Sunday September 4 – First Mountain Climb/ Sacramonte

                Adam, Parker, and I left for the church at the tallest point in Granada to walk on the mountains behind the church at 11:00 in the morning. There were many inclines and declines of about 75 to 80 degrees which were very hard to get up and down. I lead the climb up one side of a ravine that was one of our steepest climbs of the day. While doing so I felt my left thigh run in to a spider web I looked down to wipe it away and when I did I saw a brown grass colored spider the size of a half dollar crawling on my black shorts, it scared me pretty good as I quickly swiped at it to get it off me.

 We headed for a tall mountain but as we got to it we crossed into a neighborhood of Granada that is a ways out of the city called Sacramonte. They had what we believed to be a church, they were giving tours and there was we think a wedding there. The most interesting part of that church was that there was the Star of David on top of one of the gates but on top of that was the Cross. We refilled our water and continued down a road they had. We asked some locals how to get to the next mountain past they city, one lady told us to cross the river but also said that they were having an annual festival at 3:00 that day. We went to look for the river and one man said that we could not cross it until school began because right now it is all private property until school begins, we were not sure how that worked. We decided we would go to the festival because it was 3:00 and we had yet to find the river. There were quite a few people there and they were making paia, a traditional Spanish dish with rice and many different kinds of meat and cooked slowly for many hours. The paia was being cooking in a giant pot about four or four and a half feet in diameter but only about a foot deep. They had been cooking it for three hours when we got there and it was ready to serve for free. We got in line and got a plate, we stayed a little bit longer and then went on our way home.

When I got back I called Trevor and said I wanted to work out. We ran to a park where there was out door lifting machines. There was chest press, rows, lat pull downs, dips, swinging and twisting abs, and a couple other machines that all used your body weight. It was a lot of fun, I think Beatrice needs those because there were people that came by just to try and without knowing they did exercise, I think that is a great idea. We then sprinted up a steep hill where I got some short lasting cramps, so we walked awhile and then when the downhill part came we jogged back to our houses.

That night I went out with my two Italian guy roommates and there three Italian friends that were girls. We went out and had sangria and talked about many things. My favorite question was, “Why do Americans hate Canada?” because they had seen many shows where we make fun of Canada and they also said that from our movies they feel America is a very unsafe place with a lot of murders because in our movies many people die from so many different situations. I also found out that they had only been studying Spanish for two weeks before coming here and their Spanish is probably better than mine was after five years. I feel that is insane, I know Italian and Spanish are similar but it is still incredible.