Yesterday was my first day of school. I met with Pilár, with whom I had been in contact via email, at about 9:30 in the morning and I took my placement test. It consisted of two parts, the first was correctly identifying articles and the second was 2 paragraphs of fill in the blank with the correct past tense. HA! Like I remember the past tense, I can’t even think in the present most days. Oh well. They placed me in the ‘group’ with the other girl who is here on a Rotary Scholarship. Her name is Rebecca and she’s from Cali. I use the term ‘group’ loosely, it’s the two of us and our teacher. Cozy. Class went from 9:30 in the morning until about 2:30 in the afternoon.
After class I thought I would get a jump on things and go shopping for a SIM card. Wrong. Nothing was open so basically I wandered around aimlessly for a few hours instead of sleeping. How stupid of me. At about 6pm I went back to school to use the Internet. Rebecca was there and we decided to go for tapas before the Rotary meeting at 8:30. I went home to tell Sra. Ruiz that I wasn’t going to be home for dinner then I went to the Mirabra to meet Rebecca. Tapas are a very traditional dish in Spain, its basically finger food. A slice of bread with some meat and potato chips or maybe some bread and potato salad. In Granada, however, tapas are gratis, or FREE! You buy a drink and you get the tapas at no additional cost. I ordered ‘una copa de vino tinto’ and I got a slice of bread with a savory piece of turkey and some potato chips and olives and carrots. Rebecca got cerveza, but I was content with my red wine.
A few minutes later Pilár joined us at the bar to wait with us until 8:30 when we would meet José, one José of about 4 in the Granada Rotary Club. José showed up, had a drink and we piled into his car and headed for the meeting. We arrived in good Spanish time, that is to say a bit late due to traffic. When we got there there were about 5 men sitting around a table. José introduced us and we gave a quick schpiel about ourselves and our host club. 30 minutes into the ‘meeting’ another Rotarian arrived, and in 15 minutes another arrived, and not to be outdone a final member arrived an additional 15 minutes later. Time seems to be much more flexible here than at my lovely breakfast club where they sound the gong at 7:15 and everyone is at attention. The meeting consisted of, what seemed to be, a bit of arguing over location as well as how they were going to delegate work and which projects they wanted to pursue. Don’t quote me on it though, it was basically just a low whirr that moved at a million miles an hour.
I did meet my host Rotarian, he was tardy member #2 but was quite enthusiastic about meeting us and said that his kids couldn’t wait to meet me. Aww. So I have to set up a date to meet with him in the near future. After the meeting we all met downstairs for finger food and cerveza y vino. I think I could get used to this.
I came home about 10:45 and Sra. Ruiz had saved some dinner for me. One dish looked like a sort of potato salad, which I wasn’t crazy about, but decided to try because ‘that’s the polite thing to do’ and the second dish looked like pizza with ham and some other sort of meat. All I have to say is WHO PUTS TUNA ON A PIZZA?! SERIOUSLY!? And if that wasn’t bad enough there was also tuna in the mayonnaise-based potato, pea, onion and carrot mix that I had already helped myself to. Needless to say I persevered and managed to get most of the tuna off the pizza and just left the potato salad alone. And I KNOW we talked about this yesterday, how I don’t like fish, because the Swiss girl, Ines doesn’t like any kind of seafood either. Neither does Rebecca. So you can all leave me alone and stop picking on me because I wont eat fish!
una caña de chocolate. these are AMAZING
this is my street
All in all it was an interesting day. I need to figure out some sort of routine other wise I am going to bore myself to death. Class from 930-230 then no other obligations for the rest of the day… I cant even shop…I just have to go to sleep, wake up and pretend to be productive then eat dinner at about 9 and find something to entertain myself with in the evenings. Anyone want to come visit?
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