one day we would WANT to cycle to this summit, neither of us would have believed it. And yet, already several times this week we have gone on training rides on the first part of the incline to start working towards this goal. :)

Next, here is a photo of the path up to the Alhambra (Muslim palace/fortress knows as the "jewel of Granada"). Last weekend was the annual Noche en Blanca in Spain (Sleepless Night) where museums and other cultural centers stay open all night with free admission. We didn't wander all night, but we did enjoy the full moon and being part of the lively crowds all exploring cultural centers and buildings.









And finally, our friends Rebekah and Nathan gifted us a Spanish version of Bananagrams before we left, which is sort of like speed scrabble... Game rules: You have to make real words, scrabble-style, and you must use ALL the letters you have. The first to do so wins.


However, we have found that even just one round can be a really long game. With only two people to divide the letters, plus our non-native speaker vocabulary to draw on, it takes a while :)


So, after several hours (I'm not kidding about this being a long game with only two people), we finally had only a few letters left. I had a C and an H. (Poor Nathan had a W, K, and an X, I think). But, as is the game, you can't just squeeze letters in. You have to break and change a bunch of other words until you have the perfect combination.

And then I came up with an idea that isn't Spanish, but at least isn't English (which sort of honors our "no English" rule...)

See if you can find it:











(Note: we also noticed later that "sabiduría" is missing its final 'A', but I am still claiming to have won... ;)

We have more stories to share, of course, as the last few weeks have been very full. But for now I need to go and eat the delectable looking Spanish tortilla Nathan has made for "la comida" today.

Besos y abrazos,
Candyce

A few photos

Finally some photos of our apartment! (We still have no internet en casa, so I am uploading these from a bar that offers free wifi with their wine...)

(Note: I'm not totally sure these photos are loading correctly... so I hope you can see them!)

Living/Dining Room:

Bedroom:

Bathroom:

Kitchen (with Nathan preparing something delicious):

Super-Awesome Dish Rack:

Views from our balcony:

Views from bedroom into the courtyard:

Hasta pronto!

-Candyce

Apartment Selected!

We have an apartment! Hurrah! We ended up finding a medium-ish apartment in Realejo just like we hoped. :) We move in tomorrow and can hopefully post some photos of it soon. It is a lovely one bedroom with lots of natural light on the third floor on a quiet street, yet still in the middle of a very urban neighborhood.

Next tasks are to get internet hooked up at our new place and to choose which school we will be studying at.

In the meantime, a few short musings/updates to share with you:

1) We've gone cycling a few times so far (sometimes on longer trips than we intended due to a surprising and sometimes frustrating lack of signs in the city and surrounding area...) and we can confirm that the roads are generally quite nice for riding, and although drivers are generally more aggressive here, they have a lot of respect for cyclists. It is a nice change to feel accepted on a shared road compared to our experience in Canada where drivers often react as if a cyclist is a pest or obstacle who should really not be on the road (see: annoying habit of speeding by angrily the instant there is an opportunity to pass.)

2) Cheap wine is good here. Cheap beer, not so much. (Not that we can claim to like cheap beer in Canada either... but even the beer that is offered with high reviews is not that exciting). At various dinners that we've had with the family here or with their friends the "best" of the beer that we've tried has all been quite uninteresting, while the wine is almost always really good. We've learned that if we are offered an option, it is best to go with the wine.

3)  Siestas are awesome. What? It is acceptable and standard for everyone, including adults, to go take a nap in the middle of the day? There isn't even any point in going out to do anything because everything (EVERYTHING) is closed? Closed because everyone is at home? Napping?

Seriously, awesome is the only word for that.

And with that, as it is almost 10:30pm here, it is time for supper. The napping, you see, pushes the evening schedule back a bit. :)

I hope you are all keeping well and enjoying a beautiful fall season wherever you are!

With love,
Candyce

Apartment Hunting

Apartment hunting can be exciting: a new neighborhood, new living space, a new kitchen. ;) It is the opportunity to choose on a (very) basic level how and where you will be interacting with your new community. To choose what our new "home" will be for the next few months.

But let's not pretend it is not a lot of work. So many options to wade through (there are WAY more places available than people who are looking to rent here), and decisions to make. Do we stay in the Albayzin (which is gorgeous, quiet, a bit pricey and only has 3 roads that are cycle-able)? Can we find somewhere in el Centro (obviously extremely central, but not a lot of housing options, reasonably priced but likely noisy)? Do we choose somewhere in Realejo (upper part of "Centro" on this map, really the best neighborhood but options are either cheap and tiny, or really nice but pricey)?

We are thankful to have friends who are willing to host us while we sort through it all and lucky that here you don't have to make snap decisions about housing (in Vic or Vancouver, if you like it you take it or 10 minutes later someone else will have).

No decision yet, although we are kind of holding out for a medium option in Realejo if we can find it...

Happy Thanksgiving and goodnight!

Peace,
Candyce

To see a larger image of this map click here

Safely Arrived

After a 9 hour flight to Amsterdam, a 3 hour layover, followed by a 3.5 hour flight to Madrid, we arrived in España! Everything went very smoothly - even the food on the airplane was not too bad! A few things we appreciated along the way were the bean bag chairs/mattresses in the Amsterdam airport (so nice to be horizontal for a few hours!) and how wine is served free of charge with dinner on a European flight. :)

After 1 night in Madrid (where our most exciting adventure was figuring out how to go around a busy overpass with our montón de luggage in order to reach our hostel) we decided all we cared about was supper and going to bed. With a year ahead of us, we decided we'll explore Madrid when we aren't walking around in a jet-lagged stupor. :) Luckily there was a supermercado and a panadería within two blocks of our hostel so we bought groceries, had a picnic in the hostel, and then promptly went to sleep (which was more of a "resting horizontally" experience than actually a "sleeping" experience... but you take what you can get when your body thinks you are trying to go to bed at 1pm in the afternoon).

This morning we took a train from Madrid to Granada and were met upon arrival this afternoon by a dear friend of mine who is hosting us for our first week or two while we apartment hunt. After a lovely homemade lunch with him and his family, we were sent straight to bed as it was siesta time anyway. :)

Hasta pronto,

Candyce (y Nathan)

And we're off!

The day has arrived! After months of planning, and a particularly busy last month of packing, tying up remaining loose ends, and organizing final details, today is the day we fly to Spain!

Transitions are always an interesting time of excitement and anticipation for what is coming next, with a dash of sadness and nostalgia for what is being left behind. It is one thing when you are making a change because you are unhappy and you are moving to something that is better - I find those transitions are almost exclusively exciting. But when you are entering a new chapter because of opportunity and dreams, and in doing so leaving behind a chapter that has been generally delightful, it is easy to feel a bit nervous and nostalgic. However, we are choosing to be grateful for what we have experienced thus far and we are looking forward to what is coming next!

At the moment I am feeling thankful for everyone that helped get us to this point in our journey. Planning, packing, sorting, downsizing, thrift store donation runs, discussions, storage, cleaning and more packing. We couldn't have done it without the help of friends and family. 

So now we are off to the airport, with our bike (and accessories), a small amount of clothes and books,  some carrots and apples and homemade cookies, and a lot of excitement!

I expect to write you next from Spain!

In peace,

Candyce

Moving to Spain!

It is fascinating how a dream can capture one's heart and mind until it seems the only option is to pursue it! For me, one such dream has been to live in a Spanish speaking country to be fully immersed in the language, culture and history. 

After many years of studying, dreaming and planning (not to mention a wonderful husband who is enthusiastically willing to share this dream!) we have decided to move to Granada, Spain!

We feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to realize this dream at this stage of our life together. I am sure it will be an adventure like nothing we have experienced before. And so, amidst our growing piles of boxes as we pack away our worldly possessions, it is exciting to think we will soon be taking up residence in the fair fair province of Andalusia!