The Past Few Days

Have been crazy.

Saturday, I went to a little pueblo about half an hour from Madrid - Alcalá. It is great little village with a number of UNESCO world heritage sites. The University founded in the 1400's is one of the oldest universities in the world. The Spaniards liken it to Oxford and Cambridge. 

The house that Cervantes was born in is also in this pueblo. We took a tour of the house - very interesting. (The Cervantes Beca -the Hispanic Literature equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature - is awarded annually by the king in the antechamber of the University.)

Saturday night was El Noche en Blanco, a festival when museums, street exhibitions, theaters, and musical venues stay open all night. It was great. All of the major streets in Madrid were closed and were filled with throngs of Madrileños as well as tourists. Hundreds of thousands of people must of been there if not millions.

On the home front, things have been a little turbulent. Although my Spanish has greatly improved in the last few weeks, I'm still having difficulty catching every word when the language is spoken so fast. Sometime this past week, I thought that Elvira had told me that her sobrino or nephew would be coming to live with us since he attends the university in Madrid. I thought she said that he would be here the next day. And then the day came and went and he did not show up. Another few days came and went and still he had not arrived. And then after I had returned from Alcalá, Elvira told me that I needed to be quiet because her sick friend was sleeping in the guest room. I was a little confused. To say the least, I wasn't entirely sure what she had said. I had thought that earlier in the week she had mentioned something about her nephew, but now her sick, ailing, dying? friend was living in the apartment instead. And then I had lunch, and the nephew showed up. I'm beginning to think that the nephew had been in the house for a few days prior to my meeting him. I think we both just had different schedules and never had the chance to meet. 

A food update: I've never eaten so much food in my life. There is lunch with piles of food and then there is dinner - in Spain it is supposed to be smaller - that is just as big as lunch.

Here are a number of dining scenarios that will likely hold true for the rest of the semester:

1) Fried Food. This plate consists of fried eggplant, fried fish or chicken, fried empanadas, and patatas fritas. Oh, and there's the baguette.

2) Fish. Prior to Spain, I did not eat fish. Why? I cannot say. I have fish about once a day. Therefore, I've come to like it - for the most part. I'm not a huge fan of canned tuna, but maybe that too will change by the end of the semester.

3)Pasta. Elvira also likes to prepare lasagna and pastas. The massive heaping of lasagna could have easily fed 10 starving children in Africa.

Today, lunch was a feast. It was the first time that the Ailing-Sick-Dying-Woman, the Nephew, Elvira, and I all had lunch together. There were mussels that were prepared kind of like oysters in the States. They were cooked and on each shell there was a cilantro, tomato, onion salsa. (Think more along the lines of a bruschetta topping than salsa.) There were Spanish style scalloped potatoes that involved tomatoes, onions, and I believe vinegar. Then there was the fish, which surprisingly was not fried, two tomato slices, and a stalk of giant white asparagus. All in all, it was fairly impressive.

I need to make an addendum to an additional post. The day that I was walking all of the town, I stumbled upon what had been some sort of brawl. All sorts of people were standing in the streets watching the shouting and bloody loons. I didn't really realize what was happening until I got rather close to the scene of the crime. The people that had been walking in front of me had stopped and I did hear shouting, but I foolishly kept walking. It was not until I realized that a bleeding transgendered woman/man (picture the villain-mother from the Goonies with lots of blood) was walking down the sidewalk in my direction that I became aware of the 'threat.' Nothing happened, there were a few broken bottles and the two people in the fight continued to scream and shout from opposite sides of the road. I stood in the doorway of a building with a burka-ed Muslim woman until we both had a chance to scurry past the man/woman.