PAELLA! PAELLA! PAELLA!

So I arrive at 8am, exhausted. I get my room key and go to sleep until lunch at 2pm (Spaniards have a completely different eating schedule). I wake up at 2 and head down to the cafeteria for lunch. I knew I had come to the right country when I saw it. PAELLA! For those of you that don´t know about my love of paella, I have a short story from Bloomington.

I went out to eat at with a couple of my friends, Clauck and Crichy Crich (these are their nicknames). We decided to go to this Morrocan restaurant called Casablanca. The young waitress, probably around my age, comes to our table and begins to tell us the specials. When she utters the word ¨paella,¨ I gasped in excitement so loud that she stopped listing them and laughed. I then apologized for frightening her and she continued. When she came back to ask for our order and it came to me, she said ¨Let me guess, paella?¨ That´s how excited I got. I was overjoyed with the prospect of seafood, rice, and saffron. Then as I´m eating my delicious meal, my lovely friend Crich gently asks me if I realize how much my meal is going to cost. Despite mentioning that the saffron I love in the dish is more expensive than gold per pound, the price had never occured to me! $35 later I had a to-go-box full of joy, and I was ok with it. Until I left the to-go-box on the table and the waitress had to run after me. O yeah and then I tripped and spilled half the left overs on the ground. Anyway, the point of that long story is that I love PAELLA!

I am continually shocked at the quality of every meal we eat here. Dorm food doesn´t mean the same thing here as it does in the States. The greasy, sometimes cold pizza has been replaced with gazpacho, baguette, baked chicken, etc. It is delicious! In Spain they also eat on a very different schedule with breakfast around 9:30, lunch at 2, and dinner at 9:30. I really like it, but it is taking some getting used to.

Well, I´m constantly sitting in meetings, and trying to learn everything I can before my intensive class starts on Friday. And I have to get an apartment by Sept. 16 so let the adventures continue! I´ll keep you posted, but I´m here safely and pretty sure that this is the country for me solely as a result of the food!