domingo, 26 de mayo

Sunday was a beautiful day to wake up to.  The cloud was perfect blue with minimal clouds in the sky, a perfect day to experience authentic paella.  We woke up a little early Sunday morning to get some last minute homework done because we knew we were going to be busy majority of the day.  Around 1 o'clock our family headed off to go meet our "grandparents."  It was quite the production getting there, we first took the tramvia which is the above ground metro, to the next stop to then get on the under ground metro, where we finally got off  in Alboraya to walk to our host mom's brother's house to take his car...public transportation had never been so annoying.  But as usual we always run into some sort of glitches and to get on the metro underground you must have swipe your ticket...you must also swipe your ticket to get out from underground.  Our host dad swiped us all in and when we went to swipe to get out, he couldn't find our card anymore.  After trying to get ahold of someone at the desk, we realized they weren't there because it was Sunday so we had to squeeze our way through the sliding doors to sneak out...quite the adventure for Lewis and Clarke.


After finally getting in the car we began our venture through el campo de Valencia.  The mountain side was on our left and the beautiful Mediteranneo was on our right.  It was about a 30 minute car ride before turning off onto a gravel road and up a winding street where we finally saw "Grandma's house."  There were magnificant views of the mountains because we were up a ways we were also able to clearly see the Mediteraenan.  The house was something from the movies, quaint with white outside and cute flowers everywhere.  The family had it's own fields with organge trees, lemon trees, peaches, all sorts of herbs, grapes, lettuce of some kind, watermelon, and even artichokes!  Any fruit or vegetable you could think of, you could probably have found there.  We met all 3 of Gemma's older brothers, her three nephews, and her parents.  Her parents were the sweetest people ever and her mom welcomed us with a warm hug while she was stiring the paealla.  Seeing old-fashioned paella being made was so neat to experience.

Gemma's parents farm land

View from their roof top towards the Mediterranean

View from their roof top towards the mountains

Grandma cooking the paella

When we all sat down to eat, I felt like I was at home.  They're family was just at loud and rambunctious as one of our family holiday gatherings.  Lots of laughing, hollering over one another, and passing food left and right.  Everyone was very welcoming to us and tried having conversations with us.  The paella pan easily fed over 22 people with some left over.  There was fresh chicken from the field, rice, artichokes, peas (I think), and so much more in the paealla.  It was veryy yummy, but I got a lot more than Jen did so she had to help me with some of it, such a great friend :)

Lotsss of paella

After dinner "grandma" brought out fresh Valencian oranages that were so big I could barely hold it in my hand.  Jen and I attempted to eat one (It was delicious!) but were only able to tackle about half of it because we were so full.  But of course Spanairds never stop eating so after fruit came cafe, and two cakes.  It was grandma's birthday so we all sang and she was very excited.  She turned 79 and told us her husband was 80, they are only 8 months apart.  We then got served a piece of EACH cake and felt like I was going to pop after that.  I loved meeting everyone and they were all so welcoming I didn't want to leave.  I was able to have a nice conversation with grandpa and was able to understand everything for the most part but he had to help me out a bit.

When we arrived back home a immediate siesta was needed after all that food.  We woke up to meet with our group to go to a partido del futbol!  The Valencian soccer team was playing Granada and we lucked out with some awesome seats all together for only 15 euros.  When we got to the stadium I was amazed by how many people there were.  Streets were closed and people were literally everywhere.  It was so different to experience because everyone was just walking aruond with one or two beers in their hands and hanging out before the game...definitely different than home.  After having a cluster of problems trying to figure out where our seats were, we finally sat down and were able to join the craziness of everyone else.  The game was a good fight, Valencia's defense was much better than Granada's so the game didn't involve Valencia's goalie much, but the tension in the crowd grew to a high level whenever Valencia was near their scoring goal and when they scored the entire crowd rose at once and screamed "GOOOLLLLLLLLLL" and everyone went nuts.  It was definately exactly how we see it on TV but way more fun being a part of the madness.

When the game was over and it was official that Valencia won we hurried out to try and beat the huge crowds...didn't work out too well.  But we were able to meander our way through everyone and get out infront of the major crowds to go home.  When we finally made it home Gemma made us a bowl of cheese tortelini with tomato sauce and we finished up homework and soon after headed off to bed.