Going Back To Spain

6/14/09

So I´m going back to Spain today. I´m taking a pretty straight route to Madrid: SFO-Toronto-Madrid. Right before I left the house Rocio spilled coffee on my shirt, an ominous sign of a bad day? we´ll see. Going through security at SFO, the technician was extra interested in the huge bag of corn tortillas I brought in my carryon bag. She was cool though and didn´t give me much trouble. Hopefully I can find some more in Spain, tortillas not trouble.

On my flight from Toronto to Madrid I was fortunate enough to sit next to a Spaniard named Alexandra Mateu. She´s not a celebrity, but a girl my age who has been in America for the last year studying abroad and who is going back to Granada for the summer. Consequently, she worked for the Spanish Ministry of Education in Seattle. She told me that I would probably have no trouble at all finding a job in a private school in Spain with a degree in Kinesiology. They are always looking for native English speakers, and the further from Spain the better.

6/16/09

My first day in Chipiona has come and gone. Basically i spent all day following Rocio around meeting her friends at various places. We woke up around 3, just in time for lunch which was caracoles (little snails). After lunch we went to the beach and came home showered, visited more friends, and went to the new store in Chipiona that Rocio will be working at. Later we went to cafe gloria to meet Sandra and her sister for drinks. Six other people seemed to appear out of nowhere and we stayed until almost 1 in the morning.



6/18/09

Yesterday I was feeling pretty lethargic so I decided to go for a run to the beach. I got there tired, and hung around watching the waves for a while. When I got back to her house, Rocio wouldn´t wake up. Instead of being trapped at her house I decided to try to fix her bike to take it into town. After applying copious amounts of WD40 to all the rusty moving parts and resetting the chain, I was in business. The bike ride from her house to town took 25 minutes and I wandered around Chipiona for a bit before she called me and picked me up to go to the mall and El Corte Ingles in Jerez.

El Corte Ingles is impressive. Think Nordstrom + SuperWalmart with other things like funeral services, travel agency, etc. It´s absolutely massive. We found tortillas! They even had Maseca masa.

I´m starting to feel overwhelmed by the amount of Spanish that is flooding into my ears. Really it takes a lot of mental energy to try to continuosly decode another language. On top of that, the Cadiz pronunciation is so fast and slurred that at times I can´t even tell what words are being said.

6/21/09

The last few days have all been pretty much the same: Wake up, run errands in Chipiona, have lunch, go to the beach and then join some friends for drinks somewhere. I have done some other cool things though. I went with Rosa´s boyfriend Juan to play soccer at a lighted pay-per-hour field. It was awesome because it was appropriately sized for a 7v7 match. That type of thing could really take off in California I think.

Tonight I went with Rocio and her parents to San Lucar de Barrameda for dinner at a steakhouse that is owned by one of Antonio´s friends. We had good food and then went to a couple nice bars in San Lucar.

Findings ingredients for fish tacos is proving a difficult task. We can´t seem to find normal American mayonnaise, all the Spanish stuff has a strong flavor. We have Hellman´s but it also tastes weird. We downloaded salsa recipes and we will probably make our own salsa which will be interesting.