The Rain In Spain Leads Mainly To Throat Pain

I like to think of myself as the type of person who doesn't need medicine. I like to think that my body goes to battle against germs and bacteria without outside help. I like to let my defense systems hone their skills by giving in to the sick for a day or so, letting them figure out how this newest bio-weapon works, and kicking it's ass. 

Apparently Spain's deadly blow was too much for it to handle. After five days of being permanently attached to a tissue box, I gave in and went to the doctor. It wasn't so much that I was feeling terrible; it was that only half of my throat hurt. The left half felt like someone had sprayed fire down it before repeated forcing me to swallow a sword while the right half felt 100% totally normal, thank you very much. That ish is too weird to leave to its own devices.

So after a couple frustrating calls with my private insurance that resulted in a couple overwhelmed tears, my saint-like roommate walked me to the hospital. I gave her my insurance card, she asked what was wrong, and I went to the other room to wait. And let's be clear here: this wasn't the socialized health care waiting room of the GOP's nightmares. There were 6 people there: 1 man with a broken arm, 1 little girl missing all her teeth, and 4 with no visible maladies. I waited 45 minutes (45 minutes! I've waited longer than that for most appointments I've made with doctors) before I was called back to a room. 

This penis-shaped plant is my only complaint about the hospital

And once I got there it was on. No "the doctor will see you in a (read: 15) minute(s)." The nurse took my vital stats and asked me if I came to Spain for love or money. When she was done, the doctor walked in -- he was wearing jeans and scrub shirt -- looked at my chart, looked at my throat, and did a quick culture for strep. He left and came back five minutes later with a (typed!) prescription for antibiotics and directions. I was in and out, without an appointment and for a grand total of $0, in less than an hour. 

And then the pharmacy. The pharmacy! I handed the pharmacist my paper and he handed me my medicine. There was no waiting 20 minutes or overnight. And did I mention that I only paid 5€ for each of my two prescriptions? 

Last time I went to a doctor, I waited a week and a half for an appointment, which I then paid $35 for (twice, because I had to go back). I had the pleasure of spending another $7 for a medicine I bought at the office and $20 for a prescription I had to wait two days to get. And that's with the privilege of health insurance; I've got it pretty easy. 

I know there's plenty here that's not right. The economy is in shambles and looking at the possibility of a bailout. Unemployment in Spain is at 24% and nearly half of all young people are jobless. When you order pizza, it comes with a layer of ham underneath the cheese. But it still seems like there's something we could learn. 

Maybe it's just the high from the whole experience, but I think I feel better already.

Food, Glorious Food!

Quick. If you had to choose any one American TV show to export to the rest of the world, what would it be? Because I like to assume that the people who make their way to my blog are mostly sane (which, to be honest, isn't really a very good assumption), I'm guessing you wouldn't pick Man v. Food. And yet that's exactly what the five of us -- me, my two roommates, and their girlfriends -- spent yesterday morning watching while we ate our breakfast.

While we debated weather or not French toast and French fries are, in fact, a French export, someone pointed out how bad the Spanish are at marketing their food abroad. "Our food is so rich and varied," she said, "But when you say 'tortilla' anywhere else in the world, people only think about the Mexican version." A month or so ago, I would've disagreed. As we all know, the Spanish don't have a "rich and varied" diet so much as "1000 types of ham." But it turns out that I was wrong. Not only is ham not disgusting (we'll get to that in a minute), it's not the only thing to eat around these here parts. 

In an effort to impress my family and friends, I'm starting a catalogue of all the weirdo foods I've eaten since I got here. While I realize that not all the foods on this list are weird in most people's books, I need you to keep in mind that we're talking about me (this is my blog after all). In high school, my friend Lydia used to describe me as "the girl who only eats white food." I didn't eat chicken until I was 19. I once described eating pesto as "adventurous." So armed with that knowledge, onward ho.

Foods I've Eaten For The First Time Since September 24th

+Octopus

     previous aversion: Um, the suckers. 

     verdict: Octopods are really cool animals. I mean, the UK has named them "honorary vertebrates." That being said, they are not by any stretch of the imagination my new favorite food. Even when swimming in garlic butter, octopus still looks pretty much like octopus and feels like chewing a particularly dense balloon. 

+Ham

     previous aversion: Mostly because I delegate all animal products that aren't eggs, dairy, chicken breast, steak to the "strange and questionable meats" category. The fact that pig legs hang out with flies on the ceilings of almost every market, cafe, and bar in Spain did do much to help win me over.

     verdict: I can not tell a lie. As much as it makes me feel like a hypocrite, I have to admit that I like ham afterall. I forced myself to try it at a bar in The Middle of Nowhere, Redondela because turning down the 70-year-old barmaid's tapa seemed like bad form and kind of loved it. Instead of tasting like I expected (rotting un-kosher animal mystery innards), it was kind of just like eating salt. 

+Bacalao

     previous aversion: Seeing dozens of pounds of salted cod sit out for days at a time in a depanneur in Montreal. 

     verdict: Unlike our so-intelligent-we-might-as-well-pretend-that-they-have-a-backbone friend the octopus, cod are actual vertebrates. I was so hungry that by the time the food arrived, I didn't think to ask if the fish still had bones and took a massive bite before realizing that I was essentially eating fried bones held together by bits of fish flesh. Going to a restaurant and ordering something that takes work to eat seems counterintuitive to me, so if I get bacalao again, I'm going to get something that doesn't involve espinas. 

+Coffee

     previous aversion: The sheer terror and disgust that old men with coffee breath inspire in me. 

     verdict: I actually kind of dig it. Coffee in the U.S. comes in size big, huge and gargantuan and cost an ungodly amount of money; coffee here comes in a tiny little tea cup and costs around a dollar. My favorite cafe here gives you coffee, a croissant, and a shot of orange juice (it's like an after-coffee mint!) for 1.50€. 

+Squid

     previous aversion: Dissected these babies in 7th grade science and the hall smelled like them for a week afterward.

     verdict: Actually? Awesome. Like most food in Spain (e.g. shrimp with eyes, ham with toes, rabbits with ears), these guys showed up in full-on squid form. None of that namby-pamby fried calamari ring bullshit. My roommate showed me how to pull the cartilage out and squeeze lemon juice on it, and I was unstoppable.

+Carrot soup

     previous aversion: Unless it's a milkshake, I don't like to drink my food.

     verdict: Mehhhhh. It is, however, worth mentioning that I thought I was eating bunnies because my co-worker confused the worlds for "carrot" and "rabbit" and told me it was rabbit soup as he passed me a bowl. It wasn't until we were done eating and I asked why rabbit soup was orange that someone corrected him and I realized that it was only carrots. 

+Swordfish

     previous aversion: n/a. Never had the opportunity to try it.

     verdict: Just no. (N.B. I ate it in our school cafeteria, so I'll consider giving it another chance if someone wants to take me out on a fancy swordfish dinner date.)

+Turkey

     previous aversion: I don't know. Un-outgrown general childhood stubbornness?

     verdict: The turkey was in paella, so I just pretended like I was eating chicken and I didn't die. 

+Ham flavored potato chips

     previous aversion: Nothing about this combination sounds appetizing. 

     verdict: Again with the ham. I ate at least 1/3 of the bag; they are that good.

+A taco that was actually spicy in Spain

     previous aversion: n/a. I love hot things! The problem here is that Spain's idea of spicy is a -3 on the universal Thai/Indian restaurant scale of spiciness. 

     verdict: Yum. After being disappointed to find out that we were going to a soup restaurant for lunch, I was ecstatic to find out that they were having a special taco day on Friday. 

p.s. Foods I miss: red onions, black beans (paying 2.5€ just doesn't seem worth it), cilantro, corn (despite the fact that Galicia is like a mini-Ohio when it comes to corn farming), popcorn, peanut butter.

Three by Three by Three

+ A timeline for this summer

      1. Past: After spending nearly 5 months attempting (and, surprisingly, succeeding) to turn myself into A Person Who Studies, I finally took the LSAT last Monday. It means a lot of things but mostly it means
            a. Freedom.
            b. ...Which is only partially mitigated by the prospect of waiting three weeks to get my score.
            c. I am one step closer to not being thrown upon the sea of life like a bean in a bikini. I have a grown up lady plan.

      2. Present: Life. Like really really good things that I've been looking forward to since the day my test first started creeping closer on the calendar. Por ejemplo:
            a. Pride, my favorite holiday (after all the holidays where I get to play games and eat food with my family).
            b. Roadtrip With Molly: The Remix. In which Molly, her 90-pound yellow labrador Orion, and I pile into her car and drive to the east coast with the help of 2 tablets of Benadryl hidden in peanut butter, Justin Timberlake, and cruise control.
            c. A-Camp, which I still struggle to find words about because my feelings are a little overwhelming and I'm out of practice with writing.

OG Roadtrip

      3. Future: And then, at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future, I'm moving to glorious España. So far I know exactly three things about what in the world I'm getting myself into, but if they're any indication at all of what it's going to be like, I'll be pleased as a peach.
            a. First of all, I'll be in Vigo, Galicia and (praise be to our lord baby Jesus) from what I hear, the fisherman types up there aren't quite as into jamón as the Polacos were. Unfortunately, that probably means I'll be dodging my fair share of pulpo there, but tentacles and suction cups are nothing compared to all that pig.
            b. In other food news, Galicia is known as the birthplace of my second-favorite pocket-shaped food: empanadas. They also serve a local cheese called tetilla and I figure any place that names their cheese after breasts is a place I want to be.
            c. Contrary to popular belief, the rain in Spain does not fall mainly in the plain; it falls in Galicia. Specifically, it falls in Fornelos de Montes, a village that has averaged over 160 inches of rain each year for a while now. Incidentally, Fornelos de Montes is also the village where I'll be teaching.

Disgusting.

+ My soundtrack for the last month or so

      1. Santigold: Of all the nights I've worked late, the one night I wasn't there was the night she came in. She was apparently lovely and gave tickets to my friends (including Andrew, the DJ/Back of House Specialist who saved my life a few nights ago when he solved the mystery of the song; by playing Santigold's new album while I was doing data transfers).
            a. Fame
            b. Freak Like Me
            c. Starstruck



      2. James Vincent McMorrow: This guy's got a voice like butta and is calm and sexy like woah. Which I think can be a hard thing to do without the cheese.
            a. If I Had A Boat
            b. Down The Burning Ropes
            c. And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop



      3. Shakira: Okay, so really Shakira's been my jam for the past 10 years, but the thought of moving has got me putting her on blast every day in an attempted to reabsorb Spanish.
            a. La Tortura
            b. Pies Descalzos, Suenos Blancos
            c. Gordita



      + Honorable mentions go to Plan B (She Said), Snow Tha Product (Holy Shit), Chiddy Bang (Ray Charles), Florence and the Machine (Cosmic Love), The Weeknd (High For This), Fun (Some Nights), Robyn (Call Your Girlfriend), and Gyptian (Hold Yuh)

+ Summer reading club

      1. Science
            a. Roses are red/ violets are blue/ they both grow better/ with more CO2
            b. "More intriguing, if you turn a seedling (or a whole bunch of seedlings) upside down...the tips and roots of the plant will sense, 'Hey, I'm upside down,' and will wiggle their way to the right direction, doing a double U-turn"    
            c. "How many continents are there? Well, how many continents do you want there to be?"
      2. People
            a. "What is lost when a language goes silent?"
            b. "The images capture Hernandez in his personal transformation — as well as blurred lines between gay and Catholic cultures, lines he was not encouraged to cross as a child."
            c. "10. Talks loud and uses slang"
      3. Food
            a. Avocado pasta
            b. Vegetable Pitas with Cilantro Pesto
            c. Nutella Milkshakes

I Need You To Understand That This Is Important

I want to know the name of this song.

Two Winters

This New Year, my only real resolution is to write something everyday. So far, I'm 7 for 9 since I hadn't yet thought up my plan on the two days of the month. I make promises to myself almost weekly--some of which I stop caring about, some which I've successfully implemented into my life, and some which I still have to remind myself about every day--so the idea of doing something concrete every single day for an entire year is appealing. I don't have any real set guidelines: I might write here, I might write for autostraddle, I might write a letter, or I might just write for myself. The point is that I write something.

Today, inspired by my friend (acquaintance? what do you call someone you met one time in 3-D and got along swimmingly with?) Ashley, I created two mixes for winter: cold and warm. The extremes that winter brings come in the differences between indoors and outside, light(s) and darkness, being alone and together. I've never been good at choosing favorites which makes winter the perfect season* for me.

*Along with spring, summer, and fall.

Spoons and Soundwaves

Most days, I'm so at home in this apartment that it's hard to believe I've only been here for a few weeks. Outside the house has its ups and downs, but those are stories for next time.

The family I'm living with is helpful and great at cooking. Their house is like one of those tiny "this is our home" apartments that IKEA has set up in their stores, but the 5 of us never seem to be stepping on each other's toes. While other students in my program are trying to figure out how to stay out of the way when their host mom and dad fight or how to deal with families who roll their eyes at their attempts at Spanish, I somehow ended up in a house where the only thing I hear more than "No pasa nada" are the church bells next door that ring every 15 minutes.

You know how you can learn more about a person by exploring their home than by spending that time talking with them in another setting? Language barrier firmly intact (although I'm working on it), I'm relying on their house to tell me about my host family. The little bit of clutter is cozy and makes think that Malene, my host mom, means it when she laughs at the stories I tell her about mistakes I made speaking to a sales clerk or accidentally closing the door on a neighbor. Every room in the house is filled with snapshots, professional portraits, and polaroids of the family tucked into mirrors and light switches. One wall has been taken over by a growth chart for Noa. The marks lower on the wall are carefully written in pencil, but the more recent ones were written in blue or purple marker in Noa's own nascent handwriting. And why should everything be perfect?

Homes here seem to be a place for living, not entertaining or improving or investing in. We're all so on top of each other that it would be insane to imagine anyone trying to make their house an entirely private space. Our windows are always open and drying laundry hangs off our balconies letting our neighbor's lives drift in and out during the day. Someone near us is always watching Bollywood movies, the dad across the hall sings to his baby in the morning when he starts crying, and someone cooks dinners that smell good enough to make me want to knock on their door and ask for a bite.

In the morning, I eat breakfast in the corner and make notes to myself to get an electric kettle for my apartment, stop eating so much nutella, and remember my dictionary for class. Our kitchen is smaller than a closet, but is packed to the top with everything we need. The differences aren't that big, but the parts that are strange mean more about culture than cabinets which, by the way, we don't have. There are 4 bins that are color-coded for the Spanish recycling system: blue for paper, green for glass, yellow for plastic, and grey for trash. The washing machine and oven under the counter are both missing their mates; dryers don't seem to exist anywhere in Spain and the stove has been replaced with a hot plate. My favorite part of the kitchen is the radio with a spoon for an antenna, a trick Malene learned from her Dutch grandmother. She has it on all the time and I've kept it on this weekend to take up space in the empty house while she, Jorge, and Noa are gone visiting her family up the coast.

A playlist of familiar and new songs from the kitchen radio, tuned to station 93.9:

+The Kooks: "Naive"
+A country song in Spanish
+Ziggy Marley: "Falling in Love"
+Shakira: "Waka Waka"
+Chubby Checker: "Limbo Rock"
+Counting Crows: "Accidentally in Love"
+Coldplay: "Life in Technicolor II"
+Death Cab for Cutie: "What Sarah Said"
+Steel Pulse: "Roller Skates"
+Spoon: "Got Yr. Cherry Bomb"
+Duffy: "Mercy"
+Something by Beirut
+The Zombies: "Time of the Season"