Best Ribs in America...and now the rest of the world.

I went back to America tonight.

Not actually (of course), but Mom is here to visit and she (and I) were getting really frustrated that she couldn't read any of the menus when we went out to eat. On top of that, it's been really hard to find good restaurants to go to. We don't want anything too pricey, but we don't want bad food, either. So, after a bit of bickering, we made a silent agreement that Tony Roma's would be the dining establishment of choice tonight.

You'd think that if you go to an American restaurant in another country, you'd feel right at home, but I really didn't. We walked in and I told the host that we wanted to have dinner and there were two of us and no, we don't smoke. His final question before he took us to a table was "¿Español o inglés?" Yeah, yeah, throw me a menu in English since obviously we don't speak Spanish. I'm feel ashamed walking into an American restaurant in Spain. I felt like I was saying "Hello, I'm a stuck-up American who can't give your culture the time of day," and even though I know that's not true, nobody else knows that.

Mom and I decided to share a rack of baby back ribs, a salad, and some onion rings. Massive mound of onion rings: check. Bottle of ketchup brought to the table without even asking: check. Enormous glass of Coke: check. Salad drenched in fatty salad dressing: ??? It all felt very American right down to the music being played...and then they brought us the oil and vinegar. I guess it probably makes sense since Spaniards tend to eat salad with just some oil, vinegar, and salt, so they would have been wasting money to stock 8 different salad dressings, but everything else was so authentic.

Mom and I figured that Tony Roma's in Valencia is pretty much American, they just do it waaayyyy slower. The two men at the table next had a burger and a chicken sandwich. First of all, they ate it all with a fork and knife, which I also noticed other people doing. Second, they took about 45 minutes to eat it. They're just like my brother except that here, that's normal.

All that being said, we made up for our adventure into little America and had some chocolate con churros for dessert.

Sorry USA, you've been good to me, but I think I might love Europe more.

I don't want to leave.

I love home because I have friends and family there, but I want to stay here. I want more time. I feel like 4 months just is not enough. To anybody thinking about studying abroad... 4 MONTHS IS NOT ENOUGH. I need more time to learn to speak Spanish. And I need more time (and money) to travel. And I just need more.

Plus, the boys are cuter, everybody dresses so fabulously, the bread is delicious and the goat cheese, too. Don't make me leave.

¿Fútbol or football?

The school arranged an event for us to go to a fútbol (soccer) game and meet the team afterwards. I originally had no interest in going, but my friends were going, and since Europeans pretty much breathe and dream fútbol, I figured it was only appropriate to attend in order to have a true Spanish experience. The game was really fun...for the first few minutes, but I'm pretty sure I'm just not cut out for watching sporting events. My attention span is much, much shorter than it would need to be to watch a sporting event in its entirety.

From what I understand, sporting events tend to have different periods. For example, hockey has 3 of them. Sometimes more if there's a tie at the end of the 3rd period. Football has two halves. And when the clock runs out, if one score is higher than the other, the higher score wins. However, in soccer, (maybe this only occurs here) this is not the case. When the clock runs out

at the end, they just add more time. The way I understand it is that its an arbitrary amount of time and they keep adding more until they feel like they're done for the night. And when you're sitting in the "vomitorio" and it's cold and windy, it's not exactly paradise.

Some people went to the game with their intercambios. (An intercambio is basically a friend the school sets you up with who wants to practice English and speaks Spanish, so you hang out and you take turns speaking Spanish and English) After the game, we waited around to meet the team, but it was taking forever, so we opted to goof around outside the stadium. I got to meet people from Spain, Poland, and Italy. ¡Que guay! (How cool!)

Another round of pictures...

"I wonder what the death rate is this week..."

Las fallas has commenced. Look out for the petardos (firecrackers).

Las fallas is a festival in Valencia which spans Monday-Friday. Actually, it goes on all year, but the main events are Monday-Friday. The city is divided into smaller groups and each group spends a ton of money and a

lot of effort to build these gigantic paper-machet sculptures. One of them wins a big prize and at the end of the week, and then they burn them all down. Every day (including the couple weeks prior to Fallas week), there is a mascletá in the Plaza de Ayuntamiento where fireworks are shot off at 2pm. Sounds weird, right? Well, it's not about the lights and the colors. It's all about the noise. And let me tell you, it's loud. I went with a group of friends today to camp out in the plaza to get front row for the mascletá. Granted, we got there a bit late and missed out on front row, but we were still really close. (Even as I'm writing this at 4:50am, there are fireworks going off. The city doesn't sleep.) Your whole body shakes. Its wild. They also have a castillo at night with the most amazing fireworks displays I've ever seen. They far surpass any show I've seen in the US.

There are stands all over the city that sell churros con chocolate (deep-fried goodness that you dip in a cup of melted chocolate). Streets are blocked off everywhere you go. People have tents set up in the streets where they cook paella and play music all night long. I'm not exactly sure when people sleep, though, because they stay up all night playing music and lighting petardos (firecrackers) and then in the morning they set off a bunch of firecrackers, called the despertá. Despertar means to wake up, so you can imagine the amount of noise they make with the fireworks.

There are stores where you can buy little poppers that you throw on the ground and they snap, or you can buy bigger firecrackers. There is a list posted on the wall of the age restrictions on them, but there may as well not be any restrictions because the kids take over the streets and throw sparking firecrackers at each other. There are some that make an insanely loud noise when they explode and it's really popular for kids to throw them down and then run away. You can't escape them. They are everywhere.

Lost in Translation

I think I've reached the point of no return. I'm letting go of my inhibitions and saying whatever I can come up with.

I'm tired of living in someone else's home. I miss being able to do weird things and not have to worry about someone else noticing. I don't want to have to worry if I'm using too much paper towel or if I shouldn't be leaving my glass on the counter or if I'm showering for too long or if there is actually some way to keep the floor from getting soaked when I shower and I just don't know about it.

Also, I've been having conversations with people lately where I'm not really sure if I understood them correctly. So rather than just not saying anything, I'm just going to run with it. I'm deciding here and now that this is my point of no return. I'm just going to assume that I understood and respond with whatever response seems appropriate. And if I'm wrong, I guess someone will tell me...or the look on their face will.