Córdoba and Granada

Making sure that every single student was present and accounted for at all of the various mandatory activities on this trip was actually kind of hard work. I got to count them when they got off the bus, when we walked to the city centers, when they got back on the bus, when they came down to breakfast, when they came down to the hotel lobby. Did I mention that I got to count them when they were on the bus?

And they're so slippery, too. They'll be standing quietly in one place, and then you look back, and they've vanished. Good gosh, it was like herding cats.

Fortunately, even though all of this counting was incredibly exhausting, I did get to clock some more awesome pictures of Córdoba and Granada (to go with all of the ones that I already have). 

The Córdoban Cathedral (that would be the mosque)

Puerta de la Justicia: La Alhambra. Please admire the
beautiful, blue sky. Because it was beautiful. And blue.

Detail from inside the Alhambra

Speaking of taking pictures that already exist, you should totes check out the pictures here, one artist's interpretation of the compulsion to take pictures of monuments as proof that we (as individuals of the human species) were in fact, there. It's pretty cool.

(Thanks Aubs for the link!)

It's fitting

that February (traditionally, my least favorite month of the year, although I've been reconsidering that recognition for a while now) would be the least active month since this blog began. This isn't to say that things haven't been happening in DNortonLand. Trust me, they have, and I will show them to you now.

Sometime at the end of January, I baked my roomies an "American" breakfast...which we promptly ate when everyone woke up at 4PM. (Actually, most of them were up before then, except for Antonio, who got up, ate, and went right back to sleep. ) We polished off the pancakes, bacon and eggs quite easily, but I was eating French Toast Casserole and fruit salad for about a week after. Which was perfectly fine with me.

I honestly can't remember what I did the first weekend in February. Probably something lazy, as in freak out about the (very small) amount of homework I had and bake cookies. (There's been a lot of that happening, what with the new apartment and ginormous kitchen and all. The roomies are accusing me of trying to make them fat, and/or trying to keep the entire Spanish dairy industry in business with the quantity of butter that I use.)

(what can I say? I get all my recipes from the Pioneer Woman. Like these salted fudge brownies.)

The second weekend was tons of fun, though. I accompanied 40 undergraduates, two professors, and co-chair of student life, Caridad, down to Córdoba and Granada. Although I had already been to Córdoba once this year (twice in my life), I was pretty excited to go back to Granada. That city is where I fell in love with Spain, so being back was kind of like a homecoming.

Only the prettiest palace in the world. If you don't believe me, then you should go see it.

I was surprised by how well I remembered how to get around. It's not like it was that complicated, but still, it's been 4 years since I last set foot in this town...you'd think that I'd want to have a map on me, just in case.