Bag the food, cook the veggies.

The rest of yesterday- Thursday, jueves- went pretty much according to plan. After my run and before my classes started I did some homework. I think that I've completely forgotten what homework is since my classes ended in April; its been five months!

My first class was History of Photography. The professor is a young guy who really wants us to appreciate the art of taking photos, so he's assigning photography projects for outside of class in addition to more traditional, lecture-based material. At the end of the semester we'll end up with a small portfolio in addition to an introductory understanding of the subject. I think it'll be a fun class, particularly since I'm taking tons of pictures here anyways. It also feels a lot like Smith since the class is about 40 girls. Did I really left Northampton? Maybe. I think so anyways, because my next class was my Spanish Geography class. I really like how the professor connects the geography of Spain to the industry and history of the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea. He also gave each of us a big map of Spain, which will be really helpful to have on my wall while doing readings, etc.

Directly following academic classes I had my first guitar class. Like the first Sevillanas class, it was all about getting organized and picking up our guitars that we rented for the semester. I have the guitar here at home now, and might have some time to play around with the little bit I know this weekend, but I'm really looking forward to our first concrete class next week!

After dinner, I went out for drinks with a group of Preshquitas. It was fun to see Córdoba in action, so to speak, but none of the clubs were open like we had planned on. I care more about the dancing than I do the drinking, so I was a little bummed the clubs were closed, but there are plenty of other nights when we can dance. I caught a cab home around 3:30, which is relatively early by Spanish youth standards, and went to bed.

Today is Friday, viernes, and since I don't have classes, I got to sleep in as long as I wanted this morning, which, as it turns out, wasn't morning at all. I woke up around 1pm, which was perfect since it gave me long enough to have a cup of coffee and get dressed before sitting down to lunch. The rest of the day has been pretty low key; I walked to the plaza and hung out with Amber for a while, and then came back here in time for dinner. This is from our wanderings around Córdoba:

However, when I got home, Carmen announced that she and Carlos were going out for dinner tonight, and that she left food on the stove for Kim and me. Thus far, the food in Spain has been bland, and pretty unpleasant. Unfortunately, this has also been true here in my homestay. It isn't for lack of trying on anyone's part, its just a cultural difference that I don't eat potatoes as a veggie with every meal and eggs aren't added to every dish. Carmen left pureed zucchini that had been mixed into scrambled eggs (though it didn't really work out because of the moisture content), and left over ravioli from lunch that was still sitting on the stove.

 Kim and I couldn't handle it, so after they left the house we got a plastic bag and dumped all the food from the pots into the bag and started making a meal from scratch. We made the most delicious pasta and veggies, cleaned up all the evidence, and walked the bagged "dinner" out to the dumpster at the end of the block. Success! I have never been so happy to have a vegetable that isn't a potato and a meal without eggs. I'm sure that years down the road the two of us will look back on this and laugh that we were sneaking around cooking vegetables, but right now it seems like such a serious, momentous occasion.

Now we're just sitting here wishing we had some chocolate frozen yogurt. We could walk to get some, but that would take 15 minutes... and we would have to put shoes on. That's another big thing about tonight: no shoes! The moment our "parents" left the house we took our shoes off. In Spain you have to wear shoes at all times here because the Spanish think that going barefoot means you're poor and not self-respecting. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but its really annoying to have to put shoes on to go down the hall to get a drink of water. These darn cultural difference are making me crazy. I never in a million years thought I'd feel like such a bad-ass for taking off my shoes in the house and sneakily throwing away crappy food, but here I am... barefoot... satiated... but still without my chocolate frozen yogurt.