But really, not that strange. I’ve been doing the turn-off-the-water-while-sudsing-up thing every day as they directed us during orientation. I’ve been turning off lights and such. Of course, I use my heater quite a bit, not too much, but enough to make me happy. Don’t they draw a lot of power?
Oh, before I go on. My family! It’s Maria Antonia, I’ll hazard a guess and say she’s 60; and Jose, her nephew, who’s 28, or that’s what it said on my assignment paper. But it also said on my assignment paper “un perro”, and there are three (I think), but they live in Maria and Jose’s part of the house that’s always closed off. So I can often smell dog, and I hear dog every day, but I get none of the benefits of living with dogs. Let me tell you, it was a letdown; I was really excited when I read “un perro” on my paper. Speaking of animals, it’s almost shameful how excited I get when I see a cat in this city. The first one I saw was at the bottom of the (dry) moat surrounding the university building.
I saw it and exclaimed. I don’t know what I exclaimed, but that is the correct verb. It seemed shiny and healthy and pretty, although it was kind of far away. Then in Aracena a ratty-looking black one ran by, and I did veer towards it hopefully. Then, the other evening, we visited an old hospice (Miguel Mañara’s) with class, and there was this big wide (fenced in) patio area with at least 10 cats in it, sitting at the bases of the trees and under the bushes and haunting across the paving stones. On our way back out when I passed by again most of them were gone but there was one eating from this huge pile of dry cat food; the hospice must put it out. It ran when I went up to the bars, and I coaxed it for a long minute and it crept closer and closer. It was pretty ratty, but you have to understand, I was going to pet it rabies or no rabies, if it would have me. It wouldn’t; it crept closer and closer and then I realized it was just creeping back to its food. It tucked in and ignored me. UPDATE: Today at the ruins, of course, I finally got my hands on a real live friendly soft fat healthy callejero good-smellin' cat. Since entrance to the ruins is only 1.50 €, and the bus is probably only a few euro since it's close, whenever I want a small fix of cat and countryside I can probably just wander over to the ruins!
How easily I drift away from the topic at hand! Is my lack of control frustrating for the reader? Maria Antonia and Jose. I don’t have a picture of them; I keep meaning to ask if I can take one – when I get one, I’ll put it up. Jose’s job is dog-walking. I’m pretty sure he works a few hours a day at it. The rest of the time, he’s probably running errands, and he cleans a lot, and does laundry sometimes. Jose is kind of entertaining. Okay, so Monday night at dinner it was just me and him, and he was pleased over something on his cell phone. I didn’t ask what was up, he just showed me, a picture of a pretty girl. We had a conversation where I definitely missed some stuff, but did get this general bit right: He had dated this girl, Isa, when he was a teenager, from 14 to 18, and she’d broken his heart. Now he was going to see her the next day. I didn’t understand, but I assume that means they hadn’t spoken in a while. He said he couldn’t eat dinner (it was true) because he was in love, you know, all he could think about was her. He was so excited. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. But poor Jose. Two days later I asked how it had gone. He said badly; he said she had deceived him (engañar), that she already had a boyfriend. I, of course, didn’t say what I was thinking, which was that I was sure she hadn’t realized he was infatuated and therefore that there was a need to specify beforehand that she had a boyfriend. It’s one of those things where the girl’s out for friendship but the guy jumps to conclusions… still, poor Jose. He told me once he pretty much has one friend, but wants a girlfriend. Today at lunch a friend (the friend, I think) called him and, if I was understanding him correctly, he doesn’t even want a girlfriend anymore. Guess he’s giving up.
Jose can’t seem to spell things for me when I ask, doesn’t even try. I’m pretty bad at figuring out the spelling of new words, which is silly since it’s all standardized – if it sounds a certain way, that’s how it’s spelled! It’s still difficult. … More on Jose. The other day Jose came to my door, said "Colleeee," brandished a handful of my freshly washed underwear and put it on my bed. Oh, I’m being mean. I can’t tell for certain whether he and Maria Antonia pronounce the n or not. If they do, it’s very faint. But it’s better than when I was Clarín the first few days. In general Jose doesn’t really pay much attention to me or really react when I say anything, but that’s usually because I just comment inanely while we’re watching TV during dinner. Speaking of which, I’ll return to Maria Antonia after this cultural detail – a planned tangent!
To me, eating with the television on is a bit of a phenomenon, probably just because we’ve never had a TV in my dining room at home. But that’s what they do here – me and my fellow TDPers all eat with the TV on. It’s required. Sometimes when Maria Antonia calls me for dinner and I go sit down, I forget, and hear, “Pon la tele!” from the kitchen. Last night I started eating, and she went into her room for something, and I turned it on. She came back in a few minutes later and said, “Oh, I was going to come tell you to turn on the TV!” It’s quite a nice tele. There are plenty of dubbed American movies, not a few quality (and not-quality) Spanish series, and a news show and a celebrity show we tend to watch during lunch (they sure do talk a lot about Penelope and Javier). Last night for some reason Jose was watching a talk show, you know, one where they ARGUE loudly the whole time, and it was insanely grating, because I couldn’t understand much and these two vicious women kept interrupting each other… One of the cool things about Spanish television is that there’s no commercials except at the hour, usually, for about five minutes. They’ll say, “We’ll return in three minutes”. The only thing I don’t like about that is that I don’t feel I can interrupt to ask or say something while the show’s going on. I don’t understand the Spanish on TV very well, although I can follow what’s happening because of the visuals. So my attention drifts. But they’re paying attention, so I try not to talk. Oh, another thing about the celebrity show we always watch, they’re always playing clips of American songs in the background, and the theme song for the show is that “Boots Are Made For Walkin’” song. I have to resist translating the lyrics for them because although someone doing that for me would amuse me, I don’t think they really care that much about English or the U.S.
Maria Antonia does well by me. She’s nice. She makes an effort to ask me about my day and my plans, and sometimes she’ll sit with me at dinner while I eat my soup (if Jose’s not there) and wait till I’m done to go out and eat at a friend’s. She hasn’t ruined any of my clothes, though I haven’t worn my pastel sweater yet because I fear for its life. Right off the bat when I moved in she pumped me for some info on what I liked and promptly went out and bought me tea, green tea (which I normally don’t care for) that turned out to be amazing. We get along. I understand her better than I understand Jose. (Oh, here comes a tangent. Get used to it; I’m going to stop apologizing for them.) I’d estimate with Jose that when he’s talking to me, I understand less than fifty percent unless I ask him to repeat it, but with him, repeating doesn’t usually help. With Maria Antonia I understand about 75 or more percent. When they’re talking to each other, especially if I don’t know the context, I understand 25 percent. This is the interesting thing about a foreign language. With native speakers (not my classmates), I understand less than 25 percent of anything not directed at me either in lecture or conversation. On the street I catch almost nothing. But in my class, and during orientacion, [that’s the second time in this essay I’ve spelled it Spanish, I’m leaving it] when Caro (head of TDP) or Ángel (history professor) or almost any CIEE person speaks to me or my class/group, I understand a good 90 to 95 percent. It’s not that they’re speaking that much slower, either. Ángel said he was speaking at a pretty normal rate, and Caro certainly does. It’s an interesting experience to understand so well sometimes and so badly others; it’s not annoying, thankfully. Oh yeah, and background noise saps a good 50 or more percent out of how much I understand. When Ángel would take us to a statue near a busy street and talk about it, I would have to be right on top of him to understand. That’s the only time it’s annoying to not understand. Maria Antonia says I speak better than a lot of her girls and that my accent’s quite good, which is something I pride myself on, so it’s good to hear.
Maria Antonia makes my bed almost every day, depending on whether she works. She’s the boss of a clothing store whose name I forget that’s located in el centro; she had to go view some new clothing one weekend. She works a lot. One night it was really late and I asked where she was, and José said working. I asked further, and what I think I got was that she has to work the night shift once or twice a week; I don’t know why there’d be a night shift at a clothing store, unless it’s stocking or something. Her mother has been in a vegetative state for a year now; Maria hasn’t told me why. Yesterday she took a bad turn, apparently. I don’t know any details. Nor do I know why Jose is living with his aunt.
Maria Antonia asked me many times if I was “contenta” in the first two weeks. I always said yes, even though the answer was always no. Now I’m content, but she doesn’t ask, so that’s fine then. I pretty much like her. One thing she says all the time is “No pasa nada,” which is “It doesn’t matter,”/ “Don’t worry about it”. She said it a lot in the beginning because I said sorry a lot, because I didn’t have my schedule, because I got a ton of water on the floor while showering, etc etc. She still says it a lot, and I kind of love hearing it. Both Jose and Maria also seem to think that if I Skype at 2 am it won’t bother them; we’ll see about that! Update: Skyped for a girl’s night in at 2:30 am SUCCESSFULLY :D
Mealtimes are
~ Breakfast whenever I get up (or at 11 on a Sunday where I sleep in and Jose seems to think I ought to have it then)
~ Lunch at about 14:30 (2:30, you lazy people), the big meal of the day. Sometimes it’s me and Jose, sometimes all three of us.
~ Dinner at 21:30 or 22:00, sometimes just soup but sometimes as much as lunch. Again, half the time it’s me and Jose; it seems like when Maria Antonia isn’t working she’s always going to a friend’s house to eat.
Here’s a not-so-quick rundown of most of the foods we’ve eaten.
I compiled this list over several days, so if I say “today I had x for lunch” three times, that’s why – I don’t feel like going back through it all again.
- I love breakfast. I take my lovely green tea with sugar in my room with one of the following breakfast foods: magdalenas (sticky sweet little muffins), polvorones (crumbly-like-dust heavy sweet cookie-thing) (I just learned from a Spanish girl I know that those are really only for the Christmas season, and there probably won’t be any more!), or galletas (sweet cookie-cracker-things). Oh, and sometimes little buttery NOT-sugar-based rolls individually wrapped, but I haven’t had them for a while. I really wonder if I’m getting more sugar with these breakfasts than in my General Mills cereals. Speaking of breakfast, for the first week and a half Maria Antonia prepared my tea for me every morning and then went back to bed. These past two mornings I told her I’d do it. I felt bad her getting up, and I like mornings to myself anyway. She or Jose always sets out the teacup (with saucer), teabag (unwrapped), sugar, spoon, and the munchies the night before. All I do is take the tiny saucepot off the dish rack, put a little water in it, and light the stove (with one of those long lighters).
- Various chickpea soups, boring.
- Various bean soups. Boring unless mixed with blood sausage, which is super strong tasting but lovely when mixed when bean soup.
- Peas in a soup, one time with an awesome egg in there, kind of pattified but not bought that way, cooked that way.
- Some really darn good liquid pea soup, tastes completely different than the peas-in-a-soup, and I want more right now.
- A soup that’s basically like a beef stew without the beef, and with much less vegetables but a lot of potato. I had seconds.
- Carrot puree soup that is surprisingly tasty. Bean puree, which is not.
- Noodle soup pretty much like Campbell’s (no chicken, but Campbell’s hardly has any chicken in it anyway), but as far as I can tell not from a can? I really don’t know. I eat a lot of bread dipped in it; bread is on the table at every meal.
- Pasta, twice – once with grated cheese on it instead of tomato sauce like they two had, because she asked me beforehand and I told her I don’t eat tomatoes or tomato sauce except on pizza. Yesterday it was pasta with a cream sauce, really yummy. Interesting thing – Maria Antonia came to table with this serving of salmon and started tucking in. I felt Oliveresque, or like those orphans in Aladdin, or something. I ate my pasta and tried to think how to ask “Why are you eating fish while I am not?” I eventually asked her if she didn’t like the pasta. She said she loves it but didn’t feel good that day. I guess a juicy piece of salmon is not as tummy-upsetting as creamy pasta. Mhm.
- Noodles with shellfish – some mussels, a clam, a whole shrimp lookin’ at me with some little black eyes. Well, you think I felt icked out? Darn right I didn’t. It was great; this dish is one of my favorites, it’s almost like from a restaurant, and the broth is really flavorful.
- Some real fat sausage links, chorizo. I kind of hate writing Spanish nouns without their articles, but they look weird mixed in with English. We also had some thinner hot dogs almost like American ones.
- A pork chop, with a side of lettuce (and the noodle soup). That’s a salad to this family: lettuce, either with vinegar or salt. It’s pretty good with salt. There’s usually more of the soups if I ever want any, but there is not more meat; just a pork chop for me and one for Jose.
- They’ve got a deep fryer in their kitchen. I think it’s normal here. We’ve had French fries (better than McDonald’s!), fried cheese things that are kinda sickening but I eat them and like them, maybe; a fried tuna and cheese thing, fried fish sticks…
- Veal with onions, which has a really strong taste, but I ate it, and then when we had the leftovers I ate it and it wasn’t as gross. Definitely gonna acquire a, hm, not taste for, but lack of distaste for, veal and chicken giblets. That’s what we had today, chicken giblets with white rice. The veal and the giblets taste pretty similar, actually, that is to say, like they ought to make you sick but then don’t. If you concentrate on the taste you can extract a meatishness in among the weirdness. But who has time to sit there concentrating on the taste? Really, though, I think a few more servings of this stuff and I’ll be golden. After describing the giblets to Mom, I think it wasn’t actually giblets like she said, but exclusively chicken livers.
- Potato and egg tortilla, that is, omelet, with the focus on the potato rather than the egg. Pretty unique and yummy.
- Eggs with cheese on them.
- A quiet little well-done hamburger one night that was like a little gnome under a huge mushroom in its bun.
- Been snacking a lot on clementines, “mandarinas”, I absolutely love them, but of the batch she bought last week, the ones that are left have gone bad and I don’t know that she’s noticed. I’ll ask her to buy some more, because they are greeeat for snacking. UPDATE: And then the pleasant things in life disappear. I mentioned buying more clementines yesterday. She said she would. Last night we ate oranges for dessert. I mentioned that I liked clementines better, and she told that in fact they’re the same, that they taste the same. If it were a different relationship I would have told her firmly that she was mistaken, but as it was, I merely expressed my opinion politely and said something like, “Well, I guess I’m weird, but they taste different to me.” Today, I went into the kitchen and saw a crapload of oranges where the clementines used to be. Yeah. It’s not that I don’t like oranges. It’s that I love eating clementines and would only eat an orange if it were forced on me (read: that crapload of oranges for the next week for dessert). Because guess what? They’re different fruits. They. Taste. Different. No matter how many times one says, “Es igual!” It’s not igual. ARGH, STUBBORNNESS. But hey, that’s what my teeth are for, right? To bite my tongue. For four months. … I walk by at least three fruit stands every day, so one of these days I’ll ask if I can buy one or two clementines; I’m sure I can, and I’m sure they’re cheap. Also: if any of you guys think that clementines and oranges taste the same, keep it to yourself. ^_^
- “Leche UHT entera”: whole milk in a carton processed UHT instead of whatever it is we do to it. The cartons sit in the cupboard until opened. We don’t drink it, I drink it. It’s water with meals, although sometimes they’ll offer me wine or beer (three times the whole time I’ve been here). I don’t take it; next time I’ll take the wine, why not. Today I got some milk before lunch and she said she thought I didn’t like milk; must have been a miscommunication last week.
- Today we had those lovely homemade French fries and a hunk of standard chicken flesh on its recognizable bone. Wolfed it.
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| My breakfast every day! Except of course I've eaten 4 of the galletas already. |
I, of course, am quite a snacker. However, I prefer that my señora doesn’t know how much I snack. It’s a privacy thing, a weird tic, I guess; also, I don’t want her to think I hate her food, which after the meat thing she could very easily believe. So I’ve been stockpiling snacks!
Because I don’t want to ask if I can store snacks in the fridge (yet; I won’t be able to keep up my current pattern forever), pretty much all my snacks are sugary. I’ve bought some cookies (not Oreos or anything, come on, they’re Filipinos), some of those swirly crusty things (palmeras) (a pack of like 16 for 1.50 €), and peanuts and chips at the supermarket (as big as a real supermarket) at el Corte Inglés (basically a huge department store chain that has a big building in el centro (shopping district) as well as a ton of smaller stores concentrating on electronics or housewares). Today I went to Lidl (some odd German-fusion cheap minimarket) and bought some more snackage. Amy Lou, you will be glad to know that I make myself tea at least three times a day here, sometimes in an hour, because of the extra incentive of it being cold! :)
I’ll close this with some emoting/philosophizing. If you’ve made it this far, I admire you, and you’re probably Mom.
This apartment cannot ever feel like a home, and I doubt I’ll change my mind about that. I really believe that “home” is an asymptote in this situation. No matter how much I grow to love this city or my room or my tea and routine, it’ll never be home. I fully expect to love it all more every day; it’s been happening! But there are several things in the way of it being a third home. One is that I am in a temporary state. I’m sure there’s some protective cognitive thing going on in my head. I will be leaving here in four months; it’s just the truth of it. Baltimore is not a temporary state; four years is too long to maintain a perception, even an unconscious one, of temporariness. Besides, I might stay there.
The second is that I am living in someone else’s apartment. I understand that my family does not expect us to become ‘family’, does not expect us all to be friends for the rest of our lives, and is not working towards that goal. There were students before me and there will be after. And I’m a guest in their territory. The power structure is completely different than being half of a pair of roommates. I believe that if I were living in the international student dorms with two other girls (American, Spanish, French, whatever), “home” might be a possibility. Of course, if I were to feel like this place was home, it would suck that much worse to leave in May! Speaking of food, interesting thing again. All my life, obviously, either my school has cooked for me or my mom has. That’s relatively out of my hands. But even when it was out of my hands, it wasn’t, because I had a say in what Mom cooked, what I picked at lunch, etc. Then college rolled on up. The dining hall is technically still “out of my hands”, but negligibly so, with all the selection every single day at every single meal. After moving out of my parent’s house, no one has ever made me eat something I didn’t want. (Mom, I don’t miss the days of spaghetti and furry peaches! :P) Then in these last two years I’ve had a nice mix of dining hall and my own cooking/buying, and of course it’s wonderful. Nothing so exhilarating as those first five times you sauté yourself a steak in ten minutes. (Go ahead, try to top it.) You’d be surprised – or maybe you wouldn’t be – at how not controlling your meals can create a feeling of distance. Something’s lacking, and I mean, it’s independence. That is not to say that it’s annoying or unpleasant. It’s very relaxing to always be cooked for. It’s not relaxing or homey to not have a say in what’s cooked for you or to not be able to cook for yourself should the mood take you. My feeling is that the dining circumstances contribute to the impossibility of “home”.
Okay, fine, I’ll emote about the food itself, too. It’s only been three weeks, I know, I know! But the food itself also contributes to the impossibility of home. I’ve been eating more or less the same stuff for almost 21 years. I like my stuff. I like a lot of this stuff too, but it’s not my stuff, and it makes a big difference for it to be introduced all at once. I could easily integrate noodles-with-shellfish, potato-egg tortillas, heck, even blood sausage (mixed in soup) into my American diet. Maybe I will; those tortillas seem simple to make. I mixed sushi into my diet three years ago, and I’ve mixed in Thai iced tea, and nutella too :). But one at a time, and mixed into what was already there. It’s different to remove all of the familiar and replace it with the un. Thankfully, I like most of the food that I am given.
That’s enough of that. Hasta luego!
