Bocadillo Days.

Bocadillo is the word for sandwich here, and has come to mean much more than just a sandwich.  Three of the four days I go to school, I bring a bocadillo.  I am now so attached to the word and the simple concept of a bocadillo, of making my own lunch, that I will probably continue to call sandwiches bocadillos when I return to the States.

A standard bocadillo here in Granada consists of some kind of meat (or two), usually ham, and cheese on baguette style bread.  Wrap that up in foil and throw it in your bag for school and presto! you have lunch.  However, bocadillos serve more purpose than simply lunch for school.  If, on the weekend, for example, your host mother mentions that she will be out for the evening, then that means its a bocadillo night.  So you trot off to the kitchen, take some cheese from the bridge, butter some baguette, add cheese.  Once again, bocadillos have saved the day yet again.

There is something comforting about a bocadillo that is hard to explain.  When you are studying for mid terms, eating a bocadillo curled up on your bed in inexplicably relaxing.  Perhaps it is that everything in a bocadillo can be labeled "comfort food", i.e. bread, cheese, etc.  You can rely on a bocadillo to always be there for you, and never leave.  It is entirely possible that I am placing too much of an emphasis on a bocadillo, but it is such a part of my life here, perhaps not.

With the studying of midterms, a bocadillo has come to be very important.  Those few minutes when you can put al thought of verb conjugations and vocabulary words and research topics out of your mind, and just think on the wonderful mixture of cheese and bread.  Its the simple things in life, really.