It's a dreary, rainy Sunday in Madrid, after a chilly, mostly uneventful weekend, but quite a busy week! The above photo (click to enlarge) is from Wednesday night's Real Madrid v Real Murcia game. Madrid won, 5-1, but it was far from a dull blow-out game. Madrid scored within the first five minutes and the ref ended up throwing out Madrid coach José Mourinho and giving out eight yellow cards, one of which turned into a red card for Madrid defender Álvaro Arbeloa. It was really interesting to see the highlights after the game, since Bernabeu lacks a replay screen (perhaps an American indulgence but I still really wish there had been one). Mourinho was thrown out of the game--and suspended for the next two games--for badmouthing the ref and stepping outside the coach's area. The entire stadium went wild and started shouting at the referee, who is also notorious for making calls just like this one. Mourinho said in a post-game interview that this ref averages about six yellow cards per match, and considering the first card he gave out in this game was after only about ten minutes of play, many more cards were bound to follow.
Wednesday's game was part of the Copa del Rey, and since Real Murcia is in a lower-ranked division than Madrid, the tickets were absurdly cheap, only ten euros for seats on top! We'd originally planned on spending more for the "good" seats in the lower sections, since they only would have cost us about 20-30 euros each, but we bought our tickets too late and the upper levels were the only seats left. There isn't a bad seat in the house, really... the rows are pretty stacked and each row had a crossbar in front of the seats because they just know we're all going to be jumping out of our chairs every few minutes! The best part was that the upper levels have heaters on the ceilings, so even though it was freezing that night, we were nice and toasty. Overall I had a really great time and I can't wait to go to another game!
The next day at school, we had an excursion to the Parque Europa, a big green space in Torrejón with loads of European monuments in a miniature form. It does seem a bit cheesy, but I think the kids had a lot of fun. I was, however, exhausted after this trip. My normal day at school consists of talking to the kids or telling them to be quiet, but never actually trying to corral them into the room. This was not the case on Thursday. We had to shout so loudly just to get their attention and tell them what monument we were looking at. The first half of the trip I was with Inma, the English teacher, but halfway through I had to switch to be with Inés so that each group would have one teacher speaking English and one speaking Spanish. It's really incredible how easily the kids stop what they are doing to listen to someone speaking Spanish, but I understand that it's so much easier for them to tune out a different language... I was a student in language classes once!
As I mentioned in my last post, I am completely obsessed with the Spanish dish, pimientos de Padrón. Well, at the supermarket on Friday afternoon I saw a packet of these little green peppers that caught my eye, especially the part on the label that said the variety was "PADRON." Naturally, I bought a pack, brought them home, and attempted to make my new favorite dish. Success! They were delicious and just how I'd hoped they would taste. If you can get your hands on these peppers, all you have to do is wash & dry them, fry them in olive oil for a few minutes until they start to blister and shrivel a bit, and then sprinkle them with salt. Pick them up by the stems, take a bite, and hope that they don't pica!
I changed the memory card in my camera this weekend and discovered a long-lost gem--a picture of my first attempt at making a tortilla! After I returned from Spain last summer I was completely enamored with this dish (and still am) so I had some friends from my study abroad group over to my apartment for dinner and tried to have a nice tapas night. I saw this photo and thought, hmm, that looks a lot like the plates from my apartment, but I haven't made a successful tortilla in a long time... so I checked the info on the photo and it was dated 10-10-2009! Incredible! I certainly have something to live up to this time around. And if you're interested in sampling some of my favorite Spanish flavors, my friend Meredith wrote a nice blog post with a recipe for this dish in particular. My advice: don't be timid with the olive oil. You'll need it!!