Good and bad

I'll start with the bad.  I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible stomach ache.  I'm pretty sure my stomach was not happy with something I ate last night.  My guess for the culprit is the arugula I had since it was sort of iffy in terms of freshness, but who knows.  I'm still not feeling 100%, but I wasn't going to let a little stomach problem stop me from enjoying my day!

I had plans with the friend of my former Basque teacher (who took me out for dinner my first week here).  We had met for a drink on Thursday night, and met again today for a Basque style brunch, so I suppose she's my friend now too.  The Basque do not really do brunch like Americans do, but we had plans to have a big mid-day meal of pintxos.

I think I previously described pintxos as like tapas - but that doesn't quite do it justice.  Basically, the way pintxos work is you walk into a bar and they have some pintxos out on the bar on plates.  These are usually pre-made and typically are eaten cold (sometimes they'll take them into the kitchen to eat them).  You can take what you want off the platters and when you're done, you tell the bartender what you want - completely done on the honor system.  Then, there's usually a menu on the wall of hot pintxos that you order at the bar and are made to order.  These are usually more delicious and a little more exotic than the pintxos at the bar.  Because all the pintxos are relatively small and made for one person to eat (or for two people to have a little bite of), there are also "raciones" which are slightly larger plates made for sharing.  I should also clear up the meaning of "bar" before I move on.  So, bars here are not really like bars in the US whose sole purpose is for drinking.  Typically you have a drink, but it is as often grape juice (inexplicably served with an olive in it) as it is beer, wine or cider.  Mostly it's the primary place most people go out to eat.  You often order at the bar and they bring it to your table, or you eat at the bar.  Bars are also where you go to have coffee most often, so it's slightly less like a bar and more like a catch-all for place to grab some food, drink and company.  Okay, definitions out of the way (for now) - back to the story.

I met up with my friend on the Boulevard at 12:30.  She was with her two friends and their incredibly, incredibly adorable son who is "a year old" (my guess is he's about 15-16 months, but it was a little hard to tell), named Oier.  He was incredibly chatty, smart, and charming with huge brown eyes and eyelashes a mile long.  And he's totally mischevious running everywhere and wanting to do everything himself.  Parenting here is a lot more relaxed generally than parenting in the US.  Kids of all ages run off and play together with parents keeping an eye on them generally speaking, but not keeping them on a leash of any sort.  They also don't typically bring toys or snacks to keep the kids entertained while they're out with their parents.  The kids eat what their parents eat (today I saw Oier try pig cheek with olive tapanade, various other meats in sauces, grilled veggies, plantain chips, and his favorite - patatas - actually french fries in this case).  I've seen this happen a lot, but I was still surprised when I saw him eating (with help from his parents) with a knife and fork.  They were careful about the knife, but let him help cut up his meat and try things on his own.  It was actually really inspiring to see how independent he was - he would try things and if they didn't work, he'd either ask for help, or try again.

Most of the conversation today was in Spanish (fortunately for me, since normally they all speak Basque to each other and to Oier - who is very, very competent in both languages).  I said most of what I needed to say in English, but was talked to entirely in Spanish.  I did manage to ask if Carla Bruni (the French first lady) was pregnant in Spanish and talked about work in Spanish as well.  Afterward I promptly came home and took a nap - processing Spanish is infinitely more exhausting than processing English - more on that later.

Anyhow, we went to the first bar and each ordered our pintxos.  I had a bottle of water, since I was still feeling a little off from my adventures with stomach pains last night, but I tried some risotto (not the best upset stomach food, but I go with whatever sounds good to me).  I'm glad I did because it was DELICIOUS.  We also put together our "bank" - everyone puts in a set amount (usually 20 euro) and then the bills at each place get paid out of the bank.  At the end of the event everyone splits the change.  This is a very common way to do things here - and really nice because you don't have to pay for each thing you order separately and no one is very nit-picky about who ordered what.  After the first place, we went to a second which is sort of a "chain" (I think there are two - one here and one in Madrid) which has more inventive pintxos - olives stuffed with vermouth jelly, for example.  We got miniature burgers, slightly smaller than sliders, with "ketchup" buns.  I'm not a huge ketchup fan, but these burgers were delicious and came with plantain chips.  We moved on to the third bar which I'd been to before.  They have a large terrace on a shared plaza that used to be a bullfighting ring and is now home to several shops and bars who divvy up parts of the terrace.  Kids run and play in the rest of it, often playing pick-up games of fútbol.  We got their famous pistachio croquetas (sort of fried balls of stuff, if you've been to a tapas restaurant you've probably had them).  Basically these had pistachio cream inside and were covered with chopped pistachios and then fried.  Really delicious.  We also got two raciones - calamari and "hongos" which are basically wild mushrooms.  Both were really delicious.  We then tried to get coffee at the bar next to the bar we had gotten food from (which was busy and didn't have phenomenal service, which is saying something for Spain, since the service typically ranges from non-existant to terrible).  They refused since we were on the wrong terrace.  So we decided to move to another bar that was a favorite for coffee.

We walked a ways to get there and Oier almost fell asleep, but once he saw we would be sitting on a couch, he perked up and decided to plop himself between my friend and I.  His mom asked him if we were his new girlfriend and he replied "si, novias" (yes, girlfriends).  We all had some coffee (coffee here comes with a million options, so you have to be prepared for the questions when you're ordering.  I got a small decaf with milk.  When they say small, they are not kidding - coffee typically comes in very small glasses (like espresso glasses in the US).  But the coffee is rich and delicious.  I really liked the atmosphere of this particular bar, which my friend compared to Uncommon Ground in Chicago.  We hung out there for quite a while, watching Oier play.  We ended up having a very animated conversation with the women behind us about parenting - it seems that the debate regarding breastfeeding, working moms, and private vs public schooling rages no matter what country you're in.  It was interesting to hear the variety of opinions (in our group people were:  indifferent about breastfeeding - try it, if it works for you great, if not, you and your kid will survive; very pro working moms; and split on the schooling issue with one mom being a huge fan of Montessori schools and the others thinking that public schools were fine when the kids are really little).  Anyhow, throughout this time Oier had been running between the restaurant and the park across the street with his dad.  He came in and announced it was time for all of us to go see the "qua qua" or "los patos".  Have you guessed what we were going to see?  The ducks that live in the pond in the park across the street.  Before we left the place, he came up to my friend and I to ask us to go see the qua qua with him.  When we agreed he gave us both "besos" (the kisses on each cheek).  The kid was too cute.  After about 20 minutes in the park we decided to go our separate ways - over 4.5 hours after we started our culinary adventure.  I got more "besos" as well as an English "BYE!" from Oier.

I headed to the nearby Chinese shop to buy some plastic tubs to store things in my bathroom and took the bus home, since I was exhausted and still feeling a little yucky.  Overall, I'm glad I went - we'll see how glad my stomach is tonight, but I feel pretty safe since I've passed the last 12 hours without incident!  I really enjoyed being with real Spaniards - I learned a lot and got to practice a lot of Spanish.  It really motivated me to practice more!

I promised a bit more on the issue of processing Spanish.  When I first got here, I could understand a fair bit of Spanish if it was being spoken directly too me, but I found most conversations between Spaniards on the bus or on the street to be far to fast for me.  Now, though, I understand a lot more which is both good and bad.  Obviously, it's great that my Spanish is improving, but it's hard because I CAN understand things now, but not without some effort.  Paying attention to Spanish when it's being spoken to me is exhausting, but so is hearing Spanish conversations around me, which my brain tries to process automatically now on the bus or in restaurants.  It's strange because working hard to understand the language around you isn't something we think about a lot, but it takes a lot of mental energy!