Sunday, August 24, 2008

I’m getting better at sleeping in, but in a house full of loud Spanish people, it’s still difficult. I eat breakfast alone, but Isabel keeps me company in the kitchen. It’s almost more fun to get up late because the rest of the house is awake and functional and willing to interact with me so I get to speak a lot more Spanish.

Isabel explains to me that on Sunday, especially at the end of vacation, everyone goes to the beach. She warns me that shops will be closed and that the beach will be very, very crowded. She’s already preparing lunch for the whole family to take the beach. She’s making tortilla Española, because I requested it, and explains to me the steps involved as she beats eggs in a bowl. She chuckles as she tells me that all the American girls who come to live with her make the same mistake—they never fry the potato and onion ahead of time. I don’t tell her that I’ve made this mistake too, and watch hungrily as she dumps cubed potato and diced onion into a deep pool of hot olive oil.

I eat my breakfast of toast and jam and colacao then head out with my computer to use the internet at the Plaza. Then I take a nice long walk and loop back to the house to pick up my lunch and get ready to meet everyone at the beach at two. When I get back to the house everyone has already gone to the beach. It makes me smile to discover my lunch waiting for me on the kitchen table and I think of how my dad made me lunches almost every day growing up. It’s nice to feel cared for when you’re thousands of miles away from home. Isabel has left me a bocadillo de tortilla, wrapped in foil, a bag of fritos (just like my dad did!) and three pieces of fruit.

I tuck my lunch away in my bag, change into my suit and hoof it to the beach to meet up with everyone. This is the on-time crowd, so I make sure to get to the meeting spot with time to spare. Jared and Isar are the only ones joining me today and we decide to walk all the way down the peninsula to the “new beach” called Santa Maria. It’s insanely hot, probably because the wind has shifted from levante to poniente and blows hot. The walk isn’t too bad, but by the time we get there we’re more than ready to get in the water.

The beach is insane! There are people everywhere and brightly colored umbrellas obscure the sand and stretch on as far as the eye can trace the coastline. It’s like a scene from Where’s Waldo. We marvel at the view, it seems as though the entire population of Cádiz really did show up to the beach today. We decide to climb over part of the retaining wall to a little sliver of beach with only a handful of people. It’s quieter and even though there’s less beach we pick a spot and spread out.

I dig into my lunch and then can’t wait any longer and plow into the water. This beach has waves! They’re fairly big too, and I get slammed around a little bit before I find my sea legs, so to speak. The sun is strong today and we’re out a little earlier than usual because we brought our lunches. By the time we leave the beach at about six, we’re all exhausted from sun exposure and even though I’m not burnt, I can tell that I’m going to take the next day off from the beach. There is, after all, such a thing as over doing it.

We set out to walk back, but I ask if we can take a detour inland to cross under the gate of Cádiz, which separates the old part of the city from the new. We pose for photos and Jared points out the rows of cannons perched on the edge of the wall, probably just for decoration at this point. We continue on our walking tour of inner Cádiz, embracing the Spanish stroll and taking our time. We pass the Roman Theater, which is the ruin of an amphitheater built when the Romans ruled the Iberian Peninsula. Oddly, this is probably not the oldest relic this little town can boast of—the Phoenecians must have left something behind too. But the Romans have left a more lasting imprint, including the name of the city itself. The latin name was Gades, from which the term Gaditano (a person from Cádiz) comes.

We cut around the ruins and wind around the streets until we come to the Plaza de Catedral. The birds of prey exhibit from the fair the night before is open and we stop to look at all the owls and hawks. We take photos and then continue on our stroll back home. We wander through the shopping district and split up as we get closer to the heart of old Cádiz. We’ve made plans with Carin and Cortney to meet up at Plaza de Mina to eat dinner at a tapas joint. I’m really excited because not only is it one of the restaurants recommended by Jennifer’s friend, but this will also be the first time that Carin has come out to dinner. Plus, there will only be five of us, which is a rather nice number for dinner and much more conducive to fun having by all…

When I arrive at the house there’s still no one home! They must be at the beach or at least on their way home. Isabel did mention that she and the family were going to a beach even further past Santa Maria, but when I asked here where it was, she winked at me and said it was a secret and if I wanted to know I’d have to come with her. Keeping this in mind, I wasn’t surprised when still no one had arrived by the time I left to meet up with everyone.

We meet at eight because the restaurant recommendation came with an advisement to arrive early since it’s a popular place and fills up quickly. We mosey down the street, but the restaurant doesn’t open until eight thirty so we just keep moseying until we get to the end of the line which is a lovely walk way along the edge of the peninsula (to the north) where you can look down over the water. The light is gorgeous and we joke around and take photos until it’s time to head back to the restaurant.

One of the meseros helps us push two tables together in the bar area and we sit, trying to decipher the menu (again, we have no idea what any of the food is) and suddenly I realize that hanging above us is a line of ham shanks with plastic cones stuck in them to catch the dripping. I quickly move seats to sit on the other side of the table where I don’t have pig carcass overtop of me. We decide on a few tapas to order and I take the menu up to the bar and chat with the mesero about our choices. He recommends a few other dishes, which I agree to and then we wait to see what exactly we signed up for.

We order a tortilla Española with salsa brava—only it turns out Carin hates ketchup and that’s basically what salsa brava is… and huge chunks of grilled tuna, some roasted vegetables with a fried egg, meatballs, and an Iberian beef dish that everyone thinks is to die for. I order more of the stuff everyone likes and Cortney takes the initiative and orders some giant fresh tomato tapa that she saw at another table. Everyone gets enough to eat and when the bill comes and we split it up it’s only three euro for the kids without drinks and four euro for the kids who got drinks. What a deal! The food wass great, and we all had a fabulous time at dinner eating family style with a nice comfortable group.

We walk to Plaza Mentidero to the award-winning heladeria to get some icecream and then decide to wander down to the Plaza de Catedral to see if the Andalucia fair is still in swing. We get down there at about ten thirty and the woman in the big tent in the plaza tells us that the fair ended at ten. Unphased I plow through the crowd, getting stuck for a moment behind a couple that is walking so unbearably slow while weaving back and forth making it impossible to pass them, but we all finally get around them and I lead everyone to the small silver jewelry stand I had seen the night before that all the girls wanted to go to.

The couple selling the jewelry have packed up, but I explain that I was there the night before and that I brought my friends who are interested in the coin bracelets they have. The young woman assures us it’s no problem and she and her boyfriend dig around in their collection until they extract a fistful of bracelets for the girls to look at. I chat with the young woman while the girls shop, discovering that she and her boyfriend are going to India in a few months. They’re originally from Argentina, but have been traveling the world. When we part I wish them safe travels and she thanks me for bringing my friends back. I think that running into people from all over the world have been the richest experiences I’ve had in Spain.

We all walk Isar home since she lives on an extremely sketchy street and then slowly part ways as we get closer to our own houses. I’m happy to call it a night, we all have class the next day and it would be nice to get some sleep again. When I get home Isabel and Debora are in the living room watching the movie Pollock on TV. They invite me join them so I sit down and watch the rest of the movie with them. Of course, watching a movie with these two really means gossiping through the whole thing, which is great because those are always the conversations where I learn the most about colloquial Spanish.

After the movie we keep watching TV. Spanish TV is mostly shows from the U.S. that have been dubbed in Spanish. I think Europeans must believe that the only sort of people in the States are those who commit crimes and those who solve them, or that the only jobs available are policemen, lawyers, and detectives. Somehow we get on the topic of plastic surgery and the difference between what is legal to do in Spain and what is legal to do in the U.S. As it turns out, the U.S. has more lax laws about cosmetic surgery. The conversation then switches to an intense discussion about good-looking men. Debora rebuffs my fawning over Rafael Nadal, criticizing him for having small eyes and a small mouth. I roll my eyes at her and suggest that her perfect man must be Ronald MacDonald with the big eyes and the giant mouth. Isabel thinks this is hilarious and agrees with me that Nadal is quite a catch.

We end up discussing Spanish athletes and I have a hard time keeping up when the conversation switches to soccer because I’m really not that familiar with all the players here. It’s really interesting to hear the gossip about David and Victoria Beckham since Beckham left Real Madrid and signed with L.A. Galaxy. Apparently everyone in Spain really loved Beckham, even though he made piles of money but didn’t seem to play that much because he was always injured. But no one in Spain liked Victoria, a.k.a. Posh because she was rude and very critical of Spain.

All of a sudden I realize it’s about three thirty in the morning and I take myself to bed. I have to be up and at school at ten the next day. I know I’m going to be tired, but it’s these happy conversations in Spanish that really make the whole homestay experience important.