¡Estoy en Córdoba (finalmente)!

I'm here! Yay! I'm living with a family near the university. I have a host mom and a host dad. They have 2 adult daughters who live with their families in the apartment-like houses upstairs. They all share a patio and everyone is always coming in and out of the other houses.

Apparently, central heating & air conditioning is a new thing to either Spain or the smaller cities, like Córdoba. Because of this, houses have been built to keep things cool during the summer, which also means it's quite cool in the house during the winter. This also means that it's pretty chilly in my bedroom. I can't wait for the weather to warm up. In the meantime, we have the kitchen and family room tables! Why am I so excited about the tables? Well, there is a heater under each table, and a blanket (held in place by a piece of stone or wood that serves as the actual table surface) covering the table. So, we sit around the tables with the blankets over our laps to catch the warmth from the heaters! It's a really nice system and I especially enjoy it in the morning & on days like today when it's cold and rainy (and my socks are wet).

And, as promised, I'm going to talk about food with the host family. Breakfast is usually a little something with coffee or hot chocolate. They drink whole milk, so I usually put the Nesquick chocolate powder or instant coffee into it. Lunch and dinner vary from day to day (in terms of what is served - the hours are pretty standard), and there's usually a salad of sorts at one or both of the meals. There is always fruit in the house! We usually have an apple or orange or banana (or a combination of the three) after meals. We also always have bread! It's kind of like heaven - all I need is a bunch of cheese. Today, at lunch, we had oranges in oil (olive, I believe) with some sugar and ate it with bread (in addition to a stew like dish that I can't remember the name of -- I can't really remember any of the names of the food we eat, but it's all SO GOOD!). I think the orange dish my new favorite food. I mean, it doesn't get much better than fruit and bread (well, I could use some cheese! I LOVE CHEESE!). Well, moving on...

I've also noted a couple more cultural differences that are very interesting. It's superstition in Spain that you get sick from walking around barefoot on the cold floors. Our program director warned us of this superstition, and I thought that walking around in socks would suffice, but alas, it did not. My host mom asked if I had house shoes, but of course, I forgot my slippers at home. She quickly found a spare pair for me to borrow while I'm here.

Also, I meant to mention this before, but we went over some stereotypes that Spaniards have of various ethnic groups. I don't think anyone in the group has encountered racism here, but there are stereotypes. Apparently, all Asians are Chinos (or Chinese) and they're the people who have all of the counterfeit goods.

One more thing: THEY USE "VOSOTROS " (2nd person plural familiar) HERE! To all of the Spanish teachers that I had in high school, remember when you said, "Don't bother learning the "vosotros" because they only use that in Spain"? Well, I'm in Spain now, and I don't know it. I can recognize when people are using it, but I'm not able to conjugate verbs into the "vosotros." I think it's common in the United States for Spanish teachers to skip "vosotros" and vocabulary words that are only used in Spain, and that kind of sucks for their students that go on to study in Spain. I guess it makes more sense to focus on the stuff that all Spanish speaking people use, but it would be nice if they at least taught us "vosotros."

Well, that's all for now.