Well I did sleep through the night, but I’m still exhausted, and I woke up with my eyes feeling all hot and sluggish. I think I’m sick. Was very, very sleepy and cold all day and felt myself falling asleep in both my of orientation “classes.”
The first was really just an hour and a half of conversation among eight students and Profesora Prieto. Every time I hear her name I think of the Argentine film I watched for my cinema class, Sylvia Prieto. It was a very typical example of new Argentine cinema – meaning, mainly, that it definitely had an independently-made, generally weird quality about it. The last ten minutes of class were used for a quick tour of our little “campus,” and I used the time to ask her if she had ever heard of the movie. She hadn’t.
The second class is really just a history lecture centered on Spain. Today’s was specifically “Old Spain: Crucible of Culures.” Profesor Kavanagh, the lecturer, jovially refers to the exercise as “¡Tres mil años en tres días!” because it really is just an attempt to cover three thousand years of Spanish history in three days. I think if Santa Claus didn’t have his north pole gig, he would be Profesor Kavanagh. I just can’t help using words like “jovial” when I describe him. He’s a great lecturer. He makes the whole thing into a series of stories, featuring some pretty eccentric main characters. It’s easy to listen to him in Spanish or English, which is good, because he switches back and forth between the two a lot. He’s supposed to lecture only in Spanish when speaking to us because we’re advanced students, but we’re allowed to ask questions in English, and he answers in English, and he then usually forgets to use Spanish for the next few minutes of his storytelling.
After my allotted hour and a half with Kavanagh, I went to the basement of the other building and used the computer for a while. I was trying to kill time because for some reason I was thinking there was walking tour or museum visit at 5 pm, and I figured it wasn’t worth going home for three hours only to come back out again. At some point I went to find Isabel (who we see for academic issues) and then Caridad and Megan (who we see for student life questions). I don’t even remember what I wanted to ask. But they weren’t there. They have actual office hours which just seems so bizarre to me after a semester in Buenos Aires. “You mean there’s only certain times I can harass you?! You’re supposed to practically live at this building!” Then I went back to the computer for a while and played around Facebook until another student kindly reminded me that our afternoon today was absolutely free according to the schedule they gave out.
I headed toward the Nuevos Ministerios metro station so I could drop by the supermarket in el Corte Inglés again. I needed soy sauce – and pictures!
THIS is the behemoth they call el Corte Inglés. What you're seeing is just a single wing of the complex. There are several. ALL of those floors are shopping floors.
This is a second wing of el Corte Inglés. If not for the white tent in the first photo, you would see it attached to the right side of the bigger one with the massive advertisement.
Here is an attempt to show how thoroughly melded together everything is. In the foreground you have bedding and sheet sets, and in the background you can see the checkout aisles of the supermarket. The supermarket, as I mentioned yesterday, is actual one of the most distinctly separate departments I've encountered there.
This is what you see when you first walk into the main building. It's a literal sea of cosmetics with no distinctive path leading through. All you can do is sort of weave among them until you escape.
View from one of the doors of the main el Corte Inglés building. The curved, half-circle directly in front and to the left is the entrance to the Nuevos Ministerios metro. The line of tents all house stands selling the kinds of things you find on street corners in New York City - but generally nicer. You can find scarfs and gloves and sunglasses, and there are even some things I genuinely believe are handmade.
Underground and inside the metro, once you've gone down the first flight of stairs, there's this randomly huge, empty space here to the side. It's always well-lit and clean looking, but there's never anyone there. The space is big enough to set up a full size basketball court or two, and could easily be used for an indoor soccer game. I would really love to know if someone had some purpose in mind for the room when it was constructed. The only way to go from here is back up or down the escalator, but you don't even need to walk through the room to get to it. Both the stairs I took down and the escalator I took further down are located in the space behind the camera and well to right.
Yet another escalator and a long walk later, you go past this, probably one of the really major entrances to the station, unlike where I entered.
Ticket machines to the left and the entrance to the grey line straight ahead.
I got out of the metro at Manuel Becerro, my home stop, and couldn't resist stopping at my fruit stand again on the way home. I have to go right past it regardless and, well, there were fruits and veggies calling my name! I got two HUGE red bell peppers, a bunch of carrots because they were inexpensive, and some more mandarin oranges. Somehow the whole thing only cost me two euros and some change.
Told you I would post a picture of my fruit "stand."
Armed with delicious food and excited to cook my first meal, I returned home and got busy. :)
When I started peeling the garlic and saw that it was getting more and more purpley-red looking, I actually started to wonder if the garlic itself was going to be that color. A few more layers, though, and I was relieved to see that inside it looked just like plain old normal garlic from home.
When I said huge, I meant huge. It was incredibly sweet, too!
Dinner. ^.^ Carrots, red peppers, and garlic sautéed in olive oil with fresh ground salt and pepper.
At some point while I was cooking, Señora Alvarez came in and started talking to me, wanting to know what I had bought and what I was cooking. She showed me where I could keep my olive oil since the bottle was too tall to fit upright in my assigned cabinet, and I said that I couldn't believe how inexpensive it had been. She smiled and said that Spaniards live on olive oil, and I replied that my mom cooks with it a lot - and also with garlic. I was sort of fishing because it had occurred to me that she might not want me cooking with so much garlic in her kitchen because of the smell, but she just laughed. Apparently she had been mistaken. Spaniards live on olive oil AND garlic. Big relief for me. She says her doctor even recommends she eat more to improve her circulation and health in general.
I think I'm going to like this country.
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