Living with my parents (again)

Having to come home early has been interesting. For the first two days my mother tried to feed me constantly. I finally put a stop to that. I'm also able to eat more because I'm eating less wheat and I've been eating it at night. I'm so tired that I can fall asleep even if I haven't fully digested the wheat product. (I was not able to do this in Spain.)

Basically, I spend all of my time on the couch. Sometimes I watch TV, but mostly I just sit and do nothing. I try to take care of the dog, but that's a major challenge because she is constantly sliding backwards off her rug onto the tile floor. She doesn't have enough strength in her back legs to get herself back up and onto the rug, so she cries and whines. I'm really bad at picking her up, so most of the time I have to get my parents to help her. Sometimes (when I'm the only one in the room) she sits there crying because she doesn't hear me typing and wants my mom to pay attention to her.

I've been giving in and eating early dinner. Last night we were finishing up dinner at 6:15, which is when I would usually be eating an afternoon snack. I think eating earlier is helping my stomach a little....so that's a good thing.

Some American things I'm getting re-adjusted to:
TV commercials. They're loud and in English (harder to ignore), although I have forgotten about most of the products they advertise.
The eating schedule. (as mentioned above)
Being in a car all the time. I haven't driven yet, instead I'm being chauffeured around suburbia like when I was in grammar school.
Foods I had missed. Flavorless marshmallows! Cranberries! Salsa! Pretzels! (they do make me really sick - but they taste so good).

There will be more to add to this list as soon as I get some sushi and go to Trader Joe's. I've already decided that all I'm bringing back to Spain is food. (And the underwear I brought home.)

jet lag

I've been home for four nights and I'm still jet-lagged....It might be partially because I'm sick, but I start to fall asleep at 9ish. Then, I usually make myself stay up until 11 or so...which means I did not see Slumdog take best picture (I didn't even come close). Then, I wake up at 6:30 in the morning!!!! I haven't gotten up that early (on a daily basis) since high school. The TV in my room doesn't work (I probably wouldn't use it anyway) and I don't have the energy or brain function to read, so I just lay in bed and stare at my ugly walls wanting desperately to paint them. I've already know what color: the same green as my Orla Kiely bag....this isn't going to happen any time soon because I can't even watch TV without falling asleep. (aka I have zero energy to paint).

Granada

This weekend I went to Granada because some friends, who are teaching English in Madrid, came to see Andalucía. We met in Buenos Aires when we studied abroad. They arrived Friday evening and only stayed 24 hours. I also arrived Friday evening, but I went first to my friend's apartment. He lives overlooking Parque Garcia Lorca, which is a tiny park just outside the center of the city. I got there late because the lovely bus left 30 minutes late and got stuck in traffic.

We met up for tapas in the center. I took them to a bar where we were given an open-faced sandwich of tortilla (egg omelet with potato and onion) and roasted red pepper. The bar was full and everyone in there seemed to be Spanish. We were happy to be in a tourist-free bar. Granada is full of tourists and foreign students. It's hard to go anywhere without hearing English being spoken.


After our drinks (most of us had seltzer) we decided to go for Mexican food instead of more tapas. I had chips and guacamole, which was pretty good, but not spicy enough. It had jalapeños in it, which I ate whole because I was so excited about the presence of flavor. The service at dinner was awful. The waitress actually admitted to us that she had forgotten about us. Then she forgot to bring us more water. Then they brought us the wrong food (two of the same entree, when we only ordered one). After dinner, we split up: the girls went off to their hostel to get some sleep before heading up to the Alahambra Saturday morning and I went to the apartment.



Saturday morning, I slept late and then went to the Corte Inglés, a department store with a great food store in the basement. I'm pretty sure it's British owned because it carries many imported foods (from the US, UK and Asia). I was going to check out the gluten-free options they sell, which are numerous. I bought some papaya for breakfast on Sunday as well as chocolate soy milkboxes for my trip home.


Saturday afternoon I met up with the girls and we went for tea. Tea houses are very popular in Granada because of the Moroccan influence on the city. There is one street which is full of tea houses. They're all the same, so we picked a random one, which wound up to be a bad one. The place was crowded, but it still took 30 minutes to get a crepe and three cups of tea. They didn't serve us anything we had ordered. Amy wanted a cinnamon and sugar crepe; they brought a crepe with honey. (We made them change this one). Meagan's tea was supposed to be mint with sugar. What came was bitter and didn't have any mint in it at all. Andrea (Amy's coworker) ordered ginger tea. I tasted hers and it was basically a bowl of sugar. I'm not really sure if there were any other flavors. I ordered mint green tea with rose and sugar. Mine was not sweet and did not have any mint in it at all. Instead it was fruity and floral (and tasted the best out of the three). We left, angrily, and I walked the girls to their hostel where they got their stuff and headed to Córdoba.


I went back to the apartment and took a nap before tapas. Saturday night, Vicente and I went out for tapas. First we went to Poe, where the owner is British. He speaks Spanish (sort of) and English. Vicente refused to order in English even though he knows how. We were speaking a mix of English and Spanish which probably sounded ridiculous to anyone within earshot (yet made perfect sense to us). We got to pick tapas at the first place, so we had chicken in coconut sauce, bacalao, and veggies in Italian spice. (Vicente also had a pork plate.) I really like Poe, but more than half the crowd was speaking English. So we decided to go find a place where there would be no tourists.

We went to the most Spanish of Spanish bars. It was actually a restaurant/bar/cold cut store. Legs of ham hung from the ceiling. Entire sides of pork hung alongside chorizo on the walls. Our tapas here were meat, meat and more meat. We didn't get to choose. I had bread (to get some gluten into me) and left the pig products to Vicente, who, being Spanish, ate them happily.


Sunday morning, I woke up and went out to the part to edit part of his doctoral thesis (he almost done studying geology). It was so warm in the park that I didn't want to leave to come back to Priego. The weather has been pretty nice here, but nothing like in Granada. Then we went for lunch - more Mexican! I, again, had chips and guac, but I wasn't really able to eat much because I just wasn't hungry. My body was pretty much rejecting the idea of food because it was afraid food would make me sick. So, Vicente ate and then took me to the bus station, where I barely caught my bus. I came back to Priego and didn't do much for the rest of the day.

Noodle Kugel with Teachers

I decided to repeat my noodle kugel with some of the teachers from my school. I explained it to them as a Jewish-American dish that is different in every restaurant and family. Ours used penne because that was the only egg-flavored noodles I had in the house. We put in apples and raisins. It was delicious and the teachers enjoyed learning and cooking at the same time. It also made me very very sick because of the gluten in the noodles.

Gluten update

So, I'm pretty bad at this blogging thing.....I haven't updated in a few days.

Anyway, project gluten is not going so well. I've discovered that pasta is the worst substance. Crackers make me sick, too, but pasta is the worst. It helps if I've eaten something before the gluten. I can't usually eat after I've eaten something that has gluten in it. Even tea makes me want to throw up. This weekend wasn't too bad because I didn't eat much gluten.

The pains in my abdomen have started to move around my body. I have pain on the lower right side when I eat most foods. It's lower right and left after gluten, and sometimes it moves around to my back.

My parents and I have decided that I'm going to fly to the US to figure out what's wrong with me. I was supposed to be going to Geneva this weekend, but I'm going to NJ instead. I don't know how long I'll be there...at least until I'm better enough to come back here.

See you soon.

Los 80!

On Saturday we had an 80s-themed party.


Americans...

Roommate photo.

We asked people to dress up: some did, but others didn't. The party was fun and the Spanish people really enjoyed it. Cecilia and Erin made jello shots (aka jello with vodka) which I refused to try because they smelled too much like vodka and I HATE vodka. The Spanish had never heard of or seen jello shots before. They were quite intrigued by the "American college" style affair.


Vanessa (Spanish) clearly was the best dressed.


Spanish co-workers attempt to get the jello shots out of their cups.

Bring on the Gluten: Day three

So, this morning I decided it was time to ditch my "wheat protein" conditioner because it's been making my scalp itch and I think I got some of it in my eye (my eyelid was swollen today because I kept scratching it). I read the ingredients to see if there was actual wheat in the stuff. Most of the ingredients were listed in Spanish except for the "hydrolyzed wheat protein" which was listed in English.....I still can't understand Spain...Spanglish ingredient listings????

Today i ate more. I had some of that British honey ginger cake (see previous pot for recipe) and some chocolate frosting I made using cocoa which has flour in it. I have a headache and my legs are really sore. My stomach doesn't like me. We'll see if I sleep tonight.