Free time! POUNCE.

portero = goalie
campo (de fútbol) = (soccer) field
disolverse = dissolve
llover a cántaros = (literally) to rain pitchers; (i.e.) to rain cats and dogs
chantaje = blackmail
(chantajear a alguien = to blackmail someone)

Hi out there, sports fans!

(THIS IS A PUN.  YOU WILL FIND OUT WHY SOON.)

Didja miss me?  Sorry.  I had a ton of work to do this week, and when I wasn't doing work, I was sleeping, eating, being in class, or sleeping.  Or sleeping.

So on Friday, my Art History class had a field trip to a city called Cuenca, of which I had never heard before.  It was a very cute little town!  If you're a Facebooker, you may have seen photos already.  They've been up for a short while.  The highlights include:

View of Cuenca from a high-up bridge.

Some call it creepy.  The museum curator would hang it over her bed

so she could see it when she woke up in the morning.  I call it "Brigitte

Bardot, 1959" by Antonio Saura, because that's what the little sign next to it said.

Precarious "hanging houses," for which Cuenca is (apparently) famous.

Cuenca was a very cute city.  We were only there for a day, and we didn't do much: we started by climbing a HUGE hill (to the aforementioned very high bridge), and from there we headed to an art museum.  Brigitte up there was my favorite piece.  It was all abstract art, but this was one of the only pieces that had an abstraction that still made sense.  There was another one involving cigarette cartons and match boxes painted in acrylic colors and arranged artistically behind a glass frame.  I liked that one, too.

Afterward, we went in search of lunch.  A few of us found "la Bar Dulcinea," which, as you Quijote buffs will already know, is named after the lady don Quijote fights for.

Then we saw a cathedral, but we weren't allowed to take pictures. :(  I got one of the outside, but it wasn't very good, so you're better off Googling it.

Side note: my Art History professor pronounces Google like "goo-gly."  Just like Craig Ferguson.

The whole day was very cold, overcast, and a little rainy.  We were indoors for the most part, but they didn't do a great job of heating the museum, and the cathedral wasn't heated at all.  I wasn't truly warm again until I was back home under the heater… mmmmm.

Okay, part two of Nicole's Amazing Weekend Adventure.

On Sunday night, I went with a few friends to see Real Madrid play Villareal (soccer)!  It was REALLY fun.  I bought a Ronaldo jersey—it may be fake, but it's SUPER comfortable, and it's my nueva camisa favorita.  In fact, I'm wearing it right now.  How lovely.

We were up very high in the stadium, but we still had a good view of the field.  Here are a couple pics.

¡El campo de fútbol!

¡Góoooool!

It was awesome.  The field was outside, but our section was covered AND there were heaters, so we were toasty and didn't get rained on when it started raining!  So that was good.  And Madrid won 6-2, so that was even better!

Have I mentioned the rain?  It's been lloviendo a cántaros for the past week or so.  Today was unbelievable.  I was literally soaked through after walking home from school.  Blech.  I thought it was supposed to be sunny here.

So, I had two essays due and a presentation to give today, so that's what I've been doing all week.  Work, you suck.  Especially when you follow me to SPAIN.  Go away.

…And midterms are next week, so I might be pretty out of commission this weekend, too.  Sorry!  Come next weekend, I'll be free as a bird.

The good news is that next weekend is a CIEE-organized trip, so the odds are that the next time you hear from me, it'll be about Seville!  Whoooo.  So you've got that to look forward to. :)

In other news, I've been thinking about my favorite words in English, lately, and I thought I'd share a couple of them with you.  Tautology.  Denouement.  Nonpareils.

Did you get the pun?

That's it.  Peace out.

How to Make Croquetas

pinzas = tongs
harina = flour
pan rallado = breadcrumbs
grumos = lumps (like in your oatmeal)

Word up, homies!

We had croquetas for dinner tonight, and Ana showed me how to make them.  They are these doughy little balls of fried delicious goodness, and they're very simple to make, if a little time-consuming.  The only tricky part is deciding how much milk to add—it's one of those things you have to do a few times to get a feel for it.  Additionally, Ana doesn't measure anything, so these are kind of approximations.

Ingredients: olive oil, flour, milk, salt, 1 egg, fine breadcrumbs, and whatever you want to use as filling (we used precooked tuna, but you can put any kind of meat, vegetable, fish, whatever).

You start with some heated oil in a frying pan.  Then you add about six tablespoons of flour. (Although what she called a "tablespoon" was really a tablespoon heaped two inches high with flour.  So like, as much flour as you can get to stay balanced on the tablespoon; six of those.)  You mix this up over medium heat to toast the flour.  When it gets brown and toasty, take it off the heat.

Let it cool all the way before adding the milk, or the sudden temperature change will make it seize up.  In total, she said she added roughly a liter of milk (which translates to about a quart).  Go a splash at a time, over medium heat, incorporating all (most) of the flour before moving ahead, and making sure to keep squashing the grumos.  Add salt to taste as you go.  I'd say a couple teaspoons of salt went into the batch we made.

Once you've hit just the right texture—something like a cross between pancake batter and silly putty—add the filling (tuna, in this case).  Mix it in, make sure all the milk is incorporated, and then take it off the heat.  Spread the dough into a casserole dish (or a shallow bowl, it doesn't matter, we're just going to chill it) about an inch-and-a-half thick, and leave it out to cool.  After it's reached about room temperature, cover it, pop it in the fridge, and leave it there overnight.

Cut to Day 2.

Pull out your dough.  It should be all congealed and gummy.  DELISH.

Crack an egg into a bowl and mix it up.  Pour about a cup or two of breadcrumbs into a second bowl.  Ana used two tablespoons to form the croquetas, but you can also do it with your hands.  Scoop out a chunk of dough about two or three tablespoons in volume (you can really make them whatever size you want, but they shouldn't be huge or they might not cook right).  Form the chunk into a prolate spheroid (or an oblate spheroid, if you prefer, or any roundish shape).  It can be hard to manage the dough, but make sure it's a smooth ball and that you didn't just fold the dough over on itself, or they will fall apart when you try to cook them.

Dip the rounded chunk into the eggwash, and then roll it in breadcrumbs.  You now have a raw croqueta!  Up until this point, everything can be done long in advance (how long, I don't know).  Just keep the raw croquetas in the freezer until you're ready to enjoy them.

About fifteen minutes before serving, heat up a pan of bastante olive oil (Ana's was about half an inch deep).  You're essentially going to deep-fry these puppies, so make sure there really is enough oil.  Side note: I discovered that Ana conserves the extra oil she uses to cook with—she strains it into a small watering-can-type thing and uses it again later.  She doesn't just discard it.  My dad does the same thing, only with bacon fat.

Once the oil is beginning to smoke, it's hot enough.  Using pinzas, start frying the croquetas.  You can do as many at one time as fit in the frying pan without touching each other.  Ana swirled the pan around to coat them with oil.  This scared me.  I would just turn them with the tongs a couple of times.  They take about a minute per side—maybe not even.  You want them to be an appetizing golden brown all over.

Pull them out as they get done, and drain them on a plate covered with paper towel.  ¡Ta-chan!  You made croquetas!  Now EAT them.  Yummm.

Ana says you can make sweet croquetas, too.  This is a dessert called leche frita, or "fried milk.  You make them almost exactly the same way, except that you leave out the filling, and instead of salt you add bastante sugar at the lump-squashing phase.  They are generally cut into squares rather than formed into balls, which makes that step easier, and after they've been fried, you sprinkle them with sugar and I think she said caramel.  They sound fantastic.  She said we'll make them, next time.

Somehow, it didn't occur to me to take pictures.  Hurr.  My apologies.  There are some left over; I'll photograph them tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, my Art History class is going on a field trip to a city called Cuenca.  It sounds like there's a lot of interesting architecture there, so I might have another interesting blog post sooner than you think!  Cuenca is located in the part of Spain called Castilla-la Mancha, which is the region inhabited by fictional character don Quijote himself!  We won't be going to the part with the windmills, but it's still cool that we'll be there.

I mean, it's cool that we're in Spain, period.

Later, gators.

Barthelona

chocolate caliente = literally, "hot chocolate," but it refers to the really thick chocolate they drink with churros (or alone, commonly)
Colacao = a brand of what we think of as "hot chocolate" (i.e. Ovaltine)
café al bonbon = coffee with condensed milk
ojeras = bags under your eyes
calamares en su tinta = a way of preparing calamari (squid), using the ink

Went to Barcelona this weekend!

It was cold and kind of dreary, but I mean it was Barcelona so we had fun.  Having been there already, I wasn't too disappointed by the less-than-temperate climate.  I actually remembered my way around, more or less (more less than more…).

We got in Friday around noon, checked into the hostel, found some lunch, then headed up Passeig de Gracia to check out the Gaudí stuff.  We started with the Casa Batlló.  The façade is designed to look like skulls and bones, and the windows get smaller as they get higher—my guess is that it creates a kind of fake perspective to make it look taller.

 

Casa Battló (we didn't go inside)

Just down the street was Casa Milà, or la Pedrera (derived from the word piedra, which means "stone," so like, "the stone thing").  This time, there were other people there with me, so there are actually pictures of me on the roof.

  

The gang on top of Casa Milà

(Most pictures with me in them were taken by friends; for you Facebookers, flip through Pictures of Me to see more.)

View of la Sagrada Familia from Casa Milà

  

After Casa Milà, we took a walk across town to visit the Sagrada Familia.  In June, I went inside, but this time around we were content to admire from the streets.  It was cooler in June, when there was sunlight and warmth (PUN), but it was still pretty cool:

The Sagrada Familia (left = front, right = back)—as always, click for larger size

The next day was drizzly and even colder, but we powered through.  We started at the Museu de la Xocolata, which was really not all that great but still cool.  The ticket was printed on the wrapper of a chocolate bar, which was deliciously received.  The exhibits were all sculptures made of chocolate—the ones of Don Quijote and Bambi were my favorites.

The main attraction of the day was Park Güell.  I was there in June, as well, but this time there were far fewer people, and I was able to get a pic with the famous lizard fountain:

 At Park Güell

We had a late lunch and spent the evening strolling along the beach (of the Mediterranean!), pretending it was more than thirty degrees out.

All these and MORE (including my pics from June) available at a Facebook.com near you.

There isn't really a whole lot to see in Barcelona, but what there is I like a whole lot.  I.e. everything by Gaudí, and just the city in general.

The next big trip is to Sevilla/Córdoba in a couple of weeks.  I promise I'll update before then, though. :)

AH GAHT MAH CHURROS

Yes, I did, and they were delicious.  They're like buttery doughnuts... like a crueller or something.  And the chocolate is thick and dark, and when you put them together it is the happiest feeling on earth.

Mmmm.

Vocab:
fichas = legos
sumo = amount
granada = pomegranate (either the whole thing or an individual seed… not sure which)
nueces = walnuts
aliño = (salad) dressing
imán = magnet
mareado/a = dizzy

I think I'm giving up on word-of-the-day.  I'm not posting every day, and each time I post, I have more than just one word I want to share.

The granadas, the nueces, and the aliño, along with lechuga (lettuce) and sal (salt), are the ingredients of a very delicious salad that my host mom makes fairly often.  That's all there is to it.  The aliño is olive oil and (I think balsamic) vinegar.  It's yummy, and there's nothing bad in it, which makes me twice as happy to eat it.

We had some kind of salmon-and-potato stew for lunch today.  It was yummy.

As part of this whole study-abroad thing, they kind of made me sign up for some classes.  I haven't talked about them much (at all?!) yet, so, here goes.

I'm taking five classes: Cervantes' Works, Spanish Art History, Contemporary Spain, Spanish Woman Writers, and Advanced Grammar.  They're all about Spanish things, and they're all entirely conducted in Spanish.  In fact, none of my professors knows more than a few key phrases in English.  This can make things difficult at times, but they know we're not fluent, and I'm keeping up.

Woman Writers is my favorite, closely followed by Art History.  I like both the subject matter and the professors in both classes.

Cervantes is a little disappointing so far—we're reading select passages from Don Quijote (I've been spelling it with an X, but they spell it with a J here), as well as a bunch of his other stuff.  The format of the class thus far has been: 1) be assigned a reading for homework, 2) read the reading and look up vocab at home, 3) answer questions about the reading at home, 4) go to class and listen to professor read the reading, 5) be given time to answer the questions in class with a partner or two, 6) want to kill self.  Wednesdays are better than Mondays because we read the Quijote in class and are not assigned anything, but she still has a tortuously slow way of reading… and speaking… and moving… … …

Contemporary Spain started slow, and it's a history class, so it's not terribly exciting.  Also, the professor of this class is probably the worst at empathizing with us non-native speakers, so I don't always know what's going on.  Fortunately, all of her notes are online, and she's supposed to be an easy grader.

Grammar is by far the worst.  It's the one class CIEE (the study-abroad program) requires us to take, and the professor is also the program director, Cristina.  She is a very organized individual, and she takes her job very seriously, which is very very good.  We all feel very secure knowing that she's there to take care of us, and she's approachable with any qualm or conundrum a study-abroad student might encounter.

Her class is just awful.

This is sad because, as many of you may know, grammar is kind of one of my most favorite things in the world.  It is my guilty dork-pleasure.  Sometimes, I diagram sentences just for fun, deriving great amusement from Googling particular parts of speech to see how they should fit into my structure… Okay, not great amusement.  But still.  It's bad.

What's frustrating about this class is that I've already learned the majority of what we're doing right now.  We'll spend an hour-and-a-half class period on the preterito perfecto (I have done such and such a thing), and I will learn one or two uses for the tense that I did not previously know.  This comprises the five interesting minutes of class.  Then we will practice it.  Then we will practice it some more.  Then we will practice it standing on our heads.  Then we will take home three pages of practice and practice it some more, and correct the practice the next day in class.  Now I have spent three hours practicing something I already knew how to do, except for the one small part that took me five minutes to understand.

It's as if someone told you, "Turn the screw to the right, and the screw goes in.  Turn it left, and the screw comes out.  Now, practice putting in and taking out the following three hundred screws."  Only you're screwing the screws into my skull.

Practice is good, yes, right, practice makes perfect, okay fine.  It's just that I already learned all of this stuff in high school, and I don't appreciate being talked down to.

A lot of the other students haven't learned all of what we're learning now, which surprises me since it's supposedly a very advanced program.  And so I understand why there is the need for repetition and practice and driving screws into skulls and all this stuff.

It's just a pain.  Gr.

Hm, okay, I'll talk about something happy now.

This weekend, seven or eight of us are going to BARCELONA, whooooo!

The perceptive (or Mom) among you will say, "But, Nicole—you've already been to Barcelona."

Yes.  Yes I have.  And I'm going back this weekend, whooooo!

I'd be more than happy to revisit anything by Gaudí, and there is at least one structure of his that I didn't get the chance to see in June.  I'd also like to spend some time in the Boquería, a big outdoor market open on weekend mornings.

We'll be staying in a hostel just off of Las Ramblas (a very large, popular street section), a stone's throw away from the Boquería and Gaudí's Palacio Güell.  I suspect we'll visit the Sagrada Familia, and outside of that I don't know what our plans are.

 

(This is a picture of the trippy rooftop of Gaudí's Casa Milà, from my

last venture to Barcelona.  I would not mind going back.)

Weekend update

coli = short for colegio = school
por fa = por favor

This blog is quickly becoming a once-a-week kind of deal.  The thing is that I don't really do anything that exciting during the week.  I go to classes and take siestas and do homework and eat delicious Spanish food.  I'll do what I can to post more often, but we'll have to see.

This past week (by which I mean last weekend), I delved a bit into the realm of the social Spaniard.  It's a bizarre and confusing territory, and my research is as of yet incomplete, but here are some initial observations as well as a brief firsthand encounter.

So far, we (my American friends and I) are all stumped by the alleged nightlife here.  The first weekend or two that we were here, we didn't see anyone in the centro (downtown) past about one in the morning.  Conversely, our sources (host brothers and sisters) told us that 1) people our age go out almost every Friday and Saturday night, and 2) nobody even leaves their house until at least midnight—and then they regularly stay out until five or six in the morning.

...So where did they all go?

The answer is that "at least midnight" really translates to "more like two or three in the morning," and that the centro is not the party part of town.  The spot to be is called La Garena, and it's a little plaza of nightclubs about a ten-minute ride from the centro.

Last weekend, my friend's host sister Sara took the two of us with her.  We started in the centro around midnight in a little bar tucked away from anywhere we'd been so far.  At midnight, the place was virtually deserted.  After an hour or so, it started to fill up, and she said it wouldn't be until three that anybody would be at La Garena.  We left the bar around two and took a taxi to get there.

We popped in and out of a few clubs.  Now, I have no idea if these were typical Spanish nightclubs—it didn't seem like it—but they struck my friend and me as a little bit odd.  The places were packed, and there was loud music and bright lights, but nobody was really dancing or mingling.  They were kind of bouncing to the music and just really kind of... being there.  So we be'd in a couple of nightclubs for several minutes each, and around four, we called it a night.


My friend and I were exhausted, but it was clear that Sara could have stayed out longer.  We later found out that four really is on the early side to return from being Out.  Normally, she and her sister don't get back until at least seven, and sometimes as late as nine.  Then they sleep until three or four in the afternoon and do it all over again.


Overall, a confusing experience.  It was fun for what it was, but I'm not sure if I'll tener ganas de doing it again anytime soon.  Maybe I'm lame.  Or maybe I just need to find a real Spanish discoteca.  We'll go with the latter.


A note on Spanish fashion.

 

First of all, every person in Spain has exactly the same style.  You don't see prep and gangsta and goth and grunge and bohemian and hippie and chic and whatever other styles we have at home.  You see a punk/emo blend with just a touch of hipster, and black, black, and more black.  Seriously.  It's a little more casual during the day, with a little more variation of color, but at night, the above photos roughly describe the outfit of every single Spanish female my age.  They all wear boots, they all wear a crazy short skirt slash dress, and they all heap on the mascara.  It looks nice, but seeing as all I own are a pair of gray boots and the potential to heap on mascara (on which I'll take a pass, thank you), it's not easy to fit in.

My obviously not-dark-colored hair is a bit of a giveaway, too.

I'm predicting a relaxing tapas date with my amigos americanos tonight.  I'm lucky that my host family is regularly in bed by eleven.  Many of my friends get super-judged by their families—who are still awake—when they are "only" out until one.