August 31st.
I finished the last day of August by taking an amazing group hike through Granada's next door National Park.
Although it was Sunday and our normal day to sleep in, I woke up at 8:00am, had breakfast and was outside getting on the charter bus by 9:00. Today, the whole group, including our teachers and UC directors, would be going on an "excursion" to "Monachil Parque Nacional," which is a few kilometers outside of Granada's city limits.
The tour bus parked and dropped us off in the middle of a seemingly residential neighborhood. There was a small plaza surrounded by 4-story apartment buildings that had been built on the banks of a flowing stream. We walked up the streets, slowly climbing the steeping grade of the winding street. After about 10 minutes, in which the surrounding houses and buildings were becoming less frequent, we came to the trail head. The trail itself was flat and sometimes paved, but it wound through the wilderness bringing us to numerous panoramic lookouts out onto the spanning valley with the flowing river surrounded by lichen-covered rock formations.
There were some great spanning cable bridges that wobbled over the mouth of the canyon. Along the way we picked black berries and saw two mountain goats that were navigating some of the more treacherous rocks.
At about 11:30 we stopped for lunch and then had about 30 minutes to explore. I went with a few other guys up the steep face of the mountain side. I was wearing sandals so I had to watch my step, but I made it up quickly, finding an obsidian tipped arrow along the way (it looked like it had been made really recently, but someone had done a really nice job on the fletching and obsidian point). About mid-way up the slope, I saw the entrance to a small cave on a nearby crest and went over to explore it. It was not very deep, but it had a wide mouth and enough space to lay down comfortably inside.
I slid down the mountain face to catch back up to the big group that was just starting to climb up a series of switchbacks that would take us back to the bus. Somehow we managed to walk uphill both ways. Overall it was a great hike and I definitely want to go back and explore.
Back at the residencia, I did half of my laundry in the machine and the other half in my bathtub as I didn't have enough room for all of it in the machine. It was actually pretty easy to wash it in the bath tub. I then took an extra mop handle and made an additional drying pole for the clothes to be hung up in my bathroom.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing ILP homework and looking for pisos. After finishing my tasks, I asked my friend if he wanted to go for tapas. We explored Plaza del Toros, another popular area to live just south east of la residencia, and ended up at "El Nido de Buho," which turned out to be the best tapas place I had eaten at yet. We met up with some of the girls from the program and were lucky enough to snag a table as the tapas bar was packed with people during the rush hour after 10pm. Our conservation was about pisos, and I was the only one who had not found anything. When I told them that I hadn't seen one that I really liked, one of the girls gave me the number to a place in the Centro that was expensive but apparently really nice. I called the land lord and scheduled a visit for the next day.
Back at the residencia, I hung out with some of the Spaniards who are also living in the same building. They have all been busy with tests (the Spanish educational system is a lot different, as the students have the opportunity to retake exams from the past semester that they didn't do well on again at the beginning of the new school year). It was a lot of fun talking to them and we may hang out later.
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