Living La Vida Loca

Well, not really.

My computer says it's 99 degrees outside. I believe it.

From what I can tell, Sevilla has a sort of desert climate. It gets super hot during the day and cools down considerably at night. There is probably a 30 degree range between high and low temperatures. Well, I like to sleep at night, which is unfortunate, because it seems like it would be the best time to be out. During the day is way too hot to do much. So what to do?

Today I tried to get up early. I'm still getting used to my bed and the noises of the neighborhood and probably didn't get the best night's sleep, but I did sleep pretty well and woke up several times early, thinking I should get up. I should have. Finally I got up at 8:00 a.m.

The construction noise had not started yet and the morning was cool. I had breakfast and fooled around on the computer for a while until I finally forced myself to get out and run some errands.

Feria Street is about two blocks away. It is the reason why I chose this apartment. When I was looking for apartments, they had pictures of Feria Street on the website. I liked it because there is a market and also there was a shop that sold home cooked food to go. I could not find the home cooked food, but did find the market and also a shop called Doña Aceituna (Mrs. Olive). I walked by it the first day I was here and when I went back after the siesta it was closed, so I figure they are only open until 2 and that's it. I wanted to go back and get some olives.

I was a little nervous as I usually am the first time I go somewhere. The young woman who helped me was a little brusque at first. I think she might have been wondering why I was so strange. I was actually really confused because I had no idea how to order things. My nervousness just made me even more confused.

Eventually, after she offered me many options (try some, mix them) and made a recommendation on the olives she liked, I asked for a half kilo of her recommendation which looked like a nice mix of olives. They had so many kinds of olives it was really hard to choose. I probably should have tried some. At the last minute I also asked for a half kilo of another mix that had olives, mini corn, little cucumbers and some other stuff.

Then I saw lupinis. Lupinis are these little beans that my family goes nuts over at Christmas. My mom buys them dried and has to soak them in the basement in salt water for 10-15 days. She has to change the water several times. There are some years when they can't find them and all of the relatives go on a lupini hunt. Sometimes my Uncle Ray and Aunt Jo find them and get some for my mom and dad - one year my cousin Kevin who lives in Chicago sent them to NJ. They are one of the things that define the Christmas season for the Kappras. To be honest, I was never a HUGE fan, but there is something more sentimental about them than anything.

When I went to Dia (the supermarket) I saw that they had lupinis in the produce section - already cured in a package with salt water. I saw them in the market too. And Doña Aceituna had them. I said something like - "Do they eat these a lot in Spain?" and she said, "Yes, they are very good - we eat them with beer". I told her that in my family we eat them - I am Italian. Now I realize I may have given her the wrong impression. But it seemed to break the ice a little. She said my Spanish was good (even for an Italian?) - I kind of brushed it off because there are times when I feel like my Spanish is totally non-functional, but she said, "yes, really". Nice. My first compliment.

Actually, yesterday when I was getting my bike I had several questions and felt pretty confident and fluent and was waiting for the guy renting me the bike who knew I was American to say something about my Spanish. He didn't. It's not like I am fishing for compliments or anything, but it is nice to hear from time to time that people think my Spanish is good. But really, is it? I complimented a taxi driver in Korea on his English because he could say a few words (and compared to most of the people we interacted with, that was a lot!)

Well, anyway, after that I felt brave enough to try another store. I had passed a bakery as I walked up Calle Feria one more time looking for the place that had home cooked food to go and noticed that there was a sign outside the bakery saying something about different dishes they had to go. They had more than bread.

I was nervous going in because it was crowded and there was one guy behind the counter. It would mean I'd have to speak Spanish not only to him, but also to everyone else in the bakery who was behind me. Yikes, a little Spanish performance.

First I asked him if they had gazpacho, because it was on the menu. They did. I got one gazpacho. I could see the case with the gazpacho was pretty empty otherwise, so I am guessing that all of the other stuff on the chalkboard menu comes out later (I will have to go back later and see).

Then I asked him for an artesan bread. I don't know exactly how to translate artesan. Well, maybe it doesn't need a translation because now that I write it, it seems to make sense in English. It had a kind of rustic look. What I didn't know was that you don't say "a bread".

After all of these years of teaching beginning ESL and teaching my students about count and non count and teaching them "loaf" for bread, not once have any of my Spanish-speaking students ever mentioned the counter for bread "barra". Maybe it's just a Spanish (as in Spain) thing. But the guy behind the counter repeated my request correctly (una barra de artesana) - nice! I learned a new word.

I came home and unloaded my olives and bread and then went to Dia to get some water. Because it is so hot, I am going through a lot of water. I'm not sure about the tap water here - it's probably fine, but it has a very distinct chemical smell, so I prefer bottled water (even if it's maybe the same thing). I bought a six pack of big bottles of water and some more sheep's milk cheese (I got some the other day and it's very good), more beets (also good), some roasted red peppers and some jam for the bread.

I came back and had a little snack of the bread, that was still warm, with raspberry jam.

Now what?

I washed my dishes, watched a little Real World and eventually had lunch. I had some of the sheep's milk cheese, bread, beet salad, olives and gazpacho and a glass of wine. It was a very nice lunch. Then I watched a little more Real World, read my guide book and eventually decided to mop the floor.

It's now 6:40 p.m. and I've been in the whole day. I'm going to have dinner and then go out for a bike ride and maybe explore the old center part of town a little bit more on my bike.

So, I am here for a month and half and it looks like at least this month it is going to be hot. What I realized today was that I am NOT on vacation. I am "living" here. That means I don't have to do everything in a few days or a week. I have a month and a half here in Sevilla. A lot of that time will be doing the things I do at home - watching TV, reading, and wasting time on my computer (reading e-mail, reading news, watching Bill Moyers, etc). The one big difference is that I am in Sevilla. When I go out I will be speaking Spanish and getting olives and freshly baked bread. Eventually my experiences will accumulate into something memorable, but there is no rush to try to do everything now. Seriously, when I went out earlier, I felt like I was going to pass out from the heat (it seems like the Spaniards are unaffected by it). I will be taking it slow.

It also seems like I have to build up some callouses on my butt or something because when I rode my bike last night my ass was so sore I could hardly continue. I kept telling myself, "it's uncomfortable, it's not painful" but seriously, it hurt, and not in a good way. I think the seat is too hard, or my ass is not hard enough, but it is going to present problems for me if I go on long bike rides.

I have lots of plans for things I will be doing in the next month and a half and I'm excited about all of them, but in keeping with the slowness of southern Spanish culture, I will be taking it slow.

I'll be living whatever the opposite of the vida loca is.