Meta #1: Comer todo.

Dutiful readers (ha), if you recall from my first entry, my first goal in coming to Spain was to eat everything. The only thing I knew about Spanish food coming here was that tapas are considered standard Spanish fare, but I didn't know what to expect in a tapa. Sr. Abadía told us in ninth grade that the small plates were designed to put on top of a wine glass in the middle ages so that flies didn't get in, and that's as much as I knew. I had no idea what to expect from Catalan food.

In the past couple weeks I've more or less fallen in love, so I'm compiling a List Of Awesome Barcelona Culinary Deliciousness.

Pan con Tomate

During the Spanish Civil War, people only had access to bread that was gross and hard, so they decided to be geniuses and rub tomatoes on it to make it softer and easier to eat.  Now pan con tomate is also rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with olive oil and a little bit of salt, and it's a staple at my señora's dinner table.  Pan con tomate is also used as sandwich bread and you can order it at a tapas bar.  It's simple, but no one on CIEE can stop eating it.

Tortilla de Patatas

On my first night in my homestay, my señora made me tortilla con patatas.  It's basically an omelet with onion and potato, and it's another one of those simple things that I can't get enough of.  Angela has made it for dinner three times and it's always a little different - she claims it's because she uses different kinds of onions - and it's always amazing.

Paella

It's more or less impossible to talk about Spanish food without mentioning paella, a rice dish that comes originally from Valencia.  I've somehow only had it once here, but it was such an experience that I'm okay with that.  Paella is a rice dish served with seafood and veggies and sometimes meat, and you can get a paella negra, which gets its color from squid ink.  When I got it in Sitges, it came out to the table in the huge black pan pictured above.  It's the kind of food that's super filling but impossible to stop eating.  Delightful with sangría.

Patatas Bravas

Patatas bravas are fried potatoes with a spicy, creamy tomato sauce and they are invariably delicious. Whenever we go out to get tapas, or even just a couple of beers, someone orders these and then everyone else gets the same idea and soon enough, everyone has a million of them. Different places have different sauces and some of them are a lot spicier than others, and I have yet to try one I don't love.

Bizcocho

My señora is obsessed with bizcocho, which can mean many things but in this case it's a cake.  Seriously, obsessed.  She has a standard recipe that she uses and then she sometimes adds things like chocolate or lemon zest or flavored yogurt.  She never adds sugar, which I think is crazy, but it works (although I thought the chocolate one could have used a little).  It's pretty amazing breakfast food, and she leaves it in the same bowl she bakes it in so it stays moist.  She gave me the recipe (except it'll need some deciphering, what does 200 grams of flour mean?) so I'm going to make it all the time at home.  There's one in the kitchen and it's taking basically all of my willpower to not eat it all right now.

Jamón con... pues, con todo 

This picture perfectly expresses how the Catalan people feel about ham.  All the time and with everything, please.

Clara y Tinto de Verano

Clara is half beer and half Fanta limón.  Tinto de verano is half red wine, half Fanta limón.  Prior to tasting both of these things I was convinced that they would be the weirdest things in the world, but they're surprisingly delicious.  Clara is one of the more refreshing things I've ever had in my life, and tinto de verano comes in a close second.  It actually tastes a lot like sangría, but it's not as sweet.

Things to not eat in Spain: hamburgers.  They usually serve them without a bun, and if you get homesick and order one at an American bar, it'll be well seasoned and delicious but the bun will be sloppy and confused.  Butter: they don't use it here, it's always olive oil. The giant heart-shaped cookies at the bakery by your school: because you'll develop an addiction, which is dangerous because those things are cheap and absolutely incredible.

The phrase I plan to stop using with such alarming frequency: "una bola de [insert gelato flavor here] en cono, por favor."  I have no regrets about the apple gelato, though. That was incredible.

I'm still alive.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0625/1224273270363.html

In case you saw that story, which has been mysteriously absent from all US news media I could find, I'm okay.  Somehow almost 30 people decided it was a really good idea to run across some train tracks in front of a speeding train, 13 people died, and they actually had to use forensic evidence to find the remains of one of the bodies.  Everyone here is pretty shaken up about it and CIEE called all of us to make sure that we were still alive and now everyone is obsessed with train safety, which is probably a good thing.

I didn't get run over by a train, so my San Juan was really great! We hung out and drank wine on the beach and watched fireworks. It was insane how many little kids were around in the wee hours of the morning, setting off firecrackers and sparklers and just running around. We all ended up leaving before everyone ran into the ocean, but I'm okay with that. I think 4:30 was a respectable time to get home.

 This is why we decided to go home. We were all a little sleepy. Incidentally the girl who's sitting up isn't on our program, she's a random Spanish girl who told us in confused English that she wanted to go to America and "fix the cows, I'm studying to be vet, vet to be vet, for animals."

A lot of people took advantage of the long weekend to travel so classes on Friday were pretty empty. My Spanish class combined with the intermediate class because there were only four of us total, and we watched Volver, which I loved. I was the only person in art history, so my professor told me a little bit about Modernisme and then we walked around the Parc de la Ciutadella and she told me about buildings and statues. It was amazing.

One of the first works Gaudí ever did!

 This is Alicia, my art history professor. She's Andorran and adorable and she knows everything.

Spain won against Chile in the world cup game! But there wasn't as much celebration here as you would think. This is why:

Graffiti on the wall by the Dalí museum.  The Catalan flag with the Cuban blue triangle and star is an extremist symbol. I'm not really clear on why this sentiment is expressed in English, but it sums up the argument nicely.

To do this weekend: short essay on Spanglish, 500 words of a research paper (ie figure out what to write about for a research paper!), some grammar exercises, watch the USA game in a stereotypically American bar, and shopping shopping shopping. For one thing, Matt and Miriam have birthdays! And I really want a cookbook.

On Sunday: bullfighting? I'm super torn but it's a typically Spanish experience that I feel like I should have. I'm still on the fence.

Fiesta de San Juan!

La Fiesta de San Juan is one of the biggest parties of the year in Barcelona.  It marks the shortest night of the year, the summer solstice, and they have special cakes for the occasion.  I am all for any celebration that gets its own cakes.  Everyone gets a long weekend (except CIEE, we have class on Friday) and on Wednesday night people go crazy.  Angela has basically told me that she will be incredible disappointed with me if I'm back at any point before 6 AM.

Everyone goes to the beach and parties and then at some point everyone runs (naked) into the ocean and the metro runs all night which is a big deal because it usually closes at midnight on weeknights and then - this is what I'm looking forward to the most - everyone eats churros dipped in chocolate.

I'm a little bit in love with the idea of taking a big long stick of fried stuff and dipping it in chocolate.

CIEErs are meeting on the beach at around 10:30 and our plan is to basically do what the locals do (although most of us are bringing bathing suits.)  Angela looked in horror at my skirt and tank top, which I wore to class today, and told me that I needed to wear jeans and socks!  Because it's cold, and there are drogas.  She was trying to tell me that I might step on a needle because apparently people shoot up on the beach (she's a little paranoid) but for some reason she started miming drug use so I thought she was saying that people would try to inject me with heroin.  Which, on top of being freaky, would not be at all affected by my decision to wear socks.

So, dear readers, expect an update about what will surely be one of the more interesting nights of my life!  And rest assured that I will (probably) not be ninja-drugged on the beach.

The one thing you can say about Barcelona is that it never fails to be interesting.

Excursión is Spanish for field trip.

CIEE Barcelona is obsessed with excursiones.  We go on them all the time in class and wander around the city and listen to our professors talk about how awesome Barcelona is, and we have two planned for the whole group.  Our first was the Cava/Sitges trip, and we just got back from our second, which was advertised as French Catalonia and the Costa Brava.

Naturally everyone on the trip was convinced that we were going to be in France for the weekend. We dug out our passports, busted out the French phrase books, and tried to remember how to ask for the bathroom (ou se trouve les (las? I never know) toilettes, is how Rosetta Stone taught me) to prepare for what we thought was to be our epic French adventure.

Then we got our itineraries and realized that the we were going to spend a grand total of three hours in Colliure, a town in French Catalonia that a kid in the group described as "six inches wide."  So, if I promised you stories of my epic French adventure, here they are: we walked around and saw the beach (so pretty!) and then we got crepes and then I bought earrings.  One kid spent a full hour looking for a soap store he saw earlier and refused to listen when we told him that ALL of the stores in that town sold soap.  It was gorgeous and I loved it but it was kind of a relief when we got back to Spain and we all knew how to speak the language again.  (Apparently that was the point of the excursión. CIEE employs crafty geniuses.)

France is beautiful! Even if I can't communicate with anyone there.

After that we left France and made our way to a town called Palamós on the Costa Brava, which is adorable and tiny even if it does have some questionable architecture.  We stayed at a hotel that normally doesn't allow groups so Lizzie, our "mama duck," told us that we all had to be ninja mice and not make any noise on our way in and out of the hotel.  Needless to say that didn't happen at all, but I appreciated the metaphor.

To get to know Palamós we did a bike tour! And then it started pouring and then we jumped fully clothed in the Mediterranean Sea and it was the best thing I've ever done in my entire life.

Right before the bike tour I walked into a plant and then I bled profusely.  I have lots of painful scratches on my arm because I was mauled by a plant. I'm clearly all kinds of coordinated.

We went to see some Greek and Roman ruins and I had a hard time accepting anything the tour guide said as fact without a clear presentation of the archaeological evidence used to arrive at her conclusions. It was a problem but also kind of wonderful. I got a sunburn.

I wish we'd spent less time at the ruins because we didn't have as much time for the Dalí museum! It was incredible. He spent the last 15 years of his life planning it and it's not chronological at all and he just decided to put things where he thought they were cool. He apparently made a comparison between himself and Don Quixote, but he said that unlike Don Quixote he was capable of coming back from insanity and returning to a sane place.

That being said he used to put honey on his mustache and speak to the flies that landed there.

 Salvador Dalí was very proud of his bigote.

Today we did a pottery workshop in Bisbal d'Epordà, which is the ceramics capital of Catalonia.  We painted pots.  They are clearly extremely beautiful.  They have a really neat crackle thing going on and I really like the one I did, actually.  We also got a bigger pot that we didn't have time to paint but they all have unique crackle patterns and I love the one I picked out. And then I somehow accumulated three other little pots that other people didn't want so now I have four little pots and they're amazing.  I'm going to use them as beverage receptacles!  I'm probably going to give the bigger one to my señora as a thank you for housing me present because I have no idea how to transport it home and it seems like the kind of thing she'd really like.

Not this kind of Bisbal.

After the pottery workshop (at which I augmented my sunburn to a pretty extreme degree) we went to a little town called Pals.  The idea of a bus dropping a bunch of students off in a small town (this one was also about six inches wide) for a couple hours while we explored and got lunch reminded me a lot of American Music Abroad!  And then I got a little homesick.

I got an Agatha Christie book - Asesinato en Mesopotamia - at a store called Happy Books (I'm saving that bag forever) and I'm super excited to read it, but we have midterms next week and they effectively scheduled our weekend so that we would have no time at all to do any homework, so I'm going to be busy in the next couple days.  Still, it's always nice to have a book to read on the metro.

Also, leave me comments and let me know how much you looooove me.

De cuerdo y loco, todos tenemos un poco

For my Spanish class we had to write a page based on the tema Barcelona.  We had to come up with our own problema (thesis, basically) and then desarrollar.  I wrote about my crazy host mom.  I haven't edited it but it's not due until Thursday.  Basically I wanted to brag about having finished an assignment 49 hours and fourteen minutes before it's due.  I can't remember the last time that happened.

Anyway, aquí hay:

Vivir con una familia en un país extranjero es una experiencia bien rara.  El estudiante elige hacerlo para conocer mejor la cultura y practicar más el idioma, y sí logra estas cosas, pero ha estado puesto en la situación extraña de buscar su papel en la casa.  No es una parte verdadera de la familia pero no es independiente tampoco.  Tiene su habitación cerca del resto de la familia y tiene que estar en casa para cenar y llamar a la señora de la casa si haya un cambio de planes, pero la verdad es que la señora no sea su madre.

Conocí a mi señora, Angela, al vestíbulo del hotel dos días después de llegar en España.  Antes de este conocimiento nunca había oído nada sobre ella sino algo que me ha dicho Marco, un estudiante español, treinta segundos antes de conocerla por la primera vez - «tu señora es loca, diviértete.»

Esto me puso un poco nerviosa.

Nos conocimos y hicimos la cosa con los besos que nunca había hecho antes – ahora soy experta – y empezamos a hablar.  A pesar del cansancio acuciante que venía del desfase horario me daba cuenta lentamente de que sí, Angela era loca.  Después de los saludos iniciales la primera cosa que me dijo fue que el Catalán sea un idioma muy feo y la idea de una Cataluña separada de España sea «una locura.»  Se mudó de Madrid a Barcelona cuando tuvo seis años y todavía quiere tener nada que ver con la cultura catalana.  Me sorprendí oír esto porque en Estados Unidos normalmente no hablamos de la política antes de conocer a una persona por el miedo de ofenderla.  La primera cosa que he aprendido sobre Angela es que no le importe si sus ideas le ofenda a alguien, y que tenga creencias bien definidas.

Condujo por todas partes de Barcelona y me dijo que había unos barrios para evitar por la noche a causa de «los árabes y malos negros, y no hablo de los negros de la Universidad.  Estos negros son malos. Tienen drogas.»  Me interesó que solamente explicó la diferencia entre buenos negros y malos negros, y implicó que todos los árabes fueron malos.  Siguiendo con este tema me preguntó si fuera musulmana, porque no había querido una estudiante musulmana, y me invitó a venir a visitarle en el invierno antes de que yo pudiera decir diez palabras.  Cuando llegamos a su casa me mostró su casa, incluyendo mi baño, mi habitación, y su cuarto de la ropa.  Es tan grande como su habitación y conté por lo menos quince pares de zapatos.  No he pretendido contar las bolsas.

Hablar con Angela es recibir un flujo constante de la información, y requiere la habilidad de ignorar un poco de lo que dice.  Me ha dicho que nunca cocina con la sal porque es muy malo para la salud, es mejor no poner el filtro solar porque tomar el sol asiste en la absorción de algunas vitaminas, vivir con el estrés causa el cáncer, y vivir sin chocolate no vale la pena.  Estoy de acuerdo con ella solamente con este último consejo, pero he aprendido sonreír y asentir un poco con la cabeza y decir que sí, el estrés causa el cáncer y intentaré trabajar menos.

He vivido en Barcelona con Angela por una semana y no cambiara mi situación si podría.  Para siempre hay una conversación nueva llena de consejos y locura.

Tú vs. Ud.

I've always learned in my Spanish classes in school that you use tú for people your own age and Usted for older people - basically, it's a formal mark of respect. Our guidebook for CIEE told us that we should refer to our host mothers as Usted unless instructed to do otherwise. So, I've been calling Angela Usted and yesterday I left her a note with my cell phone number when I went out for the day saying "para que tenga Ud. mi información."

Her response when I got home was, "no me llamas Usted! Usted es para una persona mayor que no conoces bien!"

Interesantemente he estado usando Ud. porque ella es una persona mayor que no conozco bien.

We did a reading in my Spanish class today about the differences between the two words, and it basically boils down to calling someone ma'am (at least, when you're not in the South). Forty-somethings wearing a little bit too much makeup can get really self-conscious about it.

In other news I made friends with a whole group of kids on the metro today. I think they were around seven and I was eating an ice cream cone and I made faces at them through the window and they thought I was the coolest.

Paella, Playa, y Sangría

First off, last night: tapas were delicious and flamenco was incredible. Flamenco isn't a Catalonian thing - it's from Andalucía, which is all the way across the country - but there's still a little bit here, mostly for tourists I think. At least, the place where we went had drunk British guys and lots of flash photography. It was still absolutely incredible and it was really interesting to see first hand the Muslim influence on Spanish culture. The flamenco singing is an obvious reference to Islam. The whole thing is really beautiful and there's a lot of clapping and whirling and hip moving and feet tapping and it's easy to get caught up in it. After the flamenco show we all went out to a bar and I ordered drinks legally for the first time in my life (yay?) and we all had fun and I ended up getting the very last train back to my homestay. The metro closes at 2 on Fridays. I realized that all of my clothes reeked of cigarettes, but Angela washed them and they now smell like scented laundry detergent, which I usually hate but greatly prefer to cigarettes.

Then after a whopping five hours of sleep, I woke up and we went on a Cava tour and tasting! Cava is Spanish champagne that they're not allowed to call champagne because champagne is French. We toured the storage caves and our guide told us that the wooden barrels down there were purely for decoration because people like to get married there and even though the process has been modernized for 30 years they still like to keep the relics around for fun. Then we got on a train to explore the biggest wine cellar in the world and it was kind of like a roller coaster in that we almost died multiple times and it was great fun! The tasting was amazing - we had two, a pinot noir and a dry one whose name I can't remember that is apparently one of their best. I liked the dry one the best. I do think it was silly to give a bunch of hungover college students two full glasses of cava (I know of at least two people who were still drunk from the night before) but I enjoyed it.

The world's biggest wine cellar! It can hold 100 million bottles, which as it turns out is a lot.

After the tour we went to a little town called Sitges, which is around an hour outside of Barcelona. Sitges is the kind of town that you imagine when you hear the word Mediterranean. It's on the sea like Barcelona is, but it's a lot more quaint and the beaches are cleaner. City beaches are never really the best, I've learned. There's a huge church overlooking the town and it's incredibly picturesque. A friend and I wandered around for a bit and explored and then we hung out with some people on the beach and then we ate paella and had sangría and it was absolutely ideal. The weather was perfect and the food was delicious and it was a little expensive, but worth it for the experience of eating right on the beach.




Sitges might actually be the most beautiful place I've ever been.

And then we tried to find the train station and we finally did (after first finding the train, which was not as helpful as we had hoped) and then our train stopped and we all had to get off because something terrible happened (I have no idea what) so then we got on a new train but it was really crowded and we weren't really sure where it was going so we got off and then got on another train and that ended up going where we wanted to go but we got off at a weird place so we wandered around until we found the Passeig de Gracia and then I realized that I know the metro better than I think I do.

Anyway, getting lost with someone is much better than getting lost by yourself. Samantha and I are nomads now.

Angela's daughter loves Bon Jovi and we listened to all the random slow dance 80's songs we could find at dinner today and I listened to Angela tell me all about how tomando el sol is good for your health because you absorb vitamins that way (which is true) and how you can't avoid cancer anyway so you might as well not wear sunscreen (which is not true). Now she is trying to further my cultural education by making me watch Robert Redford and Meryl Streep movies dubbed in Spanish.

As of yet, any efforts to find Firefly in Spanish have been unsuccessful.

It's midnight on a Saturday and I think everyone I know is drunk and watching the World Cup (or celebrating, or bemoaning) but my bed is very comfortable and I walked around a lot today and I can't seem to bring myself to get up to go out. I'm lame but I think I like it that way.

Oh, and the biggest mistake of my life was leaving my camera at home. It's sitting on my bookshelf right now. I couldn't find my USB cord so I forgot entirely about the camera and now I'm kicking myself. Everyone else is taking pictures and a million are going to end up on Facebook and I'm going to steal them for my own, but in the mean time I'm posting pictures here from Google Imágenes España.