Chef Carly...or something like that!

Hola!

Keeping up on this blog is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I only have class each day until 12:25, but I somehow manage to keep busy...

Last week I stayed pretty busy. I had my first cooking class. It was so much fun! Every Tuesday night, at 18:00, we meet at the cooking school. The first week the chef gave us a tour and then we immediately began cooking. We divided into groups of 4 and were given all the ingredients for Parrillada de verduras (grilled vegetables), pollo a la naranja (chicken in orange sauce), and crema catalana (similar to creme brulee)...let me just say that it was fantastic! Each group prepared their own meal and then we got to eat it...the best part was, we didn't have to do the dishes. I can already tell that it is going to be my favorite class and I'm going to be sad when the ten sessions are over.

Thursday a group of USAC (the students in my study abroad program) students got together with our USAC leader, Luis and played soccer. There were only 4 girls, myself included, who played..the rest were boys. I haven't played soccer in years, but luckily my old defender skills came into play during the game. :D Luis, who is probably in his late 30s, was amazing! He was so much better than the rest of us playing. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to playing once a week.

On Sunday my friend from Chicago, Melissa, invited me to her host family's house to do homework and each lunch. I was amazed at the difference between her family's apartment and the apartment I'm living in...it was so much bigger! We ate a couscous dish for lunch and made plans for a trip to Valencia in March for "Las Fallas". Las Fallas is a huge festival that they have every year. Basically, it's a giant party with lots of paella (a famous Spanish dish), music, and paper mache sculptures that the people spend and entire year making...only to light them on fire during a parade on the last night. I can't wait!

So far this week has been pretty eventful. My intensive language course is definitely intense! We have our first test on Thursday, which will cover the topics that would have taken a whole semester to learn at BSU. On Monday I signed up to volunteer at an elementary school twice a week, to help teach English. I can't wait! Yesterday we went to the school and got to go into one of the classrooms. The 6 and 7 year olds were so cute! They said 'hello' and the sang "Jingle Bells" to us in English! It was so cute! I also found out that my class of Spanish dances starts next Monday. That will also be 10 sessions, I'm a little nervous but also very excited!

Last night was my second cooking class. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first....we had a different instructor and therefore he didn't do things the same. The menu last night consisted of Fideua (basically a pasta dish with all sorts of seafood), Tortilla Espanola (delicious!), and Torrijas (day old bread soaked in milk, then egg, then deep fried). This time we just split into 3 big groups and each group worked on one dish. I was in the tortilla espanola group....I successfully made it, however it wasn't nearly as delicious as my host moms.

Tortilla Espanola

Fideua

Torrijas

Basically the main ingredient for these dishes was oil. Good thing we have about a 20 minute walk to the cooking school! That is one of the many differences that I've noticed about the cooking here, the excessive use of oil! Not to mention that they don't really drain the oil off there food before they serve it either...it's a mystery to me how they all manage to stay so thin, oh wait, it's because they all smoke! So contrary to what I first thought about losing weight while I was here do to the smaller portions, I'm not about to pick up the smoking habit, so maybe I will end up gaining weight...

I'm going to be better about staying on top of my blog because when I do get around to it, I feel like I could write forever...but I need to get busy studying for my exam tomorrow!

Buenas dias! (good day)