Dinner, Classes, Misunderstandings, and Pink

Last night we had paella, a very Spanish dish, complete with clams, whole unshelled shrimp, and a few snails. My one housemate, who really dislikes seafood, was very grossed out. My señor's son told us that we're suppose to suck out the stuff from the heads. I did this, plus took a big bite out of the head. The housemate was completely grossed out. He didn't eat much. I suppose the shrimp antennas floating around the entire thing didn't help much. To be honest, it wasn't the best dish ever...

During dinner, we also talked about Thanksgiving. Apparently my señor is going to try to prepare a turkey for us (although we later found out that there are no turkey's in Spain, but bigger birds that are like chickens. Eh, whatever. Close enough). That should be pretty interesting. Thanksgiving at 9pm in Barcelona, Spain.

I ate breakfast with one of my housemates and we took turns sneaking gulps of milk from our cereal bowls as our señor turned his back and left the room momentarily. Man, it's like Russian roulette (which is a tough word to spell).

I decided to take the metro to school today for the first time. I did this because in my first class we were going to the MNAC (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya). We would be taking the metro, and one gets an hour or so to use a ticket. I figured I'd try to get the most out of mine. Taking the metro is kind of nice, but it takes almost just as long as walking. It costs money, plus takes over 15 min. I can walk to school in 20-25. I'll be walking from now on.

The MNCA was an interesting museum. I hope to get back there because we couldn't stay long. Most of us in the class had our Spanish classes right after that one. Ah, this was for my religion class. We looked at paintings of the orient (Mid-East and Northern Africa).

I then took my Spanish test and I think I did well on it. The hard part was the composition. We had to write a 100 words about last Halloween. The key is to use complicated Spanish and make it interesting. Writing compositions in Spanish to show of your skills and be funny is kinda difficult.

Then I had my intercambio. That's going quite well. I think it is really helping my Spanish out. We went to McDonald's because we only had about an hour to talk and it was the closest/easiest. I had my first Big Mac ever, and it was in Spain. It was okay. I do long for "real" American food though. However, I'm not going to the Hard Rock Cafe. There are several reasons for this, and a big one is because all the entrées are around 15€ or more, equating into a $20 cheeseburger.

Anyway, a couple funny things that happened during my intercambio. First, when he greeted me, he said something about moh-neh. I thought he said good morning and said, no, in the U.S. this would be the afternoon (it was 2pm). Times of day are slightly different here. One time my señor told me I couldn't go get lunch yet at 1pm because it was too early. To quote him, "It's breakfast time." Also, they still refer to 7pm as the afternoon.

Okay, back to the "moh-neh" story, I guess he was trying to say "money." Also, he pronounced "agree" like "ag-ree." With his accent, this sounded like "angry." I can definitely see why English would be hard to learn and to pronounce correctly. He told me pronunciation and listening are his areas of struggle (pssh, add onto that speaking and reading for me). He has a hard time understanding American movies and TV shows, especially, and a quote, albeit edited, "N-word." I then had to explain to him that the N-word is a very, very bad word in the United States. Yeah, that was interesting.

And my señor turned one of my undershirts and my SCU triathlon shirt a slight pink. Yeah, my clothes are getting hit pretty hard out here.

Time to do some homework and then pack for Sevilla. I might have Internet there (in fact, I'm sure of it), however, I might not post anything. We shall see. I'm very excited. Should be a crazy good time. Have a great Friday and weekend, everyone!