New Home

My New Room

I switched homes this week from a little apartment a 30 minute walk outside of the city to another small 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment that’s about a 2 minute walk from the city center. Ian (my roommate who also goes to Westmont) and I both moved on Friday. We now live with a sweet little old lady named Anna, who is a very gracious host, a decent cook, and she’s excited to have us living with her. It's a huge improvement over the home we'd been living in (I don't our old Señora liked me very much).

Spanish meals are great… not so much at breakfast (which is just toast with jelly and chocolate milk every morning), but lunch is the big meal of the day, eaten around 3pm, and it usually includes a main course, salad, and bread. Today we had a rice dish with vegetables and shrimp that was kind of like a paella and a Spanish melon for dessert. In my home we eat dinner at 9:30, and then after dinner, usually go out to get a coffee, ice cream, or drink at one of the hundreds of little bars scattered all over the city. It’s weird for me to see families with little toddlers out at midnight out for a walk along the river, but it’s perfectly normal for them. All the stores including grocery stores are open from 10:00 – 2:00 and then 5:30 – 10:00, so people go home for a big lunch and siesta from 2:00 – 5:30 to catch up on sleep. Work is a less important part of the culture here, and people take time to rest and spend time with friends.

Tomorrow is the last day of class for the week… Friday our group is going on trip to Cordoba, to see the mosque that we’ve been studying in art class the past two weeks.