09-06-07PrimerasTapas

More pan tostada for breakfat, some class, more food, some beach, and finally some soccer!!

After class I headed to the beach and ended up playing with a few of the younger kids on the beach who were friends with the ‘little brother’ of someone in the program. After we (3 Americans and a Turk) started winning they became quite agitated. The result - lots of messing around by them so as to make the game slightly ridiculous. I guess it wasn’t fair of us to be beating them at their own sport! Excessive pride starts young in Spain. My knee, with the MCL I recently sprained, held up really well (I should not have been playing yet since I still have a good few months of rehab left, but I couldn’t help it).

That night I went out again to have some tapas for my first time since getting to Spain. At home I have a lot of the foods that are normally served at tapas restaurants but there are many many to try. We had three things – tortillas de patata, broquetes (little pickled fish which are sort of like sardines), and pan con lomo. All were very good, even the fish though I only had one.

Eating here in Spain has been something I feared at one point and now I have come to embrace it as a fantastic experience. My mind has really opened up in the last 6 months or so to new foods, partially due the fact that I realize that the taste of food is not as important as I once thought. Though wonderful when done well, food is good in many forms and I might as well give every one a chance to grow on me. Here I also tried grouper and found that it is a decent tasting fish as well. My mother attends to my dislike of foods carefully, always providing alternatives to what I might dislike. It creates a healthy environment for tasting new foods!