a mi no me gusta el pescado aqui

Another great end to a great day. Unfortunately my adventures are not as exciting as Alana’s in Kenya and all those other African countries that she’s been to, but I am enjoying myself here.

So far I am really impressed with the program. We’ve been taken on various tours of the city and campus. Not only were they tours that helped us orient ourselves with directions, but our tour guide also told us how to send and receive letters and the post office, how to buy a bus pass, etc. Very very helpful!

The hotel that we’re staying in is very nice, and every meal that we’ve eaten is covered by the program. (And may I mention that we’ve eaten at some pretty sweet restaurants.) The only unfortunate thing is that we can’t order alcoholic beverages (aka wine) on the program’s bill. I guess I’ll have to wait a few days more to start my adventures in Spanish wineland. But anyhoo, this brings me to the food here. All I can say is good thing I eat meat. I do understand that we’ve been having very nice meals lately, but all the lunches (almuerzos) and dinners (cenas) have meat in every option. And a lot of pork. Usually I’m not a swine eater, but when in Spain…

Today I had an interesting experience at the restaurant were we went for lunch. There always has been two plates and then desert. And we can choose from three options for each plato (plate). So of course when I heard paella, I had to try it. I did and that wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to get the meat out of the un-shelled shrimp. I ripped the head off of one and tried to suck the meat out. No dice. Then I tried to peel the shell off another but the dang shrimp just kept slipping around in my hands. So I just gave up and crunched one in my mouth hoping some meat would squeeze out. I think I did get a little…

THEN, for the second plate, there was a option of either pork, salchichas (basically hotdogs) or fish. I decided to go for the lesser of all evils, the fish. But before ordering, I asked the waiter if the fish came with bones. He said yes, but they’re really thin and if you swallow them, they wont do you any harm. Since the majority of fish here is not deboned and in fact comes with head, eyes, mouth and all, I thought I was scoring big with this fish. But ah, to the contrary. What the waiter brought to me was a plate full of these little fried guys. The whole dang fish. Scales and all. MmmMmMmmMM. I was about to go for my neighbor’s salchicas, but then I remembered that my dad told me to try some sort of small fried fish. Which may have been this. Unfortunately, It was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever had. It was 1) fried, 2) a fish, 3) had scales, 4) had a head, 5) had a tail, 6) had little skinny bones that despite what the waiter said, do not digest easily!

Now as for my Spanish skillz. I’m already feeling a little better about them. ¡Y ESCUCHAN ESTO! Today as the group was waiting for the bus, the program coordinator and I started talking about our day tomorrow. In the evening, were going to take a placement exam for Spanish. She assumed that I would test into the class “Spanish for Spanish Speakers.” She thought since I speak Spanish at home I would make the same grammatical errors as would a native Spanish speaker. Then I of course had to explain to her that no, my family doesn’t speak Spanish (sorry Joe, Dad and Mom but let’s be real with ourselves), that instead I learned in school. But then she said, whatever, you’ll probably be part of that group anyway. So moral of the story, I can speak Spanish! WOOT WOOT.

I suppose I’ll stop now because I may be boring all you readers out there. If you’ve made it to this point, thanks for stickin it out while I pour my heart out to yall.

Y una cosita mas: I GOT A PHONE TODAY! My # is 618648243. to call from the US, you have to dial 011 + 34 +the number above.