Misunderestimated

So, I've taken an official count of the bars and shawarma places on my street, and it turns out that at the rate of just one bar a week, I'll be done by the summer!

There are 18 (maybe 19, since one thing that seems to be a bar is behind scaffolding; maybe 20, since one place that seems to be restaurant-like might actually be a bar), and 13 (not counting one place that's right off of the street but clearly on a plaza) shawarma places. One of the bars is a shawarma place, so that gets counted twice.

If you can read this ...

I certainly could use your company at the AHP. Just kidding. I can read this perfectly well. Well, mostly. The signatures really look all squiggly, but for the most part the handwriting is alright, and since what I'm looking at is land sale documents, the format that gets followed is really standard, so if I lose my place, I skip forward to the next standard phrase, and work backwards. This particular document is in really bad shape, and crumbling in my hands, which is why I took pictures of it.

Snow!

It's been snowing since a little past two this afternoon. As of six, none of it was sticking. The flakes are wet, but they melt as soon as they hit the ground.

The orange tree in the plaza next to my house had snow-covered leaves. And oranges! Those poor (non-eatable, not really) oranges!

As of seven, some snow was sticking to the rooftops. Tomorrow morning (or maybe later tonight), I'll walk over to somewhere from which the Alhambra's visible. I imagine that the Alhambra is pretty when the hill is snow-covered. Because it's always pretty.

I believe that I mentioned that I happen to live on the most happening street in Granada? Why, the first entry when I googled "Elvira nightlife Granada"
claims that, "Calle Elvira is the district at the center of Granada night life."

That's why I had trouble sleeping my first night at home.

That's also why I am going to subject you, dear Reader, to my comprehensive survey of Calle Elvira not-quite night life. (Really, who wants to stay out until four in the morning?)

In these pages, look forward to reviews of every bar and shawarma/kebab place on Calle Elvira.

I plann on posting two entries for each category (bar/shawarma) per week, when I'm in Granada. At that rate, I'll be done with the street by September (I haven't actually counted the bars and/or shawarma places yet, but there's probably an average of three bars per block, and Calle Elvira has about seventeen blocks (from a quick count of a not-too-detailed map on the interweb.)

A Day in the Life

So, as you may have guessed, my life in Granada is fun-packed and action-filled.
In the mornings, I hang out at the AHP. I stay there until it closes at 2:30 (they kick me out at about 2:20), and then, sometimes, I go to the supermarket.

I go home for lunch; sometimes I make lunch, sometimes Oscar does, and once in a while Molly makes breakfast burritoes.

Then I go to the Escuela de Estudios Arabes a little before five in the afternoon, and stay there until seven or eight. I'm reading a couple of fairly recent books, one is L.P. Harvey's _Muslims in Spain_, his follow-up to the book that ended at 1500. It's recent. It's good, and it has a chapter on the Hornacheros, who were a major community in Rabat. I'm also working on reading Bernard Vincent's _El río morisco_.

What I'm working on in the mornings is the most fun, though. I've gotten really good (if I say so myself, and I am saying so) at reading sixteenth-century squiggeldynuts. I'm looking at the transfer of properties from Moriscos to Christians, and what's really exciting is that some documents tells you who the neighbors were, and give some of the history of the neighboring properties.

In the evenings, I tend to go to Paprika, where I am right now, and where I check email. Sometimes I walk around. Lately, I haven't been taking the surly out since it's so cold in the mornings, and now that I've given in and bought an ipod shuffle, I listen to NPR on the way to the archive.

Next week: getting a student card, so that I can stay in Spain legally.

The End?

Well, the Spain-Morocco research sandwich is officially over, now that both my Fulbright-Hays and SSRC fellowships are over. And, um, I haven't been so diligent about posting.

Fret not, there will be more content. I've got a new hard drive that actually functions (the old one just whirred and whirred) and plenty of things to say, but a nagging doubt as to whether or not they're worth saying.

I can tell you plenty about the AHP in Granada, but I don't think you'd want to hear it. I mean, I'm going to _force_ my advisors to read about it, but chances are that late-sixteenth century property auctions do not interest you.