a couple of wonderful days

The pictures are:
*Julie and I with a bunch of Erasmus students at dinner.
*The delicious tropical pizza that I ate
*Three smile producing drawings in the dirt that I encountered on my walk today
I have a couple of different topics so I'm going to skip around a little, but I will try to finish one train of thought before jumping to the next.
My apartment mate Julie is returning to her home in Berlin, Germany at the end of this weekend. So she has been spending time saying good-bye to all of here friends here in Granada, and I have had the wonderful opportunity of tagging along with her and meeting all of the people she has met in the three months that she has spent here. Last night we went to a very nice restaurant in the Realejo, the old Jewish quarter of Granada. It was more or less four stories tall with a terrace on top wich was open and set up for dining. So of course we went up to the top. Incredible food, incredible conversation, incredible view. (One of the pictures is of the tropical Pizza that I ate.. MMMMMmmmm.....)
I think now is the right time to mention the Erasmus program. It is a program that fosters academic exchange and an increase of multicultural knowledge and experience for students within the European community. From what I have picked up, and from what I read on the Erasmus website it is a scholarship which any student, in a European university which is a part of the program, can apply for and then if they recieve it can spend the next six months in a different country studying at a local university. More or less the same as a study abroud experience from a university in the States but completely facilitated and paid for by the Erasmus program. Too say the least it is extremely cool. All most all of the people who I have met through Julie are a part of the Erasmus exchange and are studying at the University of Granada. Salvo and Marco, the two Italians that I went to the beach with, are but two of the many Italians in the Erasmus program here. Last night I met two girls from Cyprus, a girl from Belgium, a girl from the UK, and three guys from Germany. It is incrediable how powerful of a multicultural experience it was. And it was quite funny how boggled the waiters got because they were hearing like four or five languages drifting off of our table.
It was a really night for me because I was able to talk about politics, current events, and world affairs for the first time in a while. I was actually pretty amazed that my Spanish was good enough for me to carry on the majority of the conversation with only having to drop into english for a couple of moments. A couple of the comments from my table mates which struck me:
"Don't the people in the United States realize that this is a war? That people are dying?"
"A lot of people in Germany believe, and I believe this myself, that a lot of people in the United States aren't aware of the fact that this is a war. And that they don't know, or want to know anything about world politics."
"Everyone that I have met from the United States doesn't like Bush. How did he get re-elected? Who voted for him?"
Also on this note it is really interesting to me the reaction that I get from people when I say I'm from the States. I would definately say that when they ask where I'm from and I reply "Estados Unidos" that I am presented with a slighty gaurded opinion. That I have to somehow prove myself to them, that I'm ok to talk to, that I am different from the opinion of the States that they have developed from world events and the news. A good first step but certainly not enough is "No me gusta Bush." Something that has a little bit more power is when I comment that I read the BBC, and Aljazeera. That I don't own a television and I dislike the corporate news industry (perhaps I should say entertainment industry) of the States. That I think Islam is an incrediably interesting religion, and also when I demonstrate that I have some knowledge of it. When I tell them that I think it is extremely important for me to learn another language, even though many many people speak my native tongue. That I think a world that spoke nothing but english would be a tragedy, that so much culture, life and beauty would be lost if that were to happen. And remarkably a German lady that I met today gave me a 180 degree shift in her opinion when I mentioned I was going to walk the Camino de Santiago. She asked me "Do people in the States know about the Camino??" and told me a little about her experience walking it two years ago.
A small note on learning spanish. When you say "I get it," "I'll get it," "I need to get it," ect. ect. which verb are you actually using. What action are you hiding underneath the word "get"? I really really want to know the verb "to get" in spanish, but unfortunately I don't think it exists. In much the same way I don't think it really exists in English.
On a different note. One of the most amazing things about walking in the Hills around Granada is my ability to look over at the other ridgeline and see the trail that I walked on yesterday. And to look at the distance inbetween that I compeletely impassible and realize how little space it actually is. Two days ago when I was walking I decided to take the 14km trail that went down and crossed the river before it went back to Granada. However, when I got down to the bottom I ran into to mountain bikers that had just ridden up that way and they told me there was knee deep water on much of the returning trail..... Unfazed I choose the other fork and climbed up out of the valley only to be presented by a NEVER ending trail which continuously switched back and forth following the ridge line. It added about 3 hours of walking onto a what I had originally intended to be a 3 hour walk and I didn't get back to my apartment until about 11 P.M. I was pretty tired to say the least. However I learned that sometimes I just have to follow the actual and metaphorical mountain. The switchbacks serve a purpose, and trying to short cut them usually takes much more time than just following them. That sometimes I have to climb up oneside of a valley just to climb back down the other side.