Meeting the family

Saturday morning at ten is when  we were to meet our host families. I was quite anxious the night before.   I have heard multiple times that your host family can really make or break your experience in Seville.We almost missed the meet up because the windows had super intense blinds that appearently block 100% of the sun because I woke up thinking it was about 5 or 6 AM before I checked my clock and realised it was 9:23. Cody and I rushed out of bed and did that super fast getting ready routine that only seems possible when one wakes up at the wrong time. we checked out of the hotel and ate the breakfast at the hotel. I arrived about 5 minutes before 10 but they had started slighty early(wich was a great surprise considering everything else started late) Our family was the first one called and that's when I met Teresa Gonzales, our host Mom. I also met my two new roomates Hunter and Steven. Teresa took us out to the street where there was a taxi driver waiting for us to get in. My roomates had too big of bags so we ended up having to get another taxi. Steven and I got to ride to our new house back with Teresa while hunter rode by him self.

When we got to the apartments we found out that the taxi driver was not actually a taxi driver. It was Manuel, Teresa's Husband. Its very rare for a family to have a car here in seville so we are one of the lucky ones.  We are also the lucky ones because all during orientation we were told up and down about all these rules that we had to follow at all times in order not to offend our host family but because we have our own apartment we can can act how we normally act with out constantly worrying about the social norms here in Spain yet we still get to experience the culture here when we go eat or just hang out in their place.

Just as we were getting settled in Teresa came back down and started talking to us in spanish. They speak no english so communcation can be very tricky. I worked on spanish during my free time at school last semester so I know a little. All I could make out is that in 20 minutes we were going to go  drive somewhere. when she got back we thought we were all ready to go but she kept motioning for us to put clothes in a back pack and bring it with us. For some reason i thought maybe we were going to the

beach so i just packed my swim trunks and a shirt. it turns out our host family has another house in a province of Seville called Cornilla that was about about 30 minutes away and we were taking a weekend trip there. At first I was really bummed because there was a lot of shopping I needed to do and I had made plans with some people I had met and was very excited to get to know some of the other people who came. I ended up being extremely happy we went there instead. We got the chance to really get to know our family and had an amazing time. Teresa is an amazing cook and incorporates many different vegetables and meats into her dishes. I haven't had the same thing twice since I've been here and all of it has been fantastic.

The most interesting we did that weekend was definately asperagus picking. Teresa came into our rooms saying "chicos chicos vamanos" which means boy's lets go. she must have told us the night before but its been so hard to understand whats going on because of the small amount of spanish we know. We had no idea what was going on and just started following Teresa. We walked a solid mile before we got to this random field. We were so confused as to what was going on by then but we were just going with it. We followed her into the field watching her looking at the ground and moving brush away untill we saw her stand up with asparagus in her hands. It finally hit us that what we were doing. We thought it was great!

 We learned all about how and where asparagus grows and which ones are good to pick and which ones aren't. we spent a solid 2 hours picking asparagus that were spread sporadicly through out the field. We must have gotten over 30 pounds of the stuff. we filled two huge bags. Next step was too take our fruits of labor home to seperate and organise. We had three piles. one was for the short and thick shoots with really nice tips. Teresa told us that those kind are "mucho dinero" which is a lot of money. the
other was for huge stalks with good sized tips and the other pile was some sort of edible scrap pile. later that night we came back to seville and Teresa cooked the asparagus for us in the most foreign way imaginable. She had made us asparagus pie. It looked as though cookie monster had eaten Oscar the grouch and thrown it back up only to put into the shape of pie to give to his most hated enemy. After a small amount of hesitation we all tried it and it was actually extremely tasty. definitely something everyone should try.

P.S. (I'm not really sure if P.S. is appropriate for blogging but who knows)

I am sure you all are dying to know, just as I was, the milk here is ok to drink. In fact its AMAZING. It is true that it is served in a box at room temperature but it's still sooo yummy. I have already drank 7 boxes. Its very different than American milk. It taste much sweeter and the regular "whole" milk has almost twice the amount of fat as american whole milk, the partly skimmed milk is roughly the same as whole milk, and skim milk thankfully doesn't exist here. I felt kinda bad because one time I drank all the milk and Teresa was very confused where an entire case of milk could go. I went out and bought a new case and I am sure to keep at least that much in the fridge so I dont upset her anymore. Also if any of you come to Spain some time and wish to know my recommendation of milk the brand Muuu has been an excellent choice so far and receives the highly regarded Ben Stamp of Approval.