Trying to find the desire to write this week’s e-mail after such an exciting week in Paris is like taking the ice after Johnny Lysacek’s flawless figure skating performance in this year’s winter olympics, it’s tough.
I rolled over in bed this morning, picked up my cell phone and checked the time. 11:20am. I was waking up a bit later than usual but not for no good reason. Last night around 5:45am I heard the buzzer for our apartment going off, ring ring, ring ring! Knowing that each one of my roommates had slept at home I decided to ignore the ringing and go back to bed. Ring ring, ring ring, ring riiiiiing. Whoever was downstairs at this early hour was clearly not going away. I was bound and determined not to get out of bed and answer the call because 10 times out of 10 the person downstairs was nobody that I knew and was just ringing everyone’s buzzer in hopes that someone would let them in. Well, after 2 long minutes I could not take it anymore. I threw off my covers and stomped to the front door where I picked up the phone and in my most groggy and annoyed voice said, “Si (yes)?!” Of course, there was no answer. I should not have even picked up the phone because once I spoke into it, the person downstairs knew that someone was awake in apartment 4A. The ringing increased to an all time high and not two seconds later my roommate, Marta Cobian, stumbled down the hallway. She promptly yanked the phone off the hook and gave the person downstairs a piece of her mind. Word to the wise, do not ever pick a fight with a spanish woman. You will not win.
Well, after this heart warming escapade I found it difficult to fall back asleep, so I picked up my book instead, read for a couple hours and fell back asleep. Which brings us to the present time, now.
Along with last night’s unusual theatrics, this past week was a bit off kilter as well. We ended up playing 2 games instead of one, however, one of the games was more of a friendly scrimmage. Since we had last weekend off and it had been a full two weeks since we had had a game, Charly decided to schedule a scrimmage against, Canoe, a division one team in Madrid. As I have said many times before, the biggest difference between division one teams and division two teams is size. Canoe’s shooting guards were taller than our post players, making their post players quite large. The game went by in a bit of a blur and as I was sitting on the dark wood floor, stretching out my limbs, one of my teammates said, “estabamos empanadas (we were empanadas).” Confused as to why she was referring to us as a spanish food item, I asked her to explain the meaning of this phrase. She visually drew a picture for me of someone waking up in the morning, it is dark in their room, they do not know where anything is, they cannot remember what they have going on that day etc. In other words, our team was a bit of a disaster on Thursday night. To me, empanadas are delicious and I have not really been able to fully understand the correlation, oh well.
Saturday’s game, unfortunately, had a similar recipe to that of Thursday’s empanada. At 1:30pm We boarded an Ave. train that took us the three hours or so to Barcelona. The team we were facing was Segle XXI or 21st Century. They are a young, athletic team with a lot of talent. The first time around we had squeaked out a win by just 2pts. The second time around would prove differently. With Sarah Crooks still strapped to the sidelines we pulled up our boot straps and took the floor. The first quarter was a constant foot-race. The ball flew down the court over and over again, leading to easy, uncontested baskets for Segle XXI. At one point we were trailing 21-9, but we fought back and got ourselves to within two points before the end of the half, 30-28. I was feeling very confident in my team and had faith that we could win the 2nd half, but after committing 21 turnovers, the win was out of reach. This was a very important game that we needed to win. Right now we are in 5th place, the top 4 teams advance to the playoffs and this upcoming weekend we face Navarra, the top team in our conference.
Sunday morning came and with it the tradition of going out in the neighborhood called, La Latina. I accompanied several of my teammates to a bar and followed them downstairs. The room opened up and we were greeted by a large table of friends, most of them having played on the same teams at one point or another. For several hours we sat and enjoyed beer, sangria and tapas. One tapa that I had never had before was a bowl of french fries covered in eggs and sliced hotdogs. Spanish culture is poles apart from American culture. I sat back and watched as many of these athletes lit cigarettes and joined in on the clapping and singing of various spanish songs. Spanish women are loud, and nobody ever has a problem telling you how they feel or what they think. There is no room for passive behavior.
After several hours the group changed venues and moved to a bar across the street where a large, flat screen T.V was showing the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, men’s basketball game. Barcelona ended up throttling Madrid by 20 points. This rivalry is similar to that of MN vs. WI, and so there were several cranky chicas following the game. Spanish people are real party animals. We started the afternoon around 3pm and by 9pm I was ready to head home, but not the rest of the group. I heard my roommate come back home around 2am and she had to work in the morning.
Leslie’s Loose Ends
Potaje de lentejas. This Cuban stew is darn right delicious. The spicy chorizo makes it one of the best stews I have tasted. http://www.bigoven.com/169443-Potaje-De-Lentejas-(Cuban-Lentil-Soup)-recipe.html Give it a try, it was easy to make and well worth the wait.
Perhaps I have mentioned this before but in Spain when you ask how far away something is you will always hear a response in kilometers. Charly asked Sarah how long it would take to get from her parent’s farm to Vancouver and Sarah replied, “about three days.” Charly was dumbfounded! “3 days! What if I drive fast? What if I don’t sleep?” Now, talking in hours and days sounds pretty ridiculous to me after listening to Charly’s way of thinking.
Tons of jokes that I hear in Spanish sound pretty funny, but when I imagine saying the same thing in English, it just does not seem right, or funny. Weird.
I rolled over in bed this morning, picked up my cell phone and checked the time. 11:20am. I was waking up a bit later than usual but not for no good reason. Last night around 5:45am I heard the buzzer for our apartment going off, ring ring, ring ring! Knowing that each one of my roommates had slept at home I decided to ignore the ringing and go back to bed. Ring ring, ring ring, ring riiiiiing. Whoever was downstairs at this early hour was clearly not going away. I was bound and determined not to get out of bed and answer the call because 10 times out of 10 the person downstairs was nobody that I knew and was just ringing everyone’s buzzer in hopes that someone would let them in. Well, after 2 long minutes I could not take it anymore. I threw off my covers and stomped to the front door where I picked up the phone and in my most groggy and annoyed voice said, “Si (yes)?!” Of course, there was no answer. I should not have even picked up the phone because once I spoke into it, the person downstairs knew that someone was awake in apartment 4A. The ringing increased to an all time high and not two seconds later my roommate, Marta Cobian, stumbled down the hallway. She promptly yanked the phone off the hook and gave the person downstairs a piece of her mind. Word to the wise, do not ever pick a fight with a spanish woman. You will not win.
Well, after this heart warming escapade I found it difficult to fall back asleep, so I picked up my book instead, read for a couple hours and fell back asleep. Which brings us to the present time, now.
Along with last night’s unusual theatrics, this past week was a bit off kilter as well. We ended up playing 2 games instead of one, however, one of the games was more of a friendly scrimmage. Since we had last weekend off and it had been a full two weeks since we had had a game, Charly decided to schedule a scrimmage against, Canoe, a division one team in Madrid. As I have said many times before, the biggest difference between division one teams and division two teams is size. Canoe’s shooting guards were taller than our post players, making their post players quite large. The game went by in a bit of a blur and as I was sitting on the dark wood floor, stretching out my limbs, one of my teammates said, “estabamos empanadas (we were empanadas).” Confused as to why she was referring to us as a spanish food item, I asked her to explain the meaning of this phrase. She visually drew a picture for me of someone waking up in the morning, it is dark in their room, they do not know where anything is, they cannot remember what they have going on that day etc. In other words, our team was a bit of a disaster on Thursday night. To me, empanadas are delicious and I have not really been able to fully understand the correlation, oh well.
Saturday’s game, unfortunately, had a similar recipe to that of Thursday’s empanada. At 1:30pm We boarded an Ave. train that took us the three hours or so to Barcelona. The team we were facing was Segle XXI or 21st Century. They are a young, athletic team with a lot of talent. The first time around we had squeaked out a win by just 2pts. The second time around would prove differently. With Sarah Crooks still strapped to the sidelines we pulled up our boot straps and took the floor. The first quarter was a constant foot-race. The ball flew down the court over and over again, leading to easy, uncontested baskets for Segle XXI. At one point we were trailing 21-9, but we fought back and got ourselves to within two points before the end of the half, 30-28. I was feeling very confident in my team and had faith that we could win the 2nd half, but after committing 21 turnovers, the win was out of reach. This was a very important game that we needed to win. Right now we are in 5th place, the top 4 teams advance to the playoffs and this upcoming weekend we face Navarra, the top team in our conference.
Sunday morning came and with it the tradition of going out in the neighborhood called, La Latina. I accompanied several of my teammates to a bar and followed them downstairs. The room opened up and we were greeted by a large table of friends, most of them having played on the same teams at one point or another. For several hours we sat and enjoyed beer, sangria and tapas. One tapa that I had never had before was a bowl of french fries covered in eggs and sliced hotdogs. Spanish culture is poles apart from American culture. I sat back and watched as many of these athletes lit cigarettes and joined in on the clapping and singing of various spanish songs. Spanish women are loud, and nobody ever has a problem telling you how they feel or what they think. There is no room for passive behavior.
After several hours the group changed venues and moved to a bar across the street where a large, flat screen T.V was showing the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, men’s basketball game. Barcelona ended up throttling Madrid by 20 points. This rivalry is similar to that of MN vs. WI, and so there were several cranky chicas following the game. Spanish people are real party animals. We started the afternoon around 3pm and by 9pm I was ready to head home, but not the rest of the group. I heard my roommate come back home around 2am and she had to work in the morning.
Leslie’s Loose Ends
Potaje de lentejas. This Cuban stew is darn right delicious. The spicy chorizo makes it one of the best stews I have tasted. http://www.bigoven.com/169443-Potaje-De-Lentejas-(Cuban-Lentil-Soup)-recipe.html Give it a try, it was easy to make and well worth the wait.
Perhaps I have mentioned this before but in Spain when you ask how far away something is you will always hear a response in kilometers. Charly asked Sarah how long it would take to get from her parent’s farm to Vancouver and Sarah replied, “about three days.” Charly was dumbfounded! “3 days! What if I drive fast? What if I don’t sleep?” Now, talking in hours and days sounds pretty ridiculous to me after listening to Charly’s way of thinking.
Tons of jokes that I hear in Spanish sound pretty funny, but when I imagine saying the same thing in English, it just does not seem right, or funny. Weird.
I finished reading the Scarlet Letter this week. An American classic, a bit slow at the beginning, but I am happy to have read it.
For many years I have grown up hearing about France, Paris and the Eiffel tower. For this reason, I have created a magical, fairy tale picture in my head of Paris. Combined with my thoughts and my real life experience, I have walked away from Paris with an oh-so-sweet taste in my mouth. This taste is similar to the same taste I experienced as a 6th grader when my family took a trip to Disney Land. After that trip I felt so light and airy, Disney Land was in-fact, where dreams came true. As an adult, I am now enjoying the same sense of deja vu. For this reason, I was not looking forward to writing about a not so exciting week here in Madrid. However, Madrid is also a wonderful place in its own way and I love being here as well.
I hope you all have great weeks and not empanadas;)
hasta luego,
Leslie
No comments:
Post a Comment