I am sitting right now in the Café de Indias, which I believe is sort of the Starbucks of Spain (although there are several Starbucks here) and drinking my first Spanish hot chocolate, something I was very excited to try. It is like a cup of melted chocolate chips, with a little milk added as an afterthought. I think I am in love.
Yesterday morning, Alicia and I went to mass at the cathedral. Neither of us are Catholic, but we wanted to see what mass in such a giant and old building. I was able to understand much of the mass and the homily. Of course, it helps that I’ve been to mass in English with Kerry several times, but I didn’t have too much trouble with the Spanish. For lunch, Carmen made us a tortilla. For those of you who don’t know, a Spanish tortilla is kind of like an omlette, with potatoes and other vegetables (peppers, onions) and I think often ham cooked in eggs. I liked it much more than I thought I would. Not that I thought I would dislike the tortilla, but I eggs aren’t my favorite food, something I can take or leave. But it didn’t taste particularly eggy. There were more potatoes than eggs, and most of the flavor came from the olive oil it was cooked in. It’s also traditional in Spain to eat toast with olive oil for breakfast. I’ve generally eaten half of my toast with olive oil, and the other half with jam. I tell you, all this olive oil is going to be the death of me. I suppose it’s “good” fat, and it has lots of antioxidants, but there’s just so much of it.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, as there were few places open. Spain isn’t a particularly religious country anymore—much of the population is “Catholic,” but non-practicing—but it seems that Sundays are a day to spend with family (there’s still a big emphasis on family and friends and social relations in general. So a lot of cafes were open in the evening, but not the shops or the cervecerías. The mall was open, and Alicia ended up there on a wild internet hunt, as we don’t have it in our house. A series of misfortunes including dying batteries, lack of outlets, and poor signals prevented us from successfully finding and using wi-fi, but I suppose we got some exercise, and I had a yummy café vienés. Apparently a good place to get wi-fi and use Skype is McDonalds. I never thought I would go to McDonalds in Spain, but I went yesterday at the Plaza de Nervión, and it was the classiest McDonalds I have ever seen.
As we were walking back to our house, we passed our host mom out with some friends. She was going with them for a churro and chocolate. We walked a little more, and returned home around 8. Carmen didn’t get back until around 10, and by that time we were very hungry. She apologized profusely for being late, as we were planning to have dinner at nine or nine thirty, and I felt that it was a strange reversal of roles that our seventy-something year old host mom was out later than we two twenty-somethings, and that she was apologizing for us for being late. As if I don’t feel enough like an old lady at home, when my friends go out on the weekends and I go to bed. Only in Spain, I suppose.
We had our first class today. I am in Advanced Present-Day Spanish Usage with Profesora Carmen Dorado. Kerry is also in my class. This class is three hours and forty-five minutes long, five days a week, for the next three weeks. Based on how the class scored on our placement exams, we are focusing on increasing our vocabulary and learning when to use various advanced grammatical structures. I like Profesora Dorado very much. She’s very energetic (as it seems all Spanish women are) and very friendly. She’s probably in her forties, maybe early fifties, but she’s very pretty, and when she smiles or laughs, she looks much younger. Spanish women also seem to age very well. Maybe it’s all the olive oil?
I was finally able to buy a bus card today. We’ve had a lot of trouble buying one for some reason. We were told we could get them in the tobacco shops (los estancos), but every time we went to un estanco, we were told they didn’t have the cards, or that the machine was broken, or some other excuse. Kerry’s host mom said that sometimes they don’t like to help tourists. But Alicia and I finally found un estanco in our area, which is much less touristy, in which the guy working was very friendly and sold us our cards. So that’s one less thing to worry about.
I suppose that’s all for tonight. I need to go do some homework. It’s always difficult to get back in the homework-doing mode, but I don’t think I’ll have too much, or that at this point it will be too hard. Tomorrow, in addition to my language class, I have “Cultural Realities” and my dance class. I will try to write about them tomorrow.
¡Buenas Noches!
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