Learning to be Spanish

Spain is definitely not on the top of Europeans best food list.. I know they are competing with Italy and France.. but they aren't trying very hard. :) hehe. However they do have a few good dishes going for them!
- Paella! Paella is like a rice and seafood or rice and chicken dish. Nothing extravagant but a very rich and delicious flavor. Candace and I had tried some of the paella and restaurants around the city and were completely under-enthused. So Candace was talking with her house mom one day and her mom said that Paella is only as good as the ingredients in it and the only place in the city that you'd find good real paella is in a very fancy expensive restaurant -- bummer. She then followed that up with but still the best way to have paella is homemade. She told Candace to invite some friends over and we could make REAL paella! We arrived at Candace's house to a plethora or ingredients including a ton of fresh seafood! Lourdes (the mom) took us through everything step by step! It was amazing and the secret ingredient- saffron! Along with the Paella we had semi-sweet wine from Italy and a Rose after dinner. Also a salad with lettuce, tomatoes and battered and friend goat cheese - yum, with a homemade dressing of some kind - double yum. And of course Ali-oli, not positive what it is but it's a rich white sauce that they use with a lot of things!

Some other Spanish things we have been doing...
- Saw a bullfight. It was gruesome but kind of interesting. I guess the fall is like the time the young torreros learn how to fight and so it wasn't a like "good" performance, meaning they took too long to kill them. General info- there are six bulls that are fought. The come out and and run it around and then take these little swords and stab them six times, then guys on horses stab it twice with a long thing and then the main matador comes out with a sword and does the finishes the job. then the three mules come out and drag the bull away. They drug the bulls before they come fight too, but if they bull is like too drugged to fight they'll just take it back and kill it. So one was too drugged and kept like tripping and falling on his knees (which is like an unfair fight so they change it I guess) So they bring out this herd of giant herding.. idk giant cows to herd the bull to the back. I don't think I have a picture of this but it was interesting! Here is a blurry pic of the guys on the horses- that part was really scary.

I live about 5 minutes from the Royal Palace here in Madrid. It's simply amazing

And because we are perfecting our Spanish-ness we attended an amazing futbol game!! Real Madrid won 3-0 of course! We were in the fourth row- No big deal :-) hehe

Stay tuned! Always more to come :-) Until next time besos!
Hasta Luego