SUNDAY, JUNE 13th
Mom and Dad left at around 10:30 on Sunday morning, and I went home and then headed over to the market (El Rastro) which is very well known in Madrid. It's an amazing place-- great for gift shopping! I forgot my camera but it was not the most beautiful market, just great stuff for sale. I came home and worked the rest of the night on my Spanish paper, which was due Monday at midnight. Luckily I turned it in at around four p.m. Monday so I could enjoy the cooking class/meal (which took like 6 hours) without stress!
MONDAY, JUNE 14th
On Monday, I went to school as always and worked on the dance school list afterward. Monday was special though because we went to a cooking class at a restaurant around the corner from my house. This restaurant, named Lua, is very special because there is no menu. Every morning, the head chef goes to the market and creates about 10 courses for the day, each unique and delicious. We didn't actually cook, but we saw how they made everything (including traditional paella, which they normally don't serve there) and it was so fun to watch!
The first thing we made was corn cappucino. It was hot, with steamed milk on top, but completely coffee-less! It was and incredibly delicious warm drink of corn flavor- just corn and water were the main ingredients! Then he showed us how to make Gazpacho- Lua actually adds cherries to theirs, so you can see the color difference. The cherries made it DELICIOUS. Then the chef showed us his special way of boiling an egg, and even let us try (and fail) to do it ourselves! He cracks it into shrink wrap with some olive oil and salt and pepper, ties the shrink wrap tightly around the egg contents, and drops it in the water for five minutes! My friend Matt and I did it together, and he was annoyed that I (the female of the partnership) wasn't better at doing it! But it was so hard! Then he showed us how to make this cool dessert made of cream with sugar and gelatin. The chef mixed it all together and poured it into a little metal cube mold and refrigerated it for a few hours. When it was done, it was a solid little cube of creamy deliciousness!
After these first shows, the chef made a little apple juice ball that explodes when you eat it! Basically he made fresh-squeezed apple juice and added salt from algae to it, which did exactly what gelatin would. Then he took a spoonful of the gooey green mix, and dropped it into water that had a different type of salt. This type of salt seemed to create a chemical reaction that turned it into a perfectly solid green sphere-- check out what happens when you poke into the green thing!
We also watched him make Paella in the kitchen, but I don't have any pictures. You can assume that there was just a LOT of sea food and good smells! Then we got to eat everything, and then some stuff we didn't even see being made!! The presentation was so nice. Here is a picture of the final dessert tray we were given:
TUESDAY, JUNE 15th
Tuesday evening we went to a traditional Flamenco show by Enrique Morente, a very famous singer, and his group at Canal, the big theater in Madrid. This had less dancing than the Andalucian stuff we saw, but it was great! The guitar players were phenomenal, and Enrique had a group of six men whose only job was to clap all these incredible beats. There were also three male dancers who were PHENOMENAL, words can't describe how fast their feet were moving. No pictures of the show, but here is a picture of me outside the lovely theater!
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16th
Nothing too exciting today, aside from school where I had an amazingly interesting class that was about the differences between Spain and Latin America, and various parts within Spain. We learned a lot about the language and cultural differences, as well as my professor's (Bobby) background as a wealthy person from Guatemala, who went on the Harvard where he was a TA for Natalie Portmant. During the night, I went across the street to Maloney's, the American sports bar I was told that I HAVE to go to. It's so fun! And the best part was, I came across this written on the wall!
If you can't read it clearly, it says KAPPA ALPHA THETA 2008 CHI CHAPTER (which is my chapter) and then the names of the four Syracuse thetas who were in Madrid that semester!!!! (Abby, Alicia, Jennie, Angela). It was a nice little Theta reminder. Then I met an actual Theta from SMU about ten minutes later, also in Maloney's! Small world!!
That's all for now, sorry for the delays! I will be going to a winery visit tomorrow in Toledo, so expect lots of pictures. And Mom and Dad-- the weather is back to normal, hot and sunny, finally!
Whitney
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