Monochrome Sevilla

  

Credits for our Sevilla trip go to:

Cat, the most famous (former) auxiliar in the land - we missed seeing her in town but she sent us some awesome suggestions for places to eat (Cuban food in Sevilla? yes please.) and general info about town. Thanks chica!

Thanks to the anonymous commenter on this post who told us about a cool flamenco spot. We went, drank some agua de Sevilla, and said "ole!" a lot. It was a great night. Out yourself and I will give you a proper thank you!

Thanks to tobyo also, who gave us all sorts of helpful suggestions!

And of course thanks to The Mister and his sister for being bitchin' travel companions and for pausing so frequently while I stopped to take pictures. Between you and me though, I think I make up for it by leaving all the chocolate for them when we eat churros.

Sevilla

Spain: good paella, bad labor laws

Oh, sorry, did you say that I've been neglecting this blog?

It's because I've been off in Sevilla with my fab sister-in-law eating paella.

I'll be back tomorrow with some pictures and stories. I'll have plenty of time because there's a huge strike tomorrow in pretty much every economic sector in Spain so I'm not going to work. Because there won't be a bus to take me there. Or other teachers to teach with. Or, you know, students.

Oh, Spain.

   

Hard to say which view was more memorable in the end

Taken March 11, 2012.

4:14 p.m. (just after lunch)

Right after I took this picture, a teenage couple stood six feet in front of where The Mister and I were sitting and proceeded to suck face with a frenzied intensity. There may or may not have been lots of swaying hips and wandering hands. We tried wildly not to laugh, but they were right in front of us. 

We lost the battle.

We are only human, after all.

   

Sevilla, here I come

I'll be leaving the coast this weekend to head to Sevilla with The Mister and His Sister (I had a lot of fun typing that out; I hope you had fun reading it). Those of you who have been to Sevilla - what should we make sure to see/eat/experience?

Easter package

Easter care package!

Prize item: Starburst jelly beans.

See? More American food. 

  

The view from here

I have an iPhone, and it doesn't have internet. I mean it works if I have wi-fi around, but I don't pay for the data plan and so the poor thing is like a bird without wings. 

I find though that the iPhone is pretty much incredibly useful even without internet: GPS locators (she's navigated us on successful roadtrips through both France and Portugal), the ability to easily flip between languages so I can text in both English and Spanish, iBooks (it's like a pocket Kindle, I read all sorts of books on there in PDF form), music and podcasts, and so on and so forth.

And, of course, the camera. Here's the view from here lately:

American food is not a myth

Getting a slice in NYC, September 2011

I'm having one of those weeks where it seems to have suddenly occurred to a lot of people around me that I'm American. Coworkers, friends, and my students have been full of questions this week. Which is great. I don't mind answering them, even when they're asking me for the hundredth time why Americans are so fat. 

But this, this one question, is somehow driving me crazy this week, and I swear if I hear one more person say that American food is limited to hamburgers, hot dogs and junk food or that America doesn't really have it's own food culture I might scream. 

So, listen up, Americans and otherwise: we have tons of foods that are uniquely ours. Sure, we are a nation of immigrants and lots of things (but by no means all) have roots in another food culture, but we have changed many things beyond recognition (I submit to you that seven-layer dip is American, not Mexican) and we have plenty of things all our own.

Off the top of my head:

casseroles

cinnamon rolls

biscuits and gravy

fried chicken (they fry it other places too but our buttermilk-soaked way is called "American style")

pancakes and waffles as breakfast food (elsewhere they're usually dessert, if they're around at all)

barbecue sauce and flavors

clam chowder

chicken and tuna salad

club sandwiches

banana splits

peanut butter and jelly

s'mores

coleslaw

crab cakes

jalapeño poppers

buffalo wings and hot sauce

grilled foods from a backyard barbecue (okay, maybe we co-own this with the Australians)

corn on the cob with butter and salt

buttered and flavored popcorns (white cheddar anyone?)

banana/pumpkin/zucchini bread

pumpkin pie

grilled cheese with American cheese (don't act like you didn't eat this as a kid, no matter how much the thought of American cheese grosses you out now. Also, if the thought of American cheese doesn't gross you out as an adult, you should do some soul-searching.)

macaroni and cheese

cranberry anything

anything with a chocolate and peanut butter combination

baked beans

caesar salads

eggs benedict

Now, I'm not saying we own this stuff exclusively or that other people don't eat it. But it's all definitely part of our American cuisine. And yes, such a thing does exist.

Whew, glad to have that off my chest.

I feel cleansed.

   

Carnival ride

Taken in London.

February 26, 2012.

Taken right after I saw Eddie Izzard running barefoot on a dirty London sidewalk.

Which still confuses me, to be honest.

Snow games in Jordan

The week before last, when we were snowed in in Jordan, we were in an empty, unheated apartment and we were hungry. (Yeah, I said unheated. In parts of the world where it doesn't snow often, people rely on space heaters and mild winters to keep themselves warm. Which they don't. But that's another post.)

So, we were hungry because we hadn't anticipated the weather and all we had was a half-eaten box of Honey Nut Cheerios. We saw them on a quick trip to the market and made an immediate decision to buy them, because we don't have anything like that in Málaga. For the record, the run-of-the-mill Jordanian grocery store had Betty Crocker baking mixes, peanut butter, Frosted Flakes, and Nutri-Grain bars. And that's all I saw before The Mister dragged me away from the food and towards the electronics section.

So: Jordan, me and The Mister, no heat, box of Cheerios. We were cold and hungry and the roads were impassable. There was no choice: we had to go out. We lined our (very un-waterproof) shoes with plastic bags in an attempt to keep dry, put on all our clothes at the same time to stay as warm as possible (I looked like the younger brother in A Christmas Story) and ventured forth. 

We walked for ten minutes and got absolutely soaked. The watery slush in the road came up to our ankles at some points and stepping right in it was the only option. My toes were numb.

Finally we came upon a little food counter. Saved! The menu was only in Arabic, and the people at the place only spoke Arabic. Our Arabic is limited to knowing how to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak Arabic" so it didn't come in that handy. Luckily, there was a huge photo on the wall of a cheeseburger. The Mister smiled, pointed to the cheeseburger, and held up two fingers. It worked. Two hot cheeseburgers (with fries!) later, we trudged back in the snow.

On the way back, groups of young guys had staked out the road, ready to pelt passing cars with blizzards of snowballs. They were also cheerfully lobbing snowballs at anyone that passed, and we fit that bill.

They saw my blonde hair, took in our unmistakable foreignness, and a gleam came into their eyes.

They laughed. "Welcome to Jordan!" they cried, and hurled snowballs right in our faces.

We looked at each other and smiled. Our "dry" clothes were ruined anyway. We couldn't really get any colder.

Why not?

So we scooped up snow as fast as we could and slammed 'em right back.

The London Eye watches over us

A friendship story

After our time in London, we went to Amman, Jordan to visit some friends. You might rightly wonder how in the world we have friends in Jordan, and we wonder that sometimes too. But it's because a few years ago in Phoenix a group of very smart, very engaged people put their heads together and thought, how can we make the world just a little bit better? And they thought that one thing the world could use right now is some mutual understanding between the Arab and Western worlds.

So, being industrious people, they decided to have a little impromptu gathering of young people: a few from the Middle East and a couple Americans (they threw in a Brit or two for the fun of it) and to toss everyone together for a week and see what happens. The Mister and I were invited to this week-long gathering, in which the Jordanians flew to Arizona and stayed in our homes, and we spent a week sitting in living rooms, sharing meals together, and having conversations about religion, politics, culture and the Black Eyed Peas.

And in that week, what do you know, we became friends. Good friends. We had deep conversations and sang Hey Jude together at the top of our lungs and learned about each other, our cultures and countries and religions. It was easily one of the most educational and eye-opening weeks of my life.

So last week we headed to Jordan to visit these friends, although the weather had other plans. There was snow/hail/sleet/ice/general winter mayhem for practically the whole time we were there, and a lot of our meetings with friends and almost all of our sightseeing was cancelled. A disappointment, definitely, but we still got a chance to see nearly everybody and have some great conversations and smoke some hookah (lemon mint flavor, yum) and eat some really fabulous hummus.

London, a street view

Monochrome London, Part II

 

Well we are back in Málaga, and it has been an eventful week folks! We got completely buried in snow in Amman and had a few really warm sunny days in London, so go figure. 

It's late and I'm still tired from our long travel day yesterday so I'll just post a few black and whites from London:

Visit:

Monochrome London, Part I