A - Z Challenge: MISSING HOME

SPAIN

As much as I love Spain, there's a lot I miss about my home(s) in Philadelphia and Williamsburg.  Obviously, I miss my family, friends, and pets, but here are some more specific things that, if you come to Spain, you'll find lacking.

Peanut Butter

Not a thing here.  Spaniards don't eat it.  Heck, Europeans in general don't eat it.  Peanut butter is  strictly American, which I didn't know until I got here.  Sure, you can find it in the supermarkets, but it's ridiculously expensive.  Plus, it's not nearly as good as Jif.

However, they do have an abundance of Nutella, of which I highly approve.  Good job, Europe.

Coffee Shops

Coming to Spain, I thought I would find an abundance of amazing coffee shops.  It's Europe, right?  I figured I'd be at a café every day, sipping excellent coffee while I wrote.

How wrong I was.

Yes, Europe has cafés, but they're not "sit and relax" cafés.  It's frowned upon to do any type of work, so no reading, no writing, no opening up your laptop.  Cafés are for eating, drinking, and socializing, so if you go alone to do work, you're given quite a lot of weird looks.

You know it's bad when my favorite café is Starbucks.  The only place with comfortable seating and free unlimited wifi.  Plus, it's acceptable to do work there (probably because it's 95% foreigners).  At any rate, I miss good ol' American coffee shops, and once I get back to Williamsburg, the managers  will have to literally drag me out of Aromas come closing time, because I won't ever want to leave.

Netflix

It stops working once you leave the States.  No streaming.  Nothing.  Same goes for Hulu.

Food (other than peanut butter, which obviously deserves its own category)

Steak.  Chinese take-out.  Corn on the cob.  Reese's Cups.  Soy milk.  Steak.  French vanilla coffee creamer.  Chips and salsa.  Pita Pit.  Steak.  Raw vegetables.  Dark chocolate M &Ms.  Did I say steak?

A - Z Challenge: GASTRONOMY

A lunch my host mom serves regularly.  Mostly peas
and chorizo.

SPAIN

Ah, the obligatory post on gastronomy, or in less fancy words, food.

The Spanish diet is, without a doubt, the single most interesting diet I've come across.  Not only for the type of food, but for food's place in culture and daily life.

Breakfast:  7:00 AM

Breakfast isn't a big deal in Spain.  Usually it consists of tostadas, the Spanish phrase for toast, with butter or jam, and café con leche (coffee with milk).  It's eaten whenever you get up in the morning, which for me, is usually around 7:00 AM.  Since lunch isn't served 'til 2:00 in the afternoon, I tend to break away from cultural norms and put peanut butter on my toast for some added protein.

(Peanut butter is not common in Spain.  Spaniards don't eat it, and though you can find it in the grocery store, it's very expensive.)

Lunch:  2:00 - 3:00 PM

A few weeks ago I attended a cooking class.
Here, our chef Carlos helps me make a
chicken and vegetable paella.

Lunch in Spain is not a mere sandwich or salad, as it is in the U.S.  Nope, lunch is the largest meal of the day, and that's large.  Every day, my host mother brings out huge portions of the main course, bread, cheese, salad, and fruit.  This is why the siesta is such an important aspect of Spanish culture:  people come home from work for lunch, so everything shuts down (most businesses are closed from 2:00 - 5:00), and afterwards, people relax, often taking a nap.

So what does the main meal consist of?

Spain's signature dish is paella, which consists of rice, chicken, chorizo, seafood, and vegetables (though you usually won't get meat and seafood mixed).  Paella, however, isn't an everyday food, unlike bread and chickpeas.  Being quite an ordeal to prepare, it's usually made on special occasions, oftentimes as a family activity.

It was my job to cut the squid!  To my
surprise, we used the entire squid.  Head,
tentacles, everything except the cartilage.

Most dishes I've had are stew-like:  white beans, chickpeas, or peas with bits of chicken and chorizo.  Spain, being located on the Iberian peninsula, also consumes a lot of seafood:  tuna, salmon, shrimp, and especially squid (often in an ink-based sauce).

If you have to eat on the run, you'll probably pack or buy a bocadillo:  a baguette-type bread with either chorizo, cheese, chicken, tuna, or tortilla española.

Our final products!  Paella!

Dinner:  9:00 - 11:00 PM

Dinner is small in Spain.  For us students, it usually involves tortilla española, which is usually made with eggs, potatoes, and sometimes vegetables.  It's very similar to quiche.  We eat it every day, sometimes with pumpkin soup, pasta with tuna, or a plate of vegetables.

Dessert

Usually dessert involves fruit:  bananas, oranges, apples, kiwi, strawberries.  I like fruit, but not as much as I like chocolate, so I had to do some good snooping in the supermarkets.  Here's what I found:

Principe cookies are like reverse Oreos, except they put Oreos to shame.  You can't get them outside of Europe, so I'm going to need a whole suitcase just for my supply of Principe Cookies.

Milka is one of the big "non-fancy" chocolate brands over here, equivalent to Hershey in the States.  The regular one is good, but you haven't lived until you've tried Milka with Oreo.  It's like a chocolate covered Oreo…but better.

Tapas

This is in Turkey, not Spain, but you can see the spit.

If you tend to get hungry between lunch and dinner or after dinner, Spain is your kind of place.  The streets are lined with tapas restaurants, where you can pay two or three euro and get small plates called tapas.  Morcilla, fried brie, croquetas, and more!  They're kind of like appetizers.

Random

Döner Kebab - You know how the U.S. has quick Chinese food on every corner?  Well, Spain has Turkish fast food in the form of döner kebab, a pita filled with chicken or lamb that's roasted on a spit.  My friends and I frequently make late night döner runs.

Helado - The ice cream in Spain is the best ice cream I've ever had in my life, plus it comes in all kinds of neat flavors, including Kinder and dulce de leche.

Churros con chocolate - Fried dough dipped in thick hot chocolate.  It's rough on the stomach, but it's worth trying at least once.

The Dreaded Middle

Believe it or not, my life in Spain is not all fun and games.  Like any extended life experience, there are ups and downs, but this week has been the most trying yet.  I've felt emotionally unstable, both sad and stressed, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've arrived at the dreaded middle of my Study Abroad experience.

Halfway there, and as my friend put it, the honeymoon period is over.  The veil we referred to as a "new cultural experience" has somewhat lifted from our eyes.

For example:

Two months ago:  "Wow, I guess Spaniards like cold showers.  Woot!  Time for cultural immersion!"

Now:  "Uh uh.  No way.  I ain't immersing myself in anything less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit."

Don't get me wrong.  I love Spain, and I love its culture, but I'm reaching that point of mild homesickness.  What I wouldn't pay for a steak.  For a cup of real American coffee.  For a snuggle session with my kitty.

Yes, the middle stretch is always the most difficult, whether studying abroad, running a 5k, or writing a novel.  It's when the fun starts to wane a bit, when you suddenly realize, "Hey, this is actually hard work."

As for writing, maybe you don't know how to move forward.  Maybe your characters are getting on your nerves.  Or maybe you're just sick and tired of everything; all you want to do is get to the end.  But just as I can't fast forward to the end of my semester (not that I want to), you can't jump to the end of your manuscript.

So how do you push through the dreaded middle?  How do you make it to the end?

Everyone has their own methods, but I have something I like to call a driving scene.  It's one scene toward the end of the story, though not necessarily the climax, that I envision over and over again, so eager am I to write it.  But I don't.  Not until it's time.  Because if I write it to, say, get it out of my system, then it's free.  It's no longer driving me.  But when I keep it bottled up, it pulls me forward, dangling in front of me as a reward for perseverance.

Sometimes I describe it in one sentence or paragraph, as it would stand in a synopsis.  For example, the one for my drawer novel was, "The last grain of sand falls and the hourglass shatters."  That's not even a scene; it's just one image, and to anyone who isn't me, it probably doesn't mean anything.  But I know the details, so for me, it's powerful enough to pull me through however many chapters precede it.  Anyway, I'll take that driving scene sentence and scribble it into my notebook, or paste it above my desk, so it can act as a beacon toward my final goal.

My drawing is about as good as my singing (so not good), but sometimes I'll sketch the scene, too, and put that drawing where it will encourage me to keep going.

I have a driving scene for everything I write, even short works.  In fact, it's such a part of my writing process that I've even come to apply it to my outside life.  For example, I have a driving scene for this whole Study Abroad experience.  It's different than looking forward to something; when I just look forward to something, it's hazy, vague.  No, this is a clear image.  One image, and though I doubt it'll play out exactly as I have it in my head, it's the image I envision whenever I'm feeling down.

It's greeting my family at the airport in Barcelona, after not having seen them in six months.

Truth!

Study Abroad: Real Settings

¡Hola!  Si no ya sabéis, estoy en Sevilla, España.

That's Spanish for "Hello!  If you don't already know, I am in Seville, Spain."  We arrived last Tuesday for our semester abroad, and so far, it's been excellent.  The food, the flamenco, the winding streets…

Nowadays, lots of college students will spend some time abroad.  At many schools, studying abroad an unspoken expectation.  No doubt it's a valuable experience for everyone, but it's especially awesome for writers.

Sure, it's great to play the part of "expatriate artist," like Hemingway or Fitzgerald, and sit in a bar or café while penning the next Great American Novel--but let's also be honest with ourselves.  What with challenging classes (sometimes in another language), endless social activities, and all the excitement of a foreign city, our writing time is probably going to significantly decrease.  I know mine has.

Yet at the same time, I'm considering this entire semester as writing research.  Here I am in a completely new setting, surrounded by a new culture, and it's the perfect opportunity to absorb an atmosphere that could easily end up in a story.  Personally, my favorite books all have unique settings:  the little Colombian town of Macondo, or the streets of Pamplona, or the plantations of Georgia (One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Sun Also Rises, and Gone with the Wind, respectively).

I'm sick of New York.  I'm sick of London.  I'm sick of L.A.  Give me some place exotic.  I read for experiences I can't have in my real life, so the less likely I am to travel to a certain setting, the better.

Take Daughter of Smoke and Bone, for example.  While I'm not big on paranormal romance,  I loved the two main settings:  Prague and Marrakesh.  Would the plot have changed much if Laini Taylor set her novel in London?  No, not at all.  But seriously, I've read so many stories set in and around London, I feel like I vacation there every summer.  Prague?  Marrakesh?  Now those are entirely new.

One of the reasons I chose to study in Seville was the setting.  As an English major, it makes much more sense for me to go to England.  In terms of classes, it would probably be better.  But Seville, while crawling with Americans, is a city unlike any I've ever visited.  Narrow streets, lively plazas, a beautiful river…My writer's mind is running wild!  No lie, in this past week alone, I've figured out ways to include a flamenco dancer, gitanas (gypsies), and the city itself in my WIP.

Also, if you haven't already realized, I'm big on setting, so expect more posts about it :)

For now, enjoy these photos of Seville, Spain :)

A calle (street) in Seville.

Look at that bridge!  (I've yet to cross it.)

The gardens of the Alcazar (a palace).  If you're a fantasy person, and write about palaces regularly, why don't you try this:  Instead of the usual "Cinderella's Castle" or Gothic fortress, give it some pizazz.  I'm talking bright colors, arches, and tropical gardens like this one.