Mucho sobre la comida (A Lot About Food)

I just realized that most things I wanted to write in this entry have to do with food. That's telling, I suppose, as the only other thing I'm really doing is studying (Nazca, Moche, Inca, oh my).

1) I was in the kitchen a few days ago working, and I noticed just how Spanish our kitchen is. There were ceramics hanging on the walls and a pata negra (literally "black leg"; the Spanish ham that comes still on the leg, hoof included) chilling on the end of the table, half sliced into. I saw the bulk vino (wine) that Mayte and Fernando buy sitting in the corner in its boxes, waiting to get transported into the glass containers they have (they go through a lot of wine). There were 4 or 5 different glass containers of aceite (olive oil) sitting around and a big bin of live caracoles (snails) waiting to get cooked. And of course, in the corner were some cruzcampo (Sevilla beer) cans, waiting to be recycled. That whole scene has become normal to me, but it is so authentically southern Spain. I wonder if my kitchen in Michigan will feel strange in comparison.

2) Since it's getting unbearably hot again, the apartment smells like it did when I first came in August. Buildings really do smell different in summer, and that smell takes me back to my first weeks here. It's funny how smells can be so closely connected to emotion.

3) On Thursday, Luisa and Eva (the two women who work in the center) went out for lunch with Liliana and myself to our favorite tapas place, Los Coloniales. It was fantastic. Lots of fun conversation and story exchanges. The relationship that I have with them is yet another benefit to staying here for a year. Being able to go out with them like that for a lunch never would have happened last semester. But now I consider myself close to the people who work in the center, Luisa especially.

4) Austin and I cooked both lunch and dinner yesterday. I took pictures, although I'm currently too busy to put them up. It was fun. For lunch, we made vegetable and tofu stir fry with rice noodles. None of them had ever tried tofu before, so it was fun. They were all good sports and I think the food was decent, but Nando and Fernando could not hide their disgust for the tofu. At the end of the meal, Nando whipped out his mayonnaise and meat. It was kind of funny. No one else normally eats dinner in the house, so we made pancakes and scrambled eggs for ourselves (American breakfast for dinner!). We left one for Mayte and Fernando to try, and they both loved it. They had never had a pancake before. Oh, and for lunch we also made peanut butter cookies, which were a big hit. It was a lot of fun and provided some good breaks from studying yesterday.

As of now, nothing very exciting going on. I've spent the last few days sitting around, doing all kinds of studying. I am ready for this week to be done in the school sense, but not in the leaving Sevilla sense.