Rainy days are happy ones indeed

Due to an internship I have on Mondays and Wednesdays (I work with an elderly woman, helping her do various tasks and providing her with company), all of my classes were scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those days are long ones indeed, but absolutely fantastic in terms of Spanish practice.

In any event, my first class begins at 8:30 am, so I am always frantically scrambling about in the mornings, as expected. The sun has yet to rise and my roommate does not have class until later, so I clamber around in the dark, typically. Naturally, coffee is worked into my routine, so I always run downstairs to fill up my mug. The coffee is made the night before, I think, and stored in jars, so I toss (literally) it in the microwave when I return upstairs. Yesterday, I managed to microwave the coffee for far too long, and seeing as I did not have time to both wait for it to cool down and drink it before having to leave, I opened the bathroom window and placed the mug on the window sill. Success! During this time of year, Granada is consistently pretty cold in the mornings, so the coffee cooled down quickly and I got to endure a solid, bone-chilling breeze while touching up my makeup. On the plus side, I could hear the doves cooing outside in the abandoned building next door– so peaceful. Actually, I will be honest. I am pretty sure those birds are pigeons, but doves seem more preferable, especially if one’s coffee is chilling on a ledge, wonderfully exposed to any and all flying creatures. Doves it is.

The normal overcast skies of the morning remained throughout the day, producing rain on and off, a rare occurrence here. While Granada is so beautiful on fair weather days (the streets are filled with finely dressed individuals and the snowcapped mountains can be seen so clearly), rainy days are just as wonderful. Elderly couples walk under shared umbrellas with arms linked, and at night the old-fashioned street lights reflect off the wet roads. On multiple occasions yesterday, as a result of both being distracted by Granada’s beauty and in a hurry (typical Rachel), I nearly wiped out while out and about. This I brought upon myself, though, as walking around Granada on rainy days truly requires some focus; most of the sidewalks are tiled, which provide quite the classy appearance… and also a very slippery surface. Someday, maybe I will learn.

After my last class, which finished around 6:30, I booked it across town (quite haphazardly, once more) to make it to a showing of the movie Hitchcock. By saving most of my Spain preparations until the last minute, I did not have the chance to see this movie, so you can imagine my immense delight upon finding it at a nearby theatre. On the way, I got stuck behind one of the sidewalk scrubber trucks that are always plugging around the city Granada is known for being super clean, and these Zamboni-like machines, complete with at least two huge scrubber wheels (like one finds in a car wash) certainly help maintain this reputation. With the narrow nature of some streets, one can hardly squeeze by the scrubbers. It was raining, so I was not too bothered by the extra, momentary spray of water as I rushed past. As the Spaniards love to say, no pasa nada (no worries).

The movie theatre had just about as much business as one would expect for a Tuesday evening. The individual theatres themselves were interesting in that the floor developed into an incline as one got to the front rows. Smart! Much easier than having to crane your neck. The movie was dubbed in Spanish, but it was not too hard to get the gist of things. According to one of my professors, each actor and actress has the same dubbed voice consistently in all of their films. Makes sense.

The movie was so fantastic, of course, and almost makes me long for Netflix to revisit some of Hitchcock’s classics. Project for the summer. For now, so much more exploring to be done!