Eating on an Auxiliar de Conversa's budget

Hey y'all.  As many of mine friends know, I LOVE to cook.  I love to mix things together and see what result I can get.  So, this blog post is going to be mainly about what I have been eating in Spain on my lovely Auxiliar's budget.  I am living in Galicia which is the northwestern part of Spain that juts out right above Portugal.  Galician cuisine for the most part seems to consists of Galician stews (el caldo gallego), lots of pork, and lots of seafood.  I live in the costal region and a lot of the cuisine here is based off of what one can find in the local fish markets.  Galicians really appreciate the natural flavor of their food and do not tend to add many seasonings.  The most a Galician may add to a dish is salt, pepper, and on occasion bay leaf from my experiences. But when it comes to shellfish, they just boil and salt the water and savor the natural flavor of the shellfish. I do think the dishes are delicious but I am accustomed to adding in more spices to give my food more of a kick.  Galicians also eat a lot of octopus, which is amazing.  I have started learning that there are correct and incorrect ways to cook octopus and I've learned some techniques for perfecting your octopus-cooking methods. Personally I like my octopus boiled, then sautéed with red peppers, green peppers, and a bit of onion.  

This is my octopus sandwich I ate as leftovers last night. If you look closely , you can see the suction cups. 

 

The first thing I learned about Galicia is that Galicians eat turnip greens. I was so excited when I found this out because turnip greens are a staple of the North Carolinian diet in the United States.  In Galicia, they call them "grelos".  They are fantastic.  These are a little less than 2.50 euros for a bunch of them.  I normally buy two bunches at the market here.  Then I cook them with a ham hock or a pork loin until they have reduced in size. A ham hock is "codillo" in Spanish and is roughly 2.30euros/ kg if you purchase a small one, it'll run you about 5 euros.   Sometimes I mix in a little vinegar or Tabasco sauce to give it a little kick.  I love making a dish like this because with 2 bunches of grelos, you can eat it for leftovers for roughly four days. 

A bowl of "grelos" with codillo (ham hock).  

Cooking the langostinos/gambas. 

These  are a bunch of jumbo sized shrimp called gambas or langostinos.  They are delicious.  Like I said earlier, you just boil them in a bit of salt water, drain, and start peeling their shells.  These langostinos/gambas are fantastic and are about 4.50 euros/kg.  The only problem with langostinos/gambas is that if you don't combine them with another dish, they won't really be economical because you end up eating them all in one sitting. 

Getting ready to shell the langostinos/gambas.

Draining the langostinos/gambas

A rice dish with langostinos and gambas that I
bought from the local grocery store. 

However if you are a person that does not want to touch raw shellfish, then you can just go and buy a pack of pre-made rice already mixed with shellfish and heat it up in a skillet. It's really good and cheaper, roughly about 2 euros for a bag of it and it has about 3 or 4 servings. 

Another thing I have come to love is preparing bocadillos.  A bocadillo is a Spanish "sandwich" that is shaped kind of like a sub.  Bocadillos are an economical lifesaver.  A large loaf of bread for the bocadillo is roughly 1 euro and you can buy slices of the meat to fill it for less than 2 euros and a tomato for a few cents. The way I like to prepare my bocadillos is I prefer to toast my bread with a bit of olive oil, then rub a tomato on it, and add my slices of meat.  The sandwich is fantastic, quick, and cheap.  You can even rub a clove of garlic on your bread if you want a bit of spicy kick. I normally buy slices of the cured meat from the local grocery store. 

A hush puppy that I made with a private student. 

Every once in a while I feel homesick and start craving a dish from the United States.  Since being in Spain, I have managed to make cinnamon rolls, hush puppies, and biscuits.  These dishes tend to not be as expensive as you'd imagine because a lot of the ingredients are just your normal baking materials.  Hush puppies were a bit difficult because I needed to buy cornmeal but a local bakery sold it for around 2 euros/kg.  

A pan of cinnamon rolls after a friend and I got at them. 

These are biscuits that a friend and I made one Sunday.  They were fantastic and we ate them like Southerners, with butter and jelly. 

But with all this food, you're gonna wanna wash it down with a swallow of something.  Luckily, Spain is a wine country and the Spanish are a wine-loving people.  In the United States, I was never a big fan of wine, but since coming to Spain, I'm slowly developing a love for red wine.  

This multi-tentacled animal is also a wine lover.
Oddly, it has 9 tentacles. When drunk in Galicia, you can say "Estoy como un pulpo" (I am like an octopus). 

A meal in Galicia is not complete unless it is served to you with wine and perhaps a bit of gaseous water.  This includes your meals at home.  Since being here, I have slowly began stocking my pantry with wine. I've learned how to open a wine bottle and how to begin cooking with wine.  People will even gift you bottles of wine sometimes, or a bottle of champagne. 

My wine and potato pantry. 

"A Lenda Galega" is a cheap wine you can buy here for less than one euro.  It  is pretty much the "Aristocrat" version of wine in Galicia.  However it tastes much better than any of the Aristocrat versions of liquor. If you mix it with gaseous water, it creates a refreshing taste to go with any meal. 

However if you are more a cider person, there are a few brands of cider here.  Spanish cider has to be poured in a certain fashion and drunk in quick gulps.  I did not know this the first few times I drank cider here, and I thought the cider tasted like musty armpit.  After following some recommendations on how one should drink the cider, the flavor got a lot better and it is great.  A bottle of "El Gaitero" cider is about right under 2 euros a bottle.  

Enjoying a bottle of champagne on the beach. 

These are just a few of the things I have been drinking or eating on my budget here in Spain.  If you adjust your diet to more of a Galician one, then you'll have no problem getting by here in Galicia.  Or you can always make a few Galician friends who will cook different things for you or invite you to their homes for meals.  Until later, "bon proveito" foodies! 

Farewell my langoustine friend! 

Going to the Doctor

Hey folks, this post comes from a truly real spot.  The fact that we take it for granted so many times whenever we visit a doctor in our own country.  

Last year I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) at a community college in the town where I was living.  On the first day of every English class I would ask my students why did they want to learn English.  I did this with the goal with trying to tailor the courses to their needs.  One of the common reasons I always heard was going to the doctor.  I showed sympathy because I thought I understood what it would be like to see a doctor who does not speak your maternal tongue.  With this need in mind, I would have the students do role-play with me being the pretend-doctor. But it wasn’t until recently that I was truly able to empathize with these students.

About two weeks ago, I had my first experience going to a doctor in Spain.  This doctor did not speak English and my visit was completely in Spanish.  It was truly one of the first times I felt like I stood out as a foreigner.  I walked into the clinic and spoke to the woman at the check-in desk.  When I walked in the woman said something to me that I did not understand.  I asked her to kindly repeat a few times and afterward I handed her my cards so that she could write down my pertinent details.   She walked me down the hall to a waiting area, where I started to begin contemplating my verbal tenses in my head.  “Me duele la garganta desde ….” (My throat has been hurting since….) I felt nervous and anxious at the same time because I had no idea how the next part of the visit was going to go. 

The doctor calls me into his examination room which is the same room as his office.  Then he begins to ask me questions about what is hurting.  I try to explain several things, but then I became frustrated because I realize I don’t have the vocabulary to tell him everything I want.  He then starts saying several things to me and I only understand a few of the commands.  In my mind, I think  “This must be what my English students meant when they wanted to talk about ‘going to the doctor’”.   We leave the room to do an X-ray and afterward the doctor tells me to do something several times before I finally understand him.   Once I understand I go back and wait in his office for a few minutes, pondering whether or not I followed his commands correctly or if he wanted me to go somewhere else before returning to his examination room.  After a few more minutes the doctor returns and writes my prescription and I am on my way out the door.

This experience though has opened my eyes to a series of the feelings that non-native English speakers must feel in the US.  As a teacher I was trying to prepare them for the vocabulary they would need to have a basic visit.  But as a person, trying to help them break into my culture, I failed.  I overlooked this cultural point because I did not understand its value.   I did not think about the importance of teaching students what to expect when they go into a doctor’s office, the set-up of most doctor offices, or how doctors in the US may be culturally different than the doctors in their home countries. Now I understand the frustrations, the nervousness, the fear, of visiting a doctor who does not speak your native tongue.  The one language in which you can best express yourselves when you are at your weakest moments.  The one language you cling to when you feel most vulnerable.   It is truly one of the most infuriating things.  It feels as if someone has shot your legs from underneath you.   Or as if someone has cut your tongue out of your mouth and asks you to speak.  

  However in my case, I have health insurance, I have been speaking Spanish for 7 years, and I have a college degree in the language. I imagine in the case of a person who does not have health insurance, hasn’t been speaking English for 7 years, and does not have a college degree in the language that their experience would be much worse.  Because of this experience, I believe I can empathize much better with my past students.  I have used this experience to help me modify my teaching and slowly start incorporating more culture into my classes to help prepare my students for their future “doctor’s visit”.  

First month in Spain

After one month and 13 days in Spain, I can say with certainty that coming to Spain is one of the best decisions I have made in my life.  It has been quite an experience and the people here have welcomed me with open arms.  My days consist of being a language assistant at my school throughout the morning and in the afternoon I have my private classes.  Actually let me rephrase that, my days consist of being a language assistant in the morning, visiting a teashop and gorging myself on lovely Moroccan food, taking a siesta, and then having my private classes in the afternoon/evening. 

 

My school is wonderful.  I have been there for a month and the folks there are fantastic and courteous.   I help with the art lessons and on occasion with the English lessons.   Every morning I check in with the principal and then become a linguistic English sounding board in the classroom.  The way it works at my school is that the kids learn English grammar and theory in one class, and then they have to use this theory and grammar in their art class.  In my opinion, this is genius.   The kids, unbeknownst to them, are learning English grammar and are then required to apply it in a real-world situation.  The result is that the kids end up building up vocabulary in art that is only accessible to them in English and not in Spanish or Galician.  For the month of October, my students spent the month constructing monsters from recycling material and the end results are amazing.  To help inspire them, I read them a story called Under the Bed and showed them the opening song from The Nightmare Before Christmas.   The younger kids colored monsters, which were just as great; they got very creative with the colors and then decorated their monsters with all kinds of stickers.   For the month of November, I’m going to attempt to have my older kids make dream-catchers and my younger kids make Native American shields. 

After leaving school, I stroll on over to the Moroccan teashop and buy some delicious bocadillos and cookies.  It has become a regular thing where the shop-owner looks for me around the same time every day. This place has the most delicious cookies I have tasted thus far in Spain.   Some days I buy bocadillos, the name for Spanish subs, or other days I will buy empanadas or pizzas. The Moroccan tea there is fantastic as well. After enjoying some delicious food, I go home for my midday siesta.

My private classes are another favorite part of my day.  All the private students I have are fantastic.  They are witty and they force me to think about things that I may not have ever thought about in English before.  For example, why do we say “shower as /shau-wuhr/ and not as /sho-wuhr/ because it looks like shower would come from the word “show”.   I enjoy my private students because I can teach them standard English and some slang English and the environment is a bit more relaxed than a formal classroom. 

All in all, I am happy that I am in Spain.  I’ve gone traveling to other sites within Galicia but that’ll be another blogpost.  I have also realized that there are specific phonemes that one needs to be wary of when teaching English to Spaniards that doesn’t appear when teaching English to Hispanics but that’ll have to be a separate post.

Beginnings in Ribeira

Last week my friend Jesus met me in Santiago de Compostela to help me go apartment hunting in Ribeira. Now a little bit about my friend, he’s Valencian, an excellent companion on trips, honest,a bit maleducado some times, and does not speak a lick of English.  Truth be told, he makes any trip interesting.

La rata voladora según Jesus 

Jesus met me at the bus station in Santiago and we got ready to go and explore the town I’d be at for the next two years.  The  bus ride was a lot longer than it should have been.  It was supposed to be two hours but it seemed that we bumped into every bit of traffic that we could possibly encounter.  The trip ended up taking about three hours.   As we passed each town we kept  remarking at all their beauty until we got to one town and we both said “Uff que feo” without realizing that it was Ribeira.   Ribeira is a town of about 14,000 people sitting right on the river bank.  It’s the main fishing port of Galicia and I believe it is the most important port that Galicia has. After remarking about how hideous Ribeira was, we hopped on the bus and embarked on finding the hostel.  Jesus and I lugged my luggage up a hill which seemed to be the longest walk in my life (it’s amazing how adding 60lbs to any trek makes it take forever).  When my friend and I checked in, the woman asked us if we wanted the married couple’s room.  I am not sure what gave this lady the impression that my friend and I were married, but neither of us were wearing a ring.  We quickly declined and asked for a room with two beds.  We arrived in the room and relaxed for a bit before heading out to get lunch.

This church was our main reference point for traveling around the town. 

For lunch we went to a place and ordered the Menú del dia.  I had no idea, but the norm in Spain is to order a 3-course meal with lunch and dinner.   These 3-course meals normally include free wine and tonic water with bread.  And the best part, it’s dirt cheap.  For the first course I had potaje, which was awesome.  Potaje is essentially a chickpea soup with different types of meat and fatback in it.  Later on I found out that there are multiple types of potaje, and I cannot wait to try them all.  The serving was rather generous and  it was unbelievably delicious.  For the second course I had paella de marisco.  This is essentially seafood rice dish that is very rich and was loaded with saffron.   After eating both these dishes with a bit of bread and wine, I could not manage any desserts for the third course.  The Menú del dia was dirt cheap too.  It was 10 euros a person but the owner knocked it down to 9 per person because we didn’t eat dessert. The owner of the restaurant was a friendly man, he started telling jokes with us and goofing off.

Look at how gorgeous this landscape is. It's stunning. 

This is a view from the shore

After eating this large amount of food, my friend and I went wandering around the city to start looking for apartments.   Which was its own adventure in its own right. We soon discovered that although Ribeira is not the prettiest city with the most stuff to do, it is full of pleasant people with the most beautiful landscape.  Everyone from the hostel clerks to random people on the street were very pleasant to us and helped us navigate the town.   

This is another view looking back on the town from another part of the coast. 

My next post will be about my interesting experience with trying to find a place to live.

Traveling to Spain!

I arrived in Spain last Tuesday in the morning and I must say, passing through their border was fantastic! The woman just looked at my passport and stamped it and she did not ask any questions.  Last year when I lived in Scotland for 2 months I had to pass through the border at Heathrow and the man there played 20 questions with me before allowing me to pass.   Spain has it set up a bit weird, apparently you pass through the border once you enter Spain but you don’t go through customs until you get to your final destination.  Which would’ve been perfect for me, but like a klutz I checked in one of my carry-on bags right before the flight from JFK to Madrid with its end destination being Madrid. As soon as I passed the border in Madrid, I realized this little mistake and hauled arse to get to the belt to quickly grab my backpack before I lost it forever in Madrid.

With backpack finally in hand, I had unknowingly past the point of no return in the airport meaning that I had to go back through security again with my carry-on luggage. I was an unhappy camper, but I just bit my tongue and quickly went through security again.  I realized afterward that Spain is the only country I have been in where they do no tell you the actual location of your terminal until like 1 hour ahead of time.  This would be perfectly okay if the airport in Madrid wasn’t so large.  My lay over was only 3 hours but I spent an hour and a half of it being lost and figuring out how to re-enter the airport.  Then finally I realized I had no idea where I was going, and apparently that was okay because Spain had no idea where my plane was going to land either.  Once I found out the gate number I hauled arse again and the walk still took like 20 minutes to get to that side of that airport. 

Once on the side of the airport I quickly boarded for my third and final flight from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela. The flight was only 50 minutes long which was wonderful.  Well it was wonderful until the lovely lady in front of me decided to recline her seat all the way back and was practically resting her head on my knees.  The chair was crushing my kneecaps at first but I managed to cross my legs to avoid the pain.  It helped at first but after 20 minutes like that, I tried to get the woman’s attention to tell her that she was hurting me, but then the intercom goes off saying we’d be landing shortly and to return chairs to normal position.  I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.  The man beside me was watching the entire situation and kept asking if I was alright and I just kept saying “No se preocupe, sobreviviré.”

Once landing in Santiago I went through customs with my luggage.  This was fantastic again, the man only asked if I had anything to claim and I graciously said “No!” and he allowed me to pass without filling out any paperwork. I was so excited to finally be leaving.  I quickly grabbed a taxi and went to my hotel to rest for a few hours. 

I stayed at San Lazaro Hotel and it was delightful.  The lady at the front desk was unbelievably helpful and answered all my questions and recommended some places on a map.  My room was beautiful and my bathroom was fantastic.  After a few hours I got up and scoured the streets looking for a bite to eat.  This was the first time culture shock hit me, I forgot that Spaniards don’t actually eat dinner until like 9pm or so. I was looking for a place to eat around roughly 7pm. Every place I walked by seemed to be closed except for the restaurant attached to my hotel.  I walked in and ordered chicken and rice and it was amazing. It was one of the best chicken and rice dishes I have ever had in a long time.   I then left the restaurant and walked around a bit more to try to discover the town a bit.  After that brief walk, I returned to the hotel and went to sleep because the following day I was going to meet my friend Jesus and go on a whirlwind of adventures with him.