Toothache and Tuna

As I have mentioned before, not everything here runs so smoothly.

There are two main things that seem to put me at a bit of a disadvantage living here: not speaking fluent Spanish and being a vegetarian.

Now I know that, despite the rising numbers of vegetarians, pescatarians and flexitarians in the UK, it can be annoying to have that one person asking for the umpteenth time if there was real meat in the gravy or the one that brings their own food to make sure there is at least one thing they can eat. But most veggies/other I know are quite considerate. I’m on the flip side, almost apologetic, and I always try and anticipate the needs of others. So when my friend invited me to his house for an Italian dinner party, I thought it best to mention my meat deficient diet. No problema he said, so thought all was well being that I had given him a day’s notice. Turns out the Italian idea of vegetarian food is pasta with beer sauce. No, that is not an obscure delicacy, it is exactly what you think: pasta cooked in a bit of oil and beer. I had to sit and watch while everyone else enjoyed rich, creamy carbonara, whilst I made up for my lack of edible dinner with a lot of red wine. Imagine if I said I was vegan.

As for eating out, restaurants don’t seem to understand the idea of vegetarianism. They can deal with the no meat bit, but fish? It is practically one of your five a day here. The number of times I have asked if something has meat in it to find it has been made with tuna. I genuinely think tuna is considered a vegetable here. It is in the contents of every vegetable sandwich, salad and empenada. When I finally asked for the contents of something to be listed, after the waiter reeled off a list of vegetables he asked me “with tuna?”.

But the test of all tests when you’re living in a foreign country is dealing going to the doctor, or in my case the dentist. A couple of weeks into living here my last wisdom tooth decided to rear its ugly head and give me an infection. After not being able to sleep due to toothache, I decided that I was going to skip classes and get myself down to the 24-hour-drop-in dental clinic. And in true Spanish style, the one time I drop in the dentist is not there. So I try to explain my problem with broken Spanish and a swollen face, eventually manage to get across the problem (mostly thanks to Orla and google translate), give the receptionist my Whatsapp, and go home to wait for the dentist to come back. I was afraid that I might have to have the tooth taken out, in Spanish! Thankfully he just prescribed me some antibiotics and told me to come back in a week if nothing had changed. At least it gave me an excuse to eat ice-cream and binge watch ‘Grace and Frankie’ (which I highly recommend if you have the time).

There are of course loads of great things happening on my year abroad, but who wants to read that.