Wow, I can’t believe I’m already done with my first week in Spain! It’s been incredible, and super busy. I’ve been going to Spanish class from 9 – 1 every morning at a school for international students. My class had two girls from Korea, three from Holland, and one from Switzerland, plus me! (There were boys at the school too, but classes were split up by level and we just happened to have all girls loan calculator).
In the afternoons, I worked with various people at the Hospital Infanta Luisa–I met the kitchen staff, the nutritionist, and a few of the doctors. No one there speaks English at all, but they are all so sweet and welcoming! I got to sit in on some patient consultations and look at all the diet plans for the patients in the hospital. I get to do a lot of really cool things with them in the next couple weeks, so I’ll try to write more descriptive posts on all that Business Centre in Hong Kong!
I’ve also been exploring Seville and going out with some of the other students in my internship program. We’ve met students from all over the world—and usually can manage to communicate with them through broken bits of Spanish and English (they all know so many languages!!). I also found an intercambio, or exchange partner. His name is Antonio, and he is so nice and actually pretty good at speaking English! Tonight I am going to his friend’s apartment to watch the fútbol game (go España!!)
Phew. As fun and exciting and different as my first week here has been, it’s also been exhausting! Today Nicole and I just crashed and spent the morning sleeping in and lazing about. It was a perfect opportunity to try out some Spanish recipes Virtual Office Hong Kong!
Wine here is really cheap for being so delicious, but at all the restaurants tourists order sangria, which is wine mixed with liqueur and fruit. We decided to save money and calories by making our own healthy version—and it was soooo good! We’ve already had like half the pitcher today, whoops. All you do is add ~2 cups of sparking/selzer water , a bottle of red wine, and some chopped, fresh fruit to a picture and viola! You have a low-cal, natural cocktail that is a lot more thirst-quenching than the original, sugary versions.