- …Christopher Columbus went to many countries in Europe to ask for funding to explore…Ferdinand and Isabela, the Spanish monarchs, were the only ones to say yes.
- …Spain has a communist party. It is still active today, but mainly a leftover from the civil war. When the dictator, Franco, took power, the only political party that opposed him, was the Partido Comunista de España and oddly enough, it’s still around.
- …Spanish actually has 15 different tenses. For a point of reference, English has three: past, present, & future.
- …I ate fried pig cheek, or, carreta as a tapa.
- …From Spain, it costs around 15€ to fly anywhere in Europe, of course the airlines charge for taxes and other things, like if you wanted to use the bathroom. Just kidding.
- …So our landlords, Antonió & Ana, brought us an oven when we moved in. However, the oven needed a special electrical plug so they arranged for some electricians to come and install a new socket/plug/something like that. When the electricians arrived, about a week later, it was almost like opening the door and seeing Tweedle-dee & Tweedle-dum on the doorstep. They asked for something to climb on and some dish soap. We were pretty confused and tried to show them to where the oven was, but that’s not what they wanted. For the next four hours, the electricians that came to install a plug for our oven, played with the wiring of the doorbell instead. When they left, I couldn’t help but think, “What in the world just happened?” Anyway, our oven works fine but we still don’t know what the wiring of the doorbell has to do with the plug for the oven.
- …all of the following concoctions are perfectly normal and acceptable for Spaniards to order: red wine & coke, red wine & Fanta, beer & Fanta, etc.
- …part of the original city wall of Úbeda, is still intact. It was built 1000 A.D.
- …El Corte Íngles (The English Court) is a huge store that has a great international grocery section.
- ...We locked ourselves out of our piso on accident. Instead of calling a locksmith, we went to our neighbors house, asked if we could use the balcony. I watched (and prayed) as Crystal climbed over to our balcony and go in through a window. We live on the 4th floor, which is actually the 5th by American standards.
- ...We are asked by Spaniards, at least a couple times a week, what we think of Barack Obama.
- ...Crystal and I suggested getting dinner to our friend at 8:30PM; she said that was way to early.
- ...Crystal and I wanted to learn flamenco, so we went to get some info about classes. The only thing we found was a dance school that told us we could take classes with the six year olds.
- ...Little girls have their ears pierced when they are a few days old. It would be very abnormal to see an infant (girl) without their ears pierced. It’s a cultural thing for people to assume the baby is a boy when the ears aren’t pierced.
- ...The verb, to give birth, in Spanish translates literally as “dar la luz”, or "to give the light".
- …I saw a Texas license plate, in Europe.
