Steph has traveled the past couple weekends, so I’ve been in Caceres by myself. It’s been fun though, I’ve gotten to know the city a lot better, and I’ve spent a lot of time with my host moms. On the weekends they don’t work, so they make me lots of different typical Spanish food for breakfast. One morning they made migas, which is basically fried breadcrumbs, with dried red peppers and pieces of bacon. It was so good! Another morning they had some of their friends over and we all ate churros and chocolate. Last weekend we had a very typical Spanish breakfast of toasted baguette slices with onion and vinegar. Very yummy.
Steph’s mom and sister came to visit her this past weekend. They arrived in Caceres on Saturday. Our host moms took us all out on a tour of the city. I learned so much! I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about the place I’ve lived in the past couple months. Our moms told us a lot about the history of the city, but also about the traditions. For example, there is a statue outside the cathedral that if you kiss his foot, you’ll find love. There is also a small very old church, where tradition says that if you take a friend there, she will get married. I told my host moms NOT to take me there any time soon haha.
Our mommies then took us to a really good tapas restaurant. It used to be a palace, but now it’s a very upscale restaurant with only tapas. The inside is really cool, the ceilings are arched and the walls are brick. There were no chairs, everyone just gathered around high tables and shared tapas. Steph, her sister, and I all got coke, our moms got wine, and we ordered tapas. This was the best food I’ve had in Europe so far. We had potatoes with some sort of sweet sauce, migas with fried eggs, and meatballs dipped in a thick orange sauce. It was soo good. I think Steph’s mom and sister really liked it too.
After that we all went up the mountain outside the city. Most people walk up there, but our moms drove us. On top of the mountain is a statue of the Virgin Mary. The story is that she appeared on that spot to a shepherd, so they built a church and the huge statue that overlooks the city. The view was amazing. We could see all of Caceres, all the old buildings, the church, the palm trees in the streets. It was awesome.
Monday was Steph's birthday. Our host moms made a special lunch for us to celebrate: paella, which is a very typical meal here in Spain. It took them awhile to make, we didn't start eating until 4:30pm. They brought it out in a huge pan. It took up basically the whole table. Paella is rice with a mixture of seafood: calamari, mussels, clams, shrimp. There was more stuff in there, but that’s all that I recognized. It was interesting to eat. It was actually a lot of work, because we had to pull apart the shrimp and clam shells and everything. When we got done, our plates were filled with empty shells from the assortment of sea creatures. It was delicious though.
They also made tiramisu for Steph’s birthday, and we had apple champagne that is made in the Caceres. It was really good. I was so full after that meal I could barely breathe. Steph and I said we're going to have to wear sweatpants for my birthday lunch…
School is good. In one of my classes we had to write 6 sentences, three of them true and three of them false. Then we had to read each sentence to our classmates, and we had to guess which were the truths and which were the lies. That was fun. In another class we play tabu once a week in Spanish. It gets pretty competitive… This week we each have to teach a 4 minute class about our major to the rest of our classmates. So somehow I have to teach everyone about journalism and do learning activities… in Spanish… that should be interesting, I’m absolutely not looking forward to that.
This week I’ve been busy watching NCAA March Madness. I was hoping the Spanish ESPN would show some of the games, but so far all I’ve seen on the channel is soccer and the World Handball Tournament. Really Spain?? So I’ve been following basketball on CBS.com. I tried to explain the whole bracket competition to my host moms, but I think they now believe I have a gambling problem. They couldn’t believe that I was betting on 32 games all in two days! I tried to say it wasn’t for money, but I don’t think I did a good job explaining it… Oh well.
One more week and I go to the Canary Islands for spring break! I’m very excited. I’m hoping to get a tan, although that won’t help with people still mistaking me for Spanish. Last week I was walking home from school with all the obvious American signs: I was wearing my sorority letter t-shirt, tennis shoes, I was listening to my ipod, and I had a backpack. All things that you would never see on a Spanish girl. But I still got stopped by a chaperone of a group of Spanish students asking me where the museum was. I can't win...
I'll have more stories to tell later this week, we're going on another school trip to Salamanca on Wednesday. Hasta luego! :)
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