Learning Curve

A few things that I have learned here, things at first, which surprised me but now, are commonplace…

The shrimp have shells?
I learned this one at a meal where we had the infamous Paella of Spain. It is a massive dish of yellow rice served with vegetables and sea food, it is really common to the countries living on the Mediterranean. Anyway, I cut that big tasty looking shrimp in half and popped half in my mouth and there was way too much crunch. Not wanting to spit it back out onto my plate I just grinded through it, I’ll never make that mistake again. Definitely these shrimpos need to be peeled.

No such thing as a walkway

I thought it was just a pressure washer or a loud laundry machine… until that sound coming from behind me honked at me. Felt like my heart jumped up in my throat to hide. Turned around and apologetically and got out of the way. The alleyways here are so skinny thought they were just for people…but the cars and even the cabs have no problem taking you down any road that they can. If it works, it works. Like I said, they utilize every space.

<---------found a man made halo...really went for it

Breakfast in bed

No silly. Breakfast in bread? Still no. Breakfast is bread. Alas the truth comes out. Spaniards aren’t very big their desayuno(breakfast) here and that has been an adjustment made. Just a couple pieces of bread with jam on them and some orange juice for breakfast. Nothing to complain about but my stomach audibly made some protests the first couple of weeks.

Red means dead

If we obeyed the signs in the USA I don’t think anybody except for Usain Bolt would make it across the street in permissible time. Everyone is walking when the red is making its one handed protest…right? However here the green means walk, the blinking green means start jogging…. The red? You’ll be lucky if you see the red and live to tell the tale. Well that might be an overstatement but you could have a ringing ear from all the horns being honked in your direction.

Olives have pits

That was jolt when I was expecting to just bite through the olive and didn’t quite make it halfway through before I hit the pit. Also their flavor is a lot more robust. I don’t know why that is so. We have them in the salads every day and sometimes I eat them as a challenge, they are so fumy… (Don’t really know if fumy is a word, having an excess of fumes?)

Siestas are a myth

I was rather disappointed to find this out. My first day I took a siesta out of necessity because the jet lag was really putting a number on me but that has been my only siesta thus far. I asked my host mother about it and I guess it is just a myth.

That’s not mud on the sidewalk

Although I would have preferred if it was… people here don’t seem to feel the need to pick after there dogs and on a growing number of occasions, I have stepped right in those dogs leftovers on the sidewalk. I guess that’s the price I pay for walking. Maybe people truly take the metro to avoid stepping in these? I don’t know. The worst time was right before class. I looked like someone doing a terrible dance outside is I tried to get the poop off my shoe in the planter outside. I could have been embarrassed and stunk up the class or let all my classmates see me doing the dance before class? Well it turned out I didn’t do a very sufficient job at getting it off my shoe so I guess my classmates got both. You are welcome.