Day 9

Day 9: Yesterday we went to Sacramonte, an old neighborhood on the outskirts of Granada, in order to have a private Flamenco lesson, then to have a dinner of tapas, and then to watch a Flamenco show! My group met at our school at 6:30 pm (or 18:30 in Spain… that will always be weird to me… :P) then walked a little ways to a restaurant type place… which is composed of the caves which Sacramonte is known for. We had our private lesson in a cave with walls adorned in photos and memories of all the Flamenco dancers of that place, which I believe are all from the same family… or at least have all grown up together with their families being close friends. Flamenco-ing is REALLY difficult! We learned a simple foot step which was okay, but then when you have to incorporate constant rotating wrists and moving arms… you start to forget to move a foot or a hand… haha, it’s really hard. We learned a second step too, which was definitely harder, but after that we couldn’t really pick up anything. Although it was definitely important because it gave me a newfound understanding of how hard the Flamenco dancers have to work. We all learned together as a group and then at the end of the lesson we all had to dance with just our teacher in front of everyone else… pretty crazy. But the music was being played by a guy in the corner with a guitar, and the clicking of the teacher’s shoes, so that was pretty awesome.  Then we went outside and up a flight of stairs to get to a beautiful patio area (which I posted pics of—it has a great view of the Alhambra!) where we were served tapas. We had a traditional dish called “tortilla de patatas” which is a tortilla made out of potatoes… and that was served on bread. And then salad, cheese, and some sort of yummy pork. When we were done eating we went into a different cave to watch the show. It was awesome because all of the music (drums, guitar, singing) was live and the dancers are really fun to watch. It looks so fun and playful how they dance, and I am pretty sure that the whole show was telling a story—I just couldn’t understand the words of the song. The whole time I kept staring in amazement at the people’s feet… I don’t know how they physically move that fast… In the end, the dancers took people out of the crowd to participate and lucky me, I got taken twice. I totally forgot how to move my feet, but I remembered the arm movements pretty well so I just went with it… It was pretty funny. Also, the colored lights in the cave were amazing! One woman had a BRIGHT red dress and the lights would change to such a color that her dress looked black… not like in a shadow, just as if it were black, and then the lights would change and it would be bright red again. So cool! After the show my roommates and I walked back to the apartment, but along the way stopped at an heladería for some ice cream. I took pics of the display… the ice cream looks SOOO extravagant here! I got pistachio flavor because I had never tried it, but it was pretty good…. Hasta mañana!