Everyone has a biggest fear when they are about to study abroad. Will I make friends? Will I be able to speak the language? Will the cultural differences be too severe? Will I get lost in a foreign city?
All of these are valid concerns but not one of them threatened me too much before I left for Spain. My biggest fear: am I going to gain weight?
I am never one to deny myself any sort of food or drink on a vacation and this is more or less how I was looking at the next four months. A vacation is in a new place with new gastronomic indulgences. I may be here for classes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m in a foreign country basically famous for wining and dining.
I was prepared to let myself go a little wild when I first got to Spain and then I was going to buckle down and watch what I eat. That’s not exactly what happened.
I lost weight my first couple of weeks here. Spanish cuisine is difficult to describe and also can seem somewhat strange to a foreigner. When I first arrived, it looked to me as if all they ordered at restaurants was plates of chorizo or Iberian ham. These plates come with nothing on top and nothing on the side and do not look exactly appetizing. Their plates of cheese are usually just labeled “cheese” or “cured cheese” on the menu so I never knew exactly what I would be getting. They also love their seafood here while I don’t eat any fish. The initial times my friends and I went out to eat we all scrimped to find something we would like and after dinner the reaction was always the same: “That was good…wait, it was OK…well actually I don’t know, actually I didn’t like it.”
Combined with all the walking we were doing, I did not gain the study abroad 15 I was initially expecting.
My roommates and I realized we needed to get smart. There was an obvious reason the sevillanos themselves spend hours a day eating and drinking. There was good food out there and we just needed to find it.
Our first discovery was an Italian restaurant (OK, not exactly Spanish) that has the most amazing eggplant pizza I have ever tasted. Next door, we found a place called Diablito, “Little Devil,” with barbeque chicken nachos and chicken and avocado salad. Behind our school, there is a place called El Rey de los Bocadillos, “Sandwich King,” where we order breaded chicken with ali-oli sauce. And 100 Montaditos has become our old standby on Wednesday nights, where mini sandwiches, plates of French fries, and tinto are all one euro.
Soon enough, we were eating quite well. Combine that with our going out five nights a week and soon enough complaints of love handles was echoing throughout my apartment. I was overdoing it. Eating one meal like this a day is perfectly fine but not all three. Especially when topped by a McFlurry (yes, they exist in Spain and they are better). Walking two hours a day was doing nothing to cancel all that out.
It had to stop. French fries mid-week were neither a) native or cultural to Spain, or b) necessary. And why was I eating McFlurries? It all comes in moderation, something I’ve never been good at. But there’s no time like the present to learn. My friends and I have begun to cut the unnecessary things out of our diets. Trips to our favorite candy store are modified. We are trying to slim down to four nights out a week. But we are only in Spain once so when we hear of the “best (whatever) ever!” we are definitely running out the door to try it. No drastic results here, but most of us have neither lost nor gained weight since we’ve been here. Mission accomplished.