Cordoba

I am finally in Cordoba. It has a dash over the first o but I do not know how to type it. Hahahaha. I hope all is well back in the US.
Yesterday I rode in the train from Barcelona to Cordoba. It was five hours long but an extremely beautiful ride. My city is in the mountains so my face was glued to the window for he majority of the five hours. (Two hours were spent watching Shrek 2.) I rode with another girl from the program. She lives about an hour away from Cordoba.
Upon exiting the train I saw three people watching me from above and immediately knew it was my host family. They were very excited to finally meet me. I was extremely excited to finally meet them too. My Spanish is very very bad but I am learning and I can understand a lot. Marta, my host sister, speaks English very well but I really do need to learn Spanish. My family decorated my room for me and it is very pretty. I have a wrought iron bed and a floral bed spread. Also there are two paintings with flowers and a beautiful chest. I brought gifts for my family as well. A bracelet for Marta, a Revere bowl, many kinds of Moravian cookies, and a book of North Carolina.
Juana, mi mama, made paella for lunch... which is eaten around 3pm. It was very good. I love the food here. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day too. After lunch we went to the city center because a market was going on that only comes once a year for one weekend. I was lucky enough to arrive on this weekend. It was packed. The people who had booths were all dressed in medieval clothes. They also sold all types of things: food, jewelry, tiny books, figurines, and much more. The food was all amazing. I sampled a lot of meat... like sausages and a sort of jerkey. I have never smelled or tasted food this good. I also sampled cheese. There were people juggling and playing old instruments. There was a woman dressed as a tree on stilts and a man dressed as a faun (half goat half man) on a sort of stilt that bounces. He bounded through the crowd all the time. I laughed and pointed a lot. Marta held my hand the whole time so I didn't get lost.
While we were there my host family bought me a gift. A necklace that is very popular here. I think it means protection from the angels or something like that. It is very very beautiful. I learned a lot of words and wrote them all down in my journal so I can practice them.
We had dinner around 10pm and it was very light. It was a salad.. It consisted of oranges with avacado and cod fish on top with olive oil. It was amazing. I cannot wait to come home and make all this food for my family because I know they will love it. Juana and Carloman bought a lot of the meats and chesses at the festival so we also had those with dinner. For dessert we had greek yogurt. YUM! We sat and watched television for a while after but I was falling asleep so I went to bed. I did not have school today. I start tomorrow because it is the first of the month. I slept til noon. It was okay because they said to sleep as much as I want. Marta went to school but Carloman stayed home with me. He taught me how to make what I want for breakfast. He speaks little English and I speak little Spanish but it worked out well. I understood most of what he said to me. I loved breakfast. I made toast and cafe con leche. But instead of butter on my toast it is very common to pour olive oil on toast. The olive oil is so good. I watched some tv while I ate too. Scrubs was on and then after that the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire was on. Both in Spanish. I was very amused that they had those programs here.
The family dog, Paka, (pronounced pika), just came in my room and sat on my lap. She is so so cute.
I will post again soon! Adios!