Everyone knows that food is my passion in life, and I knew that coming to Europe would be very satisfying to my palate, but I never would have thought of some of the food combinations that Spaniards eat here all of the time. Potatoes, peas, and calamari....Rice and tomato sauce with an egg over easy with toast... etc. Pepi has made us some delicious meals and some interesting conversation. One of my most memorable meals was at dinner the other night when I was feeling really confident and happy because I had spoken Spanish really well at dinner (which is rare.) Marissa is way better at Spanish, and Pepi realized that quickly. Sometimes Pepi only looks at her when she speaks, and I sit and bob my head up and down and say, "Si, si" as if I'm really contributing to the conversation. But anyway, I had this great conversation and was feeling confident enough to suggest something in the food department. At our orientation, our leaders told us to tell our senora's what we do and do not like to eat. They said we should be straight forward from the beginning. Besides raspberries, I'm pretty open minded. I'm also living with someone who just left vegetarianism back in America. I'm so proud of her. Watching her eat 2.... not 1... but 2 hotdogs stuffed with cheese might have been one of the greatest moments ever to witness. She kept her cool. I would glance over at the tv and mumble, "You doing okay?" making sure Pepi didn't see the fear that I had on my face or the terror in Marissa's eyes. We've both been pretty open minded and trusting of Pepi's taste.
ANYWAY... on to the story.... so after dinner we are helping put everything away, and I thought I would ask Pepi about breakfast. Here, she sleeps in so we make breakfast on our own, which is perfect because 8 AM for Marissa and I is ROUGH. My alarm goes off... her alarm goes off... my alarm goes off and so on and so forth. We are always running late. All we have for choices of food are yogurt (blugh), toast, cheese, fruit. While we are sprinting out the door we grab the toast, and maybe a piece of cheese and fruit. So, I thought on this brave day that I would ask Pepi if she could make hard boiled eggs at night so that we could have them in the morning. Now, you also have to picture me giving hand signals and doing charades to try to describe how to hard boil an egg with limited Spanish and with my dictionary upstairs. Oh the look of confusion. If looks could kill.... I swear... I would have exploded in a second. "Huevos???? Por desayuno?! Nooooooo. No, no, noooo." In English: "Eggs, for breakfast??? Are you a fucking retard? No, no no no nooooo!" Wow. What did I just do? We then tried to explain that we eat eggs for breakfast in America, not for lunch and dinner like they do here. I didn't need her to make me eggs... I was literally just asking if she ever does that. Welp, the answer was no. She is always talking about her high cholesterol so during that conversation she tells us that her "medico"... doctor... says that we shouldn't eat more than 3 eggs a week. Fine. Whatever. High cholesterol. What about that cheese you eat every single day Pepi? The cheese spread on the table, the cut up "blanco" cheese that you have an entire cheese wheel in your fridge....the goat/brie cheese concoction you make with honey and oregano... god woman, you're gonna die of high cholesterol and take us down with you!!!! So I ask, nicely of course (not easy at this point after I have been shut down hard) and ask, "Pepi, el queso tiene cholesteral (The cheese has cholesterol)".... Pepi: " Nooooo, todos los dias!" Every day Pepi? You're telling me your medico crack head says that you can "eat cheese everyday?" Hmm... I think not. But what am I going to do, argue with my little old lady who feeds me all day, everyday? Nope. So i swallowed hard and walked upstairs.
The problem here could have been that the doctor told her to not eat cheese, but she's so deaf that she blocked it out. On our first Sunday here we learned that everything in Sevilla is closed. So we slept in late, came down at 11:00, ate a little snacky snack and watched Pepi cook. We thought hey! maybe we will get lunch early. Nope. We had to wait another 3 1/2 hours until lunch. Anyway, Marissa was reading a book. No way could I do that. The kitchen was roaring with splattering oil, there was noise outside... it's just not possible for me to concentrate in such conditions. So I turned the tv on. What comes on? FRIENDS!!! Oh was I happy. So I'm watching tv and Pepi tells me I should turn the tv on. I point to the tv and she laughs. She didn't realize it was on, she couldn't hear it. She actually thought that for over an hour I was just staring at a wall. The pictures of her family aren't THAT interesting to stare at for an hour. Sorry Pepi, your family looks just like everyone elses, and you've showed us about 5 times by now. Si, Si, es bonita....blah blah blah.
I really can be a sarcastic bitch. She really is the sweetest little munchkin lady ever. Sometimes I have these moments where I think she hates me. Then we sit down at dinner, I smile after I take the first bite, look at her, and then finally we speak the same language. Not Spanish, but the language of food. Maybe that's why I love it so much. Everyone needs it. It makes you feel at home, makes you feel good, and safe. I've only known her a week, but I know she will have a special place in my heart. She calls me hija (daughter.) Que hija? What, daughter? So, so, so precious. Sometimes when she is only talking to Marissa and I'm staring off into space, I look at the little details in her face. Like the little bit of lipstick left on her top lip by the end of the day or how her skin is soft, but plump. I wish my Nanny could meet her, and speak the same language. I feel like it would be an interesting combination of grandmother's.
Which leads me to how giving and wonderful she is, just like my own grandmother. I pointed to a picture of smoked salmon on the side of the box of crackers and asked her if she liked salmon. "Si, si, me gusto." When I said I did too, she immediately said she will buy some for us. I mentioned I like Spanish ham. Yep, she's buying that too. She said we need variety and she wants us to be happy. She said we are going to be here a long time and we should tell her exactly what we like and don't like. We try to get her to change her mind, but there's no turning back. She wants to please us, so I think we'll just let her.
She keeps chocolate in the refrigerator and Marissa and I break off a piece after dinner sometimes. She went food shopping the other day and bought more since she saw we liked it so much. So after dinner the other night we snuck downstairs as if we were doing something wrong, grabbed the chocolate and came back upstairs. I started singing, "I've Got the Golden Ticket" from Willy Wonka and danced around the room with it. We looked like two little kids going crazy over a chocolate bar. We thought about if we ate the whole thing what Pepi would say to us in the morning. Pepi: "Donde esta la chocolata?" And then we would say what she said to us over the egg battle: "Chocolata? Despues cena??? NO. No, no, no, no." This is probably way funnier to me and Marissa than it is to anyone out there reading it, but we laughed for a good 5 minutes over this in our beds. Then we laughed for another 5 more minutes about how squeaky our beds are. Every time we move it could wake up an entire city block. God I love this place. Everything is funny, everything is delicious, and everything is an adventure.
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