Once upon a fortnight...

So it’s been almost two weeks since I last wrote anything.  Sorry about that.  So what’s new?  Let’s see…

Classes

I’ve started two of my five classes.  Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I have Ancient Mediterranean History from 9-11.  It’s completely in Spanish which automatically makes it ten times harder than any other class I’ve ever taken. There are about 30 Spaniards and 2 other Americans in this class.  One difference that I noticed right away was that of those 30, I would say 10 are 40 or older.  The other class I have right now is an intensive language class, every day, for 3 hours… I only have one week left of this and then I’ll start my three other classes: Art and Artists from Picasso to Topias, Modern Spanish Literature, and Spanish Language and Society (although I’m thinking of switching that to another Spanish grammar class).

Food

I love the food here.  I even like things here that I didn’t like before.  For example, one night for dinner this week we had pizza with not only cheese and ham, but also mushrooms, onions, and olives.   And I liked it! Other things I like here include croquetas (an assortment of meat inside a breaded crust), tortillas de patatas (basically potato chunks fried in eggs), patatas bravas (potatoes, again, cubed, fried, and topped with a delicious sauce), wine, sangria, salad with tuna in it, breaded fish, pan con tomate (I must admit this isn’t my favorite- it’s bread (hard bread) with tomato juice squeezed on top),  hamburgers, lamb, rice, some sort of bean thing that I don’t know the English or Spanish name of, and probably a lot more that I’m not thinking of right now.

Daily habits

Eating habits are pretty straight forward.  Spaniards eat all the time.  Technically the meals are only: desayuno (breakfast) -around 8 or so they have coffee or tea and maybe some toast or cereal; almuerzo (lunch)- around 2 or 3 they have a bocadillo (basically just a sandwhich but it’s made with one loaf of French bread and not slices of bread like we’re used to) with ham and cheese; and cena (dinner)-around 8 or 9 they have any one (or more) of the various things mentioned above.  Besides the three meals, they pinchar (snack) during the rest of the day, well, mostly at 11am and 5 or 6pm.  During my class from 9-11 we have a 15 minute break in which most of the students leave the class to either smoke, or buy/eat food.  We also have a 20 minute break during my 3 hour class to eat something if we want. 

Everything is later here, not just the main meals.  Max and Berta have school from 9-5 everyday.  Stores don’t open until 10ish and most are open until 8 or 9. 

What else?  … Everyone smokes (basically).  Thankfully, it is now illegal (as of December 26^th) to smoke inside any public building or within so many meters (50?) of a school.

Language Ability

 They say having dreams in another language is when you know you’ve really mastered a language.  Well, I haven’t mastered Spanish, that’s for sure, but I have had two dreams that I remember in which someone spoke in Spanish.  Don’t get too excited though, it was the same short phrases and broken Spanish that I attempt to use during the day.  Apparently, now I’m trying to use it at night too. I thought I would be doing a lot better by now.  I guess I had unrealistic expectations.  I must admit, I am getting better.  I can tell when one word ends and another begins when people talk to me now.  I’m not (too) afraid to say something in the past tense and future isn’t too bad either.  Maybe my feeling of not getting any better is really because I make the same number of mistakes and forget just as many words as before but now I’m trying to use more obscure words and more complicated phrases (at least I can hope, right?). 

Other things

I’m freezing right now.  I know all of you back in Michigan are thinking “it’s nowhere near as cold in Barcelona as it is here.”  And you are correct, however, you don’t have to walk outside for 20 minutes to get to/from your car, and your heating systems actually keep your house warm.  It’s around 60-63 degrees in my room right now.  The house is heated by a couple of space heaters.  There is one in the living/dining room and one in the bathroom.  That area of the apartment isn’t too bad…  Another thing, I didn’t bring sweatshirts/sweatpants to wear around the house like I normally would in the US if our house ever got this cold.

I have a correction to make.  In my last post I said that there were only two days every year on which things go on sale.  I was wrong.  Las rebajas are still underway and apparently they last until the end of February and each week things are marked down more and more in order to get rid of the winter inventory.  This happens again throughout July and August.

So, to recap, I love it here.  The language is difficult at times which makes other things difficult but I love my family here and they make delicious food for me every night.   What more could I ask for?

…maybe an extra blanket…