Adventures in Spain: Tapas!

Hola Todos!

Classes began today at 9 am. I had a really hard time waking up at 8. I was so tired that I had to fight to stay awake during my 9am Spanish Art History class, and I never fall asleep in class. Ever. Aside from being extremely tired, I enjoyed class. I've heard the professor (who is also our program director, Jesus) is hard, but Spanish art is a fun and interesting topic to study, especially in Spain, so I am more excited than worried for this class. It will also be really cool to see many of the works of art that we study in class in person on weekend excursions! After art I had an hour break before my next class during which I grabbed a cup of coffee to wake up. My next class, Intro to Spanish Lit, went well also. I am curious to see how I do in this class because English (as in reading and analyzing literature and then writing about it) is kind of my thing. However, this is not English lit; this is Spanish lit, and the language barrier may make understanding the prose and poems on a deeper level of significance more difficult because I will first have to make sure I can just read it and know what's being said. My third class, Spanish Grammar, doesn't meet for the first time until tomorrow.

After classes most of the day was fairly typical-- I walked around the city for 2 hours, ate lunch at 2:30, took a short siesta, and went for a run. Where today differed from other days was in our dinner. Typically our Madre (host mother) cooks us dinner to eat around 9, but instead today we went out for tapas!

Tapas are similar to appetizers in that they are small plates of typically two to three bite foods, but unlike appetizers they do not precede the meal. Rather, multiple plates of various tapas make up the meal. You order multiple plates of different tapas and then you eat one or two of each small food to make up the meal.

We visited two different tapas restaurants tonight for dinner. At the first we had bread, chorizo, ribs, and some food that I can only describe as thick bacon pieces with a sweet glaze-- Jesus told us what they were called, but I can't remember now. It all tasted amazing, though I was still hungry at the end, so I was very happy when I realized we were going to a second restaurant for more tapas. The second restaurant was located in one of the rooms above the street in the Plaza Mayor, giving us a beautiful view of the plaza. Up until that point I was very curious about the rooms above the plaza. Were they restaurants? Government offices? Expensive and highly sought after apartments? Dinner in the restaurant gave me at least a partial answer. The food here was also very good! We had bread (bread is a staple here and is served with basically every meal), croquettes, tortillas, fried calamari, beef with papas fritas (aka French fries) and cod wrapped in peppers. Croquettes have become a favorite of mine. They are a small ball with can be filled with meat, potato, cheese, fish, vegetables, or basically whatever you want, and then they are breaded and fried. I've only had ones with meat, cheese and or potato so far, but they have all been delicious! Surprisingly, I enjoyed the fried calamari. It was served with a lemon to squeeze the juice over, so it tasted really good, I just had a hard time getting past the rubbery texture. Tortillas in Spain are not what you typically think of when you picture a tortilla. They remind me somewhat of an omelet or quiche as they are made with eggs, potato, though there can be other ingredients as well.

Dinner ended around 10:30 and I sat in the plaza for a bit before returning to the house. Now its past 1 and I should probably go to bed so I can stay awake in art tomorrow, because unlike with classes in English, I can't zone out for even a second or I get so lost trying to understand the information in Spanish!