One last picture that I can't help but post:

My dad at the Eiffel Tower :)

Paris and a new semester

Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts on this blog. It has been a very busy month.

Paris was amazing. My dad and I spent four days there and loved every minute of it. We saw the Louvre museum, Notre Dame, Shakespeare and Company, the Ópera house, and the Eiffel Tower! My favorite part, by far, was the Eiffel Tower. Somehow I never imagined that it would be that huge in real life.

The Eiffel Tower!

Eiffel Tower at night

We also wandered around aimlessly and spent a lot of time on the Metro. We struggled a lot because of our lack of French but we managed to convey our meaning with gestures. Luckily the staff at our hotel spoke English.

The most delicious thing I ate in Paris: crepes. Everywhere you go there are crepe stands where you can watch them fry your crepes and add cheese, ham, egg, Nutella, banana, or whatever you want. It was a delicious food experience.

After Paris we spent a couple of days in Barcelona. Ahh, the ocean! It wasn't warm enough to swim but I couldn't resist taking my shoes off and walking in the sand. The weather was beautiful in Barcelona and we were kind of burned out on sight seeing from Paris, so we wandered around a lot less. We saw La Sagrada Familia and also watched some teams playing a version of Bocce ball.

Dad at the top of the tower of La Sagrada Familia

Ocean

The last couple of days before my dad flew out we spent in Burgos, so he could see where I live and meet the Santidrians! My dad came over for supper the first night he was here and he and Eva hit it off immediately. They both hammed it up and giggled a lot. By the time my dad left a few days later, he and the kids had invented their own version of the "fist bump." I'm not sure who enjoyed his visit more--my dad or my host family.

When my dad left, I was sad to see him go but glad we had seen so many great things together.

Monday, February 6th, the second semester of classes started. I'm taking Spanish Literature of the 16th Century, Spanish Grammar:  Morphology, Cultural Background of the Western World, and Latin.

That's all I've got for today. Soon I hope to post about running and Rome.

It's the final countdown.

I am officially in the full swing of finals in Spain. The semesters are different here, so today began the craziness of finals.  I am lucky:  I took one final early in December and one today, and the two that remain are spaced pretty far apart. My Theory and Criticism of Literature final is Friday, and the Literature of the Middle Ages final will be next Monday, the 17th. This is going to be a very long seven days of cramming.

The good news:  next Monday after I finish my finals I plan to go have some coffee with a friend and pack my bags for Paris! My dad is coming to visit me and we're planning to see Paris and Barcelona before coming back to Burgos so he can see how my life is here.

I'm nervous for finals and already anticipating the relief of finishing them, and excited to see my dad. It's going to be a good week.

Happy Monday everyone! :)

Christmas in Spain!

So..for all of you who may be wondering, Christmas is one holiday that Spain definitely has. The majority of the Spanish population claims Catholicism as their religion, although I think a much smaller number actually goes to church. I think all of this Catholicism has a lot to do with the era of Franco in Spain, but I am still woefully uninformed about Spain's history.

My Christmas here had a lot in common with the Christmases I have experienced in the US. The holiday was spent surrounded by my surrogate family. We have a Christmas tree, and the streets of Burgos are decorated with Christmas lights. People know about Santa Claus because of TV, but the children here have a different hero (or rather, three):  The Three Kings. Instead of exchanging gifts on Christmas Day, the Spanish get gifts from the Three Kings on January 6th. They spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with their families but without the gifts. I will admit, I was a little sad because we didn't get any snow for Christmas but the fact that I don't have to deal with snow the rest of the time makes up for it.

We spent Christmas Eve eating an enormous amount of food with Antonio's family, and Christmas Day at our house with María's extended family. The Christmas Eve meal with Antonio's family was pretty heavy on seafood, a lot of which I had never tried before. Most of it looked really weird, but I tasted almost everything. I had langostinos, which are a kind of prawn. Last time I tried prawns I thought they were disgusting, but the langostino turned out to taste much better. It reminded me a lot of crab.  We had some kind of small squid stuffed with ham in an absolutely black sauce that was made from the squid's ink. Squid is one of the things that has pleasantly surprised me here. I actually enjoy it, despite my aversion to seafood. Hands down, the thing that made my stomach turn the most was the stomach. The dish is called "callos," and I believe it was made up of cooked stomach and maybe intestines. They just translated it as "guts." I am assuming it was beef. When they told me what it was, I talked myself into eating it by remembering that my ancestors ate all the parts of the animal, and they certainly had to have eaten stomach. Not only that, but if the people at the table liked it, it couldn't be so bad. So I took two little pieces and braced myself. The initial taste was really good but the after-taste ..not so much. I swallowed the first piece quickly and the second one I barely chewed and just swallowed. The main dish was a giant chunk of halibut. I had no idea those fish could be so huge! It looked like only part of the fish but it had to have been almost a foot long. It was pretty good, as fish go. 

I expected our Christmas Day to be really laid-back because I thought we were just eating lunch at our house with Maria's mom and two sisters. Boy, was I wrong. I completely forgot that Maria's two cousins were coming over with their families, as well as all kinds of random relatives. All in all, there ended up being about twenty people in our house. That's a lot of people for an introvert like me. Still, they were all really nice and I enjoyed it. Later on in the day I slipped out to go skype with my family. That was the hardest part of my day: seeing my family together and not being able to be with them.

Overall, Christmas was good. I have finals starting January 10^th, so I was worried about that, but good food and good people never fail to make me feel better.

Monday blues.

So it's Monday. Not my favorite day of the week. I woke up feeling sick and had my temperature taken with the slowest thermometer in the history of the world. I spent literally ten minutes waiting for it to beep. No fever, but I stayed home from class anyway and now I feel completely fine. I was supposed to hand in a paper today, so María went to the university at the beginning of my class and handed it in for me. She is so cool.

This weekend Irene and Eva went on an overnight trip with a group they are part of, and the house was so quiet. Diego isn't very noisy, especially when he's alone. Irene and Eva left Saturday morning before I woke up, and when I walked out of my room I found their easel chalkboard parked in front of my door. It said something to the effect of "Good night Elise, for tonight and the rest of the nights this weekend. From your flat mates Irene and Eva." Beside her name, Eva wrote "Writing this was my idea".

They make me laugh. On one hand, they are so obnoxious sometimes, because they're kids, but they can also be so sweet. It is obvious that they love having me around, and it makes my life much happier. Diego finally stopped being shy a few weeks ago. Irene spends a lot of time avoiding her homework by talking to me, and Eva is just Eva. Kind of rambunctious and extremely quick to fly off the handle, but when she's done she calms down quickly. All three of the kids think I am hilarious, but mostly when I'm not trying to be funny. They think I make funny faces and the gestures I make when I talk send them into fits of laughter. Like I said, they're kind of obnoxious ;) I can understand why they find it amusing, so I tend to forgive them. Besides, how can I not when they do cute things like write me notes before they leave for overnights?

Gambas y gulas

Tonight we had gambas and gulas for supper.  Gambas are prawns.  Prawns are basically a larger version of shrimp.  In Spain, or at least at my house, they are cooked whole and then you remove the meat from the thorax (kind of like eating lobster I think).  I’ve never been much of a fan of seafood, so I was quite wary of the little prawns and their beady black eyes and antennae. 

Then there were the gulas.  They are quite weird-looking.  Refer to the picture below for proof.  As I found out from a Wikipedia search, gulas are imitation baby eels.  In Spain, baby eels are a delicacy, and are cooked in olive oil with garlic and some kind of spicy red pepper.  Unfortunately for the majority of the population, it is difficult to fish for baby eels, so they are extremely expensive.  Thus, we were eating imitation baby eels.  I think they creep me out much less than the real thing would—at least the fake ones don’t have eyes!

The verdict?  The shrimp were disgusting, but the fake eels were pretty good.  We had a really funny moment when I asked how I was supposed to eat the shrimp and I didn’t know the Spanish word so María told me in English.  She said I should lick them, and I couldn’t help it--I burst out laughing. I had this mental image of me licking this dead shrimp with its eyes and antennae and it was equally disgusting and hilarious.  When I demonstrated what licking was, they all burst out laughing.  Then we figured out that what María meant was “suck.”  So I peeled off the hard shell and sucked out the fleshy part, and immediately wanted to spit it out.  It tasted so gross, at least to me.  I was also mentally transported back to dissecting crayfish in high school.  Gross.  Normally I am not a picky eater—I’ve tried quite a few things here, and have liked almost all of them.  I have eaten a lot of fish, even though it’s not my favorite thing.  I just think seafood tastes disgusting.  So I swallowed the shrimp as quickly as I could and declared that I was not eating any more.  Antonio is convinced that the shrimp was undercooked and insists that if I try them when we have them at Christmas I will change my mind.  I think he’s wrong but I am game to try them one more time.

The fake eels were really good.  In reality, it is probably because they don’t taste like anything, except olive oil and garlic.  It almost feels like cheating, but I am glad we can’t buy the real thing.  I don’t think I would like real baby eels.

Today was the first day of a six day weekend for me!  Monday is the Day of the Constitution, when Spain signed its constitution, and Wednesday is the Immaculate Conception, so we have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off.  I will have class on Thursday, and another three days without class.  I am glad to have a break and also a chance to catch up on homework a little. 

Tomorrow I am going to bake chocolate chip cookies with the kids.  Eva and Diego have are going to run a race in the morning and Irene is going to meet with her friends but in the afternoon they will all be home to bake cookies.  They are excited, and so am I.  We’re going to have to improvise a little since María couldn’t find chocolate chips.  Instead we’re just going to cut chocolate bars into pieces.  We also don’t have brown sugar and will be using raw cane sugar instead.  I’m hoping it turns out because I love chocolate chip cookies.

There are only 20 days left until classes end, and then we have finals.  I am nervous but also excited for the break.  I’ll have three weeks without classes before the next semester starts, and it is going to be amazing.  Until then, I will be studying like a crazy person..

El Patillas

Happy Thursday!  I don’t have class on Fridays, so tonight I went out with a couple of people.  We went to this bar called “El Patillas.”  It’s called El Patillas because the bartender has some serious sideburns going on.  It turns out that it is the go-to place for people looking to hang out and play music.  We spent a good couple of hours listening to a group of people playing the guitar and singing—not drunken singing, but seriously impressive vocals and musicianship.  At some point, I got hijacked into a conversation in with a Spanish guy who was rocking a mullet and looking to practice his English.  I also found out it’s common for people to roll their own cigarettes here.  Maybe I’m just sheltered, but I’d never seen it done before.  Overall, a good experience.

Classes have been ridiculous thus far.  Not because they’re actually ridiculous, mostly because I don’t know what’s going on.  The Spanish students are pretty good about translating.  I turned in my first paper yesterday!  I hope I don’t get an F.

I went to Astorga and Leon this past weekend with some friends.  They are both really beautiful cities.  We went to Astorga on Saturday and Leon on Monday (we didn’t have class.)  Both days I got up at 5 a.m. to catch the bus—it was exhausting!  My sleeping on the bus skills are definitely improving.

This weekend I am looking forward to relaxing and hopefully getting some homework done.  It takes four times as long, since I have to work so hard to translate the Spanish.

My biggest fear right now:  lice.  Diego said his teacher warned them today that some kids in the school have lice.  I was shocked, but Eva has had them two times.  I guess it’s common here.  Now I am praying that I don’t get them.

I am sooo excited right now, because my mom and brother are coming to visit me at the beginning of November!  I'm waiting impatiently.