Monday, January 31, 2011

La familia

Well by some act of God Siobhan and I were placed with the same host family; a husband and wife as well as their 13 year-old son (Mario, Ana, and Alex).  We are living in a small apartment about a 10-15 minute walk to the University of Salamanca.  Siobhan and I share our own room and so far things are going fairly well.  The family barely speaks any English, so both of us are having the opportunity to speak a lot of Spanish.
We are slowly but surely adapting to the culture and just yesterday experienced our first siesta ( a break period in the day from about 2 to 4 where many of the businesses close, families return home together to eat the main meal of the day and take a very short nap before leaving the house again).  For those of you who do not know, in Spain we eat a very light breakfast around 8 (we have been having warm milk and coco powder) lunch is served at 3 and is a HUGE meal, and then around 9 we eat a fairly decent sized dinner.  The lunch yesterday was absolutely amazing.  It is a little hard to explain, but we had beef that was cooked similar to roast and had half of a hard-boiled egg, a roasted carrot, a green olive, and a roasted red pepper in the center of the cut (I am still trying to figure out how she managed to do that).  In addition we had the Spanish version of french fries and a large salad with a balsamic vinaigrette like dressing.  The salad was very similar to something we eat in the states-lettuce, tomato, onion, green olives- but they also add cooked corn.  For dessert our host mother made us homemade flan...YUMMMY! We washed the whole meal down with a great red wine :) I was definitely very happy to learn that our host mother can definitely cook!
Dinner was sandwiches (it was similar to an egg salad but with fresh veggies and lettuce mixed in), chirizo (kind of like italian supasod (?) no idea how to spell it lol), cheese, and fruit. I liked everything except for the sandwich.  I have a very strong aversion to  egg salad....so needless to say it was hard to get that down and I did not have the heart to tell her I did not like it.  I am simply praying that she never makes it again.

We do not have a lot of internet access at our house so we will be spending a lot of time at school and at the student center that has wifi lol.  I will hopefully be updating every day or so and let you in on the new things that I have seen, eaten, or experienced ;)

Love,
Tayler

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Travel Saga


The trip started off fairly well.  I arrived to Laguardia on time and made it through security without a hitch.  More importantly, I also managed to say goodbye to my parents without bursting into tears.  For those close to me, you all know that is a huge accomplishment.  Although I was a little nervous to be flying alone on what I surmised would be a very small puddle jumper plane (it was just that by the way) I was also very excited to finally be on my way.  After seven weeks of waiting, the day had finally arrived.  I sat in gate 6 reading my first book on the Kindle I received for my birthday (shout out to mom and dad for the sweet gift).   
I was feeling confident as I boarded the plan, as I was now only a little over an hour away from meeting up with Siobhan and Alexa in Philadelphia and no longer having to travel on my own.  I had the rest of the day all planned out; find my gate, get some dinner, and catch up with the girls.  Unfortunately this is where my trip started to get a little more interesting.  As we make our way to the runway, the pilot suddenly kills the engine (we were being delayed an hour because of snow removal and air traffic in Philadelphia).  I, of course, was panicking because I was afraid I was going to miss the connection in Philadelphia.  Luckily there was a very attractive 4th year medical student that was sitting next to me and throughout the delay and the entire flight we chatted it up about school and our profession (and no unfortunately I never got his phone number….my life is not like the movies lol).  Although I had great company I still had to race through the Philadelphia airport sans food in order to make the connecting flight.  I arrived at gate A19 sweaty and unable to breathe as I have worked-out minimally since soccer season ended in November.  Nonetheless I did make the flight and met up with the girls.  I was finally able to relax….NOT. Our flight was then delayed 2 hours, we sat on the plane the entire time and I had not eaten since 11:00am.  It was now 8:30pm.  After a 6 ½ hour flight, 3 very uncomfortable hours of sleep, we finally arrived in Madrid.   It took another 3 hours of waiting, a 2 ½ hour bus trip, and I had FINALLY FINALLY made it to Salamanca.

To say the least it was an overwhelming 2 days…but totally worth it. More to come on my first day in Salamanca and the host family that Siobhan and I are staying with!

Love,
Tayler