a explorar

Again as I write, I'm waiting for dinner. It would seem like all you're going to hear from me this summer will have to do with food (jaja - that's Spanish laughter for you!). We had our orientation this morning in the classroom that we'll be in for the whole summer. It's six stops away by el metro que se llama CIRCULAR and then about a ten minute walk beyond that. Incidentally, the one building that we'll be dealing with all summer is across the street from the SLU (St. Louis University) campus - the one I would have attended had I not decided to go to Duke. Small world, right?

After the orientation, Caitlin and I returned home to almorzar with our host parents. Lunch came to us as a small bowl of a tomato-based stew, filled with chunks of meat, potato, carrots and onions, and it was accompanied by a portion of fresh bread (of course) and little fried bullets of that same cheese that had topped the pasta yesterday. This cheese, I was informed at el desayuno is called Manchego and it also served as a spread for the toast we had for breakfast. We finished up our lunch fairly quickly and spent awhile chatting with Emilio. We learned more of our family and some of his rendition of the history of Madrid and Segovia (where we're headed tomorrow para una excursion!). Most interesting of the topics we talked about had to do with what Emilio described as the growing diversity in Spain. He talked a lot about (and we heard a bit of this from our program director at our orientation as well) how the concept of race and racial identity is relatively new in Madrid - something that has only begun to crop up as groups from different countries around the world have started immigrating en masse. He told us how he rarely hears any single person being singled out racially - no slurs or instantaneous prejudice - but that varying groups within the city (say an entire neighborhood of Koreans or something of the sort) tend to stir up tensions. Just an interesting observation of his that I thought I'd share.

While most of the city closed down to take their siesta after our lunch, Caitlin and I joined back up with Max with an unofficial quest to master el metro. We spent awhile studying the maps and after riding around a bit decided to get off at the stop by La Plaza de Espana and then walk up La Calle de la Princesa to check out the seven-story Corte Ingles. The store reminded me of a combination of the giant Marshall Fields in Chicago and your typical Forever XXI.

Alright dinner now - I'll talk more about our wanderings later!

---- 5/19/12 ----

To tie up this post from the other day, here's a photo of the Spanish Air Force building we found as we wandered. We then returned to the area of the city near our homestay and decided to try out the little riverside cafe in front of our building. At this point, it was about 8p and dinner had been scheduled for 9:30p in our household and our host parents had told us earlier that it's been common for the girls that they've hosted in the past to enjoy a drink, with or without a small appetizer, around that time before they came home for dinner. And with this in mind, Caitlin and I accomplished a first: we each ordered una cerveza con limon, a beer diluted with lemon Fanta. It was light and bubbly - the perfect refreshment to cap off our afternoon's explorations and heighten our growing sense of cocky sophistication as we work to grow more accustomed to the culture here.

Dinner followed with broiled fish (sorry it's been a couple of days, so I don't remember what type), more fried queso manchego some fresh veggies and a yogurt for dessert. As we ate, Emilio put las noticias on the television. He had eaten earlier and thought it might be a good idea for us to get a better sense for the major current events in Madrid. Believe it or not, the program Emilio chose was actually the same one that we used to have to watch for Sr. Yavetsky's class - I guess that dreaded weekly assignment was useful after all! I won't go into a detailed explanation of the stuff we heard about on the news, but I did want to share that the one story that I think I have the confidence to say that I understood 100% was a report about the dwindling number of girls in engineering, robotics and computer science. Just thought that some of you might appreciate that (I see you, Liz!).