the american store

It's fate. I move to another part of Madrid... and land myself a mere 5 blocks from 'The American Store' (www.theamericanstore.es) which, according to them, is the largest American store in alllllll of the noble land of Spain. Well, it was not all that big... but I felt like a little kid going through the 5 aisles looking at the assortment of goods that I had forgotten I'd even missed. Mike 'n' Ikes! Cranberry sauce!! Rice krispie treats!!! Quaker oatmeal!!!! Lucky freakin Charms!!!!!! I resisted the temptation to buy it all... I somehow even managed to not pick up the Lucky Charms, that beloved childhood cereal which I rediscovered in Holy Cross's dining hall and proceeded to eat with a rather disturbing frequency because Mom wasn't there anymore to make sure I ate the proper ratio of marshmellows to cereal. The Lucky Charms tub and the fro-yo machine were my two favorite and most visited parts of Kimball... even miraculously beating out the omelette line at weekend, aka 'hangover recovery,' brunches.

I went to the American Store with a mission, my wallet, and a list of four items of the utmost importance: cake mix (and obviously an accompanying tub of frosting), Skippy superchunk peanut butter, root beer, and for the love of God some normal pickles NOT soaked in a vat of plain vinegar (insert gagging). A half-hour later I came out with a rather sizeable plastic bag like a trophy of my success filled with aforementioned products... annnnd perhaps some other treats that mysteriously made their way into my basket. Three bags of Reeses Pieces? What? A giant bag of Root Beer Barrel candies? Huh?

And as a gleeful exclamation point to my American shopping experience, the woman working there summoned one of her underlings working in the basement up to floor level to offer me a free root beer from the store's secret subterranean refrigerator "to beat the heat." It was glooooorious- so much so that I almost could have skipped home out of sheer contentment.