I'm Learning SO Much, Already...

I've only been here for a few days and I've already learned SO much about the Spanish culture... Here I'll focus on the layout of the city and meals.

The city: the map above is of the city of Pamplona! I live in Barañain, which is labeled in the left center of the map, and my school (La Universidad de Navarra) is about in the center of the map, below the main part of Pamplona. The center of the city is the small green section above my school. Northeast of the green center is Casco Antiguo, the oldest, most historical part of the city (not labeled on the map). Most other exchange students live in big apartment buildings somewhere around the center.  Everyone walks everywhere in Pamplona, since, by European standards, it's a "small" city!

Meals: breakfast is normally cereal with warm or cold whole milk (which comes in a carton and doesn't need to be refrigerated until open) and/or toast with chocolate spread and/or cookies with chocolate spread and/or croissants... there's also a chocolate powder similar to Nesquik to put over the cereal!

Lunch is at 2:30 or 3:00 p.m. and is the biggest meal of the day. My family eats two courses plus dessert, and my host mom makes EVERYTHING from scratch. It's pretty amazing... lunch is usually salad or vegetables, pasta, or something similar, and bread for the first course, meat(s), potatoes, and other foods for the second course, and fruit (and sometimes yogurt) for dessert.

Dinner is around 10:00 p.m. My family has a tradition of eating soup (and bread) for the first course (since it gets cooler at night), then meats etc. for the second course, and fruit for dessert.

Today: I had European hot chocolate (VERY thick and rich- half a teacup was plenty) with a croissant for breakfast. Lunch was spaghetti with two meats, bread, fried pork skins, meatballs, homemade french fries, and small slices of cured thin ham and sausage. Dessert was fruit and some sweets left over from Christmas. Dinner tonight is in a little over an hour! Last night for dinner, we had soup with star noodles in it (homemade broth), bread, salad with oil and vinegar (first course), leftover shrimp (still in the shell with head and legs), empanadas (fried meat and tomato-filled pockets) (second course), and for dessert a sampling of many things: queso fresco (comes in a yogurt-shaped container), other thin slices of cheese, truffles, chocolate, marzapan, turrón (special for Christmas- contains mainly ground almonds, honey...) and a sampling of Pacharán (an anise flavored liquor famous to Navarra)!

My luggage should be here tomorrow, hopefully, and then I'll have my camera's cord so I can upload pictures! :)