26 September 2009

Working Conditions

“Could I make the dessert for tonight?” I asked Carmen. We were hosting yet another dinner party.
“What were you planning on making?” she replied.
“A pie, with nuts.” My true plan was a tart with maple cream and a pecan-pie filling except with walnuts, but seeing as pecan pie doesn’t exist here, that explanation wasn’t going to translate well.
“Well someone will probably bring some sort of dessert, a trenza or something like that. But another night,” Carmen said.
I was disappointed: I’d wanted to show off my cooking skills. I’ve been on a roll, between the éclairs from a few days back to the chili-chocolate vegan cake and the pizza I baked for a lunch with friends yesterday. I had been looking forward to testing out this recipe of my own creation – instead, I’ll be making rice with peanut sauce, also good, but I made it just a week ago. “Could you pick up some ginger at the store?” I asked Carmen this morning.
“Why?”
“It would be really good in the rice dish,” I explained.
“But you didn’t put it in last time, and it was wonderful!” she said. I appreciated the complement, but didn’t know how to explain that I would have utilized ginger last time, I just didn’t have any.
Back to the pie idea.
“So you wanted to make something like yesterday?” Carmen asked, referring to the cake.
“No, something with dough [I motioned to the pie pan I’d brought out] and nuts on top.” There is a fatal flaw to the Spanish language: the baking vocabulary is very limited. First off, a verb for “to bake” doesn’t exist. I’ve been using “hornear”, from the word “horno” for oven, which literally means “to bake” but isn’t actually used.
“So what do people say?” I’d asked Carmen.
“Oh, that they’re going to make a cake, or algo así,” she’d answered. Or at least I think that’s what she said. Another difficulty, for me, is that the word she used, “pastel”, means “cake”, “pie”, and “pastry”. However, since pie as something sweet doesn’t really exist here, it more refers to quiche. The other options are similarly ambiguous: “tarta” means “cake”, “pie”, and “flan”; “caramelo” doesn’t just mean “caramel” but can also be used for any candy. The word for pudding, “postre”, also means “dessert”. Of course, I’m being a bit prejudiced: I’m trying to apply Spanish words to English desserts. Walking into a pastelería here, the labels for the gorgeous pastries are incredibly specific. This morning, I ate cabello de ángel, and Thursday afternoon I tried my first palmero. The first was baked by my abuela (and she must teach me someday!); the second, however, was bought, not homemade.
And purchasing seems to be the method of choice for desserts, pastries, and bread. Seeing as I wanted to make my own pizza dough for lunch yesterday, I needed to buy yeast. Another vocabulary problem for me: the dictionary said that yeast was “levadura”, but baking powder is also “levadura”. What I didn’t know, until I finally found yeast half an hour after commencing my epic search, was that in Spain at least, yeast is “levadura del panadería”. First I enquired in the small grocery store near school, where I found cocoa powder but not yeast. They told me that the only place to get yeast was at a bread shop. I walked to the nearest panadería and inquired there, but they told me that bread shops didn’t sell yeast, but the big supermarket would. I then walked to the big Corte Inglés, a department-store/supermarket chain whose largest location is 5 minutes from school and just as many stories tall. I was first led to the baking section, where the supermarket lady showed me the baking soda. She sent me to the bread section when I clarified what I was looking for (but not before a woman with a basket of items overheard me attempting to describe what I was looking for and came over to “help”.)
“I’m sorry, Spanish isn’t my first language,” I had explained, after saying that the levadura I was looking for was “alive” and “for bread”.
“Have you bought this here before?” the supermarket lady asked.
“Of course she hasn’t!” intervened the shopping woman. “She’s a foreigner!”
The bread lady sent me to the “specialty foods” section, where I found gluten-free baking powder, brewer’s yeast, and nutritional yeast. Before resigning myself to the fact that I’d have to make another dish for lunch, I asked one more supermarket person. She led me to the section that the first lady had shown me, reached up to the top shelf, and handed me exactly what I was looking for.
“Muchísimas gracias!” I thanked her. And the pizza came out perfectly. In fact, it rose exceptionally well. I make it the night before, and after letting it rise for an hour, wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap, as directed, and stuck it in the fridge.
When we arrived after school, very hungry and ready for lunch, I opened the refrigerator to take out the dough. It had broken through the plastic wrap and overflowed in a rising frenzy! No problem. We peeled the plastic wrap off of the rest of it, rolled it all out, added vegetables and spices, and placed the pizzas in the oven – which I think was at the equivalent of 350 degrees F. The oven only has a few numbers: a line, then a centimeter, then 170, then another line about a centimeter away, then 210…and no ready light. I never really know what temperature the oven is at; however, everything so far has come out well, so I must be guessing right.

21 September 2009

20.09.09

“¡Ay, niña, qué buena pinta tienen!” Carmen is complementing the éclairs I’ve just finished making. The cream filling is cooling and I’ve readied the puffs for completion, and since we don’t have any bar chocolate handy for frosting, I’m planning on topping them with Nutella. However, to prevent myself from prematurely pouring the lovely cream into the puffs, I’ve decided to write a little something to force patience.
My mother asked me about my classes a week ago or so. I have waited to write about them because my first impression was not very rosy: the classes were boring and the homework unstimulating. However, since the first few days, everything has improved exponentially. The teacher, who gave us an in-class essay on the first day, has really grown on me since that not-so-happy first impression. Our current book for English is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which I read during sophomore year. The fact that I’m rereading the literature makes English less enjoyable, but I’m enjoying listening to the comments of virgin readers with the foreknowledge of what will happen, and I’m making some observations and connections to ideas which I hadn’t yet learned of two years ago; the teacher’s commentary is also new and interesting, which makes for a better read.
Geography of Spain is the topic which is starting off my Spanish History course. Since many students don’t have advanced levels of Spanish yet, geography is something relatively language-light, although memory-heavy! By Monday we are supposed to have memorized all 50 provinces and the 17 autonomous communities that make up the country. (Not only is writing a good way to give the filling time to cool, it is also a great way to procrastinate studying!) The teacher is the same as for my Political Science class, and he is really great.
My Spanish Journalism class will produce two newspapers by the end of the year, and so far we have brainstormed topics and talked about the process. I am the only student with experience working for a school newspaper before. The layout of the paper is my group’s task, which happens before the article assignments here (the opposite of the Scroll). I recently wrote an article to send back to the Scroll, and the journalism teacher helped me think of topics to write about since I only had a few days to complete the article. I’ve enjoyed the readings for the class so far: memoirs and interviews with famous Spanish and American journalists.
My Spanish class, Humor, hasn’t tackled anything about jokes or puns yet; we’re currently focusing on vocabulary and some grammar review. The class prepares us to take the DELE exam, which is a professionally-recognized test for proficiency in Spanish as a foreign language. I absolutely love the professor – she is very kind but also controls the class well.
In Mediterranean and Spanish Art History, we’ve learned the format for critiquing a work of art (which involved learning a lot of art-focused vocabulary), and are looking at prehistoric art right now. During our trip to Albarracín, we explored a pine forest with some prehistoric paintings, and were able to identify the period and appreciate the paintings more. The professor has a doctorate in art history, although he has started off very slowly – my class contains some of the most basic Spanish speakers, which makes things difficult.
Finally, Political Science is my favorite class so far. Our homework assignments have varied between reading handouts regarding ideas such as power, authority, legitimacy, and force, the history of governments, and the newspaper. The professor is very animated and excited about the class, which makes it a lot more fun.
The class day begins at 9 o’clock and ends at 5:15, with a 35 minute morning break, one or two free periods, and an hour and a half for lunch, which we take at a local high school within walking distance. Since co-curriculars haven’t yet begun, I generally go to the library to use the wifi and then walk home to start my homework and then help my host mother prepare dinner. On my way home I pass this brilliant bakery, and I always stop to look in the windows, making for a sweet finish to the long class day.

20 September 2009

Albarracín

I expected metal-armored soldiers and petticoat-clad women to appear around each corner. I suppose a more accurate daydream would involve burka-wearing women and turbaned men, since Albarraín was one of the last Arabic hold-outs in Spain. Albarracín, a medieval Spanish town, was our school’s destination this weekend. Every building is made of stone, and to preserve the unique aesthetics of the city, gesso is the only adornment allowed on houses. The town is ideal for defense, surrounding by a small river on one side and large hills on the other. Enhancing the natural barriers is an incredible stone wall, a structure whose beauty seems to deny its purpose as a

tool for violence and war. The views of the city (only 1,200 people live there, but in negotiations a few hundred years ago, Albarracín secured the right to always be called a city) from the top of the wall are amazing.

We departed from Zaragoza at 8:30 on Friday morning and arrived at the hostel where we spent the night around 2 o’clock – lunchtime. We had stopped for a few hours at Teruel, another town rife with history and the capital of the province to the south of Zaragoza. Teruel has a lovely church and is famous for its mudéjar architecture.

Albarracín was the perfect spot for our short retreat, however. I loved the silence, a stark contrast to the city (I’m writing this at 11:20 on Saturday night, and the streets five stories below the windows are bustling and murmuring; they will until dawn). A particularly wonderful treat was our stop on Saturday on the way back north: we visited a forest with prehistoric rock paintings. However, rather than starring the art, for me the highlight of the very short hike through the sandstone-filled pine forest was its inspiration of memories of the lovely woods of Western Massachusetts and traversing them with classmates last spring. Another familiarity: people tap the trees in the area, although the sap is not used for sweet syrup but for paint thinner. Essential for artists. Detrimental to pancakes – but they don’t exist here, so it’s okay.