Siesta

It’s been a few days since my last post, and since then I have had two more days of conversation classes with the teachers at my school. It’s been fun and I have had a chance to get to know some of the younger teachers better as they invited me out for “coffee” with them the other day. It was a lot of fun, and I especially enjoyed finally having a chance to practice my Spanish!

I say “coffee” with quotation marks because in Spain, people tend to have a small breakfast in the morning, with maybe just some milk, or a piece of toast. Then at about 10:30 or 11:00 am, they have a 2nd breakfast which involves something a little more filling, like a sandwich, and is generally accompanied by some coffee. Their lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day for Spaniards, doesn’t happen until siesta time between 2:00 and 6:00 pm. Since lunch happens so late in the day, students at the schools don’t actually have a lunch break, and instead they get a 20-minute break in the morning and a 15-minute break in the afternoon. Then they just go home to have lunch at 3:00 pm when school finishes.

During the siesta, almost all the shops in town close (except for large chain grocery stores) and then they reopen after siesta at 6:00 pm and stay open until about 9:00 pm. This makes it really hard to get errands done during the daytime. Then since everyone has a big lunch so late in the day, supper doesn’t happen until sometime between 8:00 and 10:00 pm and is usually a much smaller meal than what we would have at home.

I think I’m slowly adjusting to this crazy schedule, and by the end of my eight months here, I might even be hooked!