A birthday spent... in a cave?!

It's been a great week here in Granada! Last Saturday, November 6th, was the first time that I've celebrated my birthday outside of the United States. Besides the fact that my friends and loved ones weren't with me, I had a great birthday! When I woke up on Saturday, Ana surprised me with a delicious chocolate cake (complete with candles!). After being sung "feliz cumpleaños" and blowing out the candles, Ana further surprised me with a small gift- a cute birthday card, a nail polish and a green umbrella that I had been eying some weeks before while we were out shopping together. It was a simple but wonderful birthday morning!

Happy 22nd!

Cutting the cake.

But the day wasn't over yet. A few hours later, I was on a bus with John, Jayson and Lacie (two of the other students studying abroad in Granada through GRIIS this semester) to Guadix. Guadix is a small town about an hour outside of Granada. It's famous for its many "casa-cuevas" or "cave-houses." I snagged this bit of information from one of Andalucía's tourism websites: "The most interesting feature of the Guadix area is that almost half of the inhabitants of this large town live underground, in the southern part of the town, in what are known as cave houses. The jagged ochre terrain and the dazzling whitewashed chimneys and doors of the caves contrast dramatically with the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada, which loom above." The description is completely true! We arrived at our "hotel" ("collection of caves" would be a better way of putting it...) around 5:00pm. After checking in, we headed over to Cave 6, our cave for the night. We didn't really know what to expect and truth be told, I couldn't have been more surprised when we got inside! It was lovely... and much bigger than we were expecting! There were three bedrooms (four beds total), a full bathroom, a sizable living room and a kitchen, complete with a fridge, freezer, microwave and stovetop. We spent most of the night right in the cave, playing card games, listening to music and just talking amongst the four of us. We did some walking around the area at sunset and once in the middle of the night and we went to a restaurant located within the grounds for dinner. We had such a good time that we're thinking of going back... if not this weekend, then hopefully in a few weeks towards the end of November. Here are some pictures of our cave:

Our cave: number 6!

Jayson, John and Lacie outside of the hotel's "lobby".

Sunset in Guadix.

The kitchen.

The living room (and the "master" bedroom behind it).

Sunday I got another "birthday present" in the form of one Ashton Porter! Ashton is studying global health and children's malnutrition this year at Trinity College in Dublin. She had a week off for a "fall break" and she decided to travel to Spain with another girl from her program. First they visited Barcelona and Valencia for a few days. On Sunday, Ashton's classmate went back to Ireland while Ashton caught the bus from Valencia to Granada! I picked her up at the bus station at 9:30pm that night and we spent the next two days together, walking around the city, eating chocolate con churros, going out for tapas, catching up on everything that has been going on in our lives since we left the States in September, etc. She looks wonderful and seems really happy with both her program and her current life in Dublin. It was great to see her and we had a wonderful few days visit together. I'm definitely going to be visiting her in Ireland next spring... I'm hoping to plan a trip to see her sometime in either March or April! (Ashton's got a blog going, too, while she's abroad... click here to see what she's up to around Ireland!)

Alright... I'm off to run some errands and finish up some preparations for my classes next week. Anais is coming down from Madrid this weekend; she should be here tomorrow morning through Sunday afternoon. I'm sure we'll be out and about Granada tomorrow and Saturday... I can't wait 'til she gets here! Bye for now!