I’ve only been here for two weeks, so you'll see everything is still fascinating to me. I'm pretty much in awe of all of my new experiences. Here's a sample of my life here thus far - enjoy!
Faith has been and continues be an important part of my daily life. One of my personal goals this semester is to go to a different church every weekend for mass – the hard part isn’t going to be finding the churches, but deciding which ones to attend! So far, I’ve found that religion here is very cultural and traditional, a sensation augmented by the myriad Catholic churches scattered throughout the city.
Maybe it’s just that I’m not accustomed to praying in the midst of such elaborate tributes to Catholicism, but I could barely focus this past weekend when I went to the Basilica de San Juan de Dios for mass. The only words that can even come close to describing the interior of the church are gold, gold, and more gold. And golden. Absolutely magnificent.
Eating here has also been quite an experience. My host family eats relatively normal by American standards, but we’ve had some “different” dishes. Once we had meat that appeared to be ham, and our host dad asked my housemate if she liked it. She said, “Well, I prefer chicken.” To which he replied, “This is chicken.” It was good, but I don’t blame her for being confused. We’ve had some excellent fish – very fresh. Don’t worry, I’m positive it wasn’t chicken.
The other day for lunch we had a Mexican chicken dish called Mole (pronounced Mo-lay, NOT like the rodent). It’s an extremely efficient dish, because you don’t have to eat dessert afterwards. That’s because there’s chocolate in the sauce that's on the chicken. Expanding my palate has definitely not been a challenge!
One thing that I'm missing is my music, but I’m so lucky that my host family has a piano right here in the apartment. It pained me to leave most of my music collection at home, but I brought along some of my favorite sheet music and songbooks. The amazing thing about music is that it is a universal language – no need for translation.
One of my professors from school who is from Granada helped me network here a little, so this week I started volunteering at the Centro San Rafael, a local soup kitchen. (I like their name for it here: “social dining room”). Besides not being able to understand a lot of the colloquialisms, I felt right at home. I had limited conversations with most of the helpers, but I already feel like I know them. It's amazing how much can be communicated through dishing out soup and washing trays - actions that require few words. I was the youngest volunteer there, but the others were so welcoming and kind-hearted and the time flew by. Ironically, as I was walking there yesterday I heard two street musicians playing a lively rendition of “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. Again, music = universal language.
The Centro San Rafael is right next to the Basicilica de San Juan De Dios. The picture on the right here is a view of part of the church from a courtyard area connecting the two buildings.
We’re still in the midst of our intensive language course, but in a couple of weeks we’ll start our classes and field trips. There is absolutely no English in class right now, although we suspect that the professor is a highly proficient English-speaker. In fact, one of my classmates did some research and discovered that the professor attended the University of Delaware for an advanced degree. So, one of the other students asked the professor in class if he was a “gallina azul”, which is the literal translation of Delaware’s mascot, the blue hen. If we didn’t speak English before, we really don’t speak it now. I’m actually really enjoying the class, though. This week we had to write a short story of a legend that’s somewhat local to our hometown. I haven’t had Internet access, so I was left to my own mental library for reference. Unfortunately, all I could think of was the Mothman. Not my first choice of legends to represent where I come from, but at least it’s entertaining. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I don’t suggest you look it up.
I hope you're enjoying the trip with me so far! As for this slice of my life – there’s more where that came from. Feel free to come back for seconds!
