September 5th
When the social life starts at 12:00am its sometimes difficult to distinguish when one day starts and the other begins. "Today" is a good example of this as I went out until 4:00am and came to the police station at 7:00am for my second attempt at my visa extension.
Thursday is a big night to go out in Granada (actually every night is a popular night to go out in Granada. With 60,000 college students and hundreds of clubs, tapas bars, and activities there is never a dull moment). A couple of the monitores wanted to take their groups out for tapas, botellón, and then go to a club. I wanted to go, but I knew that I wanted to get up early and head to the police station. Tomorrow/Today would be Friday and although we didn't have class we had the presentation by Inma and another by the history professor as we would be going to the Alhambra later that afternoon.
We met up with our monitores in the Plaza del Triumfo, down the hill from the residencia, and then went out on the town. We went to a club called "Vogue" (pronounced vo-GUE), which had a bunch of random tecno/house remixes of American songs that I didn't really like. I was asleep at my apartment by 4am.
I new that getting to the police station at 7 would put me far back in line, but I wanted to get a couple of hours of sleep (I suppose if I was a true "granadino" I would have gone straight from the club to the police station at 4:30am and be the first one in the door). Today, I received number 45 and figured I would be ok on time. Once again, I seriously misjudged as the overall wait until my application was processed took a total of 4 and a half hours. After waiting until 10:00am just to get inside the police station, I waited another hour and a half inside in the subsequent lines to file my form. The wait inside didn't seem as long as I struck up a conversation with a couple from South Africa and students from Chile and Libia. We discussed American politics and why each of us was in Granada. We had got on the conversation about American politics when I had told the South Africans that I was from California rather than the United States. They had noticed that, and we spent the greater part of the wait discussing the 2008 election. Like Israel, South Africa seems to be treated as an international pariah as the couple said that Spain was one of the few places they were allowed to immigrate to.
Finally it was my turn, and thankfully the whole process took only 5 minutes. Dropping off the application was only the first of three visits that I would have to make to the police station. I will have to return in 10 days for the next step.
At 11:30 I had missed a good portion of the presentation on the Alhambra. I have already been, but I would have liked to have heard the presentation by the professor. I was feeling pretty tired during Inma's presentation on class registration but I managed to struggle through until after lunch when I took a quick siesta.
We took a charter bus to the Alhambra, which took a really long time as it had to go all the way around Granada before it could enter the parking lot as the streets leading up to the Alhambra are all too small for such a large vehicle.
Although I had seen the Alhambra before, I was really happy to see it again. The history professor was our "tour guide" and he told us a lot of great "hidden" facts about the Alhambra that I had not known before. Since I had taken a ton of pictures on my first tour, this time through I could really stop and absorb the detail and grandeur of the palace. The Alhambra is so big that even a guided 3 hour tour does not cover all of the grounds. On this trip, I didn't get to see the gardens, but I did get to tour the "Alcazaba" or old military wing, and climb the lookout tower that has a spanning view of all of Granada and the surrounding country side.
Leaving the Alhambra from a southern exit, I was really surprised and excited to see how close it was to my apartment! As I was leaving, I received a call from Heiko saying that our new apartment mate, Antonio, had just arrived. I headed straight to my apartment from the Alhambra.
Just talking to him in the first 5 minutes, I could tell Antonio was a cool guy. A little shorter than Heiko and me, but with an athletic build, Antonio looked like an outdoorsy, adventurous person. He was trying to organize his room. A mini-fridge, two-mountain bikes, and a five gallon bottle of olive oil were propped against the wall. He is from Almería, Spain; a small beach town right on the Mediterranean Sea. Heiko was going out with friends and invited us to come. Antonio wanted to get organized and I had some things to do back at the residencia. Nevertheless, I ended up talking to Antonio for a good hour. He is also 23 and is in his last year here at the University of Granada studying "Derecho" (Law). Last year he was an Erasmus student to Germany so he is speaks Spanish and German. Between him, Heiko, and my other German roommate I think I'll have plenty of opportunities to learn German.
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