Huevos

On January 12th I arrived here excited, nervous, and ready to learn mucho español. I'm studying abroad in the beautiful city of Granada, Spain at the University of Granada in the Center of Modern Languages. There I take five classes, all in Spanish, Monday through Thursday with an occasional class on Friday. I'm living with very nice host family. I have a host mom and dad, and two host sisters (22 &16). As far as meals go, breakfasts are tiny or non-existent for the most part, lunch is the largest meal of the day, then dinner late at night around 9:00 or 10:00. Lunch is eaten during 'siesta' hours, 2-5, and all stores/banks/companies close during these hours so people can eat with their families. My host mom is an excellent cook and I can only think of one food I haven't really liked since being here and that is 'morcilla', or blood sausage. Besides the taste, the fact that sausage itself is mystery meat made it hard for me to eat while thinking I could've been eating mashed up eyes/nose/other unappetizing body parts.
Other basic things about here is that for people in Granada it's always 'cold'. It's 50-55 degrees F and sunny just about everyday this time of the year. If I walk out of my room in just a sweatshirt or light jacket they look at me and say "loca!" or "que frio!" and proceed to ask if I'm sure I don't want gloves or another scarf to wear. The same also goes for when I run but the reactions are worse because I'm typically in shorts.
In the past month my Spanish has improved a good amount and I'm happy I can understand (for the most part) the thick Andalusian accent. It's so different from most Spanish accents that when one of the host moms tried talking with a phone company, whose teller was Latin American, they couldn't understand what the other was saying.  Obviously I have mixed up some words here and there, but there's one word I used that my host mom still finds hilarious whenever the topic of shoes comes up. When we were going to the outdoor market I told her i needed to buy heels. Well, that's what I meant to tell her but instead of saying 'tacones' I said 'tacaños' meaning I wanted to buy stingy people.
Many cognates and words we use for dual meanings in English do not translate to the same meaning in Spanish. For example, when someone says "constipado they are not telling you they are constipated, just that their nose is stuffy. Yesterday in my culture of peace class, the professor divided us into groups and had us brainstorm ways to better the employment rate and the economy of Spain. We were having some difficulty since the economy here is terrible and is continuing to drop and there's not even enough money to finish any construction work in the streets (21% unemployment rate). We wrote down two points about increasing incentives to go to college, especially for women and whatever our teacher told us, but we couldn't think of a third so we decided to throw something down as a joke. Before coming to Spain, my friend jokingly told me I should sell my eggs to make more money for traveling while abroad. So, I told my group this and they said if I presented that part to the class we could put it down. Naturally I agreed. Now when it was our group's turn to present, one girl read off the first two points and handed the paper to me. I started talking about how women could sell their eggs to make money since it can bring in tens of thousands of dollars with each procedure, and how women doesn't have to work since it's all natural... etc. And my teacher just looked at me after I finished with no smile whatsoever. I started to think well this is awkward.. he didn't even think it was funny a tiny bit. My confusion began when he asked me and why can't men sell their eggs?" then proceeded to talk about the agriculture industry and how women aren't working in agricultural jobs.. etc. Finally, he said, "Also, in Spanish we don't say their eggs, it's the eggs". And that's when it dawned on me and the rest of the class... he thought I was talking about chicken eggs the whole time! After I managed to control my laughter, I  explained to him what type of egg I was referring to. He started to laugh and wrote "óvulos" on the board, the word I should have used, and said he was going to write this one down in his journal. I would call it a successful class.