Day 4; Spanish Life

There's A LOT I want to cover today, so I've split the topics into two: Spanish Life, and English Camp.

For starters, they tend to be a bit more lax on matters of time. While Americans tend to constantly be running so they're not late, Spaniards take their time for most things. I'm actually finding this really enjoyable and am really wishing America worked like this. Nearly everyone I've met seems a lot more relaxed and happy than Americans.

Then comes their sleep patterns. On Saturday night the family (including the kids, the youngest being 6) went out for ice cream. At 10:30. We didn't get home until after 11. And to them that seemed to be in the norm. During the school year, elementary school starts at 9:30 and high school starts at 8:30.

And then their food. Since they wake up later, they eat breakfast around 9 or 10AM. And then maybe a small little snack, and then lunch around 2 or 3. And then dinner can be anywhere between 9 and 10.

What they eat is different too. They tend to use oil instead of butter, fruit, "jelly (jello)," and maybe a small ice cream for dessert, and nearly always salad. They use white flour instead of wheat, but it seems to balance out because they eat so much less than us. I think their dinners are about the size of some American's snacks. I'm perfectly fine with that honestly since I really don't like eating when I'm still full. And when you wait 6 hours for a meal, you tend to be hungry.

Their breakfasts are the same, cereal, fruit, and juice. My breakfasts are going to be mainly the same because a lot of their cereals actually have chocolate in them. So i've been having "Fibre Flakes" which actually are pretty good, and "Soja Leche," or soy milk. And then Piña y Uva juice. My ultimate favorite of the juices I've tried so far. I've always loved pinapple juice, but this stuff is just awesome. I wonder if there's a way to get some back in the states. . .

Lunches and dinners so far have always been hot. Today at English Camp we had a form of vegetable soup, a ham omelette, a small piece of bread, salad, and I had an apple since I couldn't eat the small cup of ice cream. My first day here we had hamburgers, but they didn't taste like any hamburger I've ever tried. They were so good.

Dinners can be the same. Tonight we had rice and sword fish with tomato sauce over the rice, and raw tomatoes which lately I've found I'm starting to like.

And their desserts are very different. An American can eat a huge bowl of ice cream, or a plate full of cookies. So far we've had fresh fruit and one night we went to get ice cream, but the serving size of that ice cream? What's roughly equivalent to a kid's scoop at Baskin Robbins.

Tonight while we had dessert we played a game. The mother of the family had a large bowl or cherries by her, and whoever could answer her questions correctly got two cherries. I had to translate from English to Spanish, and the kids vice versa. They did better than me, which wasn't surprising, but I did get some right. I know know how many cherries we all ended up with, but it was very satisfying.

People around here tend to be what we call OCD: think Monk in cleanliness. But not in the ways of germs. When Señor Adolfo and I went running last night with Inés biking, we all shared the same water bottle. Something that I found very interesting.

English Camp explanation next. =]