Catching up

I´ve been in Spain now for almost two weeks now and I love it! I just got to Reus yesterday...but I am still not in the house with the family. I went to see it yesterday with Ferran and it is a total mess. The works are suppposed to be done by today...but it is not going to happen...I doubt they will be done by Saturday, which is a problem because the kids start school on Tuesday. So right now Glòria is still in Castellar del Vallés with the kids at her father's house. Ferran is here in Reus, staying with his parents, who also have his niece and nephew staying with them...so there is no more room. So I am staying in Reus with a colleague of Glòrias, Noemi, who has an apartment right off one of the main squares. She is very kind and has been feeding me and even gave me a ride to Tarragona this morning where I pre-registered for a Spanish class.
I'll write more about the present later...first I will try to catch up with what has already happened.
The jet lag wasn't too bad really. The first couple of days I was very tired around 1 or 3 and I wasn't hungry at meal times or tired at bed time, but after 4 or 5 days i would say I was fully adjusted to the time zone. I've been eating very differently here, but all the food is very good. Something that everybody has and is like a staple here is pan tomacuet, which is bread with tomato. It is a piece of bread smeared with tomato then sprinkled with salt and oil. On top you put some kind of ham...usually proscutto or a sweet ham (like plain sandwhich ham in the states, but very thinly sliced). Ofcourse there is a lot of fish and seafood here too and I have that almost everyday I think.
Glòria likes to make everything at home and make stuff from scratch if she can...so I had the chance to learn a lot what they liked to eat and how they made it in Castellar. Which I think was really good because once school starts and we get into a schedule everything will be very busy. Another typical dish here is Caldo, and Glòria showed me how to make this one day. It is a homemade broth...chicken, pork, some other meats, and vegetables all boiled in water for a couple hours. Then you have the broth with noodles or use it to make other soups. We had it with noodles the first night and then the next day made a spinach soup with it. The base for almost all dished here is sufritos...which are chopped/diced onions slowly cooked in oil...I really loved all this cooking in Castellar and I know once we get into a schedule I will get to cook for the family more.
I absolutely love this family. We all get along really well and work together really well. I really feel like an older sister and a true part of the family already. Teresa and Biel are the most well behaved kids I have ever worked with. They are absolutely amazing and I love them so much. Teresa's english is perfect and I can't believe it. Biel doesn't really speak much english, but he understands it perfectly. So we still communicate very well. Plus just listening to Glòria and the kids talk I have been able to pick up some Catalan. It is very similar to Spanish and a very beautiful language.
Castellar del Vallés was a wonderful little village and it was nice to start there with the kids because we were able to have fun and get to know each other before being thrown into a hectic schedule. We were usally all up by 8:30 or 9:00 and then we would have breakfast. A lot of times the kids had pan tomacuet and Glòria and I had yogurt and cereal...and then we all had fruit. Right now usually peaches. One thing I really like about this family is that they try to eat the produce that is in season...so right now we have a lot of peaches. Glòria tells me that in the fall they have a lot of apples...and so on.
Glòria and I get along so well. For one thing, she is just as adament as I am about not collecting plastic bags. It was pretty funny because we both walk around with big tote bags and when we were paying at a store or the market we also would say, no, don't it in a bag and we would put it in our tote bags.
I've already had the chance to see many different places in Spain and I will post pictures as soon as I get to the house in Reus and have the internet and my own computer. It is absolutely wonderful here and I really love it. It is everything I hoped for and more. The cities are beautiful and old and unique, but new at the same time. Castellar del Vallés was a small village with a population of about 20,000. I also visited Barcelona a couple times, which was fun. Glòria drove us in and one time me and the kids went ice skateing and had lunch with one of her sisters who lives in the city. Another time we went to the ¨clicks¨(the little playmobile figures) exhibit that was in the mall because the kids have lots of clicks and really love them. We also spent 3 days in Matajudaica, which isn't really its own place...it is kind of hard to explain. It is a tiny ¨village¨in the countryside that is where about 60 people live and they have a public pool. You can't buy anything here, but must drive two miles or so to another village that is a bit bigger. There are a bunch of these little ¨villages¨that put together make up a whole village and there is kind a school that is located in the center, I don't really know...it is hard to explian. Anyway, it is very close to Flaça, so one day while we were there I took the train from Flaça to Girona, which is a city. This is all part of northern spain and very close to France. Most recently I have visited Tarragona (as I said earlier) which is maybe 10 or 15 minutes away from Reus.
I'll write more about my arrival in Reus and all that later...but I think I've pretty much caught up to the present, yay!