Before I begin, I must digress to apologize for any misspelled words: for the past week I've been struggling a little bit with spelling in English. I'm constantly laughing at myself because I haven't been away long, but words with strange spellings, (like "humongous" and "grateful") have suddenly become a little tricky.
These past few weeks have been busy with orientation, getting settled in with my host family, and starting classes. We just finished up two weeks of "Intensive Spanish Review," which consisted of class from 9-1:30 P.M. every day. And the review was useful, it was tough to sit through four hours of class each morning. So I'm glad we've moved on to our normal semester courses.
I feel like I'm starting to adapt to the Spanish lifestyle: physically, I blend in well with other Spanish women. Looking Spanish greatly reduces the amount of catcalls you attract while walking down the street. (Unless, of course, you're dressed up to go out. We had a man sing to us once in a valiant attempt to get our attention.) Looking Spanish also has its entertainment value: I love standing next to American students from other programs on the bus without saying anything. If I throw in an English "excuse me," to get off the bus, they're usually quite surprised.
So far, I'm so happy I chose Alicante as my city away from home. It's a livable, Spanish city, where there are very few tourists and barely anyone speaks English. Some Alicantinos like to practice their English on us...however this usually makes communication more challenging than if they were speaking Spanish. From what Spanish-speakers have told me, it's extremely difficult to learn the proper accent to speak English; each time I think about this, I'm grateful to already know the language!
My host family is wonderful: Maricarmen and Pepe are an older couple in their late sixties who have five children, although they're all moved out of the house. They're very caring and love to chat with me: I'm their 33rd host student, and I think they genuinely like to have exchange students in the house. I have a large room and my own bathroom, which is more exciting than it sounds. (Some girls in my program are sharing one bathroom with entire families of four!) Every time I leave the house, Pepe tells me "Abrígate bien, eh? Con chaqueta, bufanda y guantes." which essentially means "Dress warmly with your coat, scarf and gloves!"
It's been in the high 40's since we arrived: I told them it was about -30º Celsius in Minnesota last week, and they were appalled.
Spanish life revolves around meals: there are technically five meals a day. Desayuno is breakfast, and that typically consists of galletas, which are sort of like graham crackers; yogur (yogurt, and one of my most favorite Spanish words: they pronounce it "Yoh-guuur."), coffee, and una madelina, which is a muffin. After that is almuerzo which is around 11:30, and that's a mid-morning snack.
La comida, or, literally, "The food," is between 2-3:30. La comida is the largest meal of the day, and we eat things like pasta, chicken, soup, or paella as the main course. Then we'll have bread, nuts, jamón, and fruit on the side: it's enormous. I know now why the Spanish started the tradition of siesta, because you need a nap after eating so much.
Later, there's merienda, another afternoon snack, and dinner, or la cena occurs around 9 P.M. It's so funny; I don't know how they have time to do anything else but eat.
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