Well here I am sitting in my room on yet another misty rainy foggy miserable and gray Friday with nothing to do but wake up from a nap and blog about everyday life in Bilbao because I am too poor to travel anymore. Last night there was (apparently) a really important soccer game here against Portugal and when Bilbao won I could hear the sounds from the stadium all the way from my house! Mind you I live a good two miles away from the San Mames stadium. People here take soccer, or futbol as they say in español, so seriously. Everyone has Athletic (Bilbao's team) flags hanging in the balconies of their appartments and on a game day everyone, even the babies, have on an Athletic jersey. All of the kids here kick around soccer balls after school certain that they will become the next player on the team. One day I was walking in the city and saw a bridal shop and the featured wedding dress in the window had the trademark red and white Athletic stripes in honor of the team. That's just a bit too far.
As I was listening to last night's game on the radio with my host mom I was reading a magazine and was looking at a few recipes. I asked her what a word meant and the word was tripe which is like the stomach of a cow or sheep. She started going on telling me about all the weird food she likes such as tripe, feet, liver, and tongue. I told her I had never tried any of those before and she tells me oh yes you have. What? Oh yeah you've had tongue before, I've made it a few times but didn't tell you. When? What dish? She makes this dish, tongue apparently, with red peppers on top and it is DELICIOUS. Probably one of my favorite things that she makes. If she told me it was tongue before I ate it though I probably wouldn't have...
I've been reading a lot here but it has all be in English aside from books for class so I decided to buy a book in Spanish. I didn't want to read anymore classic Spanish literature about the Civil War so I bought Eat Pray Love...but in Spanish! Come Reza Ama. It takes a lot longer to read in Spanish but its definitely good pratice and I only need to look up a few words on each page.
My friend's host mom's daughter just had a baby and in celebration she (the host mom) made a ton of food and brought it to the ISA office for all of us to have a picnic! Turns out it was more of a feast than a picnic but everything was soo good. She made three different types of tortilla española, three different cakes one that was like a banana bread without the banana but made with strawberry yogurt which I really want to learn how to make, a cheese cake, sandwiches, and a ton of ham and cheese and bread for us to snack on. Yum! I am indeed going to miss the food here when I go home. Sure it'll be great to eat normal portions again and eat when I want to but the food is delicious and that is why I have been learning how to cook things with my host mom the past few weekends so I can make Spanish food for my family! Last week we made ham croquetas which are like little fritters, think of a mozarella stick, filled with ham and cheese. Next I told her I want to learn how to make these seafood stuffed red peppers so hopefully that's on the agenda for tomorrow! ...So these are the everyday things in Bilbao that have been too boring to write about compared with my travels. Twenty days till I'm America bound!
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