Food Glorious Food...

Hola a todos! I hope you're all basking in the heat of NZ because here today we had a freak hail storm. It was quite funny, I thought someone was knocking on our front door and then I opened the back door (whoch looks out over a well-like thing in the middle of the building) and it was hail. There were a couple of other people on their tiniest-balcony-evers and they were acting like they'd never seen hail before...

I am still adjusting to the way of life over here. The way that all the shops close from 2-5pm, and everyone comes out in the evening. Midnight is considered an early bedtime any night of the week, the siesta time is sacrosanct, and I'm told I'm eating early when I have dinner at 8. It is completely different and I'm hungry all the time, which actually isn't so bad I guess as there's lots of new foods to try. There is so much bread and chocolate! It's unbelieveable. And fruit is either prepackaged or you have to tell the people behind the counter what you want and they choose it for you, you're not allowed to touch it. I didn't know the first time I bought fruit and I got told off :(.

Anyway, this past weekend my italian flatmate Giulia and I hung out with some other international students a bit, there were a few italians, a german guy, a chezch (however it's spelt) guy, and a few greek girls, and we went to a couple of nightclubs. I love the music here! It's actually music! It's different. Also one night we ended up at this Teteria, which serves tea (really, actually tea) but it's all exotic, I had some yoghurt flavoured stuff which was quite nice, I know some people in NZ who'd love it. We also had tapas (finally!) which was beautiful, and the australian pub is nothing of the sort. It's boring. Oh, and we found this bar called "la escuela' which means school, and the barmen took a shine to us and gave us these badges that read "I want to go to school". Awesome!! And they have 2 euro mojitos on friday nights. I think I'll go back...

On saturday at lunchtime Giulia cooked Italian Pasta for Amanda and I (another girl from NZ) and it was gorgeous. I have also tried plain toast with olive oil and a little bit of salt (reccomended!) and I can't wait to try pizza! Anyway, Amanda has found a flat with some other italian girls so on Sunday we invited everyone over and cooked a NZ roast for them (chicken), with pavlova for dessert. It went down very well and on thursday we have been invited to Amanda's flat for an italian dinner, I have no idea what they're gonna cook but I can't wait!

Last night we went to see Australia, in spanish, which was interesting. It helped knowing a bit of the country's history already, but we could actually understand quite a bit! Not all but enough to put us in a good mood for the 30min walk home at 12:30am. On a Monday night! And when we got home Giulia cracked open some sangria! I went to bed.

And this morning I had to get up earlier than I have been, because I have a sort-of-job helping a doctoral thesis student with her english. She's presenting part of her doctoral thesis in it and wants help with pronunciation and grammar. It's actually kind of fun, as I get to sit in her tutor's office for an hour, listen to them talk and correct them when necessary, and they have a few sweets left over from christmas so sometimes I get some of those as well! It gets kinda boring when they start talking math, because her thesis is in, you guessed it, civil engineering!! I come halfway round the world to study spanish and I end up with more engineers. Typical. Giulia is also studying engineering of some sort, although I'm not sure what.

So after almost falling asleep in class and being made fun of by the professor (I didn't really mind :P) I got some more passport-like photos taken, only smaller, and now I have a student card (with discounts on regional trains and buses) and a bank account. It doesn't have any money in it yet but it's free and I'm sure it'll come in handy.

Anyway, I am at the uni and my battery's running a wee bit low so I might finish here. Bye!!