Sevilla, Olive Oil, and Why Boys Suck

First of all, I want to note that actual good guys are going the way of the dinosaur. Men are quite scummy these days. I just thought someone should raise the alarm on that one. (I’ll tell this story later on.) **Edit: Ok, FINE. Guys are generally kind of awesome, I just fell in with the wrong crowd for a minute there. And, to be fair, women can be just as bad (often worse) than men. I'm sorry I got upset and said that men are scum. Sorry, men. You aren't all bad, the bad guys just seem to be more... vocal.**

Anyways. This weekend, a few friends and I went to Sevilla, which is the capital of Andalucía and a really cool city. It was a bit rainy on and off during the day, but it was actually pretty awesome to hear thunder occasionally, and at one point, it was ACTUALLY RAINING—not sprinkling like it usually does, but really coming down! I definitely went and danced around in it for a minute. :)

The first place we went to we actually found on accident, because we were lost. :P It’s called the Plaza de España, and it’s one of the buildings that was built in 1929 (I think?) for a big fair thing, and it has representations of each Spanish municipality in these cute little booths, all done in lovely Sevillan tile work. We found the one for Granada and took pictures of it and with it, of course. The building is built in a semi-circle, and it has a cute little fake canal and very cool bridges that go over it—all very useless but beautiful.

Next, we walked through a lovely couple of parks in search of the Cathedral and Alcázar (palace), and played around on this awesome tree with a really cool, complex, above-ground root system. Then, we got lost in the old Jewish neighborhood—judería, which pretty much every Spanish seems to have, and they’re all beautiful and cool. (We did a lot of getting lost and finding cool places by accident.) Eventually, we actually made it to our destination, the Cathedral. I kind of feel like I’ve seen so many gothic cathedrals that they all blend together and look the same to me after awhile. However, this cathedral is supposedly the third biggest in Europe, which is pretty awesome. Also, its belltower was built by the same guy who built a belltower I saw in Rabat, Morocco, which is pretty awesome. It has a ramp up to the top instead of stairs so that whoever was going to ring the bells could ride a horsey up to the top, which I loved, because sometimes walking up or down a lot of stairs gets me pretty close to having a panic attack, actually. (I’m remembering the tower in Bruges – it was not very fun trying to come back down from the top. Poor Melissa had to coach me through it—I miss that girl!)

After seeing the cathedral, we took a lunch break on a bench in the square in front of it, and did some people watching and horsey watching—there are a lot of carriages that hang out there to take tourists on little jaunts. Then, we went to the Alcázar, which is the palace where the King stays when he visits Sevilla, and very similar to the Alhambra. One really cool thing about the Alcázar is that a lot of the paint is still intact, so you can get an idea of what the Alhambra would look like if more of its paint decorations were still intact, too. There were a ton of rooms, and we kept discovering new little nooks and courtyards, each one cooler and more charming than the last. Also, one of the girls I went with was pretty goofy because she’d stayed out all night the night before and was a bit sleep-deprived (ahem), so she got us all to sing Disney songs and dance around through the royal halls and gardens. It was pretty awesome. She also serenaded the fishies in one of the many fish ponds (which were all pretty grody looking, poor fishies) with a lovely rendition of “Come little fishies, I’ll taaake you away…” from that movie, the one with the witches… what was that called? Anyways, all in all it was a pretty awesome day.

The next day, my program took us to an old olive oil making place that is now only a museum, and it was super cool to see the way they press olive oil. We didn’t actually get to see them make any, since the machinery isn’t functional anymore, but still. Olive oil is such a huge part of the culture here, and I love how good it is for you, as well as how good it makes me feel—my hair and skin are definitely softer, for one thing! So that was fun. Plus, there was this cute doggie who accompanied us on our tour, and we named him Jack. I wanted to take him home and give him a bath, and maybe a few rabies shots. :P

So, I guess I should explain my frustration with men a little further. Besides the gross catcalling and horror stories of harassment I keep hearing from my friends about Spaniards, I have become pretty disillusioned with some of the guys in our program lately, too. A lot of them seem really nice, right up until you realize they’re just looking to get some action and don’t actually care too much about developing a friendship with you. I’m really NOT looking to hook up with anyone, and as soon as they figure that out, many of them have stopped being so friendly. It’s really quite charming. There’s one guy in particular who seems to be making the rounds of the girls, pursuing one until he hooks up with her, then ditching her to pursue someone else. And this is a guy I thought originally was really a sweetheart—shows you how good a judge of character I am!

Anyways, not all men are scum, as evidenced by my friends back home and two guys here who have yet to mar their reputation in my eyes. One of them is the guy who has been really great at supporting me and talking through things with me concerning my ex-boyfriend—he’s really challenged me to be strong and take care of myself first, which I appreciate a lot. He’s been a great friend to have here. The other guy is super nice, has a girlfriend, and is SUPER great with boundaries. He makes it clear that he isn’t going to do anything that would make his girlfriend uncomfortable (she is one lucky girl!), but he’s still really fun to hang out with. So last night when we all went out, I kind of just stuck with those guys, and had a really good time (even though some of the not-so-cool guys were around doing their not-so-cool thing, which got me all sorts of mad). They taught me how to eat sunflower seeds! And danced with me without being gross and sexual. It was very nice. So, I guess, most men are scum, but there’s still hope. Sort of.

I’m a little worried about how jaded and bitter I seem to be, but, well, I think it’s a normal part of the growing-up process, and I think perhaps it’s good for me to be seeing bad behavior and identifying it as such. Maybe it will help me to make better decisions about who I get involved with in the future. I’m pretty frustrated with dating people I’m not very compatible with (haha).

I am pretty excited about coming home—being away from all of my friends and family for a little over eight months is pretty difficult and exhausting. I feel SO lucky and SO grateful that I’ve had this experience—I’ve done a LOT of learning and growing up, and I wouldn’t change a thing that has happened in these eight months. Still, I miss home. I miss a sense of predictability in life. I miss not sticking out like a sore thumb—being stared at in the street actually gets old after awhile. :P

Love to all, and see you in a little over a month!!
Pura Vida,
Kelsey

Close Encounters of the Spanish Kind...

I realized the other day that I forgot to mention something that happened on the bus to Toledo—or, well, the bus from Granada to Madrid, but our ultimate goal was Toledo. About twenty minutes into the five hour trip, there was a commotion in the aisle next to me and Nora (I was by the window, Nora by the aisle), and people started shouting for the bus driver to stop. I couldn’t see what had happened in the aisle from my seat, so I was confused, but when the bus pulled over, I sort of peeked over Nora and saw that a guy was laying face-down in the aisle. Apparently, he just slumped over and fell into the aisle. A couple of guys got him turned over and eventually he stood up with their help and they took him outside. When he was turned over and I saw his face, he looked so sad. He was crying, and just looked really sad. There was a med student on the bus that went outside with them, and someone ran to a gas station to get a bottle of water for him, and then we just waited for an ambulance to get there to take him somewhere to get checked out. It was kind of a surreal experience, but I’m glad it happened on a bus rather than a plane or something like that where you can’t just pull over. I was also impressed that everyone was so helpful and patient. So that was our little unplanned adventure on the way to Toledo. I hope he’s ok, poor guy.

This weekend has been a whirlwind and a workout! On Friday, I walked up to the Albaycín with Luis and Jocy to watch the sunset on the Alhambra and see all the lights come on and such. It was really fun to hang out with them and just sit and talk and watch the light change over the cityscape. We were sitting on this ledge-wall-thing that divides the lookout from the street below, which has a pretty big drop to the street. I’m afraid of heights, so I was sitting on the edge of the wall that was on the lookout side and trying not to look down at all on the other side, because it made my head spin. Luis and Jocy were on either side of me, and both were sitting with their feet dangling over the street-side, and every once in awhile one of them would forget they were sitting so close to the edge and be like, “Wow, I almost lost my balance, haha!” I kept getting nervous for them and like grabbing their arm in panic that they were going to fall over; it was actually really hilarious, but I was definitely relieved when we got up and moved away from the wall, haha.

That night, I went out with them and this other guy from our program, Russell, and these other Americans from a different program who were really nice and fun. We went to a tapas bar, and then to this bar called L’Scandelo where we’ve been developing a relationship with the bartenders and we get really cheap (sometimes free) drinks. Most nights, nothing extraordinarily exciting happens, but that night, I had two rather interesting encounters. First, this bachelorette party arrives and the bride approaches us to ask me and Jocy to help her do a puzzle. She’s probably in her mid-forties, and her friends had four different little challenges for her to do over the night, the first of which was the puzzle. Next, she had to get five people to jump rope—and yup, you guessed it, we helped her with that one, too! That was definitely the most interesting challenge, just because everyone had been drinking for at least a few hours at that point—and the bride was very drunk—so our coordination was not fantastic. I’ll let you imagine for yourselves the hilarity that ensued. Next, they had a little toy dartboard with magnetic darts and they split us Americans up into two teams of three and had us compete, with free shots as our reward. Of course, the bride was basically in love with us by then, and she ended up buying shots for all of us. Her last challenge was to get us all to sing a song in Spanish, which was almost impossible, because almost none of us knew any songs in Spanish, and we ended up kind of faking along with “Estas son las mañanitas…” which was hilarious.

My second interesting encounter was after the bride and her entourage left, and I was starting to think seriously about going home for the night since I had early morning plans. This random guy came over and started talking to me and Jocy and another girl (who was it at that point? I can’t remember her name, an American girl I’d just met that night). He was from Madrid and only in Granada for the weekend, and he said he was going to give us Spanish lessons, at which point I was already like, ok, sketchy man, whatever. Our first “lesson” was the two-kiss-on-the-cheek thing, which I was also wary of, but definitely expecting, since that is trick #1 that you learn to spot as a gringa (or guiri, as we’re called here) around sketchy Spanish guys. So he did the kisses with Jocy, and then with me, and then all of a sudden he had a hold of one of my arms and his other arm around my waist and was talking in my ear, saying, “Wow, just those two cheek kisses and I’m already in love with you!” So I’m like leaning back away from him, but he has me by the waist so I can’t exactly move away (don’t worry, I didn’t feel unsafe—this guy was a sketchmeister for sure, but he wasn’t dangerous, especially when I had a few good guy friends a few feet away if I needed them, so I was just kind of amused, and definitely not scared). He told me he was going skiing the next day and wanted me to come with him, and I just said, nope, I don’t ski, while still trying to subtly worm my way away from him. As he was wheedling and asking me why I was soooo busy I couldn’t spend the day with him, I got my hand free—success! After about five minutes of bantering back and forth and him saying, “come on come on come on!” and me saying, “no no no!” he said, “ok, I’ll give you thirty seconds to come up with a decent excuse not to come up to the mountains with me tomorrow” and backed away a tiny bit. As soon as his arm wasn’t around my waist anymore, bam, in swooped one of my new guy friends (Ryan, I’d just met him that night, but I think I might have a class with him?) and, taking my hand, leaned over and said, “Hey, are you ok?” I was kind of still reeling from Intense Madrid Man, so I just kind of smiled and nodded my head slightly, and he was like, “Are you sure?” And I just squeezed his hand and was like, “Well, UM.” And he totally took over the situation, stepped in front of me and engaged the Madrid guy in conversation for a few minutes, after which the guy said goodbye, looked at me kind of disappointedly, and left the bar with his friend. I was like, holy crap, I need to go out with you more often, new friend!! I mean, I could have eventually gotten rid of the guy, but when I’m a few drinks in, really tired, my Spanish is fuzzy, and the guy is particularly insistent and doesn’t give me any good reason to be particularly MEAN to him, it does take awhile to get them to go away. I am curious to know what Ryan said to the guy, because it worked really well and he didn’t even get feisty and try to pick a fight or anything! I always try NOT to let my guy friends get involved in a situation where a guy is hitting on me and I don’t want him to, just because if the guy gets upset or belligerent and violent, it’s very unlikely he’ll hit me (at least in Spain, from what I can tell), but it is VERY likely he would hit a guy friend who’s trying to defend me. Plus, I can defend myself pretty well, sometimes it just takes me awhile to put my foot down, you know? I’m way too nice. I feel like any guy who has the guts to come straight up to me and say, “I’m crazy about you, please go out with me” deserves at least a kind rejection, you know? No, maybe I’m just way too nice. Anyways, that was my second interesting encounter of the night.

So, after getting home and into bed at around 4 am, I woke up at 8:15 so I could go up to las Alupjarras with my friend Katie the next morning. Haha, weee! I was really impressed with how it wasn’t too difficult at all, actually. I was sleepy, of course, but I didn’t even have a headache or anything like that. My hair still smelled like bar, but I just put it up and said to myself, I’ll deal with that later. We didn’t really have a plan, so once we got up into the mountains, we just got off the bus in a little town called Órgiva, and were like, now what? Once we realized how stupid we were for not having planned anything at ALL, we couldn’t stop laughing at ourselves. We found the tourism office, got a few rather unhelpful maps, had a coffee and some lunch, and then set off on a random road out of town to explore the mountains a bit. We ended up having a blast wandering around the town and up this beautiful curvy road where we met a doggy friend, who we named Waldo. He was adorable and followed us all the way up and most of the way down the road, and I wuv him. It was a great day, and super fun to just get out of town and explore a different, beautiful part of the area with a good friend.

I got back home at around 7:30 at night, and went into my room for a bit to empty my bag and settle in. I put my headphones in for a few minutes while I was putting my pictures on my computer, and when I took them out, I heard Concha throwing up in the bathroom. I came rushing into the hall (of course), and her best friend was coming in at the same moment—Concha must have called her when she started not feeling well. Concha literally looked grayish green and like she might faint, but she didn’t want to go to the doctor or anything like that, so we put her to bed, and then her friend left. I was, of course, worried about her, but there wasn’t exactly much I could do—I know from experience that sometimes you just need to sleep that stuff off, especially stomach flu-like illnesses. I took a quick shower, then went to bed, too, but I left both our bedroom doors open so I could hear her snoring and know she was ok. Eventually I fell asleep (really early, I imagine, since I got into bed at around 10), and when I woke up at 10:30 this morning, my door was closed and Concha was up and about, doing her normal Sunday stuff. I got up and asked her how she was, and she said she’s feeling ok, although still a little punky, of course. She had plans to go see La Traviata tonight, but I don’t know if she’ll end up going. I told her to just sit down and take the day off, but she’s super stubborn and insists on doing SOMETHING, even if it’s just dusting, so that she doesn’t feel so useless. I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on her over the next few days, but I think the worst is over. Uy uy uy, what a semester of stomach illnesses it has been! What is up with that?

This next weekend we’re going to Madrid with our program, which is super exciting!! Then it’s only a few more weeks until midterms—eek! I have no idea what to expect, because I still haven’t turned in any work to any of my teachers, but I don’t think it will be TOO awful. I guess we’ll see. :)

I hope everyone is doing well and that you’re all enjoying the beginnings of Spring wherever you are!

Pura vida,
Kelsey

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