choque cultural

well.. i am finally over my tummy bug!! thank goodness, too. because if you're feeling shitty physically usually it rubs off on your mentally. definitely not as much staying in at night watching english-speaking movies now that my diet has surpassed rice and chicken broth..though it's hard to not stay in all cuddled up as it is FREEZING (50 degrees..) and rainy all the frickin time. it wouldn't be so bad if we all had brought the proper gear. south of spain? cold and rainy? i've literally been wearing the same pants for the past week because everything else is for balmy weather. oh well..what can you do? just wait it out, i s'pose.
i have also discovered their chocolate spread, which is basically like nutella. seriously, their chocolate spread/nutella is cheaper than peanut butter over here because they put it on everything. literally, the image on the jar is a picture of toast with nutella, a cake slice with nutella, milk with a dollop of nutella..how these people stay so thin and not die from some kind of interior nutella-vital organ-blockage is beyond me. but as they say, when in rome! spain!
i realize that in order to actually speak the language with hispanohablantes nativos, you really just need a combination of luck and balls. if you have the courage to just talk to anyone and ask them questions and try your best at spanish, they will probably help you out and will end up being really awesomely nice. por ejemplo! i was sitting at a cafe today and this spanish guy asked to borrow my dictionary, we ended up talking and he may now be my intercambio (someone from the university who you help out with english while they help increase your spanish abilities). he was very nice, kind of impatient for my not so fluent spanish, but it was definitely hilarious trying to communicate what we wanted to say to each other. for instance, he told me he visited new york city and that there were all of these huge squirrels in the street...which I took to mean that there was a large squid in the street who he fed a bagel. honestly, how things can be lost in translation...odd, i tell you, odd.
here are some photos of the area surrounding the university!
besos, Tess