"This week in errors," Issue 3

This feature publicizes the week's most epic/memorable/blush-inducing language fails. This week's issue focuses on students unknowingly saying/writing wildly inappropriate things.

1). In a class, my students were playing "20 questions" about celebrities to practice asking questions about and describing personal characteristics. Nicki Minaj came up (if you don't know who she is, look here), and one of my students asked the student describing her if the person being described "had a big ass." I couldn't believe what I heard, so I asked him to repeat because I was sure I'd heard it wrong (like the time a student said he made a mistake on a PowerPoint because he "was wrong" and I thought he said he "was drunk"). He repeated, and sure enough, he confidently repeated "ass." He didn't realize that was a bad word because he'd learned it as an equivalent to "culo," which technically it is, but it's stronger in English.

2). This comes from one of my roommate's students. Look at #3.

The girl meant to say "hold me" or "pick me up" ("cogerme" in Spain Spanish), but in parts of Latin America, "coger" means "f***," so when she searched "coger" in a translator, that's what she got.

Un saludo,
Teresa

Feria de abril

I imagine Sevilla's "Feria de abril" might be like the Texas State Fair or any traditional event celebrating the southern U.S. If you're from there, such festivities are cultural gems. If you're not, they're an excuse for southern pride to puke all over the place. The southern U.S. and southern Spain are alike in that they have subcultures that are very much alive, deeply ingrained and wildly celebrated. Both "souths" have customs that are exclusive, esoteric and shall we say slightly obnoxious?

You could say Sevilla's April fair is obnoxious, exclusive and esoteric, but in the most awesome way possible. There are lots of fancy, expensive flamenco dresses, overdone makeup, guys getting drunk on horseback, fried food and booze. Lots of booze -- including the traditional drink, rebujito, made of white wine and Sprite. A network of more than 1,000 casetas, which are individual bar/reception areas set up exclusively for the event, fill the fairgrounds. To get into all but the handful of public ones, you have to know someone inside. The fair is loud and hot and a bit circus-like. The bathrooms are as close as it gets to urge-reversing, and you have to weave through piles of horse poop in the streets.

On the other hand, it's alive, vibrant, merry and good ol' fun. Relatively cheap drinks, colorful characters and ridiculously beautiful people abound (the beautiful people part was kind of sickening, actually.) The dance floors are full of immaculate women twirling and stomping the Sevillana, the region's typical folk dance.

I'd love to go back next year. I had a blast (and I love Sevilla anyway). But next time I'm going to dress as a Sevillana, and I'll come equipped with a dance move or two.

Un saludo,
Teresa

Entrance to the fair

General debauchery

Entrance to one of the casetas

One of the casetas

Way too adorable

Caseta

Just the police taking pictures of each other

My roommate and I with one of the horsemen

Some Sevillanos took us for a ride through the fair (and then the police told them to drop us off because guiris who aren't dressed in typical attire aren't allowed on horseback).

On the importance of shopping around

It quite literally pays off. Cliche, yes, but true. I looked at flights to go home for the summer about two weeks ago, and I about puked from sticker shock. Since then I've been busy taking way too many siestas and doing way too much of nothing, so I haven't had time to look at flights. Today I finally did, and good thing I shopped around.

When I first looked, this is along the lines of what I saw. I wasn't happy about it and actually got a little worried. 

So I looked at trusty Student Universe, the site where I bought my one-way ticket to come to Spain last September. Didn't turn out to be so great this time around.

So then I thought maybe it'd be cheap to fly to Chicago and then either buy a separate flight to Omaha or take a bus. Wrong. Still $701 to go to Chicago through Student Universe.

I looked at Iberia, Spain's airline. ARE YOU KIDDING ME, IBERIA? Almost 2,500 euros to fly to Omaha?

Then Expedia, from Madrid to Chicago. 633 euros. Then Expedia from Madrid to Omaha. 1,300 euros. So no. Then CheapOAir - $634 to Chicago. Nope again.

And then as a last-ditch effort, I Googled "student flights" and found STA Travel, which I had heard of when I studied abroad in Spain and Costa Rica, but I hadn't been impressed by their rates before. Then, THIS:

The exact same flight that is 2,422 euros directly from Iberia is $487 through STA Travel, which is a reputable company, even as too-good-to-be-true as it seems. The site has awesome deals for students and "youths" (me) under 26.

So, I'm coming home June 17, and I ended up paying $487. I'm thrilled.

Un saludo,
Teresa

"Stuff I Eat" - Spanish morcilla

I don't intend to reference Anthony Bourdain -- the "celebrity chef/world traveler/pithy quote machine/professional wise ass," as I described him last time -- in every food post, but it's just inevitable in this one. The dude loves "black pudding" for reasons I never quite understood. Coagulated blood and lard stuffed into intestinal casings just didn't pique my appetite. Any food for which you can say "the fresher the blood, the better" scares me a bit.

Even so, for a long time, I was admittedly intrigued by Bourdain's affinity for a food that looks like a bloody stool. When in Spain, do as the Spaniards do. That's my motto, and I'm sticking to it. In my inaugural issue of "Stuff I Eat," I mentioned that I'd be willing to eat a "bulging, deep-red intestine casing stuffed with throwaway mammal parts" if the opportunity presented itself. I meant it as much as a figure of speech as a legitimate vow, but I soon found a bulging intestine on my plate.  

Name: Morcilla de Guadalupe

Translation: Blood sausage, or "black pudding," from Guadalupe, Extremadura

So what is it exactly? Ingredients vary by country and region. As is obvious, blood is the star ingredient that gives the dish its off-putting name. Fillers can include barley, pork, beef, rice, onions, fat, cornmeal, chestnuts, potatoes, oatmeal or whatever else tickles the preparer's fancy, I suppose. I tried various kinds in Guadalupe, a small Extremaduran town that's famous for its blood sausage. One type had potatoes, I remember. But the one I'm featuring here is the most traditional; it had pig lard, cayenne pepper (or something of the sort to give it kick) and pig blood for sure. There may have been onions, garlic and cabbage, which are all typical ingredients, but I can't confirm that.

Where I ate it: At a small cafe near the monastery in Guadalupe, Extremadura

Before trying it, I was thinking...: "I've already eaten way too many typical-of-the-area sweets today, so if I'm going to pack my belly even more, this stuff better be dang good."

Texture: Very soft, even crumbly. Some people say "pudding-like," hence the name "black pudding," but from what I experienced, that's a misnomer. It's not creamy in the way I imagine pudding, but to each his own. Neither is it like the inside of a hotdog or typical sausage, which are more solid, less moist, and they don't fall apart in a dissolve-in-your-mouth kind of way, like morcilla does.

Taste: I'm not a food writer. I have no idea how to describe tastes and textures and presentation in an eloquent way that really conveys my experience. I can tell you what morcilla didn't taste like, though. It didn't taste like ground beef or pork; it didn't taste like sausage; it didn't taste like lard. It did have a strong flavor of cayenne pepper or whatever the spicy bit was. And given that there's blood in the sausage, it did have a hint of metallic-ness.

Verdict: Delicious and filling. It's not something that I could eat a lot of because it's got a unique flavor that could quickly become too much of a good thing. But given the chance to try it again, I wouldn't hesitate.

Other types of morcilla de Guadalupe that I tried. I don't remember what the darker one was, but the orange one was blood, mashed potatoes and something spicy.

About what happened in Boston...

It makes me want to vomit. The pictures of wincing victims, red-soaked sidewalks and bloody American flag gear made me teary-eyed in the teachers' lounge. I swallowed hard after seeing the video recorded from the finish line.

The first thing the teacher with whom I commute to work said to me this morning was, "Did you hear what happened in Boston?" I get it; I'm American, and it was small talk. But small talk should be that it was 10 degrees last Thursday and it's 25 today, not that an 8-year-old boy and two others were murdered in a senseless sideline explosion.

Tuesday's front page of "El Pais" newspaper

They talked about it on the radio - something along the lines of "another tragedy in the U.S." - and I gasped at the latest casualty count because it had more than quadrupled since I'd last checked: now three dead, 144 injured.

I have experience fielding the "did you hear what happened?" question. I wish I didn't, but the Sandy Hook massacre didn't happen that long ago. I tell whoever mentions it that the violence is disgusting and cowardly and that it makes my stomach turn. My most emphatic point is that the stories of shootings and bombings and knife attacks don't accurately reflect life in America. But when kids are shot at school and spectators are blown up at a marathon, how does it not?

Perhaps the worst part is that we're getting used to it. Sure, for the first few days we're numb, scarred, broken and unified. But by the next week, we're back to taking the kids to soccer practice or logging 80 hours chained to a desk. Life goes on, and we're all too familiar with the cycle of collective grief.

How do I explain the why? Is it a matter of gun control? Is our TV too violent, our mental health system too broken? The truth is I have no idea. It's a conversation in which I would choose my words carefully even in English. Imagine doing it in Spanish.

This post isn't about statistics or ideological debate. It's an off-the-cuff emotional rant of sorts, and I can't tell you how the number of shootings or bombings in the U.S. compares to other countries, per capita. Surely there are similar events happening around the world and the media machine doesn't bat an eye. But here's the deal: The U.S. can't throw its weight around in global politics and economics and then expect people not to pay attention when it's vulnerable. The country is under a microscope, for better or for worse.

I can only hope that in the next month and a half before I come home, I don't have to hear "did you hear what happened in the U.S." again.

Un saludo,
Teresa

"This week in errors," Issue 2

This feature publicizes the week's most epic/memorable/blush-inducing language fails.

1.) ...trying to tell my mentor that "tienes que bailar esta noche, sabes." ("You have to dance tonight, you know.") When I speak quickly, proper pronunciation goes by the wayside and things can get a bit hairy. In this situation, "bailar" became "balar," which means "baaaa," like a sheep.

2.) ...while working on vocabulary with my fifth-graders, we came across the word "beach," which induced back-of-the-classroom laughter. English-language learners are infamous for confusing the pronunciations of "beach" and "b****," so I figured the juvenile chuckling was related to that. I launched into a spiel about how "beach" is not a "palabrota" (bad word) and how the pronunciation of minimal pairs completely changes the meaning of the words. The teacher and the students were noticeably confused by my sudden soapbox lesson and what had initiated it. Turns out a kid in the back had accidentally written "beach" on his name tag instead of his name. There was no "palabrota" confusion. Awkward.
 

3). ...I'd nominate this label for the worst Spanish-English translation of the year. It's certainly the worst I've seen in person. This doozy of a disaster comes from the label of a sauce my roommate brought home from the Canary Islands.

I'm no professional, but the translation should be something like, "'Mojo rojo' is a red sauce typical of the Canary Islands that's used with meats, fish, vegetables, roasted cornmeal, baked potatoes, etc."

Here's to being entertained by shaming myself and others.

Un saludo,
Teresa

A different kind of wonderful

Much of what I saw in Bulgaria was shabby and not in a chic way. It was shabby in an unkempt, paint-peeling, windows broken, "what happened to this place?" kind of way. There's graffiti, cracked sidewalks and renegade gypsy camps. Lots of buildings are blocky and gray and worn, some with exteriors that seem to house the remnants of a horror story inside. (The country has a fair share of stunning buildings, too, I should say.)

Vratsa

I saw lots of people who were noticeably hardened -- not mean but hard, haggard, perhaps struggling and losing. There isn't the brightness, the carefreeness, the "let's grab a beer and work later" mentality that's so classically Spanish. For the 20 percent of Bulgarians who work for the equivalent of 1 euro an hour - minimum wage - it's about surviving. People sell tarnished coins and animal pelts and treasures from Grandpa's attic at makeshift markets to make ends meet. (Bulgaria, of course, isn't the only country where people do that.)

Even so, Bulgaria is an eclectic, endearing, intriguing ex-communist gem - nothing like the traditional European beauties of Vienna, Venice or Prague. I adored it and would love to go back someday. It's unconventionally beautiful, like a guy with a gap in his teeth or a crooked nose -- you have to look past a superficial flaw or two to see that he's peculiarly handsome.

Sofia

Vratsa

Veliko Tarnovo

Vratsa

Veliko Tarnovo

Veliko Tarnovo

Sofia

Bulgaria has plains, hills and mountains, green in summer and white in winter. It's got charming medieval towns that have endured centuries of Ottoman rule and later, communism. It's got what I'm told is an awe-inspiring Black Sea coast on its eastern side, which I sadly didn't have the good fortune of visiting.

Vratsa

And goodness, the food. MMM, the food. It was the most glorious sort of hearty and heavy - think meats, bread, potatoes. Even the salads alone were enough to over-stuff an empty stomach. Eating our three- and four-course meals was like de-layering those Russian dolls; when you think you've reached the end there's yet another surprise. And all of it was guilt-inducingly cheap: You can get a delicious meal with way too much food for the equivalent of five euros or less.

Is it lunch time yet?

Typical tomato and cucumber salad with delicious Bulgarian cheese.

Mix of veggies with chicken and pork

Potatoes and more of that delicious cheese

Pork and more delicious veggies

This was a starter...for one person (served on traditional Bulgarian ceramic).

Bulgaria may not have the Statue of David, the most well-manicured face or the most notable European architecture (we've got Churchill to partially blame for that. Sofia, the capital, lost something like 12,000 buildings when he ordered the city's bombing during WWII). But sometimes conventional beauty is boring. 

Un saludo,
Teresa

Where in the world was Teresa Lostroh?

It's been a while since I've penned a travel dispatch. I'm trying to move away from the whole chronological "this is where I went, this is what I did" formula, but in case you're asking, "Where in the world was Teresa Lostroh?"....Stick with me. I promise there's an entertaining line or two.

1.) Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.
Went there for Los Carnavales, a Mardi Gras-esque liquor-fueled free-for-all. Was a tourist by day and a martian/some sort of Asian by night (we dressed up for Carnaval, in accordance with the custom). Felt like I landed on the moon when I visited the Teide Volcano, the world's third largest. Declared my panoramic shot of Los Gigantes (massive rock formations) the most epic ever. Ate three times my stomach's capacity at a typical Canarian eatery - and enjoyed every second of it. Got two Spanish friends to ask for a take-home food box for the first time in their lives. Broke my camera during an ill-advised self-timer attempt, therefore losing my beloved "vivid" setting forever.

Lunar landing?

The "Los Gigantes" panoramic

2). Mallorca (Majorca), Balearic Islands, Spain.
Was hoping for a glorious, snafu-less return trip to my favorite place on Earth. Went to the Cap de Fomentor peninsula on the island's northeastern tip, where I captured more epic panoramics and several Awkward Family Photo shots with my roommate. Also went to Sa Calobra, a remote cove reached by a mess of winding mountain roads. Went out, got my iPhone 4S and wallet stolen, effectively losing all photo evidence of the trip. So much for snafu-less. Thank goodness for memories. Ate fresh oranges from my friend's orange tree. I think the saying goes something like, "Once you go fresh oranges, you never go back." Let Mallorquin food win my heart even more (snails, bread, squid, vegetables, frito mallorquin, etc.) Spent Sunday in the obnoxiously Anglo neighborhood of Magaluf, where Spanish is a foreign language, Brits run amok shirtless and sunburned and Happy Hour starts at sunrise. Dipped into a bar at 7 p.m. that was packed with hammered middle-aged Brits reliving Spring Break. Jammed to lots of oldies and continued jamming even after the Brits' bedtime struck at 9:30.

Cap de Fomentor, Source

Magaluf, Source

3). Cordoba, Spain.
Split my heart in sixteenths as I fell in love with yet another colorful Spanish town. Got my mind blown by the Mezquita's wondrous mix of Christian and Muslim architecture. The place is huge. Went to a flamenco show in a nondescript basement on some Cordobese side street. Ate oxtail and flamenquin, a traditional dish of pork loin wrapped in ham, breaded and fried. Both dishes filled my belly but didn't change my life. Decided I must return when the city's ubiquitous residential courtyards are flush with May flowers.

Mezquita

Mezquita

4). Sevilla, Ronda, Trujillo, Granada, Malaga, and Nerja, Spain
Parents came to get a taste of la vida espanola. Cried when I met them at the train station in Sevilla (hey, it'd been five months). Launched a 10-day tourist blitz on this fine country. Did a generally terrible job of sharing with them the delights of Spanish cuisine (the best meal they had was at the hotel restaurant, without me). Made the mistake of ordering a fried seafood platter at a restaurant in the interior of the country. Acted as translator at a Case International implement dealer in Don Benito for my dad, who has an insatiable curiosity about agriculture no matter where he is. Took parents to Sevilla and Ronda, two places I'd already been. Forced my parents to be in more pictures together than they've been in over the past 35 years combined. That's not hyperbole. I'm serious. Went to a flamenco show in a kitschy tourist haunt in Sevilla. Enjoyed it despite its kitschy-ness. Fell in love with yet another pair of Spanish coastal towns, Malaga and Nerja. Pretty sure my parents are still talking about Malaga's marble sidewalks. Despite my love for Malaga and Nerja, thought both towns would be infinitely better if we could expel at least 70 percent of the northern Europeans and make the towns more authentically Spanish. Dad drove through snow - in southern Spain, of all places - to get to Granada, where that damned white powder covered the city for the first time in 25 years. Mom about lost her feet to frostbite while we tried (kind of in vain) to enjoy the Alhambra in the cold. Most importantly, was reminded of how awesomely loving, generous, fun and supportive my family is.

Plaza de Espana, Sevilla

Snowy Granada

Alhambra in Granada

Malaga from the fortress

5.) Toledo and Guadalupe, Spain
Have to wonder if my superlatives lose their weight when I overuse them: favorite, prettiest, most Spanish. But each trip manages to equal or top the previous. Loved Toledo's sublimely medieval core, which is on a hill reached by arched stone bridges. Toledo doesn't have the bright-colored buildings (much of the city is sandy stone) or the it-feels-like-this-entire-city-is-smiling vibe of Cordoba, but it's as genuinely Spanish. Guadalupe is what every small town should be: quaint, walkable, endearing, enchanting. It's all of those things despite the omnipresent tourist shops and carbon-copy signs hawking Guadalupe's typical blood sausage. Must admit the blood sausage is worthily hawk-able, though. Town's massive monastery has perhaps the loveliest courtyard I've seen yet. There I go with the superlatives again...

Toledo

Toledo

Guadalupe monastery

Guadalupe

Toledo

 That's the quick-and-dirty version of my life as of late.

Un saludo,
Teresa