Desayuno - Breakfast

Breakfast in Spain is extremely different than in the States.  In America, we learn that “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” In Spain, if you eat breakfast at all it is really small. Most people just eat toast and coffee and sometimes fruit juice.  In class the other day, we were talking about the biggest differences between Spain and America and every person in my class said breakfast is the biggest difference.  We all said that bread, juice and coffee is just not enough food for breakfast. To that, our teacher said “But bread, juice and coffee is a huge breakfast.”

My breakfast everyday consists of packaged, premade toast with Nutella and coffee.  Sometimes I eat a piece of fruit but most of the time, no.  Nutella is very popular is Spain.  In America there’s commercials advertising Wheaties with fruit and juice and milk as the breakfast of champions.  In Spain there are commercials that advertise bread with Nutella and coffee as the breakfast of champions.  Carmen bought a box of Corn Flakes so we could have cereal for breakfast but I prefer the toast.  It was a little hard to eat that little for breakfast at first because we don’t eat lunch until 2:30 and I was getting hungry by 10:30 but now, I’m use to it and I actually prefer a smaller breakfast.

La Dia de La Virgen

This past Thursday, I didn't have class because of the festival of the Virgen of Granada. On this day, the whole city shuts down and everyone goes to the church and brings flowers as an offering to the Virgen.  Greta and I took a little walk over there to check out the festivel but we decide not to offer flowers to the Virgen because the line to the church was literally half a  mile long.  It was actually kind of funny because on our walk to the church, we so no one. Ever store and restaurant was closed and there was seriously nobody around us.  Then we turn on the street the church is one and it was completely packed.  There were flower stands everywhere.  The only stores that were open that day in the whole city were the flower stands and the ice cream stores on the street of the church. It was really interesting to get to experince something like that.  This is a video of some of the music they have to celebrate.

Vamos a la Playa - Let's go to the Beach

Sorry, I haven't posted for a while.  I've gotten a little busy and I just couldn't find the time this week.

This past weekend, I took a trip to the beach with some friends.  We went to Salabreña which is an hour bus ride away from Granada.  The beach is on the Mediterranean.  I don’t know if any of you have been to a beach like this, but it was completely different than any beach I’ve ever been to.  First off, the sand is rocks, like little pebbles that, yes are beautiful but kind of dig into your feet.  It wasn’t that soft powdery sand we had on the Atlantic.  But the uncomfortable sand is really my only complaint about this beach.  The water was absolutely gorgeous.  It was bright blue and completely see through.  I just kept thinking of the Charleston beaches and the murky brown water that was there.

But the biggest difference I saw between Spanish beaches and American beaches was the people.  The Spanish women are so much more confident with their bodies the American women are.  Pretty much every single woman, no matter their size, wears a bikini.  There were women, not only 3x my size but 3x my age wearing bikinis.  On top of that, most women go topless and they act like they aren’t over exposed at all.  It’s just a completely normal thing.  I think that’s one of the reasons I find Spaniards so attractive.  It’s not like they are really that much better looking than Americans (well, some of them are) but every single person in Spain walks around like they are the most beautiful person in the World and that is almost enough to make it true.  The way they just accept who they are and what their bodies look like without trying to change themselves is incredible to me.  It’s a very nice change from America, were it seems like every other commercial is for Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem or for some pill to make you skinny.  I have not seen one ad for weight loss products while I’ve been here. 

So on that note, I’ll leave you with a music video that my friend Josiah showed me.  This song is actually pretty popular in Spain right now.  It’s on the radio and I actually heard it in the discoteca the other night. I personally  think it’s ridiculous.

Pasapalabra

Well, I've already found my favorite Spanish television show.  My host mom, Carmen, pretty much always has the TV on. Her two favorite shows in the afternoon are Salvame and Pasapalabra.  I would say that Salvame is like the Spanish Jerry Springer, but they talk so fast, I've never been able to understand a single thing they say, so I could be completely wrong. All I understand is that they fight a lot.  Pasaplabra comes on at 8 here and I think I might be becoming addicted to it.  It's a game show that has like 5 challenges that the contestents need to complete.  My 2 favorite challenges are La Pista Musical and El Rosco.  In La Pista Musical, a few seconds of a song is played and the players have to guess what song it is.  If they can't figure it out, they can have up to five "pistas" or hints. El Rosco is the main challenge of the show.  One person from each team is chosen to play and they have to guess 26 different words that all start with a different letter of Spanish alphabet and if they guess all the words then their team wins the money thats in the pot.  The pot is a lot like the lottery in American because every day that no one gets all the words right, the pot gets bigger.  I think right now, it's up to 822,000 euros which is $11, 470, 913. My Spanish vocabulary has improved so much just from watching this show.  Every night I sit in front of the tv with my little pink notebook writing down all the words I don't know so I can look them up later.

Here's a youtube video of El Rosco. This guy is really good. Most people either get a word wrong or say Pasapalabra after 3 or 4 words.

Los Primeros Dias en Granada - The First days in Granada

Plaza de Isabel la Catolica

I can’t believe I’ve been in Granada for 5 days now.  It’s such an incredibly beautiful and laid back city. Granada is in the Andalucía region of Spain, 30 minutes from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and an hour and 30 minutes from the Mediterranean coast. While I’m here I will be staying with a Spanish woman named Carmen.  Carmen has been absolutely great so far.  Life with her is going to be so different then what I’m use to.  Carmen never wakes up before I leave for class so she lays breakfast out for me at night so it’s ready for me when I get up.  Breakfast in Spain is really simple. Just bread with Nutella and coffee.  Then I come home for lunch around 2:30.  Lunch is like the main meal here and Carmen is a great cook.  The first day she made paella with chicken.  After lunch is siesta time.  Carmen always says “Siesta es obligatorio.” I haven’t really gotten use to sleeping during the day yet but it’s definitely growing on me. Then dinner is at 9:30 and that’s usually a little smaller than lunch and is usually something like soup or frozen pizza.  Carmen is a really laid back person and as long as we don’t mess with the typical daily schedule, she pretty much lets us do our own thing.  She actually wants us to go out, drink the wine and just have a good time.  The only real downfall to this family stay is that there is no internet in our apartment so we have to go to either the ISA office or an internet café to get online. This is going to make things like Skype nearly impossible because I can online get online in pretty crowded places.

As far as the study program goes, they really wasted no time in starting classes.  The first day we were in Granada we had to take a placement test to see with classes we can take. In order to get credit at UK for the classes I take here, I need to take them in Spanish and in order to do that I needed to get a level 4 or higher on the placement test. I ended up in level five so I’m pretty happy about where I am. The day after the test, classes started. Right know, we are in the intensive month of language class so I’m technically only taking one class that lasts from 9am-1pm.  The class is 4 hours long and I have one teacher for the first 2 hours and another for the last 2 hours.   My class is also really small. There are only 9 other students.  It’s a big change from UK where my smallest class had 30-35 people.  So far I really like my class.  The other students are a lot of fun to talk to and the teachers.  It’s kind of hard to judge the work load for this class right now because we’ve only had 2 days of class. But then again we only have like 20 days left.

Hasta Luego!

Toledo

This morning, we woke up around 7:30 to leave Madrid for Toledo by 9. The drive to Toledo was only about an hour and a half.  As soon as we got there we went on walking tour through the city.  My favorite place on the tour was the convent because we learned a lot about the history of Queen Isabel and how she came to power.  The way I understood the story is that Isabel’s brother was the king of Spain and he had had a wife for about 10 years and they hadn’t been able to have a child.  The way the tour guide said it was “Su pene no funcionó”.  So the king divorced his wife and married again and this wife got pregnant…with someone else’s child.  So then he was dying and he had no heir so he changed the law that said there could not be a queen of Spain and Isabel became the queen.  

 Something else we learned that I thought was pretty cool is that there are two places that are thought to be where marzipan was first made.  One is like Northern Germany or something like that and the other is Toledo.  It’s said that the nuns at one of the convents in Toledo need to cook something to eat but all they had was sugar and almonds and when they mixed it together it reminded them of bread dough so they called it maza pan which is bread dough in Spanish.  I did get to try a piece at one of the most famous Mazapan stores in Toledo and I actually really liked it.

Another little fun fact is that the flag of Toledo is really really bright fuchsia and in Spanish it’s pronounced fuck-sia.

That night I went out with six other people from the group.  We first went to a nice restaurant and shared tapas and sangria.  We didn’t really know what to order so we asked our waiter, Esteban to pick four things that he thought we should try and he picked so really incredible food for us.  We had a ton of chorizo and potatoes.  It was a very good meal and priced well too.  50 euros divided by seven of us.

After dinner, we took a walk around the city to see it at night.  We ended up walking up this hill that was more of a residential area than the city. At first we were a little worried that we might not be in the best area of the city, but then we came across a group of women sitting outside eating dinner together.  We stood and talked to these women for about 30 minutes and they let us try a little bit of their food.  It was really interesting to hear about their lives and why they love Toledo so much. Most of them had lived in Toledo their whole lives and they are completely content with never leaving.  But of course, it’s such a beautiful city, I feel like if I lived there, I would be pretty happy to stay too.

Hasta Luego!

El Segundo Dia - The second day

Ok so it's really been about a week since I've been in Spain but I'm really behind and there is so much you need to know.

The second day in Madrid started at the Museum of La Reina Sofia. This is a pretty large museum of modern art.  The building is an old sanatorium for TB patients and it kind of has that old hospital look to it.  We had a tour guide who took us around to show us the most famous paintings by three very famous Spanish painters, Salvidor Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Joan Miro. My favorite painting was La Guernica by Pablo Picasso.   

Picasso painted this during the Spanish civil war as a response to the bombing of a small town called Guernica.

After the Museum we went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace).  The royal family doesn't live there any more but they still sign important documents and have important parts and stuff like that.

After the Palace, we had free time for the rest of the day. A group of friends and I went to Plaza Mayor, just to walk around.  I took the by a cute jewelry store that I remember going to the last time I was in Spain.  It's really cool to see places that I've been to before.

Well I'm still not really caught up to whats going on right now but I'll get there eventually.

Hasta Luego!