Stranger in a Strange Land

¡Bienvenidos!

¡Bienvenidos a mi weblog!

As I am currently in Madrid, I hope to use this blog as a way of keeping in touch with my friends and family back in the US, so please use the comments function to let me know what you think, or to let me know what is going on at home, or you can also email me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with blogs, the comments are public just like the posts, so don’t write anything you wouldn’t want the world to see!

I have been in Madrid for a little more than six days, and I am still adjusting to the time and the food and the language. Yesterday morning I slept right through my first class, and I am trying to blame that on lingering jetlag! The food here is actually quite good, but it does take some getting used to. My señora cooks with lots of olive oil, which she tells me is “muy sano” (healthy). Usually meals have several courses: first a salad, soup, or pasta (usually without meat); then some sort of meat (beef/pork/fish); then of course dessert, which is fruit or yogurt as often as sweets. It is very strange to me to eat each food separately rather than putting them all on my plate at one time. Every meal is eaten with a piece or two of French bread, which my señora buys each day.

Living with a host family is working out quite well – my señora cooks all my meals, and it is nice to have someone with whom to practice my Spanish, and to ask questions about life in Madrid. There are also two adult children who live here in the apartment –apparently this is very common for unmarried children in Spain, in part because of high housing costs, but probably more due to cultural beliefs about family.

For a girl from suburbia, city life is magnífica. I walk almost everywhere (including school) and for longer distances I can use the extremely comprehensive metro system. There are stores everywhere – the only problem is determining which store sells what. I have already learned the hard way the difference between a farmacia (which sells medicines and specialized types of shampoo, etc. at a high premium) and a drogería (which is the equivalent of a drug store in the US without the actually pharmacy part). Also, almost every store closes between 2 and 4:30, the time of la comida, the main meal. Everyone, even schoolchildren, goes home for that meal, then returns to work/school until about 7 or 8 at night.

I haven’t yet seen much of Madrid outside of the area in which I live and go to school, but I have been to the Plaza Mayor, which is in the central part of the city. Yesterday evening I went with my school group to have churros con chocolate (a sort of fried dough that you dip in cups of dark chocolate). This is a very typical Spanish food, and it is delicious.

Hopefully as the semester goes on I will be able to share more about Madrid and Spanish culture in general, as well as the other parts of Spain I will visit. More later!

posted by Kendra @ 6:49 PM