good evening faithful readers!
Today was one of the most unproductive days I have had so far in España and included watching the lion king 2 (dubbed in Spanish, so at least I'm learning!), drinking a cup of coffee, thinking about going for a run (and then thinking better of it), and making a pot of chicken soup. Sooooo, on that note, here I am rounding out my unproductive day with a very productive blog entry.
Updates: let's see, the other day I ate snails. It took me a little while to catch on, but it turns out this is snail season, which I realized after about 2 days of seeing tents crop up all over the city advertising "caracoles." I have always heard that escargot is something everyone "has" to try, and that you don't really notice the snails because of all the melted butter and garlic oozing out of their every orifice, so I figured "what the heck?" and a few friends and I stopped by a tent. We were even more excited to find out that an order of caracoles is only 1 euro (what a bargain!) and proceeded to order one each. Here's the deal: apparently caracoles are NOT escargot. Not even close. What the waiter presented to us were three plastic cups of whole garden snails (the little kind), complete with shells (maybe even little faces?), swimming in some sort of brown water that I didn't have the heart (nor the stomach, for that matter) to try. Anyway, turns out they're ok. I manage to stomach them--proud to say I ate EVERY LAST ONE before hurrying off to order coffee asap to drown the taste. There are some pretty nice pictures of this happening on my facebook, so--as I don't believe I have the technical ability to upload any photos here--I'll include links at the end to my albums for any non-facebookers.
Second update: I had an interview for an internship last Thursday. Bad news: I used google maps to get directions and forgot to change the settings to "on foot." Turns out using car directiosn can really screw you up when there are roundabouts involved and I ended up walking in the wrong direction for half an hour. Good news: I guess they didn't really care because I got the internship! The organization is called Córdoba Acoge and they work with local immigrants in the area while also working with the community to reduce racism. I'm still trying desperately to believe that the racism that crops up almost daily here (don't even get me started on the jokes) is out of ignorance and not bad intentions. Either way, I'm excited to start work on Monday! Second piece of good news: the internship is for credit which means I get to drop the most boring class on the face of the earth: La Mezquita: Catedral de Córdoba. The levels of dullness achieved in this class have surprised me more than almost anything here, mostly because it came highly recommended by both Whitties who studied in Córdoba (via the study abroad office) and Middlebury staff in Madrid. However, that class was DULL. I've already talked about the history behind the local mosque-turned-cathedral, so I won't go into it again. I guess I should have known I was in trouble when the professor announced on the first day that the class would NOT be covering the history behind the controversy surrounding La Mezquita's religious affiliation. Not only did the class ignore the religious and political arguments surrounding the mosque it almost entirely (so far, I guess I shouldn't be too judgmental) ignores its history as well. Instead, we spent 3 hours a week being lectured at about minute differences in pillar decoration. HA. I guess I know now never to take another Art History course.
TTFN!
For those interested: Here are links to my facebook photo albums.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2084075&id=1451700384&l=d4276228e8
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2084173&id=1451700384&l=882483c368
I started laughing so hard i almost started crying while reading your description of the class on the Mesquita. that sounds horrible. Glad you don't have to put up with that anymore.
ReplyDeletehope Spain continues to be fantastic!