The wonders of living with people from different contries.

The pictures in no particular order are:
*Me on a table at the end of the world ;-p, no, not really just at a very cool place up in the mountains
*A picture of my shadow that I liked
*trees and a path in the mountains
*HELADO, cheap, delicious and wonderful. That particular cup is chocolate and coffee. MMMMmmmmm.....
So I have been thinking about posting on this for a while, and I guess that tonight is the night I make and attempt at it. So right now I am living with one Italian (Silvia) and three Germans (Kerstin & Jörg the older couple, and Anika the new girl who is my age). At first I was a little hesitant about what it would be like living with a couple in their 40's when pretty much everyone else in the school is in their 20's, but after two and a half weeks I love living with them. It is quite possibly one of the best experiences that I have had so far in Granada. They both have lived in Germany for their entire lives (Note: they are in their mid fourties). For any of you with some quite calculation that means they were in their 20's in '89 when the wall came down and in '91 when the country was reconciled into only one country. Also, they live in eastern Germany. Talk about an incrediably interesting life. Kerstan has told me and Jose (our teacher) that capitalism, and socialism are more of less equal to her, BUT that she has a job right now, and that is something that is incredialby important and which colors her perceptions. She said that before the wall came down there was always work for everyone, but that it wasn't always a good thing, as some of the jobs were bad, and some just didn't need doing. Also to talk with Jörg about how he believes that Germany is starting on an upswing in its industial sector again, and how the world recognizes "German Engineering" as being a good thing. Also, one of the best things about talking with them is that we are forced to communicate in Spanish because English was not an extremely popular language when they were in school.
This week we have two new students at the school. Anika a German girl, and Adam an australian guy both in their early twenties. It is interesting talk to both of them as they have had experiences so different from my own. It is of course easier to communicate with Adam because when anything gets too horribly complicated we both have English as our mother tounge and can drop back into it with almost perfect understanding. He has been living in Europe for over a year now, has a UK visa and can go up and stay with friends in London anytime he needs to work and make some money, has walked to Camino de Santiago more or less a year ago, and has a girlfriend who is a native Granadian. Plus he's australian so its fun to talk to him just to hear his accent :-p. It is much more difficult to talk to Anika, because she is just begining in Spanish (and my spanish isnt that great), I don't speak german, and her english moderate. But, she is very interesting to talk to, and she is forcing me to be even more conscience of the words that I choose to use. Misunderstanding has the ability to run rampant when we talk with each other, and it definately takes quite a bit of patience and openness from both of us to actually be able to communicate.
A note on dates. So I think that I'm going to cut my time in Granada short by two weeks from what I had planned. This is because I really do want to go see Barcelona, specifically the Dali museum, and Madrid, and I do NOT want to short myself on time to walk to camino. The upside of this is that I only have a little bit more time to be impatient about starting, the down side is that I will only have about a week and a half more time before I head off for new adventures... Yikes...