- Cooking - I still have tons of frustration when it comes to my kitchen, and to eating more broadly. I should say this is not because there isn't great food to be had here. It's just that to eat good food when you go out, you need to pay a lot of money. I've actually only had two sit-down, going-out meals since I got here. Both of which were mediocre at best. The pintxos are typically good, but one cannot live on pintxos alone (well, one probably could, but I can't). There are also very few places that do take-out and even fewer (none?) that do delivery. So, on crazy long work days (like yesterday where I was at work for 11 hours + commuting time), I need to cook when I get home. This wouldn't be so bad if I had the proper equipment or ingredients to cook food that is tasty. Part of the problem is that things go bad very, very quickly here (which probably means they aren't pumped with antibiotics and preservatives). It doesn't make it any less frustrating though, when you open chicken from two days ago that looks a little yucky, you cook it anyhow, and it tastes, literally, like garbage. Cooking itself is also frustrating. It's really hard to control the temperature on the induction stovetop, and I still haven't bought any pots or pans that are safe for the oven. I really need to spend some time in a grocery store really looking at ingredients and deciding what I can use to make things here, since a lot of my typical staples aren't available ... but this brings me to point #2.
- "Business" Hours - I honestly do not understand how anyone ever gets anything done here. A typical store (including grocery store) is open: 9-2 and then 4-8. That's if it's a store that's open a lot. It isn't uncommon for stores to just be open 9-2. Or whenever they feel like being open. I tried to go to a store the other day that was supposed to re-open at 4 for the afternoon. At 6, they were not open. Weekends are even worse when almost nothing is open on Sunday and Saturday hours are nothing short of crazy (10-2? 10-12? 11-3?). The only time you can really count on stores being open is 9-2 Monday through Friday. Which is when I'm, you know, working. Grocery shopping consists of running to the store as often as I can - it's not rare for me to go three to four times a week so I can have fresh food, but also because when you only have 30 minutes 'til the store closes, it's tough to do a week's worth of shopping. It's hard to get anything done really. This does mean that you have to spend your evenings and weekends doing things that aren't running errands and are more fun. However, it's hard to have fun when you're worried about food in your fridge or when you have to do laundry since a lot of your clothing is wrinkled and you haven't been able to buy an iron since the electronics store is only open when you're working. (Sub-point - I would solve this problem by buying things on Amazon UK which does free shipping to Spain, but the plugs are different ... so a vacuum and iron will have to wait for now).
- Language - This point is the biggest and most frustrating of all. I am still stymied on a daily basis by not being able to say what I want to say. I love language, it's what I do for my job, and anyone who knows me knows I love to talk. But Spanish is hard and frustrating. Let me clarify - Spanish in a classroom is fine. I can conjugate verbs and do exercises. I can read and write in the classroom. But classroom language is not the language of the real world. Carefully produced speech on recordings is no substitute for real world speech. So, it's hard to understand what's being said. Even harder is saying what you mean. Even if I'm willing to make tons of mistakes (which I have to if I want to communicate the simplest things), even if I am willing to forego using the subjunctive for the sake of saying anything at all, I don't have the words to say what I want to say. Vocabulary is far and away the hardest part for me. I don't know how to get more vocabulary without studying a dictionary or vocabulary book. And honestly, lists of nouns and verbs aren't going to do it. Even if I know how to say the basic words around things, I don't know how to convey the specifics that make any good story worth telling. When talking about my trip yesterday in class, I was trying to explain how frustrated I was by the fact that they announced to me that my ticket was canceled. But I couldn't remember the word for frustrated ... and angry or sad don't really get the job done in the same way. I need to figure out some way to improve at the language more quickly. Because I've been here almost two months now, and I'm running out of patience for myself.
One bright note to end for now - the blanket I'm making is gorgeous. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it (not counting the border that will go on at the end). It's big enough now that I can wrap up in when I'm cold and watching TV and it covers a whole person when sleeping. I can't wait for it to be done, but I also need to have another (big) project lined up for when I finish it. I love to have a big home project I can work on in the evenings or on weekends. Then I have my commuting project (a knit cowl that is taking forever because I work on it in 5 minute bursts) and my travel project (a shawl that I only knit on the plane or in airports). Then I might start a project that the knitting group around here is working on ... but I need to be able to get to the yarn shop when they're open. But the blanket? Fantastic. I've made tons of mistakes and fixed them in stupid ways, but I love this blanket so, so, so much.
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