The Builders Association

Sunday, May 31, 2009

chino latino

OK, internet, ayude me, ayude me! Deb has reached her maximum tolerance for vigilancia de la niña. She is driving me crazy and her father is no help and so before I dress her a pretty little red cape and send her to the bulls, I have to do something.

So, I went to find something to make her happy. To try, anyway. I asked around but there are not really any stores in Salamanca that are Mexican. But lucky for me, Mexican food is now an international treat and so at the hipermercato Carrefour, I found tortillas de trigo, wheat tortillas. Made in Belgium, hecho en Belgica! I can’t take the kid to have a burrito with her dad in Mexico but I can bring a burrito to her. I hope it works.

Afterwards, I was in town and walking around looking at more old stuff and I wandered into the Las Duenas Convent, seeking spiritual comfort.


It is very serene and calm inside the convent but even better the Dominican nuns have a gift shop that sells their baked goods! Finally, spiritual enlightenment through cookies. I bought a box of the most heavenly almond cookies, galletas de almendras. Since they are made by nuns, they are heavenly in all senses of the word. Y sin manteca!

Then in front of Casa de las Conchas, another cookie epiphany.

This gentleman is selling chicarros. They are fragile and delicate straw-shaped cookies and they are not sold in stores. He told me he is perhaps the last street vendor of this cookie. He also sells obleas, the flat ones that are remind me of holy wafers from church. Another heavenly cookie.

As difficult as life is, I can’t eat only cookies so I stopped in for some lunch at this place, El Café Te Pacifico.


It is a Chinese restaurant run by a Buddhist family from Taiwan. Since they are Buddhist, they are vegetarian so I had a Chinese style pork bun that was made with vegetable pork! In Salamanca, with so much good pork this is nearly heretical but I must say, the bun was delicious.


Yi came to Salamanca and fell in love with the city and culture and decided to stay. He and his wife have two kids and they teach Mandarin to children who have been adopted from the Chinese speaking world, so that they can retain their mother language. They give these classes for free.


Yi’s son entertained everyone in the restaurant by trying to teach us words in Mandarin. I told him that Spanish was still difficult for me to understand. This woman told him it was too hard for her to pronounce Chinese and he smiled and said, "Oh come on, it’s easy!"

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Salamanca, Spain where Spanish is hard and so is Chinese, depending on how you look at it.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Viva Jamon!

OK I have good news. According to El Google, Santa Concordia is the patron saint of nannies! Sadly, Santa Concordia is not Spanish and does not live in Salamanca but I’m very happy to know that the catholics have nannies covered in the saint department.

Today I was in town and discovered the other religion of Salamanca when I passed this beautiful stadium:


I thought it was for futbol or maybe Flamenco Dancing with the Stars or something. Que boba! No one dances with stars here, but there is dancing, the dance of death, le corrida. Sadly I have to wait until September when the bullfights begin.

But there is plenty of bull activity anyway because Salamanca is where the best bulls are born and raised. I drove outside of town and found this place:


Dehesa de Rodesviejas where they grow the bulls. The youngsters are so cute! Look! Mira!


Just like little kids. And they are domesticated animals. Just like kids. As a nanny, I thought a little bit of bullfighting might teach me a thing or two about dealing with beasts. At the finca, they let me go for a capea, which is an amateur bullfight.


I don’t want to brag but they said I have some talent. I did not get the ear of the little bull, but I made my entrance, first try. Beginner’s luck.

Salamanca is very proud of its bulls. But, Salamantinos are also proud of another animal, the pig. Pata negra, or in other words, the best ham in the world, comes from the province of Salamanca and the region raises special black pigs, that eat acorns and produce premier ham or jamon and pork or puerco products.


The culture of jamon is incredible here. Jamon is everywhere.


There is even a special bag to carry your jamon in that you can buy at the supermarket:


Ham is so dominant actually, that it is pretty hard to find things to eat without ham in them. Even cookies.


I was enjoying my afternoon cafecito con mantecados the other day, and I started thinking it's funny because manteca is the word for lard. Yes, that’s what makes them so good.

This is Deb in the City, saying goodbye from Salamanca, España, the cerda, cochina, puerco, marrano, conchinilla y lechon capitol of the universe.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Viva España

Hello internet. My name is Deb and you have clicked on my blog, Deb in the City. Do you use the word blog in Spanish? Probably El Blog, no? Or La Blog? Blogs are girls or boys? No se.

Anyway, Deb in the City is my new coping mechanism since my doctor said I should stop eating churros. See, I never expected this but now I have moved to Spain and I live in Salamanca. It’s fantastic here but a little stressful because my Spanish is so terrible and everyone here speaks such a pure Castellano. It’s embarrassing because in the United States a lot of people speak Spanish and I only know enough to negotiate the laundromat. It’s pathetic, no? OK, don’t answer that.

But I live in a fantastic house.


It’s a luxury green farmhouse. Green means it’s friendly to the environment. The water of the three jacuzzis is recycled. Very ecological. This house balances out the other house, the one in Mallorca:


We go here on the weekends with all the other Americans and waste a lot of water together. It’s comforting for us.

Salamanca is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen. So well-made and old. Everything here is really old to me as an American.


The new cathedral for instance, is older than the United States. Salamanca and Spain have profound history. The United States has “classic” rock.

And Salamanca has many many religious and folkloric traditions which I hope to see. Like El Colacha near Burgos.


This man, dressed as the devil jumps over babies to cleanse them of their evil. Because babies are so evil.

Sadly, I came too late for Holy Week this year so I will have to wait. But the Virgen de la Vega festival is coming


so I will get to see my first procession and my first Virgen. Spain has a lot of different processions and a lot of different Virgens.

And the Spainsh are a balanced people and so that everything in Salamnca is not all just virgen, virgen, virgen there is also llunes de aguas festival which is after Easter, to commemorate when the prostitutes are invited back to Salamanca after being exiled across the river for Lent.

I hope that maybe there is a festival and procession for nannies or at least a patron saint of nannies that I can pray to here in Salamanca.

This is Deb saying goodbye from Salamanca, Spain la ciudad dorado, the Golden City.

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