Well we might not have a movie theatre or a library but we DO have a Surf Shop

Yes, its true Valverde will welcome the opening of The Surf Shop this spring. I’m not entirely sure where we are suppose to surf being in the middle of the country in all but that shouldn’t stop the die-hard surfers. January is almost over and it feels like time is flying, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A few important things have occurred since my return to Valverde. First off, Valverde got its first snow since the 1980s. I unfortunately was so cold in my house that I didn’t open the shutters on that day or leave the house and therefore missed it. The next day in school all the teachers showed me pictures of it and all the kids asked me if I went out and played in it. I’m glad that the kids got a taste of snow here but I’m ready for the Spanish weather I was promised to return now. Where’s the 320 days of sunshine I was told about? Yeah someone lied to me…

While I didn’t really make a New Years Resolution this year, I did make a list of things I wanted to accomplish during my second half of my time in Spain. They all have to do with personal things that I’ve let go since coming here and miss dearly. First was to get back in shape. I’m determined to return to my old form even if I can’t play soccer here and the pool will charge me 50 more Euros because I’m not a Spaniard. No more excuses, this is in my hands and I alone can change it. The first stage of my plan was to develop a daily abs routine. I’ve done a recent job of sticking to it, but I can do better. The hardest part about this was the fact that I have no carpet in my flat so I’ve been using one of my towels as a yoga mat. It’s not the same and often times it still hurts my back. The first day of my abs workout I worked muscles that haven’t been used since my soccer days at GW. I was so sore, but it felt great.

Next stage was running on the green path every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This turned out to be difficult because the beginning of January was horribly cold and rainy; all day rainy. I settled for my workout DVD on the rainy days but once the rain finally stopped I was able to go out. The first few times I went out in shorts and long sleeve shirt. I’m not exaggerating; EVERY person I passed in town starred at me and asked me if I was 1) cold and/or 2) crazy haha. I mean it was brisk but no different than early winter weather in DC. Plus I like the feeling of numb hands when I run so I enjoy running in that kind of weather. It was hard to keep my headphones in because the wind would knock them out but other than that I had decent runs. Now the weather has gotten a lot nicer and for me it’s perfect running weather. I still get the same looks and questions when I run by people in shorts and t-shirts but now I don’t think they are quite deserving because it’s in the mid 60s.

I have increased my mileage every run and my goal is to run to Los Pinos by March (7km). If I accomplish that goal, which I think I’m on pace to do, my next goal is to run to Los Pinos and back (14km). I ran this morning and ran 6km in 36 minutes, so that’s 6 minutes a kilometer or in my terms, two songs a kilometer. I’m finally getting that feeling of satisfaction that I use to get after long runs. Its nice to have that feeling again and I will do my best to keep it going. It would be easier if I had a running buddy but for now I have to settle for Pocho. Pocho is my walking buddy and every once in awhile she will text me on Sunday or Saturday morning and ask if I want to go walking for an hour. We have nice talks and I enjoy our time together but I wish we could run instead of walk. Actually one time I did have a running buddy in the form of a stray black dog. He reminded me of this cartoon dog from a book I read when I was little called Cannonball Simp.

So I passed Simp as I started my run and was surprised that he followed me. And when I say follow, he literally trotted right behind my leg in the beginning. It made me so uneasy because I’ve had some bad experiences with the dogs here (I’ll get there in a second). I kept looking over my shoulder every four steps and he wouldn’t let up. Once I started to run faster I gained some distance between him but he still followed me. I passed a few people on the path and expected the dog to follow them but no, he stuck to me for some reason. One time I lead up to blow my nose and I turned slightly and BAM he was right behind me. It startled me so much I jumped and screamed “Jesus!” So yeah he ran with me for the entire 6km but once I got off the green path he stopped and didn’t follow.

So apart from Simp, I’m convinced dogs can actually smell fear because I’ve been terrorized by three separate dogs in my neighborhood and I have yet to see these dogs go after anyone else but me. The first devil dog is this small, white, looks like a Pomeranian dog that sprints towards me and gets within inches of my legs. I swear if I turn my back to him he will chomp on me. He won’t let me pass and he follows me if I try to move. It’s happened three times, each while I’ve been running, and each time it takes me ten minutes before I can pass because I have to wait for the owner, this old woman, to just shoo him away as if it’s nothing. I’m always in tears by the time I leave.

The second one was this brown, small dog. I have no idea what kind of dog it is but it did the exact same thing as the white dog. He too came within inches of my feet and I kept thinking, “he’s going to bite me”. Again I had to wait for the owner, an old lady (see the pattern), to just shoo him away. The last dog, a brown, semi-medium size dog is the least terrorizing of the three. He just barks at me and follows me but if I make a movement towards him he’ll back off and he lets me pass. I swear these fuckin dogs are out to get me. It might sound funny but every time they startle me and make me cry and the worst thing is the owners don’t seem to care one bit. What I’m most surprised about is it is the tiny dogs that are the worst; the large dogs are all well behaved. The dogs here are SO different from the dogs in Argentina. It’s gotten so bad that anytime I hear a dog barking I instantly start panicking and I look all around me to see if a dog is charging after me. I generally believe I’m developing a phobia of small dogs now. Thank you Spain!

Back to my plan. So stage three is to go to the pool once or twice a week to help build up my stamina and as a means of cross training. I’m waiting until after my mother brings me my goggles from home before I officially sign up and start going. I already bought a swim cap (it’s required) and I’m pretty sure I understand everything else I need to sign up: a copy of my passport, a copy of my visa, a copy of my bank statement, two forms filled out (front and back), and an extra 50 Euros on top of the 30 Euro fee for 10 sessions because they are extorting me. It’s a piece of cake joining the pool here :D

The last stage of my plan is regaining my self-control and self-discipline when it comes to sweets and junk food. I like to think that I’m like Samantha from Sex and The City Movie, instead of eating so I won’t cheat, I eat so I don’t die of boredom. Spain has turned me into an uncontrollable emotional eater. I went through four years of college only eating whole wheat things, no sugar, fat free, and NEVER buying cookies or deserts besides ice cream but now, I come to Spain and I literally can’t go ONE day without something CHOCOLATE. I don’t know how I turned into this person but I hate her. I’ve lost every bit of will power I use to have when it comes to food. I eat pints of ice cream in one sitting and jars of Nutella in two days. It’s disgusting but I have no one here to tell me to stop or to help me control my cravings. The one ray of light I have is the coming of spring, which will bring more ripe and delicious fruit. I’m hoping that I can substitute my cravings for sweets with fruit since there are healthier sugars in fruit. The sooner Spain stops raining and the sun comes back the sooner I can get rid of this “Spain weight”. Amen.

Speaking of food, this month I’ve experimented with cooking. During my travel day of hell in four different airports I started talking to Julia about different things I really wanted to learn how to make. We exchanged some ideas and it really inspired me to expand my cooking knowledge. My first success was making homemade hummus for the first time. I was so proud of myself. I made everyone I know try it and they all liked it. YEAH!!!! My second experiment was sautéed spinach with vegetables. It sounds easy but I wanted to make a good sauce to accompany it and I did. My only failure came when I attempted to make a Spanish Tortilla for the first time. The one step I couldn’t do was beat the egg whites into white peaks. I beat the eggs with a whisk, then a spoon, and lastly with the puree machine but nothing worked. I tried calling people to see if I was doing something wrong but nobody answered their phones. I finally gave up and made scrambled eggs with the egg and I turned the already soft potato and onions into hash browns. In the end I had a good meal but it wasn’t what I was suppose to make.

Next I made pancakes from the Aunt Jamima box my mom sent me way back in October. I’ve made pancakes before but you need to understand that in Spain they don’t believe in measuring cups or measuring spoons. Elisa told me the big spoons I use for cereal are a Tablespoon, the little spoons I use for yogurt are Teaspoons, and the glasses we use for juice are the equivalent to a cup. Oh sure, that’s accurate. So yeah the pancakes turned out all right, but you know how good batches of pancakes are so light and fluffy that you don’t even need syrup? This wasn’t one of those times. They needed something and since syrup doesn’t exist here I improvised with honey. My next cooking adventure was fish in a frying pan since I don’t have an oven. I first tried it with Panga fish, this white fish and it was really good so I moved on to salmon. Bad idea. The salmon I bought had skin on it and it stuck to the pan and just didn’t retain any of the flavors I cooked it with it. I tasted very fishy so I ended up just throwing it all out. A huge waste, I know.

I will attempt the Spanish Tortilla again sometime in the following week but my next new Spanish dish I want to try is called Tortatillas de Bacalao (Mini fried bites of cod fish, basically “the fish” from Fish N Chips but in bite sizes). Ana made them for me when I came over to her house for dinner so I asked her if after our class one night she could teach me how to make it. She agreed but warned me that you need REALLY GOOD COD to make them and Valverde doesn’t have any good cod. She had to go all the way to Seville for good cod. She said when she teaches me we can use the cod she had saved but next time I have to produce my own good quality cod haha. Like I know where to find good cod? I don’t even know where to find strawberries let alone good quality fish. She did assure me that Huelva also has good quality cod so that’s a little better. I’ve also experimented with new snack dishes using random ingredients left over in my fridge and kitchen. My create cooking genes are finally stirring and it only took 22 years.

Two weeks ago I hosted my very first Couch Surfer all by my self. I was so nervous about having a random man staying the night mainly because I didn’t know how Elisa would feel about it but she ended up not having a problem with it. Well, it could have helped that I asked her via text if a “friend of mine could spend the night”. What she doesn’t know won’t kill her. Haha well actually in this case, it very well could. LOL no, it wasn’t like that at all. The guy who stayed with me, Pablo, was very friendly and I didn’t get a psycho killer vibe from him at all. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief now. Pablo was from this very tiny town outside of Madrid. He was on his way back from Morocco and Portugal and needed a place to crash for the night. He use to work for the government as a meteorologist for a weather company in Spain but he got bored of that job and has taken a leave of absence from any sustainable job at the moment. He’s in his upper 30’s or lower 40’s if I had to guess. You would think that it would be a little awkward (him being an older guy, me being a younger girl) but it wasn’t. He was really nice, he spoke perfect English, and he taught me a lot about Spanish culture. He also warned me that all Moroccan’s use Couch Surfing as a dating site and only offer their couch’s to women. Gross. That’s one of the reasons I’m hesitant about doing couch surfing solo. This guy from Istanbul contacted me and noticed on my profile that I wanted to go to Turkey so he said if I had any questions he would be happy to answer them. So my initial reaction was, “wow that’s nice of him, I’ll definitely hit him up”, but now I wonder if he contacted me because he wants a date. I just can’t be certain really what the motives are for some people. I guess I just have to use my judgment and hope for the best. That normally serves me well.

One thing Pablo told me that particularly struck a cord for me was about Sevillians. He told me that he lived and worked in Seville for two years and in all that time he never made any really good friendships with the people there. He said they were all nice, but very cold. They have their circle of friends and family and they don’t welcome new people in. They don’t share personal things or invite you into their lives with open arms. Well this was pretty accurate of Elisa. In all my time here she has never once offered me to come to Seville with her to meet her family or even just to get a ride to Seville. I use to contribute this mostly to the fact that she was shy and quiet but now I don’t think that’s the reason. I don’t really know anything about her, she goes home EVERY chance she gets so I practically live on my own, and in spite of my efforts to bond with her I’ve never gotten invitations in return. I’ve made dinner for her, I made her a birthday card and bought her a birthday cake, I’ve showed her pictures of my family and some friends, and I’ve tried to reach out by asking her questions about her family and Spanish things but I’ve got NOTHING in return. I didn’t really look into it that much until Pablo told me that that is normal behavior for Sevillians. It makes sense really, Christina’s roommate Lola invited her to stay with her family for the ENTIRE winter break in Murcia. At the time I didn’t think much of it but now I realize how generous an offer like that really is.

Most of the conversations I had with Pablo were about my issues with Spain and what I found interesting was that he had the same issues. It was nice to know that even the natives think that Spain needs some serious work in certain areas. This brings me to my Valverdian woes. For starters, I don’t understand why the cars in my town park on the sidewalk. I understand that the streets are narrow but there is a reason a sidewalk exists in the first place. It wasn’t to provide parking spaces for cars where there aren’t any to begin with. I can’t stand it when a car parks on the sidewalk and forces me to walk in the middle of the road ONLY to get HONKED at by cars trying to drive. You think I put the car there or that I enjoy nearly getting run over by crazy drivers? Every time this happens, which is frequent, I glare at the driver as he or she passes by. Another thing that bugs me is that there are a million little stores on every street that sells food and goods but they all see basically the same stuff. So unless I want potato chips, cookies, soda, or cleaning products I might as well make the trek to Mercadona. All I want is a pint of ice cream and nobody sells ice cream except the major grocery stores. Geez. Oh yeah and there’s also the remarkably reliable Spanish mail system.

So my mother sent me two letters back in the middle of December. I thought there was a chance that I would get them before I went off to Europe but that didn’t happen. I assumed when I returned that they would either be under my door or I would have received a slip of paper telling me to pick them up in person from the Correos because they didn’t fit under the door. Sadly that didn’t happen either. I waited until last Tuesday, but I STILL didn’t hear anything about them so I asked Pocho what she thought about my situation. She then proceeded to tell me about how awful the post is here. Some of her letters still get delivered to her mother’s house even though she hasn’t lived there in 12 years. Better, her mother-in-law gets her mail as well because the post people look at the name, not the address, and since they know everyone in the community they take it upon themselves to just put it under the closest relative. How ridiculous is that? Pocho said that sometimes she doesn’t get her bills because they are at her mother-in-law’s house and she is too busy to drop off the mistaken mail. That just takes lazy to the next level. Well I asked Pocho to come to the Correos with me to help me ask about my letters. They told me they had nothing for me but if I produced the tracking numbers they could look it up. Problem is they were LETTERS; letters don’t come with tracking numbers. Next I tried calling my mother and asking if she had tracking numbers for the letters. At this point she told me to not worry about it. Later on in the same day, when I returned home from my last private class I notice two letters addressed to me on the living room table. I just busted out laughing. Elisa then came in and told me that today she opened her window for the first time since like October and noticed two letters were in her window sill. She had no idea how long they had been there for but apparently the dumb-ass post person thought that was a logical place to put one’s mail. I, I don’t even know what to say to that…

My last woe is about a reoccurring topic on this blog, transper-frickin-tation. So I have tried over the months to book tickets for buses in advanced and for the most part I strike out. For some reason or another the route I’m looking for “doesn’t exist” (it exists) or the website cannot complete my transaction for some lame reason or another. I figure if I can’t book a ticket in advance that other people can’t either. Yeah, that’s the case because when I try to buy my tickets in person they are almost always sold out. The person who designed the DAMAS, SOCIBUS, RENFE, and ALSA website needs to be slapped repeatedly. Another reoccurring theme on this blog is banking, but for once this isn’t MY problem (thank god). So since Corrie has opened a bank account with Santander she hasn’t been able to put money in her account. They told her it was because she didn’t fill out the proper paper work. Well she filled it out and they still wouldn’t let her put money into her account. She finally talked to a head manager and asked what the problem REALLY was. It turns out the central headquarters of Santander in Madrid thinks that Corrie needs an NIE number and won’t let her put money in the account until she gets one. The thing is if you are a member of the EU you don’t need an NIE number. So basically the HQ’s don’t think Corrie is a member of the EU. The bank in Valverde has tried repeatedly to tell the HQ’s that she is a member and doesn’t need a NIE number but they haven’t listened so far. It sucks because she can never book hostels, buy tickets online, or pay for things using a credit card. It is really an inconvenience. I feel bad but secretly really happy that for once something like that isn’t MY problem.

To finish up this random blog post I’ll end with something positive. Fabregas is back to starting for Arsenal so there is a good chance I’ll get to see him in the flesh in London. Can I hear a “Halleluiah!” Lemon out.