First, Peñi made hot chocolate for breakfast! Kristen and I have grown quite fond of it... it's thick, unlike in the United States, and much better, in my opinion! To accompany the 'chocolate' we had peanut butter and blueberry jam toast. Kristen's parents sent peanut butter to us this week so that the family could try it for the first time ever. Peñi liked it but said it was really rich and that if she eats more of it she'll gain weight!! hehe, kind of ironic given all of the other food we eat here... but the food generally IS pretty healthy... Peanut butter tasted amazing though, after being so used to it and not having it for a really long time. Very good :)
After breakfast, I made banana bread with Peñi. It was kind of tricky figuring out how to measure ingredients... everything here is in grams or by sight so making banana bread here involved converting cups and teaspoons to grams, translating the entire recipe into Spanish, figuring out all of the necessary vocabulary to successfully communicate with Peñi on how to make it, buying a bread pan (which has different dimensions than the U.S.), hand shelling and crushing walnuts, and guessing how much salt and baking powder to use since a 'teaspoon' and 'tablespoon' is just a scoop using everyday spoons for place settings. (also, the recipe calls for baking soda, and they only have baking powder here, so I had to guess on how much baking powder to put in and hope it would work!) We tried the finished product after la comida (the mid-day meal) and it turned out really well! (minus the occasional fragment of walnut shell) The family just loved it too :) Antonio wants me to make apple bread sometime because he "really really likes apples. Yeah, apples are really good. Apple bread would be really good." hehe he was SO curious as to whether you could make bread with apples instead of bananas... so yeah, overall, success!!!
(Peñi and I with the banana bread!)
David cooked la comida today; his recipes (from his cooking class) were from all over the world. He made quiche (from France), some sort of fried African roll thing with ground chicken, onions, and cognac inside, eaten with powdered sugar sprinkled on top (quite good), and a greek casserole that had veal and potato cubes on the bottom, and cream and cheese baked on the top. Lastly, dessert was American banana bread. SO much food... but fun to try.
After la comida, Kristen and I met Fermín, who I share a stand with in orchestra, and one of his friends near Casco Viejo at 5. Once we finally found each other, we found some more of his friends near this café that has pool and fooseball in the basement where a lot of Spanish kids hang out. We played two matches of fooseball and it was really fun. Fermín seemed to be the oldest (he's 16), and the youngest in the group seemed to be about 10 or 11... so little. I'm amazed at how trusting the parents must be here... next we made our way to a 'bajera,' which is a space that a bunch of kids rent for so much per month where they can hang out if they want to be inside. It's a really interesting concept... you basically rent a store space and put stuff in there like couches, tvs, etc... and the one that we went to had a small skate deck inside!! The place was kind of run down with a lot of random old things in it and wasn't exactly clean, but still a pretty cool place. Kristen and I ended up watching the others skateboard for 1 1/2 or 2 hours; it was pretty fun. Fermín even showed each of us how to skate which was pretty funny, but amusing... I even went down a small hill... haha! The whole thing was a really cool, authentic exposure to the culture here. I got to see first hand what people do, how they act, how they talk to each other. After that, we all went to a 'cybercentro,' which is a room full of computers where you can buy computer time. There, Fermín set me and Kristen up on Tuenti, which is the Spanish version of Facebook! Finally, Fermín, Kristen, and I went to Corte Inglés, which is a GIANT European department store... it has 8 huge floors and all of the name brands, has an entire floor each for women, men, young people, sports, books and electronics, makeup and accessories... it's ridiculous. In the basement there's a full-out grocery store, along with a flower shop and gourmet food market... We looked around the grocery store for a bit, found peanut butter (!), which was about $6 a jar, saw lots of raw fresh seafood (the smell completely reminded me of Pike's Place Market in Seattle), and saw various meats... Fermín pointed out jamón ibérico, which is a high quality expensive cured pork. Some of the pieces were around 400 Euros, which is equivalent to about $600. I will never understand how a piece of meat could possibly be worth that much money, or could taste that good... some of it had been cured for four years. I guess the pieces with a black hoof (versus another color) are the most valuable... We took the bus back home a little after 9:30 to get back for dinner. Overall, a fun experience :)
Lastly, for dinner, Peñi made rabbit liver and onions for Kristen and I to try, to go along with the leftovers... (I wonder where that came from! We had rabbit yesterday or the day before...) I managed to evade it...
I feel like I learned SO much today. Tonight's the big night for everyone to go out and party, but I'm kind of worn out and plan to just sleep instead. Plus, I feel like I've experienced some really cool stuff already today that not a lot of people get to experience :)
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