Las clases y la comida.

Yesterday we started classes. It´s about a thirty minute walk to school, not too bad. Some people live super far away and have to take the bus. Our classes are divided up into trimesters, but we will only be there for two trimesters. The classes I have are: Grammar, Art, Oral Expression, Literature, History, Geography, and Culture. Every day we have four classes and we are at school from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. One thing very different from the United States is that we don´t move anywhere between classes. Our professors come to us. This way, we are with one group of people all day, at the same level. There are four levels one can test into: beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert. I placed into the advanced level. Most people are in this level. The expert level is for people who are practically fluent. I have Grammar class every day and Culture only once per week. I have not yet had my Geography or Culture class. The professors here are AMAZING. They are all incredibly nice and patient, and also very funny and animated. They know to slow down their speech a little for us and they always make sure we understand them correctly. They are very good at keeping class interesting. However, I have been very sleepy in class so far. Here, they do everything later. They get up later, start work later, eat later, and go to bed later. My host parents are usually up until 1 am and they are in their sixties. So, in order to try and get accustomed to the culture, we have been staying up late, which I´ve learned is not always such a good idea when I have to get up at 8 am. I might try to go to bed earlier now.

For those who I haven´t already told, the eating schedule here is very different. I´ve found, though, that it makes more sense to me. For breakfast, we only eat something small. So far, we´ve had toast and marmelade every day. My host mom also makes me orange juice every morning, which is always my favorite part of breakfast, but Kelly usually has heated milk and cocoa powder to put in. At 2:00 pm, everything shuts down for siesta. Stores close, school ends, people leave work, and everyone goes home and has a huge lunch. Our lunches have usually consisted of three or four parts. First, we usually have a soup of sorts; today we had beans, yesterday potato soup. Then we have a main course; today was fish and potatoes. Then we have fruit, usually my favorite part. Dioni has given us pineapple, apples, pears, oranges, grapes, and clementines, and it´s all fresh so it´s extra delicious. I don´t know if this is how every family´s lunch works but that´s what we have. After lunch, people usually take a nap or relax and read a book or something. At 5 pm, stores reopen and we usually go out somewhere then. Dinner is not until around 9 or 10 pm, and we only have something small. Last night we had little breaded things that had meats in them, kind of like piroks (for those who know what those are), but not really. It was more bready/creamy. We also had some sort of fried zucchini or eggplant. And then we had grapes. Fruit is served with every meal. To me, the smaller dinner and bigger lunch makes sense because you burn off everything you ate for lunch after siesta and not as much after dinner. You´re not supposed to eat before bed because it will just sit around and turn into fat, so they have smaller dinners. I like it. Tonight I think we are going to have tortilla de patata, which is probably my favorite thing I´ve had here (besides the oranges). This last picture on the left is tortilla de patata. All of these photos are of some of the foods I´ve had here. I´m kind of obsessed with the orange juice...