go to the market and sell it

As part of a homework assignment, on Tuesday our classes took a little field trip to the central market to explore and answer questions about what can be found at Alicante's mercado. The answer is primarily lots and lots of fish. I knew Mediterranean diet was really seafood-heavy, but I didn't realize how diverse the choices are. There were all sorts of squid, octopus, prawns, shrimp, crab, mussels, and of course your standard scaly fish with gills. I saw a tuna that was seriously as big as me.

 
It was really interesting to see how the market operates. On the bottom level, there's the fish stands. There are a lot of fish stands, but they all basically sell the same thing (some are more tuna-heavy, some have more octopus, etc). I wonder how people choose which one to patronize. It was kind of overwhelming.  Also interesting was the fact that everything was prepared right at the market. The fish were all whole, and almost all the stand owners were cutting up the fish, or weighing them out to put in packages for a customer, or de-scaling or de-boning, or something like that. It definitely seemed fresher than buying packaged, prepared, frozen fish from a supermarket. I have no idea what the fishing practices are like, and if they're sustainable or not, but the market sure seemed to offer fresh, local fare.

 

This man is taking the scales of some ichthyoid

After that I came home and Juani made me dinner. Usually during dinner we watch TV, which is really strange because I can count on one hand the times the TV was on during dinner growing up. Sometimes it's really hard to understand because when you're just listening to Spanish speech it can seem really overwhelming. If hand gestures and eye contact isn't directed at you you don't really know what's going on. We watch the same shows, usually, and I've gotten the general gist. They are as follows:

Que Tiempo Tan Feliz ("What a happy time"): A talk show where old actors or singers come on and have their life stories told, and there's usually some ex-lover or close relative that comes and gives the most emotional message ever. I really don't know what they talk about, mostly how many hits they had or how many people they dated. Periodically a pop group comes to sing, which still confuses me. If they sing songs that the singers made popular, that would make sense, but as I don't know anything about Spanish pop culture I remain in the dark.

Pasapalabra ("Password"): A game show that has to do with words, and sometimes a song. I like this show a lot because it teaches me vocabulary (which I usually make a mental note to use in daily conversation and yeah, that never happens). My favorite game is when they go around the alphabet and are given clues to a word and have to guess the word. They also play this game where they are given five seconds of a song and have to guess it, but I think they have to actually sing the song to get the points. 

Vuélvame Loca ("Drive Me Crazy"): A celebrity news show. Sometimes people yell. It's mostly shady paparazzi "journalism". 

Siete Vidas ("Seven Lives"): Kind of a Friends-ish style show. I don't fully understand it all the time, but I know who is generally the one who gets herself into mischief and who is there to tell her why she is wrong. I am very smug when I get the jokes. Humor is hard in other languages. 

Also SpongeBob Squarepants is HUGE here (under the name of "Bob Esponja"). I got a huge kick out of the character names, like Squidward is named "Calamardo". I am going to make a huge effort to watch this with my 7 and 4-year-old host nephews next week.

That's about all I have for now. Updates later, I'm sure

--Maren