Today is a perfect day for writing–the weather here is nasty. Lots of rain and clouds. Conchita is thrilled by the arrival of rain–Barcelona is suffering from a water shortage. And I can’t complain either. Bad weather seems to be a rarity here. It’s so foreign to me to not have to wear three coats, gloves, a scarf, and a hat to leave the house during winter. I tried to explain to Conchita that 40F is not winter weather! For it to be winter, I need the biting winds of Galesburg that seem to suck the air right out of your mouth and slice your cheeks. I need it to be so cold that the short walk from your dorm room to class causes your fingers to freeze and it takes a good 10 minutes before you can properly use them again. I am not experiencing winter–it’s more like spring! I can’t help but laugh when I see women wearing fur coats in 40F weather. They don’t mess around with the cold here!

Back to the holiday update–how I rang in the new year. In the US I normally celebrate with my family and friends. New Year’s Eve (Nochevieja in Spanish) is my dad’s birthday so we always have a huge party. Here was the same, but add eating 12 grapes in 12 seconds, red underwear, and my first HUGE (2000+ people) blowout new year’s bash.

To start the night, Conchita and I went to her brother’s house for dinner. Her brother lives on the other side of town in a huge apartment. Well, huge by Barcelona standards. I call it huge if I don’t have to turn sideways to enter the kitchen or step on my bed to get my bedroom door to close. Plus, they had central heating! I get the impression that it’s a luxury here. And of course, I was so happy to see the rest of Conchita’s family. New Year’s Eve is the one day in Spain where people dress to the nines. Conchita looked very foxy in her knee-high leather boots and all the men were wearing tuxedos. There is a boutique near my house that is famous throughout Spain for selling party dresses to Spanish royalty. The day before New Year’s Eve, I was walking downtown and passed the store–it was flooded with Spanish paparazzi trying to get the perfect shot of Spain’s princess shopping for her Nochevieja dress!

At dinner I steered clear of the odd seafood choices. I definitely didn’t want to be sick on this night! By the time we finished dinner and dessert, we had 20 minutes before the new year. There are two things that make celebrating the new year in Spain distinct. First (and most importantly) is the tradition of eating 12 grapes in 12 seconds, with time marked by a huge clock in Madrid’s Puerta del sol. It’s like the count down in Times Square, with everyone tuning in. You eat one grape for each month of the year. I heard that this tradition started because one year there was a bumper crop of grapes so the king decided to give grapes to everybody to eat on New Year’s Eve. Second is the tradition of wearing red undergarments. It sounded like a commercial maneuver to me, but when I suggested this, I received some very dirty looks. Wearing red underwear is the way to guarantee luck in the new year. Conchita made it very clear that if I didn’t already own red underwear I had better buy some or we couldn’t take the same taxi to the party. She didn’t want any possibility of bad luck.

Before the actual countdown, everybody received a goody bag filled with noise makers, streamers, party hats/noses/glasses, and a bowl of grapes. I’ve got to be honest–I was terrified of eating the grapes. It didn’t want to mess up such a huge part of the night and I was unclear on when the actual eating of grapes began. Was it the 12 seconds before midnight or the first 12 seconds of the new year? And everyone else was so jumpy that it was pointless to watch them. Every time I saw someone’s arm move I thought it was time to eat the grapes. People were constantly yelling, “Not yet Polly!” To add to my nervousness were the actual grapes. These were not grapes that you would normally see in the grocery. They can only be described as grapes on steroids. They reminded me of those rubber bouncy balls–the same ones I broke my living room window with. Because I didn’t have years of practice, the advice was to peel and de-pit my grapes. That way I could just swallow the grapes whole if I didn’t have time to chew them because it was of utmost importance that I eat all 12 grapes in 12 seconds. This also reminded me of those times I would watch people in the cafeteria compete to see who could scarf down a bowl of cereal the fastest–or those hot dog eating competitions on tv. Both of those would have been good practice. Lorenzo said that I should give it my best shot because he knew the Heimlich if I ran into trouble!

When it was finally time to eat the grapes (the 12 seconds following the new year), I laughed the whole time. It was such a funny sight to see everyone, including the tv announcers, cramming grapes into their mouths. For those who swallowed the grapes whole, you could literally watch this little lump bulge out of their throat. With each chime of the clock, you eat/swallow a whole grape before the next chime. I think I did a pretty good job for my first time–all 12 grapes made it in my mouth but not all were swallowed by the end of the 12 seconds. My cheeks were bulging with grapes and I was trying not to smile or laugh for fear that I would paint the walls with the contents of my mouth.

Following the grapes was a quick run around the table, kissing everyone and receiving your first new year’s greetings. And then in true Spanish form, the real party began. Music blared–it was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself talking, so loud that the crystal was vibrating. But what was so great was everyone else’s music was equally loud. When you stepped out on the balcony, you could easily turn off your music and still have music loud enough to continue the party. And once again, dancing was mandatory. But this time it was dancing on the table! Conchita’s family has a tradition that everyone must do their own funky dance down the length of the table while everyone shouts your name and Happy New Year. It reminded me of the final scene in the movie ‘Hitch.’ The party was so crazy and full of life. I had such a great time, but this was only the beginning of my night!

At 2a, I headed to a new year’s party with my friend Alejandro and his six friends. The party did not disappoint. As I’m sure you gathered, Spaniards take their parties to epic proportions. It was held in an old castle in the mountains on the outskirts of Barcelona. There were a few rooms in the castle that were open for the party, but most of the night was spent outside in the courtyards. The party was a cultural experience in itself–the music, the dancing, the interactions between people–it was all so different. For example, I assumed that if you were going to pay (it was expensive!) to go to a party, it would be everything you would expect from a party, that people would be doing more partying than catching up. There was a good amount of partying, but there were also a lot of people that were just talking and people would take breaks to have serious conversations. In Spain, because houses are so tiny, it’s not common to entertain, so you have to visit with your friends on the streets. I learned that it’s very common to go to a dance club just to have a place to talk with your friends. My night ended at 8a, but the party didn’t officially end until 10a.

The rest of the day was spent recovering–watching movies and eating pizza with Conchita. She also needed to recover–she didn’t get home until 5a!

The other day, in the middle of teaching Conchita the basics of her computer, it hit me how much my Spanish has improved in the past month. It’s beyond crazy for me to think that I can talk to Alejandro on the phone and leave the conversation with an understanding of our plans, without having to ask him to repeat himself a thousand times. It’s like a normal conversation! When I spend time with him, I forget that I’m speaking in a different language, which has got o be a sign that I’m getting better. Or that I can listen to the morning news on the radio and actually understand what was being said. And what’s even better is that I can do this with more ease than before. I used to dread watching tv or listening to the radio because it was painful and never relaxing. I would have to concentrate so hard just to understand one sentence and sometimes I couldn’t even understand that. Now, I can actually listen or watch for pure enjoyment. I can pick up on jokes and I am beginning to joke or be sarcastic myself. Don’t get me wrong, I still conjugate verbs incorrectly, look up hundreds of words a day, and my use of the subjunctive is sketchy at best, but it doesn’t matter because I’m getting better! And it’s really exciting! I love to think about where I could be at the end of these six months!

I’m off to search for Conchita’s los reyes magos present. Part 3, los reyes magos (or the equivalent of Christmas), is coming soon!

I haven’t grown up eating much fish or seafood. There were always the fish dinners at the Grange or at Dede’s, Millstadt’s little fish stand, but after eating a true Mediterranean diet, I don’t think either of those count as real fish. I have very few memories of eating real seafood, which is why I’ve eagerly tried all types of seafood here. I don’t crave seafood but I don’t hate it either. I think that it’s too different from what I’ve experienced back home to judge it yet. But, I’ve had some interesting experiences with it so far.

To welcome me home and begin the first of many dinners over the next six months, my host mom made one of her favorite dishes. I can tell that she’s trying really hard to make me feel at home and feel good about spending the holiday away from my family, especially after she saw my bedroom wall plastered with photos of my family and artwork by my sisters. She thought that octopus was the best way to make me feel at home. She told me a long story about her childhood and growing up with octopus on special occasions, so this would now become our tradition. I was excited about it, thinking it would be like the calamari I had eaten in the US—breaded and fried so that it barely resembled any seafood. It was nothing like that.

First we walked to the neighborhood fish store. When I walked into the store, I though that I had entered an aquarium. Every kind of edible seafood was available—fish with huge pointy teeth, scallops and clams of every size, monstrous shrimp, and of course octopus (pulpo). I’ve never seen an octopus, so I had no idea what to expect. I want to describe it for you, but I don’t think I can. It looked like a soccer ball with long lumpy arms. The fish shop was such a cultural experience that I didn’t even begin to think of what we were going to do with such a strange creature. At home I learned—and got a full culinary lesson on how to prepare octopus. Because the octopus was so fresh, the emphasis was on purity instead of sauces. This is how we prepared it: we each took turns beating the octopus with a tiny piece of wood to tenderize it. Then we boiled it is a huge pot. She made it very clear that you can only use a copper pot. After it’s done boiling, we snipped off its tentacles with scissors. We topped it with olive oil and sea salt and called it dinner. I don’t think I can ever call Dede’s fish stand sea food anymore. This was the real deal!

The texture of octopus is unique. It was hard for me to look directly at it while I ate it because all I saw was this slimy white blob that sometimes awkwardly clung on my lower teeth. It was those times that I felt like the octopus was eating me! I don’t know if it’s an acquired taste but for my first real introduction to seafood, it was memorable. I didn’t love octopus but I also didn’t hate it and since my host mom loved it so much and it was obvious that she was trying to make me feel good, I ate a good amount of octopus. Certainly more than I would have ate under other circumstances. I definitely felt like we bonded over the preparation and the meal.

She promised me that we’d have another one of her favorite delicacies– percebes (barnacles). Her face lit up when she excitedly told me about barnacles in between bites of octopus. They are very expensive (roughly 10 euros for 100 grams) because it is dangerous to retrieve the barnacles. They grow on rocks off the cost of Galicia (province in northwest Spain) in dangerous waves. It takes specialists to harvest them. She used violent hand gestures to explain how to eat the barnacles—twist, rip, bite. I had to run to get my dictionary to understand the instructions, but now those three words are engraved in my mind! It’s really quite the memory to be eating octopus for dinner while learning how to eat barnacles—two things I never thought I’d do. Apparently the best way to eat barnacles is with a beer and toasted bread. I’ll have to take her word until we make them for another Sunday dinner.

My other experiences with seafood are less memorable. I eat some form of seafood at least once a day, either for the first or second course at lunch or dinner, and sometimes at both meals. Today I ate salmon on toast for breakfast and the other night I ate cuddle fish on pizza. If I hadn’t had the pizza to go with the cuddle fish, I don’t think I could have ate it. It was not tasty by itself.

Sometimes I miss my Argentine steak so I have to remind myself that if I continued to eat Argentine steak with the same regularity, I’d probably need heart surgery within the next five years. At least I can eat this seafood and think of all the good the omega-3 fatty acids are doing and hope that they reverse some of the damage from all that beef I ate!

My tendency, when I don’t know a word in Spanish, is to guess the meaning of a word based on what it sounds like/looks like in English. This normally works, but every so often I run into a false cognate that throws everything off and leads to really embarrassing moments.

The other day we stopped for lunch in the town that my host mom grew up in. Before I left Barcelona she asked me to contact her family while I was in the town and deliver a package for her. So, I delivered the package and then called my host mom to tell her that all went well. On the phone she kept telling me, “Estás constipada, estás constipada.” Never having heard “constipada” used in Spanish before, I fell back on my method for understanding new words. I assumed that she was telling me that I was constipated. I didn’t understand why she insisted that this was the case, and I kept thinking how awkward it was for her to tell me that I was constipated. I kept telling her that I wasn’t but she told me to quit being stubborn and go see a doctor. I hung up the phone frustrated. When I told Tim, the program director, that my host mom had insisted that I was constipated, he also agreed. What I learned is that ‘constipada’ in Spanish means that you are congested!

The rest of my stories come not from false cognates but from differences between the uses of a word in Argentina and in Spain. I can understand most things but at times I feel that I have been introduced to a whole new language. Some examples:

I asked for directions the other day and an old man told me to head three manzanas (apples) up the hill. What does it mean to walk three apples? I asked him to repeat the directions and he still was speaking of apples. What’s really frustrating is when you understand all of the words but the message still doesn’t seem to make sense. Then you begin to question your comprehension, even though you are clearly understanding every word. It turns out that ‘manzana’ means ‘city block’ as well as apple. Here in Spain you get directions in terms of fruit.

On my first day with my host mom she kept using the verb ‘coger.’ In Argentina, this is a curse word. I would always hear it on the streets when buses or cars would come too close to a pedestrian or when my host mom would be angry with the leaky roof. So, when my host mom in Spain kept telling me ‘coger’ the bread or ‘coger’ the suitcase or ‘coger’ the bus, I was completely surprised. Those were gross instructions (applying the Argentine definition) and I had no idea what to do. But, I was more surprised that this seemingly innocent and adorable old lady was cursing so much. It seemed totally out of character. I later learned that ‘coger’ is the equivalent of ‘tomar’ or ‘to take.’ It was reassuring to know that my host mom was giving me directions instead of cursing at me.

I didn’t expect there to be so many differences between Argentine Spanish and Spain Spanish. When I use an Argentine word Tim won’t respond. It’s also a process to lose the Argentine accent. It took me such a long time to understand and then attempt the Argentine accent myself. Certain letters, like ‘ll’ and ‘y’, are pronounced with a ’shh’ noise. By the end of the trip, it was much more natural and here it just pops out on certain words. I don’t even think about it. After a few minutes of conversation with my host mom here, she asked me if I’d been to Argentina. She said that I didn’t even need to respond—it was obvious! She called it ‘cute’ but said that people in Spain really look down upon the Argentine accent because they think it is ‘dirty’—a result of poor pronunciation and lack of respect for the language. That seems a little harsh to me, but nevertheless, I am now trying to pronounce words with a Spanish accent. At first I didn’t want to switch. I liked the Argentine way, but a girl on my program had been to Argentina the year before and is now in Spain and she told me that originally she felt the same way but that if I don’t try to push Argentina aside for the time I’m in Spain, I won’t ever like anything done the Spanish way. It’s true. In the beginning all I kept saying to myself was how ugly the Spanish accent was or how their food wasn’t as good as Argentine food or how I liked my Argentine household style more. So now I am consciously trying not to be so harsh in my comparison of the two places. It was a mistake to think that because Argentina and Spain speak the same language they would be similar!