La comida

Schedules are very different here compared to Canada. Here are a few details about mealtimes and food stories to share. :)

8am-10am: Breakfast (el desayuno)
Most likely toast, jam, and coffee. We have trouble breaking the oatmeal and tea habit though... so while we indulge in a toast and coffee breakfast occasionally, oatmeal is the norm in our apartment. After all, toast doesn't get you very far up a mountain.

2pm-5pm: La Comida
This can't be translated to lunch, as it is not the same. It is much more like supper for us Canadians, because it is the main meal of the day, usually with meat, grains/starches, vegetables, and wine/cerveza followed by coffee and fruit for dessert. Most jobs and shops take their siesta starting at 2pm, so 2-5pm or even 6pm is generally for preparing food, eating it, and taking a short nap afterwards. It is fairly taboo to call anyone during these hours as everyone is expected to be at home with their families. Around 6 or 7pm shops re-open and people go back to work for a few more hours.

9pm-12am: Supper (la cena)
It is totally normal to start making supper at 10 or 11pm. This is usually a rich but small meal (meat, cheese, olives, tomatoes and wine, for example).

Now this is obviously a different schedule than what we keep in Canada. But switching to having "La Comida" in the middle of the day makes sense here since everything shuts down at that time. Although if we're honest, we still have a noon time snack and possibly a 7pm snack as well... I honestly don't know how the Spanish routine happens without snacks, but maybe that's just me...

Tortillas
The Spanish tortilla is very different from the Mexican tortilla. Instead of a soft flatbread, a Spanish tortilla is actually a thick omelette made mostly of potatoes, onions and egg. Everyone is very proud here of their "proper" tortilla. Apparently a regular omelette (of just eggs, cheese and veggies) is called a French tortilla, and Spaniards consider it to be inferior to their own version. Fascinating, eh?

Here is a photo of one of our attempts of a Spanish tortilla por la comida:

Other funny food/language moments:
Did you know baking soda comes in various forms? I have never purchased or known you could purchase baking soda in a more granular style. We accidentally bought this version, and tried using it to make a cake. The result: a really strange cake that did not rise and felt weirdly fizzy in your mouth. Unfortunately we had to give that cake up and count it as a point lost to the language/culture learning curve. Upon returning to the supermercado we saw that there were actually TWO kinds of baking soda: a more coarse style that is best for cleaning (a.k.a. what I put into our cake), and an extremely fine style that can be used in baking (which we recently successfully used in some chickpea chocolate chip cookies).

Another day at the store we were buying honey (miel) and saw a jar of "miel de caña" on the same shelf. -Interesting! - we thought. - What kind of unusual new food is this? - As it was not expensive and claimed you could put it on toast, cheese, in coffee, etc, we decided to try it. Upon arriving home and sampling it we laughed the moment we tasted it. Miel de caña is molasses. Not actually a new and unusual flavor. But now perhaps we can make gingersnaps. :)

And my final anecdote for you today: some foods come in unusual and strange quantities here. Yogurt, for instance, is apparently only consumed in tiny amounts. Or at least you can only buy it in tiny tiny individual-size containers. We have only found one store so far that had the very large size of a whole 500 grams, but you had to pay about 5 times the price to ditch the little containers. This does not make sense to me.

On the other hand, if you would like a large jar of Saccharine or Aspertame to use in whatever quantities you want to, this is available. ¿?

Wishing you good food and good company wherever you are!

Hasta pronto,
Candyce

Las excursiones

We have officially been in España for 3 weeks now :)

We have discovered one of the advantages of living in Realejo (our neighborhood in Granada) is that it is very easy to cycle out towards the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It is quite an epic bike ride to cycle all the way to the summit (we have not done so as of yet) as it is almost 40km of mostly going up. We did go to the summit with my friend and his family by car, which is where we took this photo:

Had someone told either of us in highschool that one day we would WANT to cycle to this summit, neither of us would have believed it. And yet, already several times this week we have gone on training rides on the first part of the incline to start working towards this goal. :)

Next, here is a photo of the path up to the Alhambra (Muslim palace/fortress knows as the "jewel of Granada"). Last weekend was the annual Noche en Blanca in Spain (Sleepless Night) where museums and other cultural centers stay open all night with free admission. We didn't wander all night, but we did enjoy the full moon and being part of the lively crowds all exploring cultural centers and buildings.









And finally, our friends Rebekah and Nathan gifted us a Spanish version of Bananagrams before we left, which is sort of like speed scrabble... Game rules: You have to make real words, scrabble-style, and you must use ALL the letters you have. The first to do so wins.


However, we have found that even just one round can be a really long game. With only two people to divide the letters, plus our non-native speaker vocabulary to draw on, it takes a while :)


So, after several hours (I'm not kidding about this being a long game with only two people), we finally had only a few letters left. I had a C and an H. (Poor Nathan had a W, K, and an X, I think). But, as is the game, you can't just squeeze letters in. You have to break and change a bunch of other words until you have the perfect combination.

And then I came up with an idea that isn't Spanish, but at least isn't English (which sort of honors our "no English" rule...)

See if you can find it:











(Note: we also noticed later that "sabiduría" is missing its final 'A', but I am still claiming to have won... ;)

We have more stories to share, of course, as the last few weeks have been very full. But for now I need to go and eat the delectable looking Spanish tortilla Nathan has made for "la comida" today.

Besos y abrazos,
Candyce

A few photos

Finally some photos of our apartment! (We still have no internet en casa, so I am uploading these from a bar that offers free wifi with their wine...)

(Note: I'm not totally sure these photos are loading correctly... so I hope you can see them!)

Living/Dining Room:

Bedroom:

Bathroom:

Kitchen (with Nathan preparing something delicious):

Super-Awesome Dish Rack:

Views from our balcony:

Views from bedroom into the courtyard:

Hasta pronto!

-Candyce

Apartment Selected!

We have an apartment! Hurrah! We ended up finding a medium-ish apartment in Realejo just like we hoped. :) We move in tomorrow and can hopefully post some photos of it soon. It is a lovely one bedroom with lots of natural light on the third floor on a quiet street, yet still in the middle of a very urban neighborhood.

Next tasks are to get internet hooked up at our new place and to choose which school we will be studying at.

In the meantime, a few short musings/updates to share with you:

1) We've gone cycling a few times so far (sometimes on longer trips than we intended due to a surprising and sometimes frustrating lack of signs in the city and surrounding area...) and we can confirm that the roads are generally quite nice for riding, and although drivers are generally more aggressive here, they have a lot of respect for cyclists. It is a nice change to feel accepted on a shared road compared to our experience in Canada where drivers often react as if a cyclist is a pest or obstacle who should really not be on the road (see: annoying habit of speeding by angrily the instant there is an opportunity to pass.)

2) Cheap wine is good here. Cheap beer, not so much. (Not that we can claim to like cheap beer in Canada either... but even the beer that is offered with high reviews is not that exciting). At various dinners that we've had with the family here or with their friends the "best" of the beer that we've tried has all been quite uninteresting, while the wine is almost always really good. We've learned that if we are offered an option, it is best to go with the wine.

3)  Siestas are awesome. What? It is acceptable and standard for everyone, including adults, to go take a nap in the middle of the day? There isn't even any point in going out to do anything because everything (EVERYTHING) is closed? Closed because everyone is at home? Napping?

Seriously, awesome is the only word for that.

And with that, as it is almost 10:30pm here, it is time for supper. The napping, you see, pushes the evening schedule back a bit. :)

I hope you are all keeping well and enjoying a beautiful fall season wherever you are!

With love,
Candyce

Apartment Hunting

Apartment hunting can be exciting: a new neighborhood, new living space, a new kitchen. ;) It is the opportunity to choose on a (very) basic level how and where you will be interacting with your new community. To choose what our new "home" will be for the next few months.

But let's not pretend it is not a lot of work. So many options to wade through (there are WAY more places available than people who are looking to rent here), and decisions to make. Do we stay in the Albayzin (which is gorgeous, quiet, a bit pricey and only has 3 roads that are cycle-able)? Can we find somewhere in el Centro (obviously extremely central, but not a lot of housing options, reasonably priced but likely noisy)? Do we choose somewhere in Realejo (upper part of "Centro" on this map, really the best neighborhood but options are either cheap and tiny, or really nice but pricey)?

We are thankful to have friends who are willing to host us while we sort through it all and lucky that here you don't have to make snap decisions about housing (in Vic or Vancouver, if you like it you take it or 10 minutes later someone else will have).

No decision yet, although we are kind of holding out for a medium option in Realejo if we can find it...

Happy Thanksgiving and goodnight!

Peace,
Candyce

To see a larger image of this map click here

Safely Arrived

After a 9 hour flight to Amsterdam, a 3 hour layover, followed by a 3.5 hour flight to Madrid, we arrived in España! Everything went very smoothly - even the food on the airplane was not too bad! A few things we appreciated along the way were the bean bag chairs/mattresses in the Amsterdam airport (so nice to be horizontal for a few hours!) and how wine is served free of charge with dinner on a European flight. :)

After 1 night in Madrid (where our most exciting adventure was figuring out how to go around a busy overpass with our montón de luggage in order to reach our hostel) we decided all we cared about was supper and going to bed. With a year ahead of us, we decided we'll explore Madrid when we aren't walking around in a jet-lagged stupor. :) Luckily there was a supermercado and a panadería within two blocks of our hostel so we bought groceries, had a picnic in the hostel, and then promptly went to sleep (which was more of a "resting horizontally" experience than actually a "sleeping" experience... but you take what you can get when your body thinks you are trying to go to bed at 1pm in the afternoon).

This morning we took a train from Madrid to Granada and were met upon arrival this afternoon by a dear friend of mine who is hosting us for our first week or two while we apartment hunt. After a lovely homemade lunch with him and his family, we were sent straight to bed as it was siesta time anyway. :)

Hasta pronto,

Candyce (y Nathan)

And we're off!

The day has arrived! After months of planning, and a particularly busy last month of packing, tying up remaining loose ends, and organizing final details, today is the day we fly to Spain!

Transitions are always an interesting time of excitement and anticipation for what is coming next, with a dash of sadness and nostalgia for what is being left behind. It is one thing when you are making a change because you are unhappy and you are moving to something that is better - I find those transitions are almost exclusively exciting. But when you are entering a new chapter because of opportunity and dreams, and in doing so leaving behind a chapter that has been generally delightful, it is easy to feel a bit nervous and nostalgic. However, we are choosing to be grateful for what we have experienced thus far and we are looking forward to what is coming next!

At the moment I am feeling thankful for everyone that helped get us to this point in our journey. Planning, packing, sorting, downsizing, thrift store donation runs, discussions, storage, cleaning and more packing. We couldn't have done it without the help of friends and family. 

So now we are off to the airport, with our bike (and accessories), a small amount of clothes and books,  some carrots and apples and homemade cookies, and a lot of excitement!

I expect to write you next from Spain!

In peace,

Candyce