A beer and tapas belly... that is what is going to grow on me if I keep up my lazy version of the Spanish lifestyle! Especially since a lot of the yummy tapas are fried, and especially since I can handle beer a lot better in this dry climate than my drink of choice, a good glass of red wine. This is how it's going to be for me in Madrid - beer (always chilled to perfection) to cool me down in the summer, and red wine (that deserves more international recognition) to heat me up in the winter!
Last night I enjoyed a tour of the local cervecerías (beer joints) in my neighborhood with a new friend. Here's the story... so yesterday I'm out on my balcony collecting my dried sheets from the clothes line and down on the ground floor of my building's courtyard is something speaking some American-accented English! And his face is familiar! It was someone I saw at the Dems Abroad meeting last week. What a small world, he lives in my building! I immediately introduced myself and suggested we go get a drink... but he was off to visit the Casa Arabe. "Casa Arabe? As in, 'House of Arabic?' Are you studying Arabic?" I asked. He was! I studied classical Arabic intensively during my three years of undergrad at Georgetown. When I moved to Italy to work for an NGO, the only lessons available in the city I was in cost more than what I was paying weekly for groceries, and so I had to give it up. Just earlier yesterday afternoon, wanting to take advantage of being in a big, international city, I emailed a few language schools around Madrid to see what they offered. And the perfect solution found me! I went with him to the Casa Arabe, got their matriculation information, and visited the lovely little museum and bookstore. The Casa Arabe is part of a Spain-wide initiative organized by the Agencia Española de Cooperación para el Desarrollo (AECID) (Spanish Agency of Cooperation for Development), part of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to appreciate and spread the knowledge other cultures. For example, in Madrid there is also a Casa Africa, Casa America, and Casa Asia.
Tomorrow I'm meeting up with a current IE student and one of my main objectives of the encounter will be to determine how much "free" time I'm going to have outside of school. Then I'll be able to determine whether or not, or when, I can fit in gym time for the beer belly issue and Arabic time for my love of languages!
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