When the family comes to town...

See I promised I would be on time this week!  This was a week of waking up early and traveling around the country that I've actually been living i for 2 months.  I actually went to class on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and then Thursday I went to Granada for the day.  Not something I would normally recommend, but well worth it in this case...I got to see one of my best friend Laura (who I haven't actually seen in person since we were on the same trip to Panama 4 years ago) and meet her fiance Matt (who is studying at the University of Granada)  I took the bus from Murcia to Granda at 8 in the morning, arrived at the Gran Via (there were actually two buses involved in this.  One to Granada and another from the bus station to the Gran Via) at about 12.  We then wandered around the city, did a little shopping, ate some lunch, and did some more shopping.  After that we spent quite a bit of time in the Casablanca tea house (which if you know me at all made me very excited) just chatting and catching up.  Then I left to catch my bus back to Murcia at 6 I ended up spending as much time in Granada as on the bus, but it was definitely worth it!  
Friday I woke up early again, this time to go to the immigration office to pick up my residency card (a.k.a I am officially a resident of Spain until September of next year!).  Then my mom came to visit!!! There was a moment of panic when it was 2 hours after her plane was to arrive and she still hadn't called.  It turns out that her phone doesn't work in Spain, something about there are 4 international bandwiths and her phone doesn't have the one that works here, so she was driving lost through the city.  Finally I called the hotel to find out that she had already checked in, so I just walked over there. 
On Saturday we went to Amería (a town on the way to Granada) for the day.  We saw the fort and wandered around the city, fairly lost since the tourist office wasn't open.  We then made our way back to Murcia and had a nice dinner at the hotel.  Sunday, was our day of adventure though....
We began the day with a drive to Lorca, which was actually rather uneventful.  Then we had to figure out how to get into the city, since there are about 4 exits into the city.  Once we did end up in the right place we found the tourist office, where they gave us a HUGE map (so big Mom didn't need her glasses to read it) and we made our way up to the castle fort.  By "made our way up" I mean we hiked on a small road near a cliff.  Once we arrived at the fort we watched a movie narrated by an animated baby falcon named Ben Sakar (meaning Son of Falcon) who told us about the history of the fort.  We then went in a time machine.  It wasn't quite what I had expected.  I always assumed they would be much faster, alá Dolorian, and much more interesting.  This was not.  However, since we are the only people I know who have been in a time machine I can't complain too much.  After being transported to the 13th century we started walking around the fort with our audio guides (included in the price).  We reached the top of the tower and met a new friend.

After hanging out with Pedro we finished our tour of Lorca and went to the beach at Águilas for a picnic (without wine...very odd occurence for our family).  We then went on a back country road from Águilas to Cartagena where Mom proved that just how good she was with a stick-shift by getting a speeding ticket.  We finally made it back to Murcia where we had an early dinner because the next morning (today) we went to Alicante to see my grandparents who are taking a cruise around Spain and happened to dock in Alicante (about 45 minutes north of Murcia) today.  

We spent the day walking around the old city and had lunch.  My grandparents also met the King of Beach (Ivan, from England) who was building a really intense Mayan temple out of sand and asked me out (and I'm absolutely going out with him...my image of my Spanish boyfriend was indeed a 30something beach bum with dreadlocks from England (if you did not pick up on the sarcasm you suck at life)).  Then my grandparents went back to the boat and we came back to Murcia, and I actually went to class (or at least one of them). 

That's it for this week.

¡Hasta la semana que viene! 

xoxo

Sarah