Pros, Cons, and Oddities

After two weeks in Granada, I have noticed quite a few interesting differences between Spain (in particular Granada) and the U.S. (in particular Chambana). Some of these pros, cons, and oddities are very general, whereas some are more specific to my situation. But never fear,what I'm referring to should be clear.

PROS:

- People here eat tomatoes with everything! Tomatoes spread on toast, Gazpacho (a cold tomato based soup), tomato sauce on rice (pretty good actually), tomato sauce on pasta, tomato on tortilla (note that a spanish tortilla is very different from a mexican tortilla... the spanish tortilla is eggs potato and cheese!), tomato on meat for those who eat that, you get the idea. Gloria also made this really surprisingly good dinner the other day of just sliced tomato, cucumber, onion, pepper, salt, olive oil, cheese and then microwaved for like 3 minutes. I had never eaten hot cucumbers before but this was tasty.

-In general everyone is very relaxed and laid back, which often translates to no one is on time, which works out nicely for me.

-The town layout makes it easy to walk pretty much everywhere!

-The city is beautiful.

-As mentioned before, Granada has awesome water.

-Sensodyne toothpaste is cheap!

-Some food items are also very cheap (like chocolate! I can get a fancy european bar for about a euro!)

-Wifi is pronounced "wee fee" as would be expected, but it makes me hide a chuckle every time someone says it.

-I might be able to play flute in the Granada Youth Symphony

-Another student at CLM is living here now too and she is really cool and we get along well. Liz is 20, goes to Villanova, and is from Manhattan. It's also nice because we can experience and discuss all the weird/funny things that happen here (such as not realizing that both Gloria and Rafael would be gone this weekend...).

-We also definitely seem to have the best host family situation for many reasons.
1. LOCATION
2. Gloria and Rafael are very cool, nice, welcoming and actually want us to feel like this is our home now. We usually eat lunch and dinner with them, breakfast is whatever we want, but we can also eat anything from the kitchen if we are ever hungry. This is appreciated more now after one girl told me that she isn't allowed to touch the fridge and her host family makes and serves her portions of food so sometimes it's too big, other times not enough, and they have also forgotten to feed her...!
3. A con to this is that they don't eat fruit... but lately have been buying more because they know I like it (there are actually about 50 plum things just sitting loos if the fridge right now hahaha).

-I have been been making friends! Joy Shapley is also here in Granda with a different intensive spanish program, so I had lunch with her and that was fun!

[Side pro: Sometimes you just want a piece of candy so I was happy to find left over biaggis mints from senior supper in one of my bags.]

-And as always, Luna and Tortugita/donna flor are a big pro!

CONS:

-Butter is never used here... only olive oil

-If you are laughing or smiling in public people assume you are american or drunk

-Coffee is not a thing here. It's even hard to find a cafe with coffee, and those that do have it charge a lot for a very little.

-No one wears birkenstocks unless very old or american (but even still I have spotted maybe 5 birk wearers including myself in the probably thousands of people I have seen walking around)

-It's rude to stretch in public?

-No one wears t-shirts, no one wears athletic shorts, and definitely no one wears them paired together (though ironically enough that is what I am wearing right now...)

-It's easy to think 1 euro = 1 dollar

-You can't touch or pick out your own fruit from a market/store

- I didn't learn the vosotros conjugations and everyone uses it :(

-I have to give a group presentation with 2 of the native speakers in my class tuesday and each of us has to talk for 10 minutes about an aspect of the cataluña region... so basically my 10 minutes will either have much less info or will be much longer than 10 minutes ;)

-7 hours behind me, my sister is rudely taking and wearing my clothes without asking.

PROS/CONS:

-There are very few fast food places here, though I happen to live right by what seems to be the only fast food place in Granada (a burger king that also has the best coffee deals).

-No one "goes for a run" here... (though I might try to do this tomorrow morning if I wake up on time... I even wore my XC shirt to mentally prepare myself)

-Pretty much everyone looks good all the time (this is mostly a con)

-There are ice cream places everywhere! (There are 3 different ice cream places right next to/across from where I live)

-My spanish classes are really hard

-There are so so many shoe stores around here (I bought a pair for only 9 euros!)

ODDITIES
(I didn't think these really fall under pro, con, or combo)

-They don't refrigerate milk/ it's all pasteurized... the milk isle at the grocery store is very foreign to me.

-The sleeping and eating schedule is very strange. People go to sleep very late after a very small and very late dinner, wake up at a respectably early time and eat a standard breakfast, take a long midday nap after a large lunch. Repeat.

-In Granada there are not many bugs, but for some reason a vespidae (yellow jacket wasp for those who don't know) has taken a liking to my breakfast location each morning.

-Everyone uses cash!

-The Spain accent is very strong and very noticeable here (for those who don't know, it's kind of like a lisp... example: "gracias" is pronounced "grathias")

-It is practically a crime not to have an actual leg of ham (hoof and all) just sitting out in the kitchen.

I'm sure there are many other differences that I cannot think of right now, but fortunately my list of cons is much shorter/more trivial than that of pros and I have been having a great (but also challenging) experience thus far!