For Pearl

More about my host family...

I live with a married couple in an apartment on the 4th floor which is called the 3º, because the ground floor is la planta baja, and nobody lives there. Angeles and Fernando. Fernando works one day a week at a nearby hospital. He worked 5-6 days a week for I think 43 years, and now he gets the same salary as he did then. The hospital pays his check for one day a week, and the government picks up the other 4. Angeles does all the cooking and cleaning. She makes my bed everday despite my telling her that wasn´t necessary. She also opens the windows to air out the house. It´s -2 C today... Most days she visits her mother who is 84 and lives one street down. Angeles´ brother and sister also live nearby and help take care of her.

Angeles and Fernando had three daughters all of whom are married now. One still lives in Salamanca and her husband is the number 2 guy at a Bimbo factory, which is a major foodstuff company. The other two live in pueblos (small towns) outside the city. However, when they tell me outside the city, it means 5 kilometers from our house for one daughter and 7 for the other. Angeles es una abuela (she´s a grandmother.) Her youngest has a daughter now as well. So we have all remaining members of 4 generations living within a 7 kilometer radius.

Both my host parents are very nice. Fernando is much easier for me to understand and we talk much better. Angeles doesn´t think I understand anything (this is based in truth), so she repeats everything and always seems to shout at me. Ah well. Yesterday I had paella for one of my lunch courses. It´s the traditional dish of Spain that you´ll read about in all the tourist books. I like the saffron rice, but it took much self-control to eat and ´enjoy´ the mussels, kalamari, and random bits of mushy, fleshy stuff.