Eat, See, Speak, Rest

So I have now been in León now for a little over a week and so far things have been going well. I have had a lot of free/¨me¨ time because I wasn´t able to enroll in the intensive Spanish course because I arrived too late and my university classes don´t begin until sometime between the 15th and 19th. As I mentioned briefly before, my host family is beyond amazing. They are the kindest, sweetest, most generous people in Spain and I am so happy to be living with them. My host mom, Julia, has one daughter Artlet, and we have spent all of our meals together and we´ve spent a some time as well with Julia´s sister, Marie Fe and her two kids, Luis and Patricia. All have been very kind and treat me like family. Having such a great host family has really made my transition a lot smoother than I anticipated. Over the last week I´ve been spending most of my time with my family trying to get in as much conversation as possible to improve my Spanish. I´ve walked around the city a bunch and I love it. It´s pretty small, but once you enter the classic part of the city where the Cathedral is, you can easily get turned around with all the different streets and ally´s crossing every which way. In the evenings on the weekends that part of the city (also known as El Barrio Húmedo meaning the Humid Neighborhood named for all the liquor the flows out of the countless bars and discotecas there) is buzzing with people hopping from restaurants to cafés to bars and discotecas. I have gone out twice with some of the other international students who will be taking classes at the university as well and it has been pretty fun. There are people from all over the place: Australia, Germany, Canada, Poland, Ireland, Brazil, England, and Italy to name a few. The cool part about hanging out with them is hearing all of the different Spanish accents people have. Even though a lot of people speak English too, when we´re out, in general everyone speaks Spanish to each other. I love that I can speak to someone from Italy who doesn´t know English, but our common language is Spanish :) The food here is great! I love everything my mom makes and brings in the house. I still haven´t quite figured out hos the meals work exactly in terms of timing and courses, but in general we have an array of things to eat each meal. For breakfast I usually just have a glass of water, yogurt, and an orange. Lunch is the biggy meal from 3-5 (or later) and we usually begin with bread and something else like pasta and then move on to the meat and afterwards sweets! Dinner is a little lighter beginning anywhere from 7-9 and generally the same kind of dishes we might have at lunch, just less. I´ve been eating a lot of bread because it´s so good and i love love love it. We have to buy two baguettes everyday because they´re baked fresh daily and Artlet and I devour them at meals. My mom is constantly asking me if I want more to eat and it´s hard to say no when everything is so good. And man does she like to spoil me with sweets. She offers me about 3 sweets at the end of every meal! Today was a great day. It was Luis´ (Marie Fe´s husband) birthday and we all went to Musac, an art museum here in León. I was feeling a little sleepy at first and didn´t think I´d be up for a museum, but I was really happy I went because the exhibit we saw was unlike any other I´d ever been to. The featured exhibit was Blanca Li, a dancer and choreographer from France. There were displays of her short films that ranged from contemporary international dance choreography to comic workout videos. It was INCREIBLE! I think I´m going to go back because I feel in love with everything. Afterwards we went to a restaurant for lunch. I forgot the name of the place but it was a small traditional Spanish restaurant. It was very cozy inside and I got a chance to see the kitchen where they still use traditional fires to prepare all of the food. I stuffed myself with fresh baked bread (of course), potatoes, the tenderest meats on earth, and topped it all off with Natillas, my dessert. Well, speaking of food, it´s time for me to eat again now! Micehele