Life on a platter

Entering Spain


The "churizo" supposedly :)

the fish platter entree--delicious, eh?

laughing while crying

in the distance you can see the Rock of Gibralter

The street we stayed on--to the left and up a bit

Me and my Roman soldier boyfriend. He was the mayor of Ceuta once upon a time.


hey kids,
so, we came to ceuta this weekend. it´s in north africa, but it´s part of spain. everyone here speaks spanish. . .with a lisp. it definitely cracks us up. however, i´ve been experiencing my first period of culture shock. ¿who knew i would miss good ol´morocco this much? i think it´s because in fes they understand a little bit of english--enough to get around. ¿here? none. not even a tiny bit. it makes it difficult to get around, and to do something so simple as ordering food. you would think that with 3.5 years of spanish i would be able to figure some menu things out. but no. not so much. (i've decided it's because there's a conspiracy in schools in the US to have us be a monoligual society so that we look like fools on the world stage :) ) at every meal we´ve had here i´ve had to resort to eating bread b/c what i ordered was so revolting that i couldn´t eat it. take lunch yesterday for example: i ordered churizo, which ed had told me was delicious. it was supposed to be eggs, sausage, and tortillas. sort of like a breakfast burrito. what was put in front of me was. . . . . . .vomitously gross. it was a breadstick, cut in half, with bloody looking salami with huge chunks of what looked like fat, though i´m sure it was cheese. they were large white blocks. but it was all flat like a salami. i pretty much started crying b/c i was laughing so hard. but they weren't really tears from laughter. it was more laughter in spite of tears. i tried one bite, and it was awful as expected. so i just ate the breadstick. we have pictures---i've tried to post them, but they're not posting for some reason.

THEN for dinner last night we were sure we had picked a good place in the Club Nautico. it was in mel´s travel book, and looked a bit upper class. we thought the food might be good. we get there, and the waiter looks at us like we´re crazy for wanting to order FOOD at a RESTAURANT. crazy us. ¿how could be THINK such a thing? so we finally get across to him that we would like some food, and he tells us we are getting a three course meal. . .an appetizer, a salad, and fried fish and what we thought was fries. he brings out the appetizer. i´m pretty sure it was pate´with toast. mel and i tasted it, and it was okay but we didn´t eat much of it b/c it was like meat-spread. vaguely revolting. next comes the salad. it had olives, onions, eggs, tuna, and lettuce. it was pretty good, and we ate a good deal of the huge plate they brought out. hopefully there were no little cooties on the lettuce. then came the fried fish. i think we were expecting like PIECES of fish. what we got were whole. . .that´s right. . .entire fish, battered and fried. eyeballs and all. and no french fries. the waiter sets the plate down. . .it was gigantic, BTW, and leaves. we all stare at it for a couple of seconds, and then burst into laughter. shortly, the tears make a comeback, and i just can´t stop. there are all sizes and kinds of fish on this massive platter. we think there was some barracuda--they had teeth, but were long. there were some small--like 5-6 centimeters long--gold-ish fishes. i think they might have been sardines. there were hunks of something that you had to peel the scales off of before you could eat it. and finally, there were tiny pieces of squid. i ate a grand total of. . . . . .zero. i couldn´t bring myself to eat any of it. i didn't want the waiter to think i was rude though so i picked up a couple of the fish and cut them up on my plate. but i did not eat any. i just moved them around to give the picture of eating. watching mel pull fish bone after fish bone out of her mouth was too much for me.

this whole trip has made me miss ed. a lot. he is a master of the spanish language, plus he´s just a whole lot of fun. we could have avoided all the gross food experiences, and since he´s been here before we could be eating like kings! it´s okay though. the city is beautiful. we´re on the ocean. it´s cool. there´s always a breeze. i´ve seen that in the US--in TX at least--we don´t know how to dress. i think i´ll make a stop at H & M when we get to NYC to pick up some european clothing. everybody here looks at the height of fashion all the time. that´s probably just the european way. i´m pretty much just happy to be in shorts! we haven´t been hassled one single time, and i even locked eyes with a boy last night and got NOTHIN´!!!! that hasn´t happened in 3 weeks. it was great. and spanish men are not really very ugly creatures. i'd take one hope in my pocket as a souvenier. we'd just have to get him to a speech pathologist asap to take care of that lisp :)

just five days of teaching left, and 8 days until we leave to go home. i´m ready to be back in fes, but not necessarily ready to be back in america. that´s probably a good way to leave. . .wanting more.

love yáll!