I wear a watch now.

If I wrote on topics based on their order of importance in my life right now, my pink [red is soooo C-ville] fluffy slippers would be on the top of a list of its own. They are so crucial when you're living in a culture where it's rude to parade around barefoot but really, wearing shoes 24/7 is quite unbearable for little Korean me. But there's only so much to say about foot accessories before it gets slightly eerie.

I started posting pictures on Facebook because it is waaay faster than uploading them on Blogger. I'll try not to overlap, though, cause that can get kinda lame.

One cultural aspect that I've readily embraced? Siestas. They're delicious.

And I've started to notice little things about language learning that I find amusing.
For one thing, people laugh at things that are not funny. A professor says something ever so slightly un-serious in Spanish, a statement such as "I think I ate too much for lunch," and then these little ruptures of giggles and knowing chuckles emerge. Because if you don't acknowledge the teacher's half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood, and you're just as stone-faced as when we're discussing the political structure of the Franco Empire, then that means you didn't get it. You didn't catch the "joke." So we laugh at un-funny things to make sure everyone else knows that we know what's going on, hmph.

I described Spain to one of my friends as a place with the grandpa from UP walking a fancy, pudgy dog times fifty. There are so many elderly folk! I asked my host mum about it, and I wasn't imagining things: there is very little offspringing going on here, and that's a statistic. It's strange to think about it--the crib market goes down while the casket market goes up. I really shouldn't end this post with such a sad and twisty thought, so I'll say one more thing: I'm going to eat real Spanish tapas this weekend with some of my new-found friends and will try to document the whole shish-kabob (especially for Trish)!

Xátiva

[laundry; saturday must be citrus-color day]

This trip happened last Friday (or Saturday?); I have lost my sense of time these days. It's nice.
Anyways, I really like Xátiva. Two popes were born here, and there's this castle that's super snazzy, with little gardens and marble outdoor staircases. And then of course there's the art. It's a bizarre, surreal feeling to be observing art in a museum--normal stuff, then realizing that the painter probably completed this piece just a few streets away, several hundred years ago. With the local element still in tact, this museum experience was not museum-y at all. I felt like I was in someone's home. A friend of the painter's, who received the beautiful courtyard piece for his birthday.

[Rebecquita]

[Bocadillo is a clever name for sandwich because it makes it sound tastier and fancier than it actually is. I really should stop being so critical of Spanish food. ]

[Chrissy]

[Even fairy tale characters would be jea-loose of this door knob.]

[Perhaps one of my favorite elements of Spain]

[Menu of the day]

[The roads of Xátiva were very patterned and varied; they made our strolling experience quite unique, especially for the soles of our feet.]

[Sharon]

[Abigail]

[Do you see all the 'chocolate chips' on my face? My mother wants me to get them removed some day, eek.]

[Rebecca and I started a tradition of plucking citrus from sacred places.]

I thought Spain would have taco carts.

This post is especially for a person who I'd like to call "Chef Mozart." He he.
Anyways, the food in Spain is not spicy, so the cuisine and I aren't kindred spirits or anything, but my host family makes simple meals that are probably more delicious than they should be because there are large g a p s between each meal, so you're parched for solids, anything. The Spanish eat hobbit-style. Breakfast, snack, Lunch [@ 2PM], snack, snack, snack, then dinner at 10 or 11 PM. Some other food-related observations before I try to clumsily describe the following dishes:

• Mushrooms are sold all sliced up.
  
• You can buy a bottle of wine for one Euro, which is around $1.45
• Breakfast is definitely not a big deal. Back at home breakfast is the biggest, most leisurely spent meal. Here, I eat a chunk of baguette and drink a gulp of juice on a good day. But in the mornings I pretend I'm a [hungry] traveling gypsy so the theatrics of it all helps me rationalize this change in lifestyle.
• Some individual yogurts are sold in little glass jars. It's the adult version of baby food and it's absolutely fantastic.
• The gelato is crazy good.
• The sodas taste a tad frutier.
  
• Spanish cuisine uses short-grained [sticky] rice as opposed to the long-grained rice used in Latin American countries. Curious.
  
• I'm in Valencia, so yes, the oranges are tangy, sweet, and juicy to perfection.

But I'm not gonna lie...I miss tacos.

[the first night i got there; deep-dish potato omelet they call a tortilla and a salad]

[lunch; rice with chicken and garbanzo beans with a hint of bacon]

[the infamous 10 PM dinner that can never come too soon; pasta with sauteed veggies and bacon]

[lunch; Spanish chili with pasta; this was tasty]

[dinner; fillo baked with eggs 'n potatoes]

Chello

Spain feels familiar. Probably because Mexico is like a little sister to Spain, borrowing all sorts of outfits. That said, I feel very much at home. Even from the moment I walked out of the underground metro station, I did not feel that this country was giving me very much of a foreign vibe. But one thing Mexico could never truly replicate is the story behind each fountain, the edginess that comes with being one of the first countries to mix old and new architectural styles while foreshadowing the coming trends of postmodernism, and the smell. Spain has a very distinct smell. It comes from cigarettes, wine, and something else, maybe lemons, but it is a really wonderful smell.

So Far

I've seen a boy on a leash.
Unintentionally witnessed a woman expose a good 90 percent of her behind at an ice cream shop.
And heard, along with hundreds of other people, through the intercom, for someone to call her mother immediately.

And I'm only in Dallas, Texas. Snazzay.

Huh

I wonder if I could love Spain as much as I love Mexico.
Right now, the night before departure, as I'm typing away in my dear little city of Chihuahua, a thought that stands out above the rest is how excited I am to spend my summer in Mexico with the family.

To the un-Christy-trained ear, this definitely wouldn't sound right, haha.