10/03/14 was a very exciting day for me. Paul Murray came in to talk to my Community and Contemporary Irish Fiction class.

I can hear some of you saying, ‘And who’d that be?’ Well, I’m about to educate you. And then you can do something great for yourself.

It was about 8:15 AM and for once since I’ve come to Berlin, I wasn’t running late. I had enough time for a quick bowl of cereal and then I was on my way to my first ‘official’ day of class (starting at 9 AM). It was a colder morning, but to save time (and attempt to enjoy the cool morning a little more) I decided to ride my bicycle –  it is not really my bicycle, but after talking with Petra (my most gracious host) about biking in Berlin, she offered me her extra bike that was being stowed in the basement.

Well, it’s been a very busy past few weeks here in Granada. So, to save a bit of your time, here’s the über-condensed-spark-notes-in-a-nutshell-boiled-down version of what I’ve been up to! Buckle up:

A semester abroad is a lot of fun, but it’s not all cafés and museums. The real reason we’re here is to learn! Apart from all the learning we do in our homestays and from the friends we make here, a lot of this new knowledge comes from our classes. One of the things I like best about the IES Salamanca program is that it’s a hybrid: we can choose to take a mixture of classes through the program and through the university here, which gives us access to a huge variety of courses.

Yesterday I witnessed my first South African load-share. Basically this is when the government schedules planned power outages in different neighborhoods in order to save electricity. This is because their current electrical grid cannot support all of the activity that goes on. Apparently a couple of years ago this used to go on everyday, but then when people started conserving energy and becoming more environmentally friendly, they reduced how often these planned outages would go into effect.

This past weekend, I took part in a trip to the St. James Range with the Tramping Club here at UC.  (For those who don’t know, Tramping is what they call hiking here).  We were told that if you went on the easy route, it took about 3 hours to the campsite if you walked at a good pace.  My friends and I decided to take the medium route and was told it would likely take around 6 hours.  Boy were we in for a surprise.  We started the tramp at 11am and after about 2 hours on the easy track, the groups started splitting off.

Buenos días!

This weekend I visited the Sierra de Guadarrama which is a mountain range about an hour away from my beloved Madrid.  Spring has arrived here in Madrid and the Sierra was perfect with its crystal clear blue skies, and pure white snow.

This past weekend I went with one of my friends and another friend’s friend who was visiting her from Germany down to Wexford, which is about two and a half hours via Bus Éireann south down the coast from Dublin. It’s near Rosslare, out of which one of the ferry lines from Ireland to Wales operates. This trip down to Wexford marks the first time I’ve gone out of the reach of Dublin Bus service with the exception of my Pink Training trip to Belfast.