Fall

There have been a few days that really felt like fall here in Spain. Something about the smells and the wind, along with the right temperature that's just warm enough to wear a sweater instead of a jacket.

Even if the weather outside is relatively nice and warms up by midday, the temp inside the apartment is still coooooold. The stone floors just suck up all the coldness and my feet are almost never warm. I have a space heater in my room which sits under the table, so the only way I can warm up is to sit at the table. Not too terrible, but then I feel a little antisocial working on my computer a lot. So I venture out to the salón/living room to watch tv with my host mother every once in a while.

I really miss the leaves changing colors back at home. Here they just die green and fall off. Some turn a little brown. Although most of the trees still have nearly all their leaves yet. However, on our class trip southeast to Granada we went through the mountains and all the aspens are turning yellow about now. Really pretty.

Fall colors

The fall fashion colors in Spain are purple and red this year. The Red Hat Society ladies would have a heyday! Except nobody wear showy red hats.

A good solid purple is most popular, but also a rich, slightly pinky-purply jewel tone and a lighter lavender. The red is mostly for accents like shoes, jewelry, purses, and jackets, and is fading out of heavy use as winter approaches.

Las frutas

If the smell of fingernail polish remover has a taste, then I've had it. We had melon today for dessert and while it looked fine, it smelled like rubbing alcohol. And because the senses of taste and smell are linked, I decided that if things ever tasted the way they smelled, the melon was for sure fingernail polish remover. I've had a similar experience with corn that tasted the way I think the smell of skunk would taste. Mmm-mmm.

Every other time we've had this kind of melon it's been good though. Must have just been a bad chunk of prematurely fermenting fruit.

This part of Spain has only one kind of melón- the outside looks like a cross between watermelon and muskmelon/cantaloupe rind and the inside is green like a heartier honey-dew melon. They have watermelon too, just not more than one kind.

For me the fruits aren't more spectacular than the fruit in the U.S. Except for the smaller varieties of oranges/naranjas - they are awesome! The normal oranges have thick skin and not much juice, but the smaller ones (similar to clementines or tangerines) are delicious. The skin peels off like melting butter and the slices are sooo juicy. I've also tried mandarine oranges, but those are too sour for me.

The grapes/uvas are nearly the size of ping pong balls, but they also have 3-4 huge seeds inside them. The peaches/melocotones are alright, but don't have much flavor. The pears are perfectly delectable. The bananas are small and a little meatier. The normal plums/ciruelas are okay, but the white plums are exceptional (they actually have green/yellow skin with white/yellow flesh). The apples aren't that great - really grainy and soft. It makes me want a nice, crisp, slighty tart apple from Minnesota/Wisconsin!

Los jovenes

Spanish youth isn't lazy per se; they just choose one occupation at a time, whether that be studying, working, or partying. It's practically unheard of that a Spanish college kid would have a job, even if they only have one or two classes a week. They just stick out their hands to their parents for money and voila!

No wonder American teens and young adults are so stressed - they are expected to fit in all three things, plus volunteering, sports & drama & music & clubs, and personal hobbies.

On the one hand Spaniards don't seem to have much experience in anything except partying, but on the other hand Americans seem to be looking only to enhance a résumé. Is that the difference between working to live and living to work? Speaking of which, I still don't know my calling in life. Bah.

Las nubes

Where are you? Where is your head right now? Estás en las nubes... ¡de Valencia! Ha. Elementary teachers say the same things here as in the U.S. You've got your head in the clouds. And Valencia is opposite Cáceres, way on the east coast of Spain, so that kid was really not paying attention.

Oh, and speaking of clouds. Today I had a sort of cookie. Well, it was round and looked like a cookie. Except it was more like really airy sweet bread; not crunchy like angel's food candy, not the consistency of fried donuts, but not like cotton candy either. I decided it was like eating a cloud, if I could ever just grab a handful of one for a snack.

Novatadas

For Spanish students, the fall semester started Monday the 27th of September. However, very few students actually went to their classes the first week.

Here in Spain they have a tradition of initiating (read: a form of hazing) the new 1st yr students. This involves the sophomore class as sort of wranglers who carry around megaphones and order the freshmen around. The freshmen, according to gender and major, wear matching tshirts that on the front say things like infantil, novatada, etc. and on the back sport their first name. They then proceed to have the following done to them: roped together in a line, eggs and flour covering them, singing songs to degrade themselves, magic marker signatures on their skin from upperclassmen, etc. Surprisingly they all seemed to be in a pretty good mood about it.

So we've been told, here in Cáceres the novatada business is fairly light and upbeat. It makes me wonder what the rest of Spain does.

The ants go marching

Everywhere I need to go in Spain, I walk. And walk and walk and walk. To meet people, I walk. To catch the bus, I walk. To go to the mall, I walk. To go out at night, I walk. I walk.

There are city buses, which are extremely helpful to get to school since I really don't want to walk to the university. It is possible to walk to classes, although it would take 50min or so, and that's even downhill. Going back up... well, that took over an hour. On a road where the sidewalks require you to be shoulder-to-side-mirror with the traffic. Along non-residential, busy streets most of the way. Which is why I haven't repeated that experience.

You would think then, since I do all this walking, that for sure I must be skinny as all get-out. But things even themselves out with all the food we eat for lunch and supper. So I can't complain too much either way.

I find that I tend to notice odd things while I walk. For example, ants in Spain do not lazily meander about the ground. They tend to do things en masse. Every so often I'll see a whole column of ants across a sidewalk. I don't know why they do this; it's not like the Amazon where ants surge in rank to devour everything in their path. It must be a Spanish thing; they can't stand being without a group of them together.

Another thing I noticed are all the baby carriages/strollers. Quizás I notice this because they block the sidewalk (which is usually a good 8ft wide in most of the inner city) and are so slow. But they are all brandnew and color-coded and comfy.