Giving Thanks Abroad

I've had a busy few weeks! I went to a quemada, which is where a group of people cut open a pumpkin, scoop out the insides, pour alcohol (basically lighter fluid) inside with some fruit and spices, then set it on fire to burn off enough alcohol that you can drink it without dying. It was very interesting to see, although I can't say I was fond of the taste of the alcohol! Too strong for me.

A few weekends ago was Spanish election day. "Súmate ao cambio"as the signs for the PP (Partido Popular, or People's Party) said in Gallego, or "join the change," was the slogan of the winning party. The PP won over the PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español or Spanish Socialist Worker's Party), whose slogan was "Pelea por lo que quieres," or "fight for what you want." The new Spanish President will be Mariano Rajoy of the PP. This is a major shift towards the conservative for Spain, whose current president (Zapatero) is a member of the PSOE. Current public opinion is that the he and the PSOE have not done a very good job handling the current economic crisis. Will a change help things? I'm uncertain, but the Spanish people seem to think it might. 

I got to teach about Thanksgiving to my students! On the blackboard there are some of the vocab words that I taught the younger kids, and you can also see a hand turkey made by the English teacher I work with. I thought he did a pretty good job for his first time!

A few days after Thanksgiving, we had a huge celebration at my piso. These are some lovely signs that my roommates made. 

I made two pies for our expat Thanksgiving, and they turned out great!

Here's our lovely turkey. Turkey isn't a very common food in Spain, so we had to make a special order for ours from a butcher a few weeks in advance (yes, you heard me right...most meat here comes from a butcher, not the grocery store!). It turned out great though thanks to one auxiliar who is a wonderful cook! I'm so glad I wasn't the one who had to deal with cooking it. It was so awesome to be able to have turkey though!

Here's my plate, overflowing with food. There were too many good things to choose just a few of them! I was so stuffed by the end of the night, but it was worth it. 

Here are about half of the people who came to our expat turkey day. We had a pretty good mix of foreigners and Americans. There were several Spaniards there and also a few Germans. I think they enjoyed trying out our American tradition. It felt good to still be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with people I like, even though I'm thousands of miles away from home. I still have plenty to give thanks for!

Spanish Kids Say the Darndest Things

Once again (as always), sorry it's been so long. Working in Spain isn't always as exciting as I would like it to be, so I don't have that much to write about! But I do get to work with hilarious children every day, and sometimes they say things that make me giggle. here are some of the gems that my students have done or said so far.

In one of my classes, I let the 12-14-year-old kids ask me questions for as long as they wanted, and lot of them were totally random things, like this:

“Have you ever been to Las Vegas?”

“Do you know anyone famous?”

“Do you like crocodiles?”

“What is your favorite animal?”

“What are the names of your family members?”

“Is it cold in Chicago?”

“Do you like Justin Bieber?”

“Do you like Slipknot?”

“What is your favorite band?”

“Do you like the Simpsons?”

Some of these questions are mundane, but I'm sorry--Slipknot. Spanish kids listen to Slipknot. So horrible and so funny.

In a class of 11-ish-year-olds, one of them was obsessed with Guns ‘n Roses and Nirvana and wouldn’t stop naming off songs that he liked, although he clearly doesn't know what any of the words mean (or at least he didn't until he put them into an online translator). So funny. I love the kids like that, who have a passion that will make them want to learn something. But it's incredibly amusing to me that this kid is 11 and likes awesome music although he doesn't know what it means. 

In the primary school, I showed a slideshow of my life in America, including my family and my house and my favorite hobbies, etc. It was really cute whenever the kids went “woooooow” every time I showed them a new slide. And it was funny that they thought all my nieces/nephews were my kids, and then when I said no, they guessed that they were my grandkids. Silly children!

In one class, I had a 10-year-old boy tell me that octopus is his favorite food. Only in Spain. (Well, no, probably not...but not in the US, that's for sure!)

The 10-year-old children knew immediately upon seeing the picture of my house that the minivan in the picture was a Chrysler, without being able to see the logo or anything. (Seriously, blew my mind. They practically don’t even have minivans here…how the heck did they know that????)

In a class of 8-9-year olds, one girl came up to me and said (in English, bonus points!) “You’re so very pretty!” How sweet, right? And another boy wanted to know if I had a boyfriend or not…inspiring crushes in 9-year-olds, my life is complete.

One day, I asked about pranks the teenagers have pulled, and some kids told me that they took all the screws out of the wheels on someone’s car, egged the school, etc. I asked whose car it was, and they said they didn’t know! And they said all this in front of the teacher! I laughed so hard. In the US, the teacher would have gotten them in trouble for saying that stuff (or at least, my teachers in high school would have I think). And they also said all the teachers in the school are witches except for the English teachers! Again, I laughed out loud. Then when we left class, I saw a kid moonwalking down the hallway because I had just taught them the words to Thriller. Clearly, I am having an awesome effect on these children.

One day when doing food vocabulary, the kids (and the teacher too) thought the idea of peanut butter and jelly was completely disgusting. Ha! I let them smell/look at my peanut butter (which I conveniently keep with me at all times) and they all wrinkled their noses. Silly, silly. They were also confused by fried rice and tacos. (Spain is really really not into ethnic food...plus the word "tacos" here means swear words!)

I taught one primary school class the song "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and I had them fill in the blanks. I was trying to get them to guess the word "hand," and one kid guessed "jamón." I laughed so hard, and I'm sure the poor thing had no idea why...but I then couldn't stop singing to myself "I Wanna Hold Your Ham" and giggling.

The primary school kids also treat me like I'm a rockstar, which is the most awesome thing in the whole world. They're so excited to just say hello to me every time they see me in the hallways! One time I was walking out of school as the buses were leaving, and a bunch of kids started pounding on the windows and waving at me. Then in town I saw another student and he screamed hello at me from across a courtyard and his mother looked at him like he was insane. It's so nice to be adored.


This past week, I taught the teenagers about Thanksgiving, and although they weren't that interested in the holiday itself, they loved my descriptions (and video) of Black Friday and the craziness (and violence) that occurs. A couple of kids decided that they want to visit the US someday, based solely on my descriptions of Black Friday! That's perhaps not the reason I'd have picked for them to want to visit my homeland, but I guess whatever works...

One last thing that I love…I find it so fun to be called “profe” and “teacher.” It makes me smile every time. Luckily they never call me anything else (besides my name of course).

So there you have it, part one of many of Spanish Kids Say the Darndest Things. Stay tuned for future hilarity.

And since I have absolutely no relevant photos, here is a beautiful sunset I saw the other day. Enjoy.

Some Good Times

Enough posts complaining about Spain. I’m trying to get over feeling depressed about my various woes and not whine any more. So now you get to hear about all the awesome things I’ve been up to.

First, some cool things I’ve done. I went to a modern art museum in Vigo, which was free and had this exhibit that was an entire floor of the building filled with balloons. And you just walked through them. It was super cool.

I went to Las Islas Cies (over a month ago now), like I said previously, which (again) is a nature preserve on some islands off the coast of Vigo. It was gorgeous. Here are some pictures!

Pristine beach

Rocks and reflections

A view from the top of the island

I went to an Oktoberfest celebration in downtown Vigo with a bunch of guys dressed in leiderhosen. That was really fun, because they were playing super random old music, like a Grease medley and Man I Feel Like a Woman and the Twist…and everyone was dancing, including all the children and old people. It was so funny, that they dance to such super old music and are so enthusiastic. I felt like I was at my high school prom or something. There was this big guy in an orange shirt who was SO into it. They were even dancing on the (fragile) tables, and there was a conga line and a hoedown. No shame in Spain, and I love it!

I also had family lunch at one of my teachers’ houses for 7 hours. It was her parents, her husband, her brother and sister and cousins (from France! so weird to hear Spanish with a French accent) and sister-in-law (from Argentina), and her son. They were all super nice and very funny to be around. They said that I spoke super good Spanish, and I more or less understood what they were all saying to each other, even though they spoke very quickly. I didn’t say a whole ton because I was feeling shy and also had a headache, but they were very funny and entertained me plenty. The father was this cute old man and was obsessed with Galicia and Gallego, and at one point after lunch came over to me and made a big show of whispering in my ear, asking me if I liked the food. So funny. They were very curious about languages and America and etc. We got into a funny discussion about whether NYC is on the ocean and why you can’t take a sailboat out into the Hudson River. We ate good food and I was really stuffed by the end. They were all so funny and so welcoming, and I felt so included and awesome the whole day. They kept me there from 1 until 8pm, just chatting and eating, and then afterwards the sister and in-law drove me back downtown and then decided that they should take me to the beach to see the sunset, so we went there. Then they took me for a coffee before dropping me back off at my apartment. What an awesome day. It was so nice to feel welcomed and like a part of something

I also went to a seafood festival in a little village with some friends. It was a beautiful day and the fresh seafood was so good! Here are some pictures:

The town where the festival was held, which was so gorgeous. Look at the color of that water!

People playing the bagpipes, which are traditional instruments in Galicia.

Some of the food we got--so delicious!

I’ve been spending lots of time with friends, doing various things, including cooking some meals together, which is really nice. It’s amazing how much you rely on your fellow expats when abroad.

Two weekends ago, a good friend of mine from college (also an auxiliar) visited from Málaga and I took her to Santiago de Compostela and Porto, Portugal. They were both really nice. In Santiago, we saw the cathedral and the pilgrims who did the Camino de Santiago, and we spent some time in the old town. We also had a delicious lunch with caldo Gallego and tarta de Santiago. Here are some pictures!

The cathedral

Our delicious soup!

The shell, a symbol of the pilgrim, and an actual pilgrim's walking stick

Us goofing around

In Porto, we spent most of our time in the old town as well, watching boats go by and looking at the bridge (designed by Gustav Eiffel). We really liked the brightly-colored buildings and the tiles on many of the walls. Plus we ran into some kind of celebration, where there were these students from the University of Porto who were dressed in suits and capes and who were shouting and had strings of pop cans around their torsos. Still don’t know exactly what that was about, but it was cool! We also had a big lunch, where I tried the Porto specialty, the Francesinha, which is a sandwich with every type of meat you could think of, drenched in gravy with melted cheese and a fried egg on top, all over French fries (so kind of like poutine plus a big meat sandwich). It was good, but slightly overwhelming. I’m pretty sure I could feel my heart saying “no more cholesterol!!” Here are some pictures of all of that.

Students with pop cans--happy or angry? Still not sure.

A heart attack sandwich, otherwise known as a Francesinha

A view from the old town

And of course there was Halloween, so I went to a party. It’s interesting how much more you value the things from your home culture when you’re away from it, although I must say that I’ve always loved Halloween because I love costumes! I dressed up as Lucille Ball, one of my favorite actresses of all time (I really do love Lucy). Unfortunately red hair is not for me! Out of vanity, I'm going to refuse to show you a picture, but it reaffirmed my desire never to dye my hair red again (okay, so I made some bad choices when I was 13...give me a break!).

I can’t believe it’s November already and that I’ve been here more than 7 weeks. So crazy. I’m starting to worry that this experience is going to fly by! I guess it’s time to start thinking about figuring out something for next year!

My advice for this time is to stay cheerful. Think about the rainbow after the torrential downpour (Did I mention we had one of those a few weeks ago? It flooded a bunch of the city and felt like a hurricane to me. Welcome to rainy Spain!). Here’s my rainbow.

Uff da, sorry about the long entry--had months worth of stuff to catch up on!

Sometimes Spain Makes Me Sad, But Then I Get Over It

Last time, you heard about my apartment searching woes, and now you’ll get to hear about why starting school made me seriously consider buying a seat on the first plane back to the USA.

I don’t mean to sound like such a whiner, really I don’t. I know that I’m incredibly lucky because I live in Europe and I have very few responsibilities and I work only 12 hours a week and I earn enough to live on (if I’m thrifty) and the teachers I work with are very nice. But living abroad isn’t always a piece of cake; I definitely learned that last time I was in Spain as well. It’s hard to hear about the things your family is up to and wish you could take part. It’s hard to miss so many conveniences that you take for granted at home (like not having to change a gas tank by hand, or having the internet, or having a car, or not having to speak a foreign language all the time). It’s hard not always understanding the culture and feeling so out-of-place.

I was homesick last time I was in Spain, but it didn’t really start until a few months had gone by and the newness had worn off. This time, my homesickness was almost immediate. I worried a lot that I had made a terrible mistake in coming, because I just wasn’t enjoying myself, and I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be at home with my parents. And then I had terrible apartment problems, and I got sick, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was my problems with getting transportation to my school.

When I visited my school right after I got here, the coordinator for my program told me that I should live in Vigo and that I would have no problems at all carpooling the 50km to work with other teachers. However, no definite plans were made and suddenly it was the night before I was supposed to start work and I had no idea how I was getting there the next day. I freaked out a little bit, I admit.

Then the next day, after I had taken the bus to school and realized that it cost 5,85 euros per trip, I was even more worried. I ended up not doing anything at all that day except getting my schedule for the secondary school (my schedule for the primary school came the next day…I work in one school one week and the other the next) and being told that I needed to find my own way to Santiago the next day for orientation because the teacher in charge lives in Ourense, about 100km from Vigo, and couldn’t drive me (like they were supposed to). I discussed carpooling with some of the teachers and felt like they weren’t going to be able to help me, for various reasons. I also got told that in the secondary school, I would be expected to run the classes completely by myself, make up lesson plans by myself and everything, and that the main teachers were going to leave the room (even though it says in our contract that they’re not allowed to do that). Then they didn’t tell me what the students were studying so I could do activities that went along with those themes (like body parts or animals or whatever it might be).

I had no idea what I was doing and was being thrown in headfirst into a very awkward and scary situation. So then I freaked out more.

As I walked the mile from school to the bus stop and then paid the 5,85 to get back to Vigo, and then walked an additional mile back to my apartment, I was thinking of how ridiculous this all seemed and got more and more angry. By the time I made it to the internet café that evening, I was really really pissed off at my school and the whole program in general for being so disorganized. I had no idea what I was supposed to be teaching when I came into school on Wednesday, and I knew that I was going to be thrown straight into teaching on my own. I called my mom and cried and said I wanted to come home, and I was completely serious about it in that moment.

It was definitely a weird feeling to be so close to giving up, something that I don’t do easily. She tried to talk me down and said that I needed to at least try it for a few days and see if I could make it work before giving up completely. I knew she was right, that I couldn’t give up without even trying, but that didn’t make the way I felt go away.

Luckily, I got a ride to school the next day and ended up spending all of my classes just introducing myself and asking the kids questions about themselves. Their level of English was surprisingly low, but I managed. And then I worked out a schedule of rides to school with some of the other teachers, so that made me feel a lot better. I still have to take the bus back a number of days and that’s definitely going to get expensive, and I still have to walk two miles (uphill both ways, no joke) to get to/from each bus station, but it’s better. And the teachers have definitely been going out of their way to try to help me, especially once I told them how much the bus costs!

So after my gigantic freak out, things ended up working out at least somewhat, as they always do. Phew. And now I don’t want to go home anymore or give up, and I’m having some fun…thank goodness! I've been giving classes now for 3 weeks, and everything has been fine. So far I've done a week in the secondary school introducing myself, a week in the primary school introducing myself, and a second week in the secondary school talking about Halloween. I taught the kids the words to Thriller! I guess I can't complain about my job too much when it involves playing pop music in class, right?

Reading over these last two posts, I realize just how verbose I am. So sorry about that! Once again, as a reward if you made it all the way through this post (or even if you just scrolled to the bottom to see how long it was), here are some pictures of my schools.

A view out over the countryside near my school--it really is a tiny village in the middle of nowhere!

The village is famous for its ham.

The teachers lounge in the primary school

A small example of the Galician language (Gallego in Spanish) written on the wall of the school. Many of the students speak Gallego, and I'm slowly learning to somewhat understand them (although they don't know it, since I'm pretending like I only speak English).

This is my approximation of North America, to help my students understand where I'm from. Pretty accurate, right? I know I'm a fantastic artist and all...hah!

The English classroom in the primary school. In the secondary school, the children don't change classrooms, the teachers do! Thus I didn't feel it was necessary to take a picture of all of their classrooms. You get the idea. 

Next time, I promise my stories will be happy ones, to counteract all these whiny posts!

Tales of an Apartment Hunt

Blogoworld, I’m sorry. I’ve been terribly negligent with you, and you’ve perhaps thought of giving up on me entirely. I’m going to try to be better, though. I still have no internet at my apartment, so posting is slightly difficult, but I’ll try to be better. When I last wrote, I said I was going to tell about all the problems I’ve had so far, so I suppose now is the time.

Before I left the US, people asked me often whether I was worried because I was moving to a completely new city in a foreign country, and I had no idea where I’d be living. But I brushed them off, saying it would be easiest to figure it out when I got here. Well, I’m here to say now that that may have been a mistake.

Apartment hunting was way harder than I thought it would be. Apparently I had slightly too many expectations, although they seemed simple enough to me. They were that I wanted to: a) live with people my own age, b) have internet at home and c) live close to the city center, and I hoped if possible that I could: d) live with Spaniards or other foreigners, e) have a nice apartment and f) get along with my roommates. The last three were not requirements, but I wanted to try for them if possible.

During my first two weeks, I scoured about 9 different apartment hunting sites (including easypiso.com, yaencontre.com, fotocasa.com, etc.) for listings that sounded interesting and sent messages to the people listing the apartments. However, I didn’t think to look at first at when the places were listed, so oftentimes I was contacting people about listings that had been online for weeks or months and had been filled long ago. Now, in my opinion these people should have taken the listings down when they were filled…but I digress. So it took me a few days to figure out that I should only contact people about listings that had been done in the last week at the most.

Once I did that, I started getting responses, and once I finally got a phone I was able to call some people back and set up some appointments. I saw a few apartments during that first week. One was a youngish Spanish couple looking to rent out their second bedroom, but they didn’t have the internet. Another was a 45-year-old (ish) woman who wanted to have me rent her bedroom and she would go sleep in her big closet. Then there was an apartment full of international students, but it was far from the city center and it didn’t have the internet. None of these satisfied my three basic requirements, so I decided to keep looking.

After I had been in a hostel for a week, though, I started getting worried about how much money it was costing me to stay there (30 euro a night), and so I got anxious about finding a place as soon as possible. Finally I saw a place that I really liked, on a recommendation from another auxiliar. It was an apartment with a German girl and a Thai girl, both Erasmus students, and it was cute and close to the city center and it had the internet. Plus I seemed to get along really well with the German girl, from what I could tell after meeting her for 10 minutes. So I told her on the spot that I wanted to come live there, and she immediately called her landlord.

…However, he told her that he had already found someone to rent the room. She was very angry that he hadn’t told her, and that he had gotten a male when they only wanted to live with females, and so she tried to convince him to let me live there instead, but it was a no go. I was extremely disappointed and felt very disheartened about the whole apartment searching process.

So I kept looking at internet listings and made some more appointments, but then I got the stomach flu and couldn’t leave my bed for 4 days. After I finally felt better, I had almost been in the city two weeks and had no apartment and hadn’t been able to go get my NIE (foreigner identification number) or get a bank account or do any of the other things that I had planned on getting done before school started.

I went to look at the apartments where I had the rest of my appointments, and they all turned out to be older ladies renting out rooms in their apartments to students. That was just not what I wanted, and I didn’t want to settle for something that I hated and then be miserable for the whole year. So I decided to keep looking, even though I was running low on money from staying in a hostel and I was getting worried that I wouldn’t find a place before school started.

Luckily, though, my fellow auxiliares D and V realized that they had an extra bedroom in their apartment and let me come look at it. It was nice, close to the city center, they were planning on getting the internet, they are around my age, and I enjoyed their company, so I took it on the spot. I really like the place, actually. It has character. It belongs to an elderly woman, so there were all sorts of glass knick-knacks all over the place, and about thirty tea sets in the tearoom, and paintings from pre-Civil War Spain on all the walls. The best part is that there is this awesome retro tv in my room (that probably doesn’t work, but it looks so sweet), and my bed is a radio (which actually does work). Yes, you heard me right…the bed is a RADIO. Coolest. Thing. Ever.

I do regret slightly not being able to live with Spaniards or other foreigners, just to be able to learn about culture and language at home and to have built in people to teach me about Vigo, but I’m not really disappointed in my living situation. Not everything is always the way you dream it will be, after all. I just have to work a little harder to make Spanish friends, that’s all. And there are certain advantages, including being able to come home and relax and speak English after a long day and having people to whine about my Spain-induced problems with. So it’s not so bad after all. I’ve been here two weeks and we haven’t had any problems yet (well, except for not knowing how to manually change a gas tank in order to get the hot water to work, and not having the internet yet), so things are pretty good.

After all that text, I will now reward you with pictures of my apartment, including the evil gas tank and my awesome radio bed. Get ready to be pretty much blown away. 

Radio. Bed. Need I say more? And check out that awesome retro tv.

The tea room. How cute!

Kitchen, obviously.

Bathroom, nothing too exciting.

Laundry room

View from the laundry room

Stupid gas tank.

Our elevator door. TARDIS blue. :)

View from our living room (which I forgot a picture of, sorry...but it has a chandelier!)

OK So Now That You Know What Spain Is, Let Me Tell You About Northern vs. Southern Spain

As promised, it is now time for another learning lesson blog--Northern vs. Southern Spain. Last time, I offended huge quantities (ha) of Americans by accusing them of not even knowing what Spain is. Now it is time to further offend and/or educate those people by telling them about the different parts of Spain. When most Americans think of Spain (assuming they know that Spain is not Mexico), they probably think of extreme heat, flamenco, tapas, sangría and bullfighting.

Actually, Spain is *gasp* not all the same! The different parts are...different! There are definitely some things that the 17 autonomous communities (shown in different colors on the map above) share. Some of the "Spain" things really are true...like the siesta. Yay! But being in the north of Spain is mostly nothing like the "typical" Spain that Americans think of. It really is like another world. 

On the map above, I have circled Galicia, the region in which I will be living when I move to Spain this time (in red, with a star by where I will be teaching), el País Vasco, the region in which I lived when I was in Spain in 2009 (in blue, with a dot by the city where I lived), and Madrid, the capital of Spain (in green). Oh, and a smiley face by France because...I love France! 

Anyway, hopefully this will help give some perspective on how far I really will be from southern Spain, where it is hot and arid and they dance the flamenco. In case it doesn't, I can tell you that Google maps tells me it is a 10.5 hour drive to Andalucía (the southernmost region of Spain) from Galicia. To give you more perspective (and to attempt to stem the questions of "won't you be so close to where you lived before?"), I feel I should also tell you that it is a 7 hour drive from Galicia to Bilbao, my old city. 

Still, I'm guessing that Bilbao and (Vigo or Ourense, wherever I end up living) will probably be similar-ish, at least in terms of climate and culture. That's because, much like the USA, Spain's culture has a huge divide between the north and the south. The north is green, hilly, coastal, temperate, and honestly the culture is completely different from that of southern Spain. I guess that's kind of hard to explain, but it has at least something to do with never having been taken over by the Arabs (or the Moors, or whatever you want to call them), with having been isolated by mountains, and with (in the case of both Galicia and el País Vasco) having a language separate from Spanish. They eat different foods, they dance different dances, and they simply behave differently. 

In el País Vasco, this goes so far that the people there (many of them, anyway) don't even consider themselves Spanish. They're Basque, and they find it offensive when people refer to them as Spanish. Now, there are a lot of other issues wrapped up in that fact, but it's something that hugely separates their culture from that of the south, where people are *extremely* proud to be Spanish. Galicians, from what I've heard, consider themselves "Spanish," at least to the point where they're not offended to be referred to as such, but it's still a completely separate culture. Actually, from what I hear, Galician culture is quite similar to that of Ireland or Scotland in some ways, because of a lot of Celtic influence there (see: they play bagpipes for fun). 

So, anyway, this post was kind of long and rambling, but hopefully it got across the point that northern Spain and southern Spain are different, and will help to dispel myths that I am going to a land of deserts and flamenco. 

What IS Spain?

I've been thinking lately about how little Americans, in general, know about Spain. Maybe I just hang around with really stupid people, but it seems like a lot of Americans make the mistake of thinking Spain is Mexico. Which...um, it isn't. 

This is Spain. It is in E-U-R-O-P-E. It borders France and Portugal. Maybe you haven't heard a lot about it in your modern European history classes, and I can tell you why: Franco. 

Now, you'll probably be asking yourself "Who's Franco?" He was a dictator. Kind of like Hitler or Stalin, except in Spain. He attempted to take over the country in the 1930s, instigating the Spanish Civil War, and eventually winning with the help of people like Hitler (and when I say people like Hitler, I mean...Hitler). After that, the country was stuck with his regime of things like censorship, imprisonment of rebels (like people who wanted to have free thinking, who supported the arts, you name it), concentration camps...for a further thirty years, until Franco died in the 1970s. Because of all of this, Spain was a pretty stagnant country for much of the 20th century. When I was there last time, you could still see remnants of Franco's regime on the country, especially because I was in the Basque Country, where Franco enforced a law that the Basques could not speak their native language (Basque, or Euskera), and had to only communicate in Spanish. 

So the point of this super-condensed history lesson is that Spain has become one of the least-well-known Western European countries. Well, it has become slightly more newsworthy in the two years since I was there last, because of the high rate of unemployment and the fact that they are dragging down the Euro (along with countries like Greece), and of course the fact that they won the World Cup last year (aupa!). Still, I feel that a small cultural lesson is needed.

Spain is not Mexico. They do not eat spicy food there, or any food that we think of as Mexican. They do eat something called a tortilla, but it looks like this:

Really, it is an omelette. And Spanish people are not brown, because there is no indigenous blood in them. They are Mediterranean-looking, dark hair and dark eyes and rather short, but white. As in Caucasian. They do speak Spanish (obviously), but it's not exactly the same as Mexican (or any Latin American country) Spanish. They do not listen to mariachi bands (well, ok, sometimes they do but it's not native to their culture), but they (well, some of them anyway) do listen to flamenco. 

I'm sure there are more things that could be said about this, but hopefully the point has been made. I know this will not prevent people from asking me how I will enjoy all the spicy food in Spain, but at least I tried. 

Up next time: OK So Now That You Know What Spain Is, Let Me Tell You About Northern vs. Southern Spain. See you then.