Gachas and Boxed Milk

Okay. Milk in boxes. 

It's one thing I'll never get used to about Spain. It's like something out of 2001: A Space Oddessy. Picture this: you're in dire need of some pancakes. You go to the store. You look in the Dairy section for milk, but -- gasp! -- it's not there!  It's not nestled in the fridge between the yogurt and the cheese, it's not even next to the orange juice. You find an apathetic-looking Mercadona lady pricing puddings and you ask her if they're out of leche. She looks at you like she thinks you're joking, then you see her face shift from skepticism to pity as she registers your genuine confusion. She leads you away from the refrigeration, toward the center of the store, to a mammoth aisle near the cleaning supplies, lined with stacks upon stacks of sterile, white bricks. Here she leaves you alone to realize: they're not bricks at all! They're little pods of airtight, room-temperature milk, waiting to be activated! 

Until they're open, they don't need to be refrigerated, and the sealed bricks can keep for nearly a year. I can't decide if they're just more highly evolved than we are or if something is very very wrong, but I must say it's pretty cool that you can buy milk in packs of ten and keep the other nine in your cupboard until you need them, like extra cans of Coors.

It's little things like this that keep me in awe at Spain daily. Little things that I took for granted in the US -- like milk in refrigerated bottles or speed limit signs in miles or prescription medicine, or even the assumption that everyone in the world had at least heard of Captain Planet -- that still strike me every time I see them.

Two weeks ago, I was invited to a friend's house for lunch. I was told we would be making gachas (pronounced like "gotcha(s)", which is a pun that I've had really probably too much fun with -- Person A: "Hey, want some gachas?" Person B: "Sure!" Person A (punching Person B): "GOTCHA!" Bahahaha, get it??), a traditional Manchego dish made with olive oil, some only marginally identifiable meat products, and this mysterious special red flour that's only found in La Mancha. Delicious. Makes you so full you think you'll probably explode, and even if you don't explode you'll definitely never eat again. Food junkie that I am, I was content just with the concept that I might be able to sit around and consume some obscene amounts of this gooey amazingness, but when we arrived at the house, I quickly discovered that when someone asked you over to "make gachas", it was a far cry from being asked over to "make spaghetti". In fact, I'm not sure I'll ever feel adequate asking someone over to make spaghetti again. I'd just feel lame. Operation Gachas was no puny pot-and-pan deal -- it was a giant iron skillet set atop a roaring fire in the fireplace, next to which several baguettes sat toasting. It made Los Angeles stoves look like Easy Bake Ovens. 

The heat from the fire made the house glow and we sat around the hearth talking while our host set to her delicate gacha-making work. As she cooked, carefully and continuously stirring the mixture with a mammoth wooden spoon while she simultaneously adjusted the burning logs for an even heat, the rest of the guests explained to me the art behind what she was doing as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "It's just a peasant food, really," one friend said, "but it's hard to make right." No big deal, just making weird magical paste food with a Hagrid-sized spoon in a fairy-tale sort of fireplace. The usual.

I don't know what it was that I found so frickin cool about what she was doing, whether it was the fire or the physicality of the work or maybe just the novelty of the giant spoon (seriously, though, GIANT. I want to make sure you're getting this -- GIANT.), but I stared, possibly rudely, for the entirely of the process, and then, once the table was set, had to be walked through the technicalities of how one finally goes about eating gachas. The meal, so normal for everyone around me, was completely and entirely new. It was great to feel so out of place.

In the past couple of months, I've been starting to feel more and more at ease in Spain, but just when I start feeling comfortable or complacent, my roommate will ask me to pick her up a six-pack of milk at the market and I'll be thrown back into intense, exciting, frightening feeling of being foreign in a country where fundamentally different things are taken for granted. I know I could get used to things here, and I know I probably will, but part of me is very glad that I haven't quite yet.

Back to Business

I can't believe I've managed to abandon this blog for a whole month and a half. I feel like I owe it an apology. I've drafted the followng.

Dear blog,

I've taken you for granted. You've been so good to me and I've neglected you. I hope we can start over. I promise never to leave you again. At least not for more than a week.

Love always,
Jean

Writing this blog really keeps me grounded, after all, and I'll be quite unamused with myself if I drop the ball again, so depend on some weekly Thursday writing action. That's right. Mark your calendars. Get psyched.

Sometimes I can't believe how quickly time has gone by, and other times I can't believe I've only been in Spain for three months. I imagined that by January I would be a Spanish ace, maneuvering Spanish conversation with unparalleled aplomb. Or at least something like it. Yet I still sound like a small, confused child when I speak Spanish, plus I make embarrassing mistakes like saying polla instead of pollo when I talk too fast (for those who do not know just how humiliating this particular error is, look it up. Or maybe don't. Maybe it's best not to know). At the same time, I really do feel like I'm leading a three dimensional, honest-to-God life here, a life more full and complex than I thought I could construct in such a short time.


Since I last wrote, December and January came and went, and with them the Christmas holidays, my mom's amazing visit, the burial of a mammoth papier-mache sardine thing, two trips to Barcelona, a beautiful weekend in Andalucia, some giant bonfire-BBQs, and a whirlwind tour of Madrid with the one-and-only Michael Rooney. All this was mixed with a lot of coffee, Spanish swear words, and tintos de verano, not to mention quite a bit of air-dried laundry. In recent news, the application for renewal of my position just opened, so I'm working on figuring out my life to decide whether Jean In Spean: Year Two is in the cards.

Wernicke, the stuffed brain who will be making regular appearances, gazes out a train window at La Mancha and the future. What he is thinking, we can only guess.

First things first: Momma. I can't articulate how good it was to see my mom come through the doors of customs in Madrid-Barajas Airport on December 22. This woman is one of my favorite people on the planet. Besides that, she was also carrying some rather mutilated but still very delicious gingerbread men, which she'd been clinging to in a little paper bag since she left Lost Angeles. That's real saintliness, people. 

I'd been looking forward to the trip ever since she told me she'd bought the ticket -- I couldn't wait to show her Alcázar and my apartment and jamón ibérico and Gaudí and Madrid, and I couldn't wait to be around her to talk and argue and eat together -- and the trip more than delivered. After a Christmas with my godmother and her family and an entire cured pig leg, Mom and I spent several days exploring Alcázar, with the help of some of the Spaniards and Americans that have made my time in Spain so great. The Alcázareños took us to the torreón and the windmills, and provided us with an entire wheel of delicious Manchego cheese. A few days later, the Americans reveled with us in the traditional Carneval parade of the Entierro de La Sardina ("The Burial of the Sardine"), which takes place in nearly all Spanish towns and consists of a crowd of black-clad "mourners" following a giant fake sardine through the city while music plays and onlookers cheer. The "mourners" come armed with Silly String and confetti and the mock-funeral looks like more of a nomad party, a sensation compounded by the fact that the sad looking sardine and its pallbearers stop at every bar to pick up drinks and tapas before heading on. This particular parade finally came to an end in the town's bull ring, where the sardine was set on fire.

Nobody understands exactly why this happens. Not even Google.

After Alcázar, Murray and Jean traveled to Barcelona, where we spent New Year's eating grapes and making resolutions in front of Gaudí's Casa Batlló. It was the perfect way to ring in 2012.

Finally, we made our way back to Madrid, where Mom met María Victoria, my study abroad host mother, who immediately fell in love with her and offered her all of her Spanish recipes. Although neither woman spoke the same language, they understood each other on a level that transcended small-talk. Meeting in María Victoria's special living room (I was never allowed into the living room when I stayed in her house -- it was meant for guests and special occasions, which only highlighted the surreality and uniqueness of the visit), the Spanish Momma and the American Momma seemed like buddies destined by the cosmos. Plus, María Victoria had a stock of some really delicious turrón.

The next morning, Murray headed back across the pond and I haven't stopped missing her yet. There's nothing like a piece of home to remind you how grateful you are for where you come from.

Read on, friend!
Someday I'll learn to make grown-up faces in pictures. That day is not today.