Avocados in the salad.

This post is being written from my new room, in my/ our new house, yes that word is house, not apartment, with a new senora. I feel like I have some explaining to do.

We made the decision to move houses earlier this week. There was a bit of an encounter with Maru the Thursday before we went to Madrid, and after talking to our program coordinator we decided that the move would be the best decision. It was sad to leave Enrique our host father, he was always trying to teach us things and he made really good food, even though he only cooked for us about 3 times during the time that we were with them. The switch was awkward, but we had one of the coordinators with us to kind of smooth the situation, and to protect us just in case Maru was going to be hostile.

Our new senora is named Mari Carmen. Living in her house with her are her son and daughter-in-law, Julia (I am really excited to get to know her better, she about high school age and is very chatty), and two dogs. It is a three story house, and it’s nice, I mean NICE. We have our own rooms and share a bathroom on the third floor. It’s kind of loud because the house is right on the street versus being 5 floors up, but I’m sure I will get used to it, and it’s only going to be for a month. For our first meal we had chicken, French fries, salad- with avocados! And pudding for dessert. It was delicious. I now have a desk, some bookshelves, and a mini bulletin board, and my new bedspread has sheep on it that are holding balls of yarn. I am hoping that things go well for the rest of the time that we are here and that we can somewhat redeem the time in this new housing situation.

I wanted to take some time to write about things that I have been learning here in Spain, but I know that this post is a little long to begin with, so I will try and summarize. My favorite class is my twentieth century Spanish theater class, there are six of us and we have been reading different plays, Bodas de Sangre, Historia de Una Escalera and right now we are on Tres Sombreros de Copa. I love this class because through the plays we are learning about Spanish culture and history, especially the Spanish civil war. In my Tres Culturas class I was really into our section on the Jews, I have always been interested in Jewish culture and the Old Testament so learning a bit more about their culture has been great; I didn’t realize how central the Jews were to Spanish culture. I am also going to be in RS 138 in the spring, which is Judaism, and I’m excited. Grammar is still challenging as ever, but I do think that I am learning. We learned about the religious state of Spain this week in our Spain class (its called actualidades, but it doesn’t translate well) It was interesting to learn about how the majority of Spain (80%) claims Catholicism, but when looking closer at statistics or even just living here, one can see that Spain isn’t as religious as it claims. Religion is a very personal topic here, but we have had a few discussions with people here, and they always seem to be so interested in our faith and I think they hear and see a different message from us about Jesus than they do from the “Catholics” in Sevilla.

Also I have re-learned that first impressions of people are not always correct representations, and this goes both ways. And that inner beauty is much more important that looks and popularity.

“Listen Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.” –Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.