The Search for Delicious Part I

I've eaten a lot, and I've eaten well thus far in Europe.  In terms of expenditure, I would say about 30% of my money has gone towards food and drink, 50% towards housing, 15% towards travel, and 5% towards clothes and decor.

The first thing I ate in Spain was what I later realized to be fairly shitty paella and a small glass of wine for 5 euros at El Mercado San Miguel, right by Plaza Mayor.  Despite the overall mediocrity of paella, it was a shining moment.  I was in Spain.  I was eating paella and drinking wine. At the time, that's all that mattered. Even if it was an inauspicious beginning in terms of quality, it was a beginning.  El Mercado San Miguel was also a great place to start, and I've gone back many a time for a quick snack or a drink.  They have a lot of different stalls.  Cheeses, olives, all sorts of tapas, Galician seafood, wine, San Miguel, jamón, empanadas, tarts, chips, vermouth, etc etc.  A wonderland in other words.  Here's a picture from a later visit of two tapas:  baccalao and pulpo (octopus) a la gallega:

A lot of my first few weeks in Madrid was spent walking around, gawking at the buildings and the people and the sights, and every couple hours, stopping at a restaurant or a café and having something to eat and drink.  One of the first such experiences was very simple, but very good...a bocadillo (sandwich) de calamares (fried squid) and a caña (a small glass of beer).  As seen below:

In general, the norm in Spain, at least as I've experienced it in Madrid is that you'll order a drink, whether that be a caña (or doble or jarra if you're thirsty), a glass of wine, or a cocktail, and you will get something to nibble on.  This something varies widely depending on where you are, and it is generally known here as a tapa.  Potato chips are very common, and better than your run of the mill Lays.  Also, olives, which I had never really eaten before I came, but which I now tend to enjoy.  Popcorn, some sort of dip and chips, nuts, basically anything salty or crunchy that goes well with alcohol.

The reigning king of tapas thus far for me, just in terms of sheer generosity, is an establishment known as El Tigre.  They have three locations in the Chueca neighborhood, right next door to Malasaña where I live.  They're self described as a sidrería (or cider house), but their food and cheap prices are their real calling card, their true glory.  The first time I went I was with two friends, early on in our time in Madrid.  We had heard good things about El Tigre, but didn't know much else about it.  We ordered three drinks, and received two large mugs of tinto de verano (wine with lemon soda) and a glass or copa of vino tinto (red wine) with a very solid amount of wine.  Each drink was 3,50 euros.  What happened next changed everything.

The waiter first brought out one heaping plate of food, slices of French bread topped with various sorts of jamón and tortilla (the spanish omelette/quiche hybrid).  Then he brought out a plate of chicken wings.  And then he brought out a full plate of paella, which was considerably less shitty than the paella I had at San Miguel.  So three whole plates of food.  For free.  Mind you tapas are always a little bit of food.  This was unprecedented for us.  In general, actual meals in Madrid are pretty expensive, definitely above 10 euros, especially at night.  So you tend to survive on what tapas you can scrape together and beer more or less.  So this was like the doors of heaven opening, a revelation.  I haven't been in the last few weeks, but I've been to El Tigre more than 5 times since living in Madrid (which is now almost at 2 months).  Every time and every location it's the same deal.  Lots of good food and big drinks for cheap.  The fact that they have multiple locations is a testament to their greatness.  They have overflow locations.  So when it's too packed at one location, you just go down the street to the other one.  When I went with a largish group (like 8 people), they just kept giving us food, asking us if we wanted more jamón, more croquetas (fried cheese and ham balls), more paella, and giving us the occasional free shot.  Someone told me that you can tell the quality of a tapas bar by the amount of napkins on the floor.  All the napkins here are white and say "Gracias por tu visita," thanks for your visit.  The floor of El Tigre is like it's just snowed.  This is a picture of the paella from that first fateful encounter:

As I was saying, actual meals here are pretty expensive.  I've mostly tried out various menus del día (menus of the day), which tend to be pretty reasonable for the amount and quality of food you get.  The first one I had in Madrid was at a place in Malasaña called El Rincón (the corner).  It was called bacalao a la riojana, which is codfish in the rioja style.  Rioja is one of the big wine producing regions of Spain.  It was essentially lightly fried cod topped with a tomato wine sauce, served with scalloped potatoes.  Most of the menu del día come with two plates (primero y segundo), a drink (alcoholic or not), bread, and dessert/coffee.  The median price is about 10 euros, depending on where you are and the restaurant itself.  The bacalao:

Undoubtedly one of the best meals I've had in Madrid was at a restaurant in Lavapies, one of the main immigrant neighborhoods in Madrid and a generally hip place.  It consisted of arroz negro, a variation on paella that's rice with chopped up squid and cooked in squid ink, giving it its name and its distinctive appearance:

This was delicious and had been on my list of things to try for a while.  What followed was even better:  trucha a la plancha, grilled trout.  Very simple, but so so good.  

It's also worth noting that until it got colder recently, I ate almost all of my meals outside, which always makes food taste a little bit better in my opinion.  

Continuing with the seafood line, I was perhaps most excited about the oceanic options in Spain and elsewhere.  Coming from Indiana, good seafood is in pretty small supply.  Another one of my highlights so far has been the grilled pulpo that I had at a restaurant called El Viajero (the traveller) in La Latina, a neighborhood famous for their food and tapas specifically.  Poorly prepared octopus can be chewy and generally unappetizing, but when done right it's to die for.  Especially when grilled, the flavor of the charcoal is absorbed by the meat and the crispiness combined with a slight chewiness (but when the flavor is there, you don't mind chewing a few extra chew) ends up being a wholly delightful dining experience.  

This is the beginning of a running series, under the title The Search for Delicious (taken from a song off of Panda Bear's album Person Pitch, and found below), in which I'll talk about my gastronomic experiences in Spain and elsewhere.  The next post will focus on my trips to Paris and Lisboa, both culinary gems in their own right.  Until then, buen provecho!

Search for Delicious

El colegio

It's been quite a while without a post, but I've been very busy, busy with work, busy with going out, meeting new people, busy with traveling.

So this one is going to be about my school that I work at in Madrid.  It's a colegio (an elementary/pre-school, not college) called Plácido Domingo in the Atocha neighborhood of Madrid.  Atocha is the main train station of Madrid, and it's probably about a 10 minute walk from my school to the north.  Also close by are the Parque del Retiro, Madrid's large and lovely park, the Prado art museum, and the Reina Sofia museum as well.

I first found out about my school placement when I was an hour away from the graduation ceremony for my master's degree.  I was in my cap and gown, waiting in the field house next to assembly hall, wondering exactly how everything was going to end up now that that chapter of my life was coming to a close.  My phone buzzed, and I checked my email, out of habit, and there was my placement letter.  Immediately, I googled the address and was elated to find out how close my school was to the city center.  The auxiliaries program places you by region, meaning that you can be placed anywhere in la Comunidad de Madrid, which includes Madrid, its suburbs, and the pueblos outside of the metropolitan area.

Although I was more than likely going to come to Spain regardless of where I got placed, it was definitely a clincher to know that I would be so close to everything.  Because of the metro, my placement also freed me up to live anywhere in the center.  My commute is about 30 minutes door to door, from my apartment to the school, with only a small line transfer right at the end.  I'm very very lucky.  Most of the other people I know have much longer commutes, many over an hour, with multiple types of transportation (metro to train to bus, for example).  On the other hand, I do envy those people who are placed in pueblos.  I feel like they get a double experience:  one part urban Spain, one part small town Spain.  At the same time, coming from the suburbs of Indianapolis and then the college town of Bloomington, I'm very content to be all up in the urban scene.

I work four days a week, for a total of 16 working hours.  In reality, I'm at the school 11-4 on Tuesdays, 9-4 on Wednesdays, 9-12:30 on Thursday, and 9-4 on Friday.  I have a 30 minute coffee/breakfast break from 10:30-11, and then a 2 hour lunch, which sounds extravagant, but most of the teachers have meetings and what not during this time, so it comes out to maybe a 45 minute lunch break. On some Wednesdays, we have bilingual department meetings, and on Fridays, I teach an hour long English class for two of the Spanish teachers.  They're both much older than me and don't speak much English, so it's been a lot of back and forth between Spanish and English, trying to explain rules in English in ways I have to think about on the spot for the most part, ranging from the rules of contractions to the differences in pronunciation between bear and beer.

Each class period is 45 minutes long, and on my full days, I have six different classes.  I'm primarily with first graders, so kids that are around 6 or 7 years old.  I also teach 1 second grade class and 3 third grade classes.  My colegio is a bilingual colegio, meaning that both English and Spanish are languages of instruction, with English being more predominant.  The way the curriculum is set up allows for English to be the language of instruction for every subject except for language (lengua) and math, which must be taught in Spanish.  So the kids have English class, but then they also have social science, natural science, music/art, and gym all in English as well.  My third graders for example have been learning about the solar system and the body systems, all in English.

It's really impressive, especially when compared to the foreign language education in the states, in which most people don't even start a foreign language until middle school.  In Spain, at the bilingual schools at least (and there are schools that aren't bilingual, so there is some degree of privilege that I'm not completely clear about), even the infantil (preschool) level children get at least a little taste of English, and they can be as young as three years old.  The infantiles are also adorable because they wear little smocks and when they walk through the hall or down the stairs, they all hold on to the smock of the kid in front of them, so they teeter totter around all connected.

In terms of responsibilities, I would say that I'm there for three reasons.  First, for pronunciation.  All of the teachers who teach English are Spanish speakers, and while most of their English is very good, at least some accent is unavoidable.  I'm there to be the native speaker.  Second, for cultural knowledge, which so far has mostly been centered around holidays.  There are two other auxiliares at my school, and our first big task was decorating for Halloween and constructing a haunted house for the halloween party at school.  Today, I was making a powerpoint talking about Thanksgiving.  Then we'll decorate for Xmas as well, and talk about what makes an American Xmas.  The third is simply providing assistance to the teachers, which is mostly working with the students individually or in small groups.

With this being said, it's been interesting because the kids are learning British English, which makes sense, but there have been several times when I've thought that something was wrong only to realize that it's just British.  There's also the differences in vocabulary.  During my first couple weeks, the kids were learning school supply material, and it was a little humorous to hear them call erasers rubbers, and further, to not be able to explain to 6-9 year olds why we don't call erasers rubbers in America.  The kids also have to take a sort of standardized test called the Trinities in 2nd 4th and 6th grade.  This involves each child talking to a British person, likely either from the Cambridge or Oxford organizations, one on one, which seems terrifying to imagine being a non-native speaker, and a child, speaking to an adult from a different culture.  But the pressure is pretty high, and I gather that it affects the schools funding, somewhat like standardized tests do in the US.  A lot of the work I do with the second graders is dictated by the requirements of the Trinities.

The first couple weeks weren't necessarily rough, but it was an adjustment, for all parties I think.  Each teacher has different expectations of me, and my role in each class is different.  So there was a definite feeling-out period in terms of what I was going to do.  I was also new to teaching or even being around young children, so that was an adjustment for me.  By and large, they are very sweet, although I have one class in particular that is a lot crazier than the others.  Still, to watch 7 year olds listen, speak, and understand a second language is quite an experience, no matter how squirrelly they might get.  It's better now because they've gotten to know me, and so I walk down the hall and have a lot of them greeting me Hello Tyler! or Hello Teacher!, some of them hugging me, and generally being happy to see me, which always brightens my day.  All of the teachers that I work with have been very warm and friendly as well, so overall I consider myself very lucky.  It's also been nice because we have fairly frequent holidays or what they call puentes (bridges) where you get a long weekend.  I went to Paris over Halloween weekend and was able to leave on Thursday and return on Monday.  It's a pretty sweet gig overall!