Fish-capades,"to shit a brick," and puppies: just your average day in Granada

Written February 15, 2010

Hola hola coca cola! Haha, oh man, I crack myself up. That was what my high school Spanish teacher said every day to start class, I think. Señora Waldron, you would be so proud of me now! :P Anyways, on to more important things. Today I think I’ll write about the food here, and my classes. Trust me, you want to read this, unless of course your name is Melissa and you can’t stand fish. In which case, maybe skip this one, honey.

The food here is MAGNIFICENT. You know how they say the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest in the world? Ok, so they might mean in Greece or Italy or something, but I’m really praying they mean Spain, because I eat SO MUCH here, and I want to believe it’s good for me. No, guys, you don’t understand, I eat like a horse. Or maybe two horses. I don’t understand where the food goes; every lunchtime I look at the food Concha gives me and I’m like, “No way. No way that all of that is fitting into my stomach.” But GUYS—I’ve started finishing my portions. It’s LOCO. For the first time in my life, I am actually worried about putting on weight. I’m serious. I am praying to the gods of metabolism to help me out here.

Here’s a typical day of eating for me: Breakfast at 9 am, two pieces of toast, a croissant filled with chocolate, a small muffin, café con leche; Lunch at 2:30 or 3 pm, a large green salad with olives and tuna and corn, a large meat soup OR several rather large pieces of fish OR a plateful of paella OR something similar, half a baguette, and a piece of fruit; dinner at 9:30 pm, a ham and cheese sandwich, toasted to deliciousness, and a yogurt or pudding. SO MUCH FOOD. I swear to god I must eat several loaves of bread a week. But guys, the food in delicious. Really amazing. Concha says she’s not the best cook, but I have to disagree; she has yet to make me something I genuinely don’t like. Sometimes I get kind of sick of all the fish, but I’m all about complete cultural adaptation—I’m kind of hardcore, just sayin’—so I just smile and swallow.

Which reminds me to tell two food stories. The first week I was here, she made me a fish soup, which was mostly pretty yummy—potatoes and carrots and broth and what looked like scallops and clams… and then this other fish. It took me a minute to figure out what it was, but then I lifted a tentacle out of the soup. Ah. Calamari. Squid. Hahaha. I looked at Concha eating away and I thought to myself, “As weird as the texture or flavor may be, you can’t offend this lovely woman, who probably is pulling out all the stops for you during your first week here. I bet this is a delicacy. And hey, I’ve swallowed a lot more disgusting things in my life (cow udder? yech). Bottoms up!” And I ate every bite of that soup. It was kind of hard to chew some of the really intact tentacles just because I felt like I, personally, was killing the poor little Squidums, but you know what, that was one good soup.

The second story comes from today, actually. Concha was going to try to surprise me by making me pescado frito—fried fish, a local specialty. But she couldn’t get the frier to work exactly right, and it kind of just turned into grilled fish, which was, again, mostly wonderful! We had this cod-like white fish which was SO YUMMY, and then this chewy ring things—maybe more squid? Or octopus? Or something… I know it was a sea-life thing. And then, the coup de grace: little tiny fishies, eyes and bones and stomachs and everything still intact. I was like, oh hot damn, I don’t know if I can do this one. I watched to see how she ate them, and she just stuck three or four on her fork and popped ‘em into her mouth. Egad. So I copied her, and oh man, I am not really a picky eater, and fish usually goes down fine for me, but these little fishies tasted a little bit too much like little fishies, if you know what I mean. But you know what, I knew she’d tried so hard to make me a nice surprise and it hadn’t turned out how she wanted, and god help me, I was not going to make her feel any worse. So, I just paired the fish-ums with bread or pieces of the roasted pepper salad (DELICIOUS) or other fish bits, and I gobbled them down. Smiling the whole time. And as soon as I finished lunch, I brushed my teeth really well and ate three cookies that my momma back home sent me. SUCCESS.

So, yes, most of the food I eat here is TO DIE FOR yummy, but sometimes I get an odd little fishy and have to kind of grit my teeth to dig into it. Honestly, it is so worth it to me to make Concha feel good, and also because I convince myself that these odd fish bits must be really good for my health, right? Right.

On to the next subject! Which is classes! I am actually really excited about my classes this semester for two reasons: first of all, they seem really interesting and all my teachers seem great; secondly, because they seem a lot easier than what I’m used to. Hallelujah! A vacation after the nose-to-the-grindstone which was la France!!

My first class of the day today was Spanish Culture and Civilization, and it looks like it’s going to be a lecture-and-notes class, but the teacher is really engaging and asks questions for us to respond to, so I don’t think I’ll fall asleep or anything silly like that. Today we went over the history of Spain from prehistoric times until the Spanish Civil War—wow! It was a great overview, and got me really excited to see what we study in this class.

My second class was Translation, and I have to be honest—it will not be NEARLY as cool and inspiring as my Translation class with Francesca last semester. I was literally sitting in class thinking, “I miss Francesca! And translating in class! And Sylvia Plath and Henry James and Toni Morrison!” But you know what, it’ll be a really good, practical class for me to take if I ever need to get work translating for the tourism industry or a school or other academic institution, because those are the focuses of the class, along with translation technique. I’m hoping it’ll be a nice complement to what I learned last semester, and the teacher is, once again, a pretty cool guy, although, sadly, not Francesca. :(

My third class of the day was Tutorías, which I’ll only have once a week, and I really didn’t know what to expect from it. It’s a class of only four students and the teacher, and it’s supposed to supplement our Spanish learning with grammar and that sort of thing. The teacher is named José, and he is a kick in the pants. What a card. He cracks me up. His favorite word in English is “ass,” which he pronounces with a hilarious Chicago accent; his favorite phrase is “shit a brick,” because he says there’s nothing so expressive in Spanish. He says his life changed the day he learned that expression; there is a before and an after the “shit a brick” phrase came into his life, and he tries to use it every day now. He is also in love/obsessed with Diana Ross, and has pictures of her plastered all over his office, where we have class. He says his only hobby is: doing nothing. Haha! And he pronounces “hobby” the Spanish way, with a very guttural ‘h.’ And demands that we do the same. I might be in love with this man. Hahaha, what a character. Anyways, we’re actually going to be studying/learning street Spanish and Spanish slang in that class because we don’t really need to study grammar anymore (or at least he thinks we don’t).

My last Monday class is Flamenco and Traditional Music of Spain. The first day of class, this little, skinny, balding old man walked into the room, and I was like, oh boy, maybe this wasn’t the best class choice. However, as soon as he put on some Flamenco music and started stomping and banging on the desk like a wild man, I realized I’d made a very good choice. He is the most adorable old man ever; I want to put him in my pocket and take him home with me, you know? And he is SO passionate about music, and in particular Flamenco. Flamenco is so much more than just one tune or even one style of song, and it’s much more than just the dance or just the music or just the singing; it’s a whole culture, and there are so many subcultures and categories and important aspects of it. I am so excited about learning about it all and coming home an expert in this beautiful music!!

So those are my Monday/Wednesday classes and teachers in a nutshell. Tomorrow (today by the time I post this), I have Comparative Study of Literature and the Visual Arts with a really enthusiastic and amiable teacher, as well as Written and Oral Expression, which is a required class that I wasn’t excited about it at first, but I love the teacher and I think it’ll be good for my Spanish, so I’m happy with it after all. Yay!

I wanted to mention one more thing before I sign off and go to bed: today, I was feeling kind of delicate emotionally, kind of down. It was one of THOSE days. Today, I saw five different puppies on my walks to school and back. How can you not be cheered up by bouncy, wobbly-on-their-feet, excited-about-life, floppy-eared, big-pawed, puppy-dog-eyed little woggies that almost fall over when they shake? and run up to sniff at your ankles and smile their puppy dog tongue-y smiles at you? And FIVE of them in one day? Ok, universe, I get it, chin up. Thank you again. I love you, too.

Pura vida (evidentemente),

Kelsey