Dinnertime chats

One of the best parts of my day here in the 'Bao is dinnertime, or "a cenar" as they like to yell at me from the kitchen. During this time, I usually eat with the kiddos (mostly because I still can't seem to wait to eat dinner as a Spaniard at 9 or 10pm like the rest of the country), and this can lead to some very interesting convos.

For instance, just today we had a 10-minute conversation about Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, how famous they are/were in the US and ALL of the details surround their death. Adrian even has a theory that Jackson's doctor poisoned him because he wanted to be famous but Esti kindly told him the truth, that he was going to die soon anyways because his body was wacked out. This OF COURSE led to a full blown discussion on transgenders and how they change THEIR bodies, including some demonstrations on adding/subtracting key body parts. Now mind you, I hardly ever add to these convos because as much Spanish as I know, the last thing I want to do is conjugate something wrong and have the whole family thinking I'M a transgender or something. Pass.

Another light dinner topic was the entirety of how babies are made, also complete with some suggestive hand motions/demonstrations. Maybe I never had the talk with my parents, maybe I did and I just forget, or maybe I blocked it out completely because of how awkward it is to ask your parents about something so controversial, but I can't believe the Telmo, Sara, and Adrian asked so many frank questions about babies and the whole shindig, while of COURSE Esti was there to give simple, concise, and sometimes disturbing answers. Ah, Spain.

Sometimes at dinner we forgo the talking altogether and just sing a song together. NOT kidding. From the Macarena (which I proudly know all of the words to when they are rambling/singing in the refrain, finally ) to Elvis Presley, to some Spanish TV shows I don;t follow, they know all the words and if I'm lucky, the dances. Sometimes I think I'm living in some bizarro cross between Full House and a Ricky Martin music video to be honest. As crazy and loud as it all sounds, I still probs wouldn't change it for anything. I've learned more about cooking, families, housekeeping, city-living, siestas, and more, INCLUDING vocab for all of the above, with my measly little familia of 7, so why would I ever change that? Besides, then how would I know where babies come from?

One week, give or take

Well my friends I feel like I have finally assimilated myself enough into this new Spanish/Basque culture that I apparently no longer feel the need to update mah blog regularly anymore. But, as the complaints about this have also stopped I feel like you all have accepted that I am Spanish now, too. So all is well in the world! Except that I only have 8 days left to be a Spaniard, when did that happen?

These past few weeks have been pretty relaxed, no major trips besides a day trip to Santander to visit the beach and explore another part of the Spain coastline. (side note: if you ever need to fly to/from Spain for rull cheap, fly RyanAir to Santander and take a bus to Bilbao, it's only 6 euros one way and about an hour and a half, super easy-peasy!) We also had another family linner this past weekend for Spanish Dia de los Madres (Mother's Day) which was once again a hugeeeee 5 course event, but this time I was prepared and balanced everything out pretty well. This actually means I skipped an entire course of squid/octopus/some type of cephalopod (yeah I looked that up) that was stewed in its own ink and chopped up into huge tentacle parts, yikes. It even tasted like ink, if that's possible. BUT this seafood experience was evenly matched with another new food I tried (course two) which was regular pulpo (octopus) cooked with potatoes and some kind of sassy red spice, yum! It's not my new favorite Spanish cuisine, chorizo will have that spot for all eternity, but it was definitely better than I expected and I hope I get to have it again soon when I get back to the states. The rest of that day was spent doing homework and hanging out with the kiddos, who have finally accepted me as an English tutor and ask me questions about translations all the time now, in exchange for my own Spanish questions. It's actually pretty awesome because unlike Spanish classes where you ask once and then forget it until the next time you need some rare word, with the kiddos we draw pictures and they describe to me IN FULL the capacities of every word. They're pretty smart kids, ya know.

As for this weekend, I plan on going to a special showing of "Fiebre del Sabado Noche" (Saturday Night Fever, sans Sr. Travolta, obvs) on Friday night and then spending the rest of the weekend both studying for finals and hanging out with CIDE peeps. We have finals next week on Wednesday/Thursday which isn't too bad but I have 5 in only 2 days so that might be bad. Luckily they are only an hour each and mainly consist of one shorter essay or info from the second half of the semester so I won't have to cram, I mean study too hard. It is weird to think it's my last weekend in Spain, minus the 5 hours I have on Saturday morning to get myself to the airport, so I'm hoping I can make the most of it without making a fool of myself or failing finals. Who knows, maybe I'll start packing just because I'm so flippin excited to see everyone from home, but I also don't want to think about leaving just quite yet. Ah the bittersweet "adios" that awaits me in 8 days is going to be pretty awful I think, I'll be a fruit salad of mixed emotions, ranging from Grape "get me the heck on that plane ASAP" to Banana "but I don't waaaaaaant to leaveeeeeeee". I guess we'll see, but it'll be messy fo sho.