A Culinary Experience

I was sitting on a plane the day after New Years. It was cold. And that sad, depressing feeling of the holidays being over wrapped around me like the complimentary blanket the flight attendant handed out to passengers to keep warm. I was flying somewhere between Boston and Berlin. Nothing but dark blue drifted below me. I was scared.

After tossing and turning through the 8-hour flight, I finally landed. But landing only feels good in somewhere familiar. I knew before arriving in Spain that making the decision to study abroad for the winter was a good one. I knew that I needed to be in a place that wasn’t Athens, Ohio--just for a little while. But I was looking into faces that didn’t smile back at me the way they used to on Court Street. Grabbing my two suitcases, I hoped like hell that I remembered to pack my heart somewhere in the shuffle between my clothes and my camera. Because I knew it fell out of my chest when I left Athens.

When I finally arrived in Salamanca, I started to find myself in the daily routine. On the surface, everything about my life looked the same as it did in the U.S. Class. Friends. Going out. But I felt like I was reading a new book in a series by my favorite author. The big parts were similar, but the details were entirely different. New classes. New friends. New language.

One day, while in class, a friend of mine asked me to lunch. She wanted to go to Burger King. In an attempt to make myself experience as much as I could while abroad, I vowed that I would not live in fast food restaurants. But greasy, salty fries smothered in ketchup squeezed from a packet sounded amazing.

And it was amazing.

Now I want to be clear that the three months that I spent in Europe were some of the best that I have ever had. I want to go back after I graduate. And do what? That part, I am not as sure about. As my very worldly roommate would say, (she studied abroad in Spain for a year) “I just know that I love the feeling of being in a place where not learning isn’t an option.”

I couldn’t agree with her more. I loved finally learning how to use the subway system after being lost beneath the city of Paris the night before. I loved enjoying paella for the first time in Toledo, eating the whole plate prior to discovering that you could remove the heads, which were still attached to the shellfish scattered in the rice, first. And I loved that a trip to Burger King with a friend on a cold day brought me home to Ohio for a short half an hour.

So it may not sound like much, but that is part of the reason why I love food. Not only that, but it is why I thought it would make an interesting blog. It’s the carton of chunky monkey that catches my tears after a bad day. It’s the Thanksgiving dinner that seats me at the “kid table” every year with my eight cousins. It’s the burger and fries that start a friendship strong enough to keep going through facebook messages, missed calls, and voicemails. When goodness like that can come from a meal, who wouldn’t want to share the recipe?