Cultural Immersion

This week CEA has helped me to become a true Spaniard. I ate tapas, drank wine and watched futbol.

On Wednesday, we had our CEA “Tapas Experience”. Forty of us piled into cute a restaurant in the back streets of Barcelona (I wish I remembered the name, but they are supposed to e-mail us with all of the information soon). A woman who worked at the restaurant prepared a powerpoint presentation to explain each of our five tapa and wine pairings. Yes, wine…so much for the CEA “no alcohol” policy. We learned a lot about wine and why it was paired with each food. First was gazpacho, a cold tomato soup, paired with an acidic sparkling white wine. ¡Era muy delicioso! Next, we had sparkling red wine paired with mussels in a tomato onion sauce. I never knew I liked mussels until now! Third was white wine paired with a potato-cabbage sort of cake. Next was red wine (my least favorite of the 5), paired with a “spicy” pork sausage on a piece of toast. Spicy is relative term, spicy to a Spaniard is bland to an American, at least to me. The final dish was my favorite. It was a piece of cheese on a toast with quince jelly paired with a delicious and sweet dessert wine. I love the combination of sweet and salty. It was nice to be taken to a tapas place and get the right dishes. There are tapas restaurants on every corner, but we have never been sure if what we are getting is authentic and/or considered good food. This restaurant was definitely better than most I have been to.

Next up was the futbol game, so of course, we had to buy Barcelona attire before we attended! We went to Las Ramblas and found some souvenir shops where I was able to bargain a 30 euro T-shirt to 12 euros (proud Dad?). Unfortunately, I didn’t try it on and apparently in Spain, small means small. My shirt was made for a ten year old, but I put a long sleeve shirt under it and made it work, after all I got it for half price. I’m in a class called Sport and Culture of Contemporary Spain and coincidentally had the opportunity to tour the stadium on Thursday. Unfortunately, it was raining so the tour was wet and my pictures aren’t great, but it was still interesting. It was cool to see the stadium empty then return two days later with all of the fans. FC Barca (Football Club Barcelona) played Getafe, a team from Madrid. We (Barca) won 2-1. It was 2-0 most of the game, but Getafe scored on a penalty kick in the final seconds.

It was a lot of fun, but not quite what I expected. We thought CEA would have all of our tickets together, so we would all be jumping around cheering together. Well, our seats were spread throughout the nosebleed sections. My seat wasn’t even next to the girls I checked in with! Luckily, it wasn’t sold out so we found some seats together. But it was cold not being surrounded by screaming fans. At the game I enjoyed a Frankfurt…aka a huge hot dog on a baguette sort of bread. I don’t care what country you’re in, you can’t do a sporting event without a hot dog!

Tonight is back to American culture with the SuperBowl! We’re going to an Irish pub called George Payne around 11 p.m. The game won’t start until midnight here, which will make for a late night. I have a presentation tomorrow morning in my first class, I think I’ll be yawning through it. Now I’m off for a run through gorgeous Spanish streets on a beautiful 57 degree day!

¡Hasta Luego!

Besos.

p.s. there are more photos to come, I had a little camera problem at the game!