Hola familia y amigos,
This is my second Thanksgiving in Europe. While studying abroad, I spent
Thanksgiving in Ireland with friends where we attended a Thanksgiving gathering
put on by members of the church community there. The Irish made us feel at home except for the portion sizes,
which were very un-American. Let’s
be honest, we each had about a Tablespoon of mashed potatoes. I guess Irish people don’t love their
spuds as much as I had imagined.
Nevertheless, they were so kind and generous to cook us a Thanksgiving
meal and to attempt to make Pumpkin Pie when there isn’t a single pre-made
piecrust or can of sweetened condensed milk in all of Europe as far as I’m
concerned. Well, maybe not all of
Europe, but I am surely having difficulty finding half of the ingredients
needed to bake a pumpkin pie for my students to sample. However I am determined to make this pie, and I will make
my own sweetened condensed milk if I have to. I will update you all if it turns out well :)
Back to the good news… We will have a traditional
Thanksgiving meal here in Vilagarcía, Spain on Thanksgiving Day. We have to celebrate a little later at
night since we all have to work still.
Come on, Spain! If you can celebrate Halloween, you can surely have yet
another day off to spend time with family and be thankful together. I mean food and family is what Spain is
all about. I digress. Our Thanksgiving meal will be hosted by
our missionary friends from Ohio.
They are opening up their home to all Americans in our program. There are seven of us total. We have so much to be thankful for!
One thing we are very grateful for is the new relationships
we have formed at church. Everyone
has been so hospitable to us. This
past weekend the pastor of the church, Eduardo, invited Robin, myself, and the
other married couple Cory and Stephanie to the house that his father built in
the countryside in the little town of Silleda. People live differently in the rural parts of Galicia. Life is not as convenient, yet perhaps
this is why one of Eduardo’s neighbors is still alive at the age of 103. Apparently, he even still helps a bit on the
farm. The entire house is
heated by a wood-burning stove.
The simplicity of the land is so beautiful, even though I know the work
that goes into maintaining the land is not simple. It’s just so fun to be in touch with nature. Eduardo encouraged us all to try the
grapes from his vine that are all natural (not treated with any
chemicals). They were so sweet and
delicious. They do have seeds,
though. Robin is so great at
separating the seeds from the grape and spitting them out. I am not.
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| Outdoor Barbeque...it smelled so very good! I think the sticks give it a different flavor. To the right is his indoor stove that uses sticks to make a fire to heat up the house as well as cook. |
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| The view from Eduardo's window...the picture of the cats was taken at his aunt's house nearby |
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| Don't these grapes look delicious? |
Travel Tales
Plans have been made.
Tickets have been reserved.
Calendars have been filled. It’s official. We’re spending Christmas in Prague! Prague is the capital of Czech Republic
located to the south of Germany and the north of Austria. We will be visiting our dear friend,
Sir Václav and his family there.
He doesn’t really use the title, Sir, but if you met him, you would
probably want to call him Sir Václav.
He is so clever and extremely knowledgeable about European as well as
American History…a natural diplomat.
He is actually studying to become a doctor. This is his first year of studies, and he has a lot of
studying to do over the winter break.
Robin and I agreed to help him study haha. We will be in Prague from December 22nd to
December 30th. His
family invited us to go with them to their cabin the day after Christmas to
ski. The good news is we will have
a future doctor nearby in case we injure ourselves. Just kidding! We plan to take it easy…baby hills for me!
The good news continues! My host family that I lived with
for over three months in Toledo, Spain invited us to spend the New Year with
them. So we will travel from
Prague to Madrid where we will take a thirty minute bus to the BEATUFIUL,
BREATH-TAKING, STUNNING city of Toledo!
We will spend one week there so Robin will have enough time to see why I
truly loved my time there!
All these
travel plans are very exciting since they are truly a once in a lifetime
opportunity. We are deeply
grateful that we will at least get to spend Christmastime with friends. However, we will still miss our
families because nothing beats a Christmas at home with the ones you love. We will miss you all and will pray for
a magical Christmas season for all of you filled with the hope, joy, peace, and
love of the birth of our savior Jesus Christ! We will miss you all!
Random Ramblings
1. Apparently, I have extra large feet in Spain. Literally, the bottom of my boots that
I just purchased say XL. When I
went to the store to try the boots on the two workers were struggling to find
my size and said that my feet are big.
Now that I’m self-conscious of my foot size, I have been observing the
size of women’s feet around me and noticed that they are rather small.
2. I was reading a recent article that revealed Spain to the
be the country with the highest life expectancy in Europe after Italy of course. Both these countries follow the
Mediterranean diet consisting of a lot of fish, olive oil, bread and legumes if
I remember correctly. To me, it’s
almost a paradox since Spaniards smoke quite a bit, drink a lot of alcohol and
start consuming at an earlier age, and eat very strong meats and cheeses. Remember our meal last weekend with
Eduardo? Three types of red meat and a slice of bread! My theory is that it also has something
to do with the siesta…Spaniards nap more.
3. Students here eat like adults! If I were to ask a handful
of third graders in America what their favorite food was, I would probably
receive a small assortment of responses including cheeseburger, macaroni and
cheese, and chicken nuggets. When
I asked the same question to fourth graders in Spain, about 90% said some form
of seafood. Drum roll please for
the number one favorite food of all fourth graders at my school…..TRIPE!
5. We had to pick up our temporary residence card in the province capital of Pontevedra. It has a beautiful old quarter.
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| La plaza de Leña (The Firewood square) named as such since Firewood used to be sold here |
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| The open air market....can't buy that in Wisconsin. How appetizing! |
6. We were in the Galician Newspaper, La Voz de Galicia. They wrote an article about us and our friend's participation in fencing and slack-lining. Our friend from Seattle is very good at slack-lining and lets us practice on his slackline. Usually, people do not slackline while fencing. I hope Spaniards do not get the wrong impression haha. Robin was wearing his Wisconsin t-shirt.
Cooking Chronicles
There is not too much new in the kitchen lately other than these blood potatoes. Just kidding…but really, why in the world did red water come out of my brown potato when I squeezed the excess water out to make hashbrowns? They tasted good, but restaurants still do it way better! I have yet to discover their secret for the perfect golden hashbrowns.
This week, Robin and I have the goal of eating five servings
of fruits and vegetables each day.
Sounds easy? It’s been difficult since we’ve pretty much been sticking
to buying fruits and vegetables that we are familiar with in the United States. However, the fruit and vegetable stores
have a wide variety of fruits and veggies that we’ve never seen before. This
week, we will explore some never before tasted fruits and veggies! For today,
we will stick to baked butternut squash for lunch (my absolute FAVORITE).
We hope this post finds you all well! We hope that reading
this post was not the equivalent to un día sin pan (a day without bread). To say Spaniards love their bread would
be an understatement. There is a
saying they use here when they want to communicate that something is unbearable
or very unpleasant, one can compare it to a day without bread. Watching that never-ending Packer
versus Vikings game last Sunday was like un día sin pan.
Blessings,
Alyssa and Robin
