Today's secret word is...

"morcilla". Extra special bonus points to whoever knows what that is without using a google search. Of course I won't know if you do, so feel free to cheat away...

It's one of those things that most people would eat and find yummy so long as they don't know what it is beforehand. There is a student in the lab, Rushi, with whom I went to dinner last weekend and again tonight (along with Marta). Marta is Spanish. Rushi is Indian. I have a lot of respect for Rushi. He's been here for 3 years and spoke not a word of Spanish before moving here. The cook in the university cafeteria is quite fond of him, and I think a part of that is because they struggled to understand each other for a long while. I see it in the way the cook makes fun of me as well. Anyway, Rushi loves "morcilla". I've had it before (my birthday two years ago in China) but not like this. This was super yum. Fried with onions. But my tummy hurts a little now. Too much fat. We started with dried meat of some sort then the morcilla with onions and a plate of pan friend green peppers followed with a firm cross between a cheesecake and a cheese flan for dessert. I'm considering bulimia as a healthy option for my time in Spain. Just kidding...

My other not-so-fun news is that the other day I left work a bit early to wander the city and ended up being followed by some random dude. He gave me an awkward sideways glance at a street corner and then I felt like he was following me. I stick out as an American here, and he spoke english so it may be that he just wanted to chat. But it was weird. So I cut up a side street and he turned as well. I turned right down another busy shopping street, and he turned also. I slowed to look at some housewares, and he paused to make a phone call. So then I dipped into the recessed entry of a shoe store where there were some other folks thinking that if I was just being paranoid I'd give him a chance to move on, but he came in to join me. AND THEN HE TOUCHED MY ARM. He wanted to know if I spoke english, where I was from, if I was alone, if I wanted to join him for a drink. I said "no", and he said "why not." In my head I screamed "uh, dude, because you're freaking creepy, you *followed me*, AND YOU TOUCHED ME!" But in reality I said "because I generally don't hang out with people I don't know". I'm fairly trusting and have struck up conversations with some pretty random people in relatively safe and comfortable circumstances. I spent a week on a motorbike with a guy in Cambodia that I'd just met two days before for goodness sake. So it was comforting to me to know that those little hairs on the back of my neck do in fact work. But no worries. The streets here are full of people, and Santander is a very safe town.

Okay, time for some TUMS and bedtime. I'm meeting Marian and Marta tomorrow morning to make up for last weekend's excursion that got canceled. I love when Marian says "excursion". It's such a quaint choice of words to begin with, and she has a delightful Spanish accent. so it sounds like there are all sorts of extra consonants in there. She developed a cold last weekend and decided the miserable cold wet weather was not a good idea, but we're on for the little village tomorrow. I'm looking forward to some history and older architecture. Much of Santander burned to the ground in the 1940s, so it's not a great place to see historic Spain...

The rain in Spain...

...does not fall mainly on the plains. And whoever said that was smoking crack. The rain in Spain falls mainly in Santander. It's apparently been raining here pretty much non-stop since September. I've landed myself in the Spanish equivalent of Seattle. So at least I can say this is quickly feeling like home. And it's lushly green and beautiful - if you can stand to be out long enough to enjoy it.

I got up this morning, got all ready for work, made coffee with my newly borrowed italian coffee pot that took some admirable gesturing, a poor attempt at my spanish, and a hail mary call to Isa to acquire from Carmen at the front desk, and was about to walk out the door when the sky exploded. That's the best I can describe the apocalyptic sound and downpour that came from the heavens. Thunder and lightening and heavy rain that I later found out also produced an inch of pea-sized hail. Folks here promise this is unusual weather for Santander, and I'm waiting for this oddity to go away. The 10 minute walk to work is all uphill which is challenging on an inch of loose ice with rivers of melt-off running down the sidewalk. It's unfortunate that the safest place to walk without slipping was in the rivers of runoff because my shoes were not so water proof. So dear, sweet Marian sat me down at a heater while one of the students from another lab ran off to fetch me a pair of Crocs from the medical students' changing room. I was impressed that he got my size right and clomped around the rest of the day in pale blue plastic slippers. But I am now the proud owner of a pair of spanish galoshes. Botas de agua - or at least that's what I'm calling them since they're my new water boots. The rest of me was quite dry with my raincoat and umbrella though the tiny cheap umbrella I brought along kept turning inside out in the gale force wind and threatened to turn me into Mary Poppins...

I also made impressive shopping trip #2 to the supermercado and managed to find everything on my list while resisting the urge to look like a crazy lady roaming up and down the aisles looking at all of the alien food items. Canned anchovies and tuna seem to be *the thing* here, so those might be on my lab list in addition to the turron that I'll be lynched if I forget. And they store milk *and* eggs at room temperature on shelves here. In celebration of my purchases, I rewarded myself with a bottle of grapefruit juice, though in hindsight I seem to have jumped the gun on that one. Turns out I bought "papel higienico" (toilet paper) instead of "toalles de papel" (paper towels) and now my dishes smell like flowers. Oops. In my defense, it's cheap toilet paper that looks like paper towel and was stacked two rolls each three across, so I thought it was three small rolls of paper towels. At least I didn't make the mistake the other way around.

I have also learned that Spanish coffee induces Parkinson's disease. So while I can usually handle an American cup o' jo and do my surgeries, not so much here. And since I'm here for my steady hands, no coffee for me until the weekends. Too bad cause the Spanish coffee and jetlag had just convinced me to give up my four month abstinence, and I may be going through the DTs all over again...

If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them so tasty?

I just got back from the first of what I anticipate to be many fabulous dinners. I met up this evening with one of the graduate students in Marian's lab, his girlfriend, and her cousin who are visiting from Madrid. They're fun folks. We went to a really wonderful restaurant and gorged ourselves on an amazing spread starting with a mixed green salad with a dressing that had so much garlic that I'm glad I have no one to room with, though it was well balanced with the spicy greens and sharp vinegarette. Followed by a plate of meats so impressive that I had to take a picture - 5 cured tastinesses. Then cheese croquettes which are essentially cream and flour cooked down to a paste mixed with cheese and chilled then rolled into little balls that are rolled in finely crushed bread crumbs and lightly fried until they're gooey in the center. Then a dish of shrimp sauteed in garlic, butter, and white wine. Followed by baked potatoes stuffed with ground beef and drizzled in some sort of bechamel sauce with paprika. And the final course was a cheese plate with 7 different cheeses, many of which are special to this region. One was a delightful soft cows milk cheese that was accompanied with quince paste. I think we had the exact thing in madrid with the addition of walnuts. Another cheese was a very stinky cross between a brie and a bleu cheese Everything was so simple and yet so incredibly yummmm because of the quality. Of course this was matched with two pitchers of sangria that tasted of the faintest addition of vanilla or banana and finished off with a yummy sweet cream liqueur that was sort of similar to Bailey's but lighter and with a more delicate flavor.

So I now understand when my dad would get mad at me for saying that his cows were fat. "They're not fat, they're FULL!" he'd say. And I'd say "well they look fat to me." Right now I look pretty fat to me, and while I'm definitely just full to the brim, if I keep eating like this I will most definitely be fat before long.

But I'm walking a lot to earn it for right now at least. Marta, an MD who is doing research in the department, called last night to warn me about the high winds and bad weather and then asked if I wanted to get out today with her if the weather was nicer. It was clear from the damage to potted plants and lamp posts that the wind last night was incredible. Today it was chilly and a little windy but not bad enough to keep us in, so we went for a tour of the town. It's not a very big city, but it's long and narrow. We walked the entire length of the city to the ocean and back in about 6 hours - stopping for wine, coffee, and snacks along the way. Collectively we ran into 5 people we knew which gives me the impression that this is a very small town indeed. Two were people she knew, two were professors from the department that I'd met, another was a young student raising money for the UN refugee fund who I met a counple of nights ago. He just wanted to practice his English because I needed to have a european bank account to give him money anyway. Nice...

Speaking of money, my new favorite spanish word is "rebajas" which means "sale". Every store window has it spelled out in big letters. The slumping economy has hit spain BIG TIME. When we were here in August the dollar was $1.57 per euro, and now it's down to $1.29. Everything is up to 70% off in the stores. You know what that means, Jenna - SHOES. Lots of shoes. Lots of pretty boots. But it makes me feel a little bit guilty even though I have nothing to do with it personally. The whole world's economy is taking a *huge* hit right now, and a lot of it is tied up in the US financial system. It's easy to sit at home and think that our troubles are limited to the US, but this is an enormous crisis (and they quite bluntly call it a "crisis" here) that is hitting the global economy. And it probably affects places like this that don't have as big an economy to begin with versus us at home. So in exchange, I'm going to see what I can do to help out a little bit in the retail sector...

My other big news is that I'm making friends left and right here. Folks are super friendly. The woman who runs the desk at the apartments in the evening, Carmen, speaks very little english (about as much as I do spanish) but she tries whenever I come through. She looks sort of like the Spanish equivalent of Darren's aunt Dawn which will only make sense to the few of you who have met her. Very short hair and sort of no-nonsense looking. She's been asking about my spanish, and I've been trying desperately to answer. She says I'm only allowed to speak in spanish and my friends here shouldn't speak english with me. I don't think she realizes how isolating that would be. I met another young gal, Isa, who is living on my floor, and she speaks a little more english. We went down the elevator together speaking english, and Carmen chastised her saying she was only supposed to speak spanish with me. So now we have an agreement. If Carmen will help me learn spanish, I will teach her some more English. I feel like I have a lot of people looking out for me here, and it's quickly turned into a lot of fun.

Must turn in for now. I got the best note when I came in at 1 am tonight. Marian is calling at 11 am tomorrow. I was afraid it would be a lot earlier. She and I are taking a drive out into the countryside to see a small village in a valley. It should be breathtakingly picturesque. I will be sure to have my camera and will try to post pictures!

Welcome to my little Spanish apartment...

Oops, just realized I sent my blog announcement as a "reply to all" from my email last year when I left for China. I will be returning to China again, but that trip is scheduled for the end of March. For those of you who did not know, I will be spending the next 5 weeks working in Santander, Spain at the University of Cantabria. There is a woman here who is a fabulous embryologist, and she and I are working together on a project that will require me to do very delicate surgeries on chick embryos. Surgeries I have never attempted. Surgeries at which she is an expert. Surgeries at which I am hoping my best not to eff up :)

So after being up until 4 am the night before my flight finishing the last bits of things in lab that couldn't wait until I got back, I overcame the stark denial that I was actually temporarily moving to Spain and boarded an overnight flight to Madrid hoping to take a Tylenol PM and zonk out for the 6 hour transit. The flight attendants had other plans. Every time they came down the aisles with meals or beverages, up went the cabin lights at full candle power. So while I did have a whole row of seats to myself on a mostly empty plane (a whole row of two - don't ask why I didn't move to the center of the plane where I could have slept in more than an egg shell of space), it was less than restful.

My first lesson about spain in the winter - even though it's a lower latitude than Boston, it gets light here *way* later. I arrived in Madrid and had to go through passport control before proceeding on to the connecting flight to santander. It was pitch black outside so without checking the clock I thought perhaps it was only 6:30 am and I had loads of time to mosey on toward my 8:50 departure. The first clock I saw said 8:05! And Marian, the woman with whom I'll be working, gets into lab by shortly after 8 am every morning. I am solar powered. I don't get up easily if the sun is not up first. But somehow I will be managing to drag my corpse out of bed and into lab before the sun rises. So much for my late nights out discothequing with the Spaniards.

So I am checked into my little studio apartment in downtown Santander with a private bath and a little kitchenette. I have an under-the-counter fridge and two cook tops that should suffice to feed myself so that I don't have to depend on my abysmal (read: almost non-existent) spanish. I have already made one shopping trip to supplement the generous rations that Marian presented upon arrival, and I am in the midst of preparing my first meal in my little Spanish apartment as I type: some sort of pre-marinated pork chop with browned potatoes and a spinach salad with oil and vinegar. I'm not going to be able to do anything fancy like pot roast and cheesecake while I'm here, but I can at least take care of myself which feels liberating. And there are a ton of little specialty "alimentacion" shops in this area full of fancy meats and cheeses and jars of interesting delectables. I don't think I'm going to have a hard time eating my way through the next few weeks.

Other than that, my sweet little apartment seems to have walls made of paper. The outside noise isn't so bad, but I definitely have neighbors above and on either side, because I think I can hear them breathing. And I can hear everything else. TV, cell phone ring, slippered feet sliding across the floor above... But the nice thing about paper thin walls is that I can also hear the organ of the church next door at the evening mass. We'll just have to see how early that starts and how charming it continues to be. But for right now it's quite delightful.

I'm going to feed my addled brain and try to turn in soon so that I'm on the way toward getting circadian-adjusted. I'm going to try to update this from time to time with my misadventures of trying to survive as a non-spanish speaker living in Spain. At least Darren gave me hours and hours and hours of spanish lessons on CD before I left, so I can spend some of my spare time in the room and perhaps while I'm dissecting listening to spanish lessons so that perhaps by the time I leave in 5 weeks I can say that I speak a little spanish. At least more than the dirty words I learned from the Mexican kids in the back of the bus in grade school...

Hasta luego...