La Cena de dos familias

Tonight my family and I went over to Emily's family's house for dinner. It was so nice. Both of our families eat their dinners outside. I also ways thought they placed foreign dinners in movies outside because it is more scenic like in Mama Mia, but they really do eat outside. The do have mosquitoes here, but I have yet to actually seen them. I have some huge bites from them though. Other than the bugs, eating outside is very pleasant. Emily and I had a long conversation with both of our parents about Texas, Spain, how we were raised, theatre, learning Spanish and much more. I don't think the dads understand much, but both of the moms speak a good amount of English. They speak more English than I speak Spanish. Emily's mom is almost fluent, so if I ever got really stuck when trying to say something, she would help me.

Get this...Spanish isn't their first language. Say what?! My town, Cardadeu, is in Catalonia. Their first language is Catalan, but they are taught Spanish at a very early age. I am still trying to figure that out. The youngest in my family, Ferran, speaks both Spanish and Catalan. Sometimes he speaks both to me, which is very confusing. In the household they usually speak Catalan, but they speak Spanish to me. The second that they begin speaking with each other, they are speaking in Catalan. At dinner tonight if the parents would talk amongst themselves, it would be in Catalan. I am so impressed. They were practically born bilingual. Before I came everyone kept telling me how much fun I was going to have here because Spain won the world cup. Nope. Catalans hate Spain. When the parade in Madrid came on the television the youngest flicked it off. Yea, it probably isn't appropriate for him to flick anything off, but I don't think he knows what it means. I remember flicking off my classmates when I was his age. Surely he'll learn. I won't be the one to teach him though. People from Catalonia like Texans think their state is the best. The father and I established this similarity pretty quickly. Catalonia even wants to secede from Spain. The reason that people from Catalonia have so much disdain for Spain is because the government tried to prohibit them from teaching Catalan in their schools. Apparently this was on the world news. Everyday we work on their summer school work for a good portion of time, an hour to two hours, and their school work is in Catalan. I can help them with some things, but sometimes I just do not understand. Of course, their work is in a language that I have never studied, but most languages have their similarities. Then there are the universal things like math that I can manage to help with. I haven't had to deal with anyone who didn't already know that I only speak English and some Spanish. Hopefully, when I go into to Barcelona on Friday I won't have too many difficulties.

Sobre la comida...they eat horribly here. Dinner is usually break with thin slices of cheese and bread. That sounds okay, right? For breakfast they eat sugar. Not straight sugar, of course, but the kids eat sugary cereal with chocolate milk. To top that sugar intake off they have dessert after every meal and for snacks. Only one of me and Emily's kids are a little on the obese side. Its mine. Poor little Bernot is a little overweight. I had a conversation with his mom about it today. Not because I asked. She just started talking about it when he kept eating cereal. She laughed about it, so I guess she isn't too concerned. Part of the conversation over dinner was about what they eat. Emily was telling them that women in America would never eat as much bread, rice, and pasta as they do, yet the women are small. They have bellies though, which could probably be diminished with consuming less carbs. I don't really know though. They immediately said that they thought America had a lot of obese people and they are right...We said that obesity is a more prominent problem with lower income people and children. The first day I was here they bought me whatever food I wanted from the grocery store. I picked our spinach salad, carrots, cucumbers, apples and bananas. They all taste the same. In Ecuador, there were not that many similarities in fruits and vegetable. In Spain, the food they do have is not too strange for me, which is nice. Sonia makes me delicious salads with my spinach, corn, carrots, cucumbers, and oil and vinegar as the dressing. Oh and tuna. Some day soon I will ask her to leave the tuna out because she always gives me chicken with my salad. Too much protein, Sonia.

Tomorrow I will get to hang out in the center of town with Emily. Then the next day we are going to Barcelona. This is the only weekend that I will be able to see Emily...Sonia and Marta, Emily's mom, coordinated our schedules for us, so that we could hang out. That was very nice of them because I am almost positive we are going to be inconvenient for them. Santi, my father, insists that it is not a problem. Santi is so nice. He bought be a fan for my room today. He said that otherwise I was going to loose ten pounds because of sweating. Was I sweating that much?

Buenas Noches!