Apartment Dynamics / How Alison Gets My Attention

Notice the wet teabag Alison is tossing in her right hand. Ready, aim...

It makes a loud sound on my window.

(not my cigarette butt)

La Cena del Día de Acción de Gracias / Thanksgiving 1

measuring cup

rolling pin

second rising

oven

whole wheat honey butterhorns!
and my first (positive) experience making yeasty bread!

my other contribution to Thanskgiving dinner -
Green beans with bacon and hazelnuts

Alison's lemon-curd tart crust in the oven

Bottle of Jerez dulce / sweet sherry that Taylor got for me in Montilla-
helped get us through a day of cooking

Alison's lemon curd

Nerissa and I bus-ing it to Kephera's house

Me and my blue and yellow basket waiting at the bus stop-
2 pomegranates, 1 barra rústica, 1 bag of butterhorns, a cup of butter and green beans.
You can tell it rained that day.

The turkey heroes: Nerissa, Kephera and Megan

Indian food on Friday night to celebrate getting through Thursday

I don't have any pictures of the dinner. I brought my camera but was too wrapped up in what was happening to bring it out. Once I get some from one of the girls, I'll post them here. In attendance were Nerissa, Kephera, Megan, Alison and I representing California, Kephera's roommates Lawrence and Sandra, from England and Germany, respectively, Sandra's friend Christina, also German, all of my housemates (Canario, Sevillano, Cuenca, Italiano), Migue and Isa, monitores from the UC Immersion Language Program and now very good friends, and the turkey, a 7 kilo big bird we post-humously named Roberto.

I have internet in my apartment...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLY7yI1xV-M

Since Last

In a day the weather here changed. For months I've been complaining that the Dirty South hadn't figured out why the north had the word "otoño" but in a day, the day that Taylor left last last, the weather changed. I stepped outside on the balcony one morning while my oatmeal cooked and it felt like climbing out of the warm car seat after the 3 hour drive to Truckee and being greeted on every part of exposed skin with that high-altitude air that is, well.. cold. For example, I walked up to school for the first time on Friday and wore tights and boots and my new dress that doesn't have sleeves. I felt great, but when I got up the mountain my arms were cold and my boogers frozen.. That kind of cold. I love it.

So I've been listening to lots of music, thinking about how if I were in Santa Barbara, half a quarter would have gone by and why haven't I done any homework? Taylor and I were in Madrid on Halloween and saw a few guys in Quicksilver short suits holding shortboards, and all the spanish mothers freaking out because of the handsome surfers and having their kids take pictures with them. I've never seen anyone dress up like a surfer for Halloween in Santa Barbara.

I really want to post more pictures but the internet here is too slow to download them. Currently I'm sitting on my balcony hacking into the wifi from the library across the street. Since it's Sunday morning and no one is there it's a lot faster than usual but still too slow to post the pictures of Barcelona that I want to show you. Those will have to wait. In the meantime, here's a picture of the pumpkin I carved last year, whose file happens to be very small.


Other things I've learned/been up to:

1. good wine is cheap here
2. i can buy wine legally here
3. you can make ranch dressing out of yogurt
4. curry chicken salad with red apples
5. i steal club promotion posters from the walls near my house as presents for my friends at home ("3 Rubias por solo 5 €")
6. i'm learning to dress like a european
7. when the bus hits the curves going downhill I let go of the pole and pretend I'm in the parking garage by the Theater building in SB longboarding (don't tell mom)
8. my classmate is obsessed with the show, "The OC," and nearly wet herself when I told her my school is on the beach. She asked me if all American boys look like the blond tools on the OC - I told her my boyfriend looks like Christiano
9. same classmate took me to her favorite tapas bar last week and ordered me her favorite tapa: 3 slices of stale bimbo bread with a slice of ham, iceburg lettuce and mayo oozing out the sides. I am beginning to hate tapas.
10. same classmate is 26, has a masters in farmaceutical sciences and is giving her grad thesis in December. She'll be a university prof next year.

SO I'm missing home, and food, and am a little cynical lately but I love being surprised by people. The OC girl with magazine cut-out pictures of Josh Hartnett on her notebook is a nerd. Like me. I'm going to go call her and see if she wants to hang out today.

BTW: The most recent chocolate recipe I've come across:

" Just melt a bar of chocolate in hot milk. That's how my mom does it!"

¡Xiauxa Barcelona!

Barcelona is a fun town. Its so full of interesting architecture and street art, you only need to buy a ticket there and walk around to experience all of its beauty.
This is Gaudí's Sagrada Familia, from Park Güell, a huge park above the city that he designed. The structure is the most prominent part of the Barcelona skyline, and the weirdest. I didn't go inside but our friends that did said that once the outside structure is finished it will look completely different. A construction team still works on the Sagrada Familia 5 days a week, slowly completing the complex plans set out by Gaudí before he died.
This is Willie (Guille is his name in Catalá) and Erick on the metro at 5 in the morning. Willie was our guide, entertainer and host.
This is Willie and his family and friends from Lleída, a town near Barcelona. They are borrowing the large plastic sign that advertises the film festival we just returned from in Sitges. They gave the poster to Taylor as a gift and souvenir. We arrived at the festival at midnight to a crowd of zombie horror-flick geeks. The tickets that we bought for the screenings (2-5 am) happened to feature lesbian horror flicks like "Lesbians in Outer Space" and my favorite, "Lesbian Vampire Killers." Needless to say, that night was the weirdest night I've spent "out" in Spain, and certainly one of the most memorable.

This is the auditorium where we watched the screenings. Sitges is a beautiful seaside town close to Barcelona and the anual host of the Sitges Film Festival, which features mostly horror films. This year, the film "Zombieland" was the headliner and for the other 46 hours of that weekend smaller or independent films were screened. But back to Barcelona...

Spires on the Sagrada Familia

What I'd like to call the "Gingerbread House" in Park Güell

A replica of Gaudí's statue "The Cosmos," from the Sagrada Familia. This is in the garden of the house turned-museum that Gaudí designed and where he lived while designing the park and for the last part of his life.
A shot of the Gaudí House/Museum that for some reason reminds me of Mom. Do you have something in the garden that looks like this? Or maybe it's just the plants?


The famous bench in Park Güell is most impressive up close, where you can see that each piece of the mosaic is unique. The details on the bench make it seem that Gaudí himself collected tiles from old furniture in garage sales and arranged them on this windy, organic structure. The other cool thing about this picture is that the two girls posing on the bench, although I didn't notice them when I took the picture, look just like my housemate Alison and I.


One last quirky image of Barcelona: This is a Cathedral/ Amusement Park at the top of the tallest peak surrounding the city. You can see this from Willie's apartment and I took the picture from Park Güell. If you look closely you can see the ferris wheel on the left and the rollercoaster circling the Cathedral. hmmm


Words I learned in Catalán:

-ganivet = knife
-pa = bread
-kalimocho = jesus juice = coke mixed with cheap red wine (probably not a catalán word, but I learned it in Barcelona)
-The numbers 1-10 but I can't spell them
-xiauxa (but I don't know if I spelled it correctly) = party
-Vull tornar = I want to go back

Coming soon: Barcelona

Baby girl dancing in Park Güell, Barcelona

Some more from Granada

Flash flood- the dumpsters are floating down my street and the man in blue is up to his knees in water!

I'd like to introduce you to my housemates- here they are heckling at passerbys trying to wade through the flood on our street. From left to right: Alisson, biochemist from UCLA, Gelu from Sevilla, Ruben from Castilla La Mancha, Vittorio from Torino, Italy, and Caruso, whose real name is something like Marco, who doesn't actually pay rent but helps me clean up the kitchen a lot.
The view of Grananda from a street in the Albaicin.

My cool classes

Classes have begun and after two weeks of uncertainty, misunderstanding, nightmarish lines and missing the entire first day of class due to someone else´s incompetence, I am finally enrolled in my classes and am pretty sure they won´t be changing again. Here´s the list...

Introduction to Enology
Lactology
Food and Culture
History of Andalucia in the Modern Age
Jews in Spain.


Woohoo!!!

More soon about school, dinner parties, and my new housemates. This weekend I´m leaving for Barcelona with Taylor and will come back with lots of pictures of that too. Hopefully by then I´ll have internet access in my piso.

My first spanish dinner party

This is Joaquin, my language intercambio in Cadíz. He teaches at a primary school and has been learning English the past few years. Shirley and I spent two hours every weekday afternoon walking around Cadíz or sitting in cafés practicing Spanish and English with him. He is one of the most generous and friendly people I've met and a great friend I hope to keep in contact with.

This is Joaquin's wife, Francis, their best friend Miguel, and Francis' salmorejo.

Joaquin and Francis invited Shirley, Annie and I over for dinner and asked that I cooked (!!). So we met at 4, did lots of grocery shopping, and went home and had a party. I made cuban food, Annie made drinks, Joaquin made spanish tortilla, and Francis, the salmorejo.

After checking maybe 7 stores, we decided we'd have to make mojitos without limes. Annie got creative with grapefruit and oranges, and our cuban dinner was saved!

The menu: citrus-adobo chicken, black beans, tomatoes and rice.

What fun :)