My favorite thing about Spain: Tapas!

30 Sept 2011
Like yesterday, I mostly observed in my English classes today--so that I have a feel for the way the classes work and the level of the students. However, starting next week, I'm going to be doing a lot more planning of activities! I'll be planing activities for 3rd and 6th grade. The 3rd graders are learning about the structure of the question "What's he/she doing?" While the 6th graders will be working with "What does he/she want to do?" Since these are more active questions, I'm thinking that maybe we can do some type of charades game with the students. Using the vocabulary from this section, students can act out what they are doing or want to do. Then, students can guess what other students are acting out. In this way, I can also try to incorporate the 2nd person "you" form and the 3rd person "he/she" form.


However, the best part of the day by far was going to a tapas bar. Tapas are one of my favorite Spanish traditions. Basically, you go out with friends to try out a bunch of different appetizers! The word tapas comes from the word tapar which means "to cover." The etymology behind this word is disputed, but according to some theories people used to put tapas over their drinks to cover them from getting fruit flies or dust in them. A slight derivation of this theory says that people used to have to eat tapas standing up and so the only place you could place your tapas was on top of your drink. Another theory says that tapas were eaten to cover up the taste of a bad wine.

There are a lot of different options when it comes to tapas. Depending on the restaurant/bar you are in, you can get Spanish tortilla (not to be confused with Mexican tortilla; Spanish tortilla is more like a potato omelet), croquetas, bread with different meats (like chorizo, Iberian ham, etc.), and many more! The place that we went to also had little mini hamburgers and fries. We ended up ordering some croquetas, bread with egg on it, and little sandwiches with chicken, cheese, and tomato. At this particular restaurant, you could get a tapa with a drink for only 3 euro! Since we were still hunger after three rounds of tapas, we decided to try a ración (ration). This is a bigger portion of some typical tapas. We ordered bread (with tomato on top) and Iberian meats--which is delicious! The meat here is very different from home. It's got a much richer flavor than anything you can find in the US.