La Comida - meals
-Don't be fooled. It's not that great. There are a few "specialties" of Salamanca [one of them is paella [pronounced pie-a-uh]: a dish of rice, various seafood items, and eggs - anyone who's known me for 2 days will know i HATE eggs, so i HATE paella]
-breakfast is small; usually served around 8:00amish for us since we have class at 9:00
-lunch is served at 2:30pm. and is HUGE. [I cannot eat massive meals at once, I prefer five or six smaller meals a day]
-dinner is served at 9:30pm and is typically fairly large. again. I do not want to eat a massive meal and I do not want to eat a massive meal an hour before I go to bed and have food sitting heavy in my stomach all night.
-between lunch and dinner, between 4-6pm [after siesta, nap, which is 2-4ish] there is "tapas". this is a famous part of Spanish culture. its basically a snack. you can eat tapas any time. you can go to any food place/bar [and dont worry Christian friends, bars here are not where people go to get smashed, you can get more than alcohol at these places :P] and order tapas. you get a beverage of your choice and a small food item that fits in your hand basically. i got a deep fried chicken nugget looking thing that actually had cheese and ham inside - AMAZING. I do love tapas. a lot.
-meals usually only have one main item served. there is also bread to eat, like a baguette. there are no 'sides' as we like to have at home. for example, the other night for dinner we had a cheeseburger. it was massive. but it was the only thing prepared. maybe it's just my host mom but the only side we've had was a salad. and that's only happened twice in three weeks :] :P
En las calles - In the streets
-walking is life. and public transportation. but Salamanca is a small city so it's not unreasonable. coming from a city like Battle Creek, and probably many other cities around the US [with the exception of Chicago and places similar to that] it was quite a shocker when I had to walk 20 minutes to class every day. I have some toned legs :]
-People are NOT very polite in the street if they don't know you. Which here, nobody knows me, so to me they're all rude. When two people are walking towards each other on a crowded sidewalk, they expect the other person to move out of their way, so shoulders are often bumped. They don't say excuse me too often. It's strange
-Dogs 'use the bathroom' wherever they want. Like the sidewalk.
-Kids 'use the bathroom' wherever they want. Like the sidewalk.
-Old men in parks 'use the bathroom' wherever they want, like the bushes at the park.
-PDA [public displays of affection] are common. and beyond what would be acceptable in the US. I won't go into details, but it is pretty intimate ;] I'm used to it now - and by that I mean seeing it, not doing it :P
I'll keep it to just those two topics for today. Leave some suspense for the future.
I'll leave you with a couple pictures :]
The second weekend here we took an excursion to Segovia. This is the main thing we saw - one of the biggest and most impressive aqueduct systems made by the Romans ages ago that delivered water from a mountain down to the city as there are many valleys and dips between the water site and where the water was needed. It's about 20 miles long :] and VERY impressive!
In honor Joanne leaving to go work in a hotel in south Spain tonight, she gets a shout-out in the blog. We are dancing together while our friend Juan [not his real name but he is from Singapore and it's impossible to pronounce] sang Backstreet Boys at karaoke night :]
Our first weekend here we had an excursion to Avila [emphasis on the first 'A'] and say the "muralla" - the wall. it surrounds the city and was built after many battles between the arabs and christians to be in control of the city. There are even areas where massive doors once were that were closed at night to keep people from getting in to the city. we were able to walk along the top of the muralla and see BEAUTIFUL scenery both inside and outside the city.
This was also the first weekend, but before we stopped in Avila we made a quick visit to Alba de Tormes. This is most of the group up on "la castilla de Tormes" the Tormes castle. It's whole Bethel group plus Scott and Maria and their 3 kids. the two on the outside are Juan and Joanne, we adopted them into our group :]que tengas un buen dia!
hasta luego <3
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