I'm going to update my blog mom, part 1

PART I

My gross generalizations of what Spaniards find important:

1. Food. Everything revolves around what you're going to eat and when you're going to eat it. Let me expound:

Breakfast is often composed of a tostada (toasted bread, usually with tomato and olive oil) and cafe con leche, traditionally light so that you're completely starving by lunchtime. Because your body refuses to function properly without sustenance, and God forbid you eat in public, you must go home midday (2, 3 pm) in order to revive yourself. This involves binge eating for at least an hour. Dessert is not to be left out, ever-- don't forget this could be that last meal you ever eat (so the psychology goes). Forced into a coma by 4 or 5 regularly leaves you in indecision-- do I return to work? Or do I watch this afternoon's documentary special on anthrax poisoned hippos?* If you guessed the latter, you are correct. By evening, you still aren't hungry because you ate 3 times your body weight in the afternoon. Don't let this deter you-- you are your only limit. You are the only thing standing in the way of a plate of tapas. But sit down, and eat them instead. And Granada is the only place in Spain where tapas are free with any drink you buy. So, wait until 11 to eat (because you're not still completely full by then) and skirt sleep for the sake of food. 

*yes, I watched this. 

2. Spain, specifically. And particularly, not Europe. And no, Spaniards are not European, they are Spaniards. An autonomous empire, you might guess, if you talked to one of them. Have they seceded from the EU? Maybe. Spain is not a country, it's a continent.

3. There are more peluquerías, or hair salons, than people that have hair. Getting yer hair did is a weekly maintenance. I think even all the hippies in the Albaícin get their dreadlocks done, which are unreal. And by unreal, I mean, how do you dread a mullet?? Which I call, by the way, the dreaded mullet. Anyway, the haircuts are truly pieces of art, like a Dalí painting you wouldn't want hanging in your bedroom but you could admire at a museum. (from a distance)

4. Dogs here are like mob bosses-- they run the town. Everyone has a dog, and everyone's dog owns them. A dog on a leash, well, it happens, but more likely, the dog is at liberty to roam and caga wherever it likes, and it's "owner" follows it around. And I've never seen so many in one place, in my life. There's also no enforcement of the, pick up your dog caca law. It's gross.

5. Fútbol. That means soccer. And we all knew that. And perhaps this should've been #1. But this is no particular order...so, it's like this: girls don't really play soccer. They also don't run outside, which I've learned by the look my sister gives me every time I say, "I think I'll go for a run".  Also, the "look" for girls right now is to dress like guys- huge baggy pants hanging to show your boxers and maybe a beater or big jacket. It's heinous. But, dare I say, they pull it off? And they do, so very well.