Apuntes Culturales

Here are a few cultural notes,

1. Potato Chips. They have the weirdest flavors of potato chips here. For example, Ham & Cheese, Steak and Cheddar (the only place you'll see the word or product of cheddar cheese), Chicken and Gravy and Onion and Cheese. The one that takes the cake, though, is the Prawn Cocktail flavored chips we saw in Gibraltar. Absolutely revolting.

2. Wine costs as little as 0.75 Euros. (Note: GOOD wine does not cost as little as 0.75 Euros).

3. They hardly ever have chocolate for dessert here.

4. There are no bagels, nor peanut butter in this whole city.

5. For groceries, the Sevillanos tote extremely fashionable rollable luggage to and from the grocery store. It is so fancy and pretty looking, that at first, when I was walking out of the grocery store, I was wondering where all these travelers were coming from. Then I saw string cheese coming out of one of them. I've never lived in a city before, so maybe this is normal in NYC, etc. but I thought it was very interesting.

6. This has nothing to do with Spanish culture, but the other day in grammar class, we did an exercise where we complete the sentence "If i were a ___ I would be ____" in Spanish, which has a somewhat tricky verb formation. For example, "If I was a fruit, I'd be a watermelon." The teacher then read everyones responses out loud and we had to guess who's response it was. She read the sentence "If I was a song, I'd be "Party in the USA" and the whole class started calling out "Liz" "Liz." And when she said "If I were a celebrity, I'd be Miley Cyrus" everyone said "definitely Liz." This was serious cause for concern, as I am completely unaware of what 16-year-old-teeny-bopper vibes I am giving off. Not surprisingly, when she said "If I were a sport, I'd be basketball" people started to change their minds.

7. Colocao is an acceptable drink for all ages. In the mornings, people either drink cafe (coffee) or colocao. Colocao is no different from chocolate Nesquik (it is even made by Nestle). They serve it at every cafe from morning till midnight. I think it's really cool that you can order a chocolate Nesquik at a restaurant and not feel like you recently learned your multiplication tables.

8. All the nutrition information on food packages is in the metric system, and I have no idea what goes into the food I eat for lunch and dinner. One one hand, there is a large amount of fried food and completely skim milk is a rarity, but on the other, I am averaging 4 pieces of fruit per day, and don't regularly eat snacks or dessert. Also, all the clothes I brought here are stretchy, or at least very forgiving. Consequently, the window of possible weights I could be right now is anywhere between 100 pounds and 150 pounds. Neither would surprise me at this point.

9. They think Abercrombie is heaven on Earth. At the birthday party, after I was introduced as the American exchange student, one girl immediately asked me if I knew what Abercrombie & Fitch was. When I answered affirmatively, she began excitedly describing the store to her surrounding friends. She described it as "the most incredible clothing store. It's like a discoteca! It's huge with 5 floors and music blaring on each one. It smells like cologne, and everyone who works there is a model! People shop for clothes, which are sooo cute and fashionable, and dance to the music while they do so." I have personally never seen anyone dancing in Abercrombie and Fitch, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the store she visited in New York city was a unqiue one.

The adventure continues....