Erica está en España: My first night out in Jaén

Another night in the hostel. Mom accidentally tried to call at 2:30am. Luckily when I sleep in hostels I keep the phone in my shirt so I can find my phone and turn it off quickly when my alarm goes off. Also one of the girls from our room came back at 6:30 and was really loud. Guess it just wasn’t meant to be a restful night.

I woke up, got ready and used the internet downstairs for awhile. After that I went to Ruiz Jimenez to meet with my coordinator Irene. She is going out of town this weekend but offered to get coffee with me later.

I spent the day wandering around town, looking at fliers with pisos para alquilar (apartments for rent), making phone calls and making appointments to look at apartments.

I had appointments at 6 and 7pm and was torn about what to do…keep making calls or wait to see if these appointments work out. I got lunch at a typical Spanish restaurant and ordered salmorejo and ensaladilla rusa. I tried salmorejo for the first time last year on my whale watching trip to Barbate. It’s a cold tomato soup with olive oil, garlic, cheese and bacon. It’s really good, but I liked the one I had in Barbate better than the one here. Ensaladilla rusa was one of my favorite things from Murcia. I ended up ordering way too much food. The servings were a lot bigger than expected and there was no way I could finish it. People have asked me lots of times about Spanish food so I’ll try to keep track of it in my blog so you can see what they eat over here…it’s not Mexican food!

La Quintana, where I had lunch

Salmorejo

Ensaladilla rusa and my other tapa (you get free tapas here when you order a drink!)

(the menu, if you want to see other typical Spanish stuff)

After lunch I headed to the tourism office (which is next to the cathedral) to get a map and ask some questions. Then I walked around for a bit and got something to drink at Deán. It had a nice outdoor area and I ordered an iced tea and a water. The waitress thought that someone was coming to meet me since I ordered two drinks, but I was just SO thirsty from walking around in the heat all day. It was a nice break.

(Fountain at Plaza de la Constitución)

I was supposed to meet the landlady for the first apartment in Plaza de la Constitución at 6. She called me at 6 to say she’d be there in 20 minutes or so. When she arrived I could tell it was her. She called and without answering walked up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned out to be Isa’s mom and her dad came too…the parents of the Spanish girl I’d been talking to almost all summer about her apartment. The first apartment she showed me was the guy’s apartment. They were a group of American men, and a French guy that was visiting them. The guys seemed really nice but I really wanted to live with Spanish speakers. Then they showed me the room across the hall which had an American girl and a girl from Scotland. Again, super nice…but English speaking. Isa’s parents were really nice, and the rooms were nice. The apartments fit all my needs except my desire to be with Spanish speakers.
I exchanged numbers with Chris, one of the guys in the first apartment, and then headed off to an appointment to look at another apartment, which happened to be just down the street. This third apartment was decent. It was clean and there was a German girl and a Spanish girl. The landlord told me I could take my time to think about it, but he was showing the apartment to another girl at 8pm. I jumped in and said I would move in. Looking back I was a little rash, but it’s fine. I have a 4 month contract so if anything was really wrong at least I could move out in January if I needed to. It was a little funny though, as soon as I heard it was Spanish speakers and the room was decent I jumped in…but of the qualifications I had ahead of time this apartment doesn’t meet very many of my “must haves.” I wanted internet in my apartment. This apartment doesn’t. If there was more than 3 people, I wanted two bathrooms. 4 people…1 bathroom. Granted, one girl is moving out in a few days and we may or may not get someone new. Oh well…it’s in a good neighborhood, almost exactly in the middle of my two schools with the Spanish speakers. It’s hard to find an apartment with Spanish speakers because so often they already have their flats from the previous year, with their same roommates, etc. The landlord has a stutter so he talks really fast to avoid stuttering. That upped the feeling of being rushed to me, but I was really eager to have an apartment and not have to pay for more nights at the hostel. The landlord said he would come to the hostel in the morning to help me move my suitcases in his car.

I went back to the hostel, changed and Eda was there. We chatted for a while and I offered to help her find an apartment because she can’t speak Spanish very well. She was extremely grateful and gave me some gifts. I forget what she called them but it was a keychain and a bracelet that are meant to protect the people they are given to. She is so extremely sweet. I invited her to come with me, Chris and his friends and go out that night. We were going to do something simple like tapas, but ended up meeting at Chris’ apartment and actually going out instead. We went to two bars…Tijuana and Truvador. Both are apparently typical hang out spots. I had fun and was really thankful to have people to go out with. I was really tempted to live in the Americans’ apartment because of that instant community, but I’m glad I waited. Now I can live with Spanish speakers and still just be down the road from all of these guys that I can be friends with. We finally got back to the hostel around 5am. Luckily we were the only girls in our room that night so we didn’t have to worry about waking anyone up.