La Comida

La Comida.
Buenas tardes a todos que están en los Estados Unidos!
Quick recap: we left Madrid and went to Toledo, which was MUY bonita and I loved it there, as well as Córdoba where we went the next day. Wednesday night we finally arrived in Sevilla and I experienced extreme culture shock when I got to my host mother's house, but I'm already getting pretty used to it here and feel a lot more comfortable. Fell in love with the city on Friday, and I already know I need to enjoy every second of being here because it's going to fly by.

Definitely needed to dedicate a post to the food here, and the extreme differences in how this culture works with meal times and all that. They eat a really tiny breakfast whenever is convenient really, have a huge lunch, and then a smaller dinner. But the times are sooo different and it's been hard to adjust to. Yesterday we at breakfast at 12:45pm, lunch at 5, and dinner at 10:15..pretty different. This past week I've already tried some...interesting....things that the US would probably never see. For example, my second night in Sevilla, we had artichoke and egg soup. Sounds wicked good right?! Except it actually was pretty good so I was shocked. I've also had tuna pizza, which leads me into my current dilemma:

So I told my host mother immediately that I'm lactose intolerant, and she was really understanding and nice about it. And she constantly reminds me that I can't have dairy and seemed to be really accommodating which was great; she bought soy milk and said that none of the meals will have any dairy. Since I'm living at a house, we get 3 meals a day but I really have no choice in what we have so I eat whatever it is, and so far everything has been really good. Weird sometimes, but good. It's been a ton of food at each meal though because she wants to fill us up, so I've been struggling with how not to be rude but not waste food at the same time...especially with the bread. I LOVE bread like any human does but I think yesterday I had to eat about an entire loaf's worth with all the meals combined; ugh so good but so SO bad.

Anyway a couple nights ago she was like "vamos a tener pizza!" and my roommate and I just looked at each other, but she claimed it had no cheese on it so I was totally fine with that. So we sit down and I look at the table to see pizza with tuna, covered in cheese...like any normal pizza. I was so confused because she repeated again it had no cheese but it 10000% did. I didn't know what to do so I nodded and smiled, and the second she looked away I had to take my lactaid pills or else I would've been dying all night. The next night we were talking about the lactose intolerance again, because it's a very popular topic of conversation for some reason (...?) when my host mother started accusing my roommate and I of not knowing for sure since we had no doctor's proof. I tried to explain that I know for sure....like trust me I KNOW I can't have dairy, but she got serious and basically said she was going to be watching us to see if it's really a thing or not..and promptly asked us if we'd like ice cream after dinner. All I did was smile and say no gracias. HELP ME I'M SO CONFUSED.

This shout out goes to the person that I immediately called when moving into my house. Thank you for talking to me and helping me feel better. Being in "another family" here makes me miss you ten times more and appreciate everything you do for me, I love and miss you!

Chao amigos!
Moll