Conocimientitos de España (little Spanish thoughts)

June 24, 2008

One of the great wonders of “pasear” (walking the streets) is window shopping. Today I partook in the traditional Spanish activity by browsing for shoes. There are two ways to buy shoes here. You can go to stores that sell clothes and also happen to sell shoes, or you can go straight to the cheaply made shoe stores. I tried both. Although I did not have any luck finding shoes that fit my wide awkward feet, I did make some observations. For example, people in Europe are tiny. The average Joe Schmoe shoe that is displayed for each person to try on is a size 6 ½-7 (36).

After roaming the streets and returning empty handedly, my apartment-mates and I watched the Spanish film “Otro Lado de la Cama”, a recommendation by our school director. Following the movie, we headed to get ice cream but were very disappointed to see that our favorite ice cream store was already closed for the night. With our heads still held high, we returned to the apartment to collect our recyclables and place them in the bins on the streets. Now, I had the impression that the EU member states would be very alert about recycling (supporting the Kyoto Protocol and all), but it was upon my own proposal that my apartment mates realized that recycling does in fact exist in Spain – it just takes someone to carry the cardboard/glass/plastic to their appropriate (somewhat ambiguous) containers randomly located throughout the streets.

Now everyone is asleep and I’m off to join them. Besos!