Arrival

I’ve been in Spain for a little over 3 weeks now and I am finally starting to feel settled in. Getting here was crazy. I had an interview for medical school at OHSU the day before I left, slept for about 4 hours that evening and then took off the following morning for Spain. I didn’t really sleep for the following two days. When I arrived in Madrid I met up with my friend Paloma who I met about 7 years ago when she was an exchange student at my high school.  In high school she did track and attended my Spanish class. It was crazy to meet up with her again after so much time. I was planning on having a low key day with Paloma until she invited me to go to a bullfight. She was a little worried about what I might think of her asking me to go to a bullfight because in Spain there are many people that oppose bullfights. But I was super excited to go. So Paloma and her brother Alfonso showed me a “very typical” (as Spanish people always say when describing a regional food or activity) Spanish day. We went to bullfighting aficionado bars and had tapas, rations of bull tail, croquetas and patatas bravas and many cañas of beer. I was really lucky to have attended a bullfight with two Spaniards who are fans of bullfights otherwise I would have been missing out on what was really going on. The crowd participates in the fight by clapping in different rhythms and whistling to encourage the bullfighter to change what he is doing and to call for a new bull if the bull is not attacking with enough energy (rarely when a bull attacks ferociously and is very “brave” the fight is stopped and the bull is saved and then used for breeding). Whistling is bad, a clap with synchronized rhythm is bad and a regular clap by the entire crowd is good. The crowd will chastise the fighters for making mistakes and also for playing with the bull for too long. The fans of bullfighting have great respect for the bulls and want them to have a respectable death.  When a bull has to endure more suffering than it should, the crowd becomes upset and whistles and claps with rhythm. When a bullfighter has trouble placing the sword through the chest and the bull has suffered too long, the crowd encourages the bullfighter to kill it by easier means, which is by stabbing the bull between the vertebrae in the neck and severing its spinal cord.  Although the whole of bullfighting is bloody and shocking to the average person, it is not a blood sport as much as it is a form of traditional art. Everything is about style, technique and effectiveness. At the end of the day all of the meat is bought by bars and eaten (like the bull tail I ate).

            After the fight we went to another aficionado bar and had more food and beer. It sounds like I was drinking a lot of alcohol, but I was never drunk once throughout the day. As we drank we were constantly eating and cañas of beer are only about 5oz. Beers are served that way because Spain is warm and no one wants to drink warm beer, so you order a bunch of small ice cold beers instead of having one large beer that warms up. 

            At 11:00 PM I took a night bus down to Fuengirola and didn’t sleep at all. At 9:00 AM the next day I went to my school and attended classes all day as my orientation. I had plans to stay at a hostel but all the teachers were trying to find me a place to stay where I wouldn’t have to pay. I ended up staying with the father of one of the teachers, who is 73 years old. I slept for 14 hours that night. Two days later the man who I was staying with had a diverticulitis flare-up and had to go to the hospital. I then moved to Malaga with a teacher, Eugenio, who teaches in Marbella and is friends with many of the teachers at my school.

I have been living with Eugenio since then and it has been awesome. Eugenio and his friends are all into mountain biking and Eugenio has been lending me one of his mountain bikes to go with him and his friends. He has also introduced me to his friends and his family and I have been having a great time hanging out with them. I have become a temporary member of two clubs that Eugenio and his friends have: the biking club and the gourmet gastronomic club. The biking club is self explanatory, but the food club is unique. It is really just an excuse for them to all get together and hang out. Every other week Eugenio and his friends meet up and one person makes a surprise dinner and cooks for everyone. Whoever is not cooking makes fun of what the cook is preparing and makes a mess of the kitchen. They are constantly giving each other crap, it’s hilarious.  At the end of the night the cook is rated on the food, drink and ambiance – but the scoring is akin to the scoring system on Whose Line is It Anyway.

Malaga is great. The weather, like nothing I have experienced in my life and the food is awesome. Seafood is number one here. I will keep posting my adventures on this blog and try to attach some photos from my first week.

Tuesdays

I finished my work load for the day which included two hours of science and one hour of PE class. I am about to go to a restaurant on the beach with some of the teachers. They always go out to lunch on Tuesdays because they have to stay longer for student-teacher meetings. Today I have to attend a meeting so I am going to get some lunch with the other teachers. I am pretty excited, last time we went it was all fried fish, molluscs and octupus. Damn good food! Weather is not bad either, its october 26th and I am sweating from standing in the hot sun.