Feb 12th – Day of Not Hearing

My allergies are becoming quite the nuisance for me now, and I’m constantly reminded that I have them. During the winter just like bears do, my allergies go into hibernation for the season until reawakened in spring and continue through fall. However, since the winter season here really isn’t winter, my allergies have been woken up too early. It’s funny how up north in the states they laugh at us in Oklahoma when we complain about our winter. Now I feel like one of the northerners here when they complain about their winter, which is really fall. The people here walk around with winter coats and scarves all bundled up, and I haven’t even worn a sweater here yet. The max I need is a fleece and scarf…no gloves, no hat. Almost every hour on the hour here I can’t breathe so I spend 10 mins clearing my nose so that I can breathe with ease for maybe 5 mins. Ugh, oh well. I’m getting used to it so it’s not bad enough anymore where it’s keeping me from doing things as to being a nuisance. However today is a little different since my sinuses have clogged up my ears. So I feel like everyone has been turned down way to low on volume or on mute. Which fortunately in Spain, my professors are very animated and loud so I can hear okay. That is until I get to history of Spanish art because we are going to walk over to the cathedral down the street to analyze the Gothic aspects to the architecture. With the slight wind and my professor’s hushed voice, I can’t hear him at all. So when he looks to me, I just smile and give the look of “oh, really?!” Then at one point he was asking us about why one of the building here was shorter and my friend Dean said it was because the people were shorter. Then Carlos asked why they were shorter. It was a picture perfect moment of college students with no clue. Poor Carlos…he then said it was because of the malnutrition. When peoples or cultures are well nourished, they are taller and when they aren’t they are shorter. At this moment, I see Dean look at me, and then look at my friend Carrie. Carrie is probably 5’ and one of my good friends here and at that moment we were standing next to each other in front of Carlos and the class. She suddenly realized what he said and then looked up at me. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. Dean and Nick saw it and burst out laughing and so did we…when Carlos asked what’s going on, we just told him nothing. Funny. Then standing at the cathedral with my friend Rachel, I feel a tug on my jacket…I got confused since she was standing next to me, and when I looked at her she looked confused too, then motioned behind me. It was Ana my host mom! (And no mom, she’s not my real mom…I only have one mom and that’s you. She just takes care of me while I’m here.) I said hi and she smiled excitedly saying she would see me when I got done with class. Class finished for the day and I went to my host home for lunch. Boy was I hungry. Today in my comp class, we had gotten our compositions back to revise again and write a new one, both due Thursday. Geez. Well, the writing tutor was going to be available today at 5pm, so I needed to be back then to go over the first one with him. I started getting my topic and information for the second composition (which is over folkloric holidays in Spain…your choice of which one to compare to another culture). When I came back to school to meet with the tutor, wouldn’t you know it, it was my assistant professor for my film class! And he was way helpful and patient with me, and I didn’t feel pressured at all. He even gave examples of how to understand when to use certain phrasing or verbs if I didn’t understand. After I felt much better about my paper and told him I would meet him again next week once I got my latest composition back about the holidays. After when I came back to my host home, Ana was going to take me to the post office to pick up my mail from the note left by the mailman. However after I finished, I ran into Teresa who told me she needed to vent about her roommate here in her host home. Yea, okay I got time. However I didn’t think about the fact that when girls get together, they can talk for hours and not even notice it. I looked at the clock and it was 9pm…I left the house at 4:30pm and Ana was going to take me when Pepe got home at 8-8:30pm. Oh no! I didn’t want to look rude and she was trying to help me by taking me. Teresa felt better after talking and I told her I had to run. When I first got to my host home, I went to find Ana but she was showering so Pepe put my dinner out for me at the table while he finished his. Then he went to go tuck Adrian in bed while I finished eating and Ana came down. I apologized profusely and told her what happened. She laughed and said it’s no big, Pepe actually came back later than she thought because there was bad traffic coming from Madrid to Alcala. So it actually was okay that I didn’t come earlier and we could go tomorrow. Oh, okay. Suddenly I realized that I stumbled upon another interesting dish that I was eating that I really liked. When I told Ana, she smiled…I had fried squid rings, just like fried onion rings but instead with calamari. They actually look the exact same, and I thought they were fried onions until I bit into one. Squid? Pretty good, but I would have never thought of eating them this way. Then I also had what seemed like potatoes with citrus fruits. I think a pink grapefruit and oranges. It was great! When I asked her what was in it and told her I liked the grapefruit, she looked at me funny and laughed. What?! There’s no grapefruit in that, it’s salmon. Really?! Oh…well, I like it a lot. It was really light and refreshing.