General Information on my Casa, Food, and Classes

Heyllo Everyone,

So I am going to try and update this blog regularly or with good regularity on Thursdays. I can’t promise you that it will always be Thursday that it is updated or that it will be updated every week. Those of you who know me well know that I have issues keeping in contact with people, etc, etc. So I am trying.

But you don’t really care about that. What you may be much more interested in is Spain. Which is where I currently live with my host mom Yolanda and two other girls named Kristin and Analisa. Kristin is the girl from the same program that I am in. She is very nice, though currently she has hurt her knee so that she has problems walking, which by the way sucks since we walk everywhere in Granada. Analisa is from a different program and she moved in on Tuesday of this week. She is very nice and I have walked around a bit with her and met some of her other friends. She had already been for six weeks but had to change residencies because she had some problems with her last roommates.

The way things work in my house is we each have our own room. We all share the bathroom. Showers are supposed to be five to ten minutes and we have to ask for the hot water to turn on. If you are the first shower you might have to wait like five or ten minutes with the water running for it to get warm. When you aren’t actively using the water, the water is supposed to be turned off because there is a continuous water shortage here (which is ironic because its rained almost every day I’ve been here).

The food here is really good. Yolanda makes all of our meals, and she´s a very good cook. Breakfast tends to be around 9 in the morning and consists of tea, two to three pieces of toast with butter and jam, and possibly a muffin of some kind. Lunch isn’t until about 330 or four in the afternoon and is the largest meal of the day. We normally have some kind of salad, bread, and then a main entre. The first day it was pumpkin soup, and yesterday we had some sort of sea food. Which i ate. It was okay. It had squid, clams, shrimp, something else, something else, and potatoes. I tried the clams and they were good. I still don´t really like squid, but i´m coping. And then dinner is not til about ten at night, and it tends to be something really basic. We had eggs and cheese on toast last night which was delicious. The night before we had grilled cheese with tomato. (Yes, i keep talking about food, but food is really important to me and I´m hungry right now.) To help with the long time between meals, I normally eat a piece of fruit in between classes at school around 12, and at night there are tapas (which are snacks) which eaten at any time really. I have no chance of getting scurvy while I´m here because I eat like two oranges every day. They are really good here.

So classes wise, I have two classes right now that meet every day. My first class is a basic spanish writing and speaking class and is from 10 to 11:30. My second class is a spanish culture class which is from 11:30 to 1. I like both my classes a lot and both classes are taught in spanish, which is sorta comprehend at times. At home, during meals, we aren´t allowed to speak in English. My spanish is better than i thought it was but its still really really bad.
After class, I tend to go walks by myself because my roommate injured her knee and has trouble walking until it gets better. There are fountains and plazas everywhere that are really pretty. I will post pictures eventually (hopefully next week). My favorite plaza is Plaza de los lobos. Its really pretty, and is a bit small, but has a fountain that spouts water and some orange trees next to it. It´s really small, but has a few benches for people to sit around and is really near my house.

During the week, I tend to explore and stay at home. Last monday, we all went out for dinner to celebrate two of the girl´s 21st birthdays (which of course doesn´t seem that important to the spanish because they can drink when they are 18). We went to an Italian resturante, and it was really nice. Afterwards a few people went out to a bar, but me and my roommate went home to sleep. On the weekends, we go out the dance clubs and the bars. We tend to leave our houses and meet up around 11, and then go to a few bars before getting the clubs around 1 or 2. And then we dance until about 4,5,6 in the morning. Both nights that I went out, I was out until about six am. The clubs are pretty packed until about 530am. 4am is considered early here. Dancing is really fun. Us girls are really good at helping save each other from the Spanish boys, who are really forward. We have system where we help pull the girl away from a really persistent boy and then get in between her and the boy.

All in all, its a very different time schedule than the one I am used to, but I am adjusting. I still go to bed at the same time I always did (which is like 2am, except on weekends thus far).

Interesting cultural things I have learned here thus far from either class or my host mom:
1. cuba libre is rum and coke
2. most spanish boys and girls lose thier virginity in a car or in a park (that was fun day in class)
3. a lot of people don´t know how to read, and only like 47% of the population read for fun
4. water is scarce and a problem
5. there is a only small amount of divorce, but it still more common than i thought it would be (my host mom is divorced)

And yea, I will talk to you all again soon. Love, Liz