buena dias.

i made it.

i arrived in madrid tuesday morning at 7:30 am and after a 5 hour layover, finally landed in granada. from there i caught the bus to La Estacion de Autobuses.
except only i didn't.
i was supposed to.
the driver stopped in front of the station and said something along the lines of "yadayadayada, no?"
and no one moved.
not even a muscle.
so, in the name of conformity i didn't either. i mean, i couldn't imagine that no one else had to go to the bus station, so i assumed that he was pulling back around. but i was wrong.
if america's obsession with globalization ever paid off for me, it was now. there were two american business men riding as well, so i asked them about the bus's final destination, and realized i had made a blunder. i ended up getting off at a random bus stop in granada and took another bus back to the station where i finally purchased my ticket to catch the bus to durcal, which i missed by 5 minutes. so i had to go back up to the taquilla [ticket office] and reschedule my ride. anyway, it all worked out, but the process was much longer than i would have liked.
just one more reason not to follow the crowd.

from durcal, i was picked up by laurie attridge, a gentlemen from the uk who is hosting me. he and his wife annie are lovely people with an equally lovely home. there's another wwoofer-- her name's jola [pronouned yola]-- from australia. very sweet. it's her first time wwoofing as well, so it's nice to be a novice with company.

good thing i like dogs.
apparently laurie and annie are the local dog sitters, because today alone they've had 3 guest dogs roaming about. one was a rescue dog that a french woman who runs a bread-n-breakfast in pinos de valle [the village that i'm staying in] took in. she brought him over because one of the local families was going to walk down [the village is just a walk up the mountain from the attridge's] and meet him. they're a new family that just moved in, and talk about eclectic-- the husband is from california, the wife is a spanish-speaking romanian, and the boy is irish, not to mention, confused.
they decided to take morcal.

up until yesterday, i was under the impression that the local dialect was castallan.
it's actually andalucian. or should i say, andaluthian.
part of the criteria is that all soft "c's" that fall within words are pronounced as "th."
so not only do i have to speak spanish, but i have to speak spanish with a lisp.

the land is beautiful here, and we're situated right on a mountain. i have yet to take any pictures, but when i do i'll be sure to post. laurie took me on a tour of the land this morning and we took a walk up into the village to pick up the mail at the local post office which is only open 9:30-10 am every day. then jola and i spent the greater part of the day pruning olive trees and tomorrow we're going to do some planting.
everything's very simple here.
very perfect.

that's about it for now.
grathias for caring.