Finally... Tortillas de España.

Well, once again I could babble on and on.... but i'm not sure my hands can handle this! I'll start with last night though... during dinner we talked about many different things: Paco thinks that people only speaking Castellon in Barcelona is absolutely ridiculous because he feels they are just stuck up and rude. He also thinks that Madrid is way too big, and that the people are too stressed and busy all of the time. He also thinks they hold their noses in the air... haha. It was neat to hear is opinions on these things. It just gives me a little insight as to how proud Paco is of where he comes from. It was also really neat beacause i told them that i would LOVE to have them help me with my spanish... and they smiled SO big. They then immediately told me an error in my speaking that i have been doing... and they said that they would love to help me. Its weird and hard to get used to their Spanish because they drop the "s" off the ends of words, and their "c" sounds like "th" rather than an "sss" They told me that i don't sound dumb, however, for the way that i say things. They actually said that the way i talk is correcto. So, esta bien! Alex and I keep looking up words in our Spanish dictionary, and it sits at the dinner table with us. During the conversations with Paco y Maria, I am somewhat of a translator.. and its kind of fun! It makes me wonder if thats what I want to do in the future. Also, during dinner Alex and I asked if in the morning we could wear our pajamas to breakfast, if it was appropriate or not. Paco replied, "ah si si! Estamos familia!" So i replied, "ahh gracias, abuelo." :) He chuckled to himself and that made me feel great. Paco is 71 years old, and he used to be involved in agriculture. I'm not sure sure how old maria is yet...After that, Maria led us on a walk to our campus, because we were to walk ourselves to class today. Its about a 20 minute walk through the city, which I love... we get to walk through 3 plazas, and past TONS of little tiendas. I love it. The shower was very cold last night, but tonight we got it figured out tonight. Maria made sure we had warm water after telling her last night was "frio." There's a pig leg in the kitchen, that we actually eat our ham from. Its kinda weird to look at, but oh well... i haven't gotten sick yet! This morning we woke up and had tostada con jalea (toast and jelly), and cafe con leche (coffee with milk). It was good, but not quite as good as my latte with a cream cheese muffin back home. ;) We then got ready for school, and walked on our own! We made it in time without getting lost :) We went on an hour and a half excursion with our program director, and she showed us the city and different historic buildings. There was a spot that Shakespeare in Love was filmed at. It was BEA-UTIFUL. After that we had a little meeting with everyone about what to do with your host family, and what not to do. Just custom things. After that we had our level test, which means that depending on how you do with the language.. determines what classes you get into. the test took TWO hours... and i was exhausted by the end of it. On our walk back home, Alex and I stopped at a little cafe and tried un churreria... which is a churro, but you dip it in chocolate sauce. SO SO good. Theres a picture of it above... We also picked up some flores for Maria, which she absolutely LOVED. :) After that Alex and I walked back to our casa, and started downloading pictures. When Paco y Maria returned for the evening, I asked them if there was ANY place we could get free internet, rather than go to the cafe and pay un Euro... he then whipped out a piece of paper with a password on it... and we now have internet in the house! They were laughing and Alex and I because we were literally jumping up and down saying "muchas gracias!"... over and over again. He told us that we can't give the password to ANYONE, because he is paying for us, and not random people he doesn't know. Haha. He's great. We then had dinner and it was SO good. We had tortillas de espana, and that is basically potatoes, onions, and eggs. SO SO good, we also had it with some ham and cooked veggies on the side... I told maria that i would LOVE to learn how to make it, so she started rambling off how... but she kinda had me lost... but i nodded and smiled. :) I love it when Maria comes to our room to tell us that dinner is ready. You can hear her shuffling to our room in her slippers (you have to wear slippers in the house.. its like proper manners).. and she goes "chica's! es tiempo para cenar." So adorable. She's so precious. Tonight at dinner we talked about so many things... differences between the U.S. and here... with food and eating times... it was neat! They have such pride for their own culture... and its so neat to see. They want my family to bring peanut butter and nutella when they come visit, so mom- lets not forget that! Anyway, I am learning SO much... and absolutely love it here. The weather is gorgeous, I am already improving in my spanish, and my roommate and host family are more than i could have ever asked for. AND i have internet now! (but i'm supposed to keep that on the downlow so others don't get jealous.) ;) Thats all for now! I think i'm going to go read and head to bed. Adios!