Botellón

So last night turned out to be really fun. We met at La Plaza Isabelle, which is our usual meeting spot in the center of the city. It has a huge statue in the middle of the fountain of Columbus asking Isabelle to go look for the New World. One of the girls in the group, Monica, brought her sister from the homestay. Her name was Beatriz and she is 23. She was so nice and taught us a lot about the city. We went to what is called a botellón, which is a huge gathering of people in a park. It is the only place in Granada where you can drink outside and it's much cheaper than the bars, as well as more authentic. We talked spanish the whole night and met a lot of new people. Around 3 am we went to a discoteca (basically a club) that is called Mae West. They were only letting in natives from Granada, but since we had Beatriz, we were able to get in anyway. It was a huge building with a lot of different levels and rooms. Most played American music, but there were rooms you could go to if you wanted to listen to Spanish music. There were TVs all along the walls and they played a tribute to Michael Jackson (everyone here gets really excited about his music). It was a lot of fun and we didn't get home until about 5:30.
Unfortunately, that means we overslept the next day and weren't able to make it to the beach. Luckily a couple other people overslept too, so after dinner we went out for tapas. Today is Megan's birthday, she is turning 21 which isn't as big of a deal here as it is in the US. We still went out to another discoteca called Granada 10. Unlike Mae West, Granada 10 had a lot of people from America, so we didn't get to speak Spanish as much as we did the other night. We met a nice group of guys from Texas who are here on vacation and then we called it a night.
Today we had lunch, the usual bowl of soup and some ice cream (I think a treat for Meg's birthday). They usually have soup at lunch, which I am trying to get used to. I don't know how they can eat something that hot when it's 95 degrees out. I just finished my homework for tomorrow and now I am getting ready to go on a tour of Albacin, an old Arab neighborhood.

Love Always,
Em