Oddities of Spain- part 1

Hola Everyone!

The weather here is changing fast- I’m looking out at a cloudy sky and the weather has dropped at least 20 degrees or more since we arrived. It feels like a cozy fall day today. According to the weather reports, we’ll be pulling out our rain jackets this weekend. It’s Friday today, and we’re curious to see what a “weekend” in Madrid is like. We hear it’s quite different than the weekdays because the Spaniards love to fiesta! This afternoon we’ll be visiting the HUGE Prado Museum with a group from our language school. It’s been so enriching to spend time with our international classmates (who are also struggling their way through Spanish). I especially love the 1-½ hours of conversational skills each day. Basically, our rotating instructors strike up conversations with each one of us (about our plans for the weekend, our hobbies, things we did the day before, etc.) and we talk in Spanish the whole time. Being that I have classmates from Luxemburg, Turkey and various other places, the conversation is very engaging! We are both loving the new vocabulary and speaking skills we acquire each day. It’s such a great feeling of accomplishment to spend 2 hours in conversation and understand it all. For those of you who are bilingual, you can obviously relate! We’re trying to make a rule that when we’re walking around on the city streets, we talk to each other in Spanish (we haven’t done very well at remembering this though)… but when we’re at home, we may talk in English. It’s great practice!

Our plans tomorrow are to take the train to visit the neighboring city of Toledo. It is significant because it is the former capitol of Spain, and it’s very scenic and historical. It will be our first trip on the train and our first trip out of the city. With so much to see this week in the historic city center, we haven’t needed to venture out yet! Sunday we plan on visiting the famous flea market here- El Raestro. It’s actually the largest flea market in all of Europe!

So, I thought today I’d write about a few of our experiences this week, which I will call…


SOME ODDITIES OF SPAIN:

Meal Times:
When is it okay to eat a meal out? What is classified as lunch, and what is dinner? When do the restaurants open? It seems to me that Spaniards eat at all hours, but what I don’t understand is what to call the mealtimes. We knew before coming here that dinner was VERY late at night, so we even adapted our own schedule this summer and tried to always eat after 8pm all summer to prepare. But, the restaurants don’t even open here until about 9pm for dinner, and you don’t start to see the locals sit down to dine until 10pm or later. Crazy. Then again, they can pretty much munch on snacks all day in different tapas restaurants if desired (typical tapas include: a plate of mixed olives, tiny ham sandwiches, various fried fishes, antipasto, etc. There are millions of choices!) It’s also considered perfectly appropriate to eat just one tapa at one café, and stop by the café next door for a second. When you walk in the bars, all of the little tapas are displayed on plates with toothpicks on their bar under glass. You point to and select what you want, and they charge you by the types and amounts on your plate once you’re finished. We haven’t done the official “tapa crawl” yet (going from one tapas bar to the next, etc…) but we plan to try it soon!

Lunch appears to be the BIG meal of the day, as most locals gather at the restaurants around 2pm for a typical “menu de la dia” (menu of the day). Three courses are provided with several choices for each course. The meals look wonderful, but a little heavy for the middle of the day. However, we will of course have to try it, so I’ll write about the different offerings once we do. As far as dinner, I don’t think it’s as important of a meal, depending on your appetite. Although, if you plan on spending the night out dancing at discotecas… it’s apparently a good way to kick off the evening. Therefore, the restaurants seem to get pretty busy after 10pm. It’s odd to be going to bed at night and to be smelling the food cooking at the restaurants below us. Tis’ Spain!

Okay… we’re about to leave now for the Prado, so I’ll write more later… Still more oddities to come:
-A 4 hour wash cycle?
-When do they sleep?
-Which road leads to our apartment?