September 6th
I was still pretty tired from the day before but decided to keep living the study abroad experience to the max by joining a group of students from my program for a day trip to the beach in Salobreña.
About a 1 hour bus ride south of Granada, Salobreña is a quaint beach and farming town and good example of the Andalucían region . Small cafés, olive groves, and an ancient Moorish castle striding the top of the largest hill provide a picturesque foreground to the backdrop of the Mediterranean sea. We arrived in the morning at about 10:00am and went to the supermarket to buy some food. It actually wasn't that great of day to visit the beach as it was very windy and the water was California cold (some kids had gone the week before and apparently the water was really warm). Nevertheless, it was still a lot of fun to be at the beach with my new friends from the program and a couple of our Spanish monitores.
About 50 yards out on the water was a large, blue floating platform with slides and diving boards. A few of the other guys and I swam out to the platform. We spent a long time jumping off the platform into the sea as we would time waves to maximize the air that we would get when we would jump off. Each swell would lift the platform a good 6 or more feet and with proper timing, jumping off as the swell cut away would launch us into the air. It was a lot of fun, but I swam back as I was getting really cold from the wind.
For most of the afternoon we lazed around on the beach. I took a walk with a couple of the other guys along with beach and we ran into two other groups of American students. One was OAP (Opportunities Abroad Program, the other program offered at UCSD to study abroad. Less intense academically, but more independent in regards to schedule) and we met kids from UCLA, UCSD, and a lot from Ohio State. They were living with homestay families and many of them would only be in Granada for a semester. The other group that we met was from the California State University System. It seems like I've come to Spain to study abroad in California.
Later in the afternoon we went to go explore the Moorish Castle that was perched on the top of the hill and overlooking the sea and surrounding valley. We walked along the steeply inclined cobble stone streets of the ivory-white, apartment-building, mountain village. At the top we paid 1.13 euros (?) to enter and explore the castle. The castle had fantastic views of the sea and surrounding area.
We headed back down and decided to catch an earlier bus. We were supposed to leave at 9:15 but there was a bus leaving an hour earlier that we were able to get on. Like the bus to Tomatina, we ended up getting back to Granada at about the same time as the other bus would have, as it made stops in all of the little villages along the way (on the way down we hadn't stopped at all).
That night, I went out for tapas with my new apartment mates.
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